The camera obscura is initially one of the first concepts of converting landscapes into images. It was achieved by blacking out all light sources in a small room, only leaving a small hole correlating to the landscape that is wanted to come through. The result was that an inverted image of the outside scene was cast on the opposite wall, which was usually whitened. This technique has been used for many reasons ; Firstly was widely used for viewing eclipses of the Sun without endangering the eyes, then progressed to be an aid to drawing. With the subject being drawn posing outside and the image reflected on a piece of drawing paper for the artist to trace. Portable versions were built, followed by smaller and even pocket models, making the art more available to the general public. The interior of the box was painted black and the image reflected by an angled mirror so that it could be viewed right side up.
This adaptation is the main stepping stone to Nicéphore Niépce’s work with light sensitive plates. He did this by coating pewter with various light-sensitive substances in an effort to copy superimposed engravings in sunlight. He called this heliography, meaning sun drawing. Niepce trialled many different substances to find the most effective one for his aim. He tried paper sensitized with silver chloride, but was only partially able to fix the image. He next tried a light-sensitive material bitumen of Judea, a kind of asphalt, which hardens on exposure to light. He achieved his final aim in 1826 by permanently fixing the view from his workspace onto a pewter plate. Metal had the advantage of being unbreakable and was better suited to the subsequent etching process to produce a printing plate.
Louis Daguerre used this finding with the intention of improving the very long exposure times by either chemical or optical means that Niepce gave in on.
Photography started off around 200 years ago; around 1021 the camera obscura was invented. The camera obscura is a device that projects images to another surface. It was a tent with a tiny hole that when light shunned, it would display a tiny, upside down image to the far wall of the inside of the box. Since at this type you could not make the image a permanent image, you could trace around it to create accurate drawings of landscapes, buildings, portraits, vehicles and more.
It was not until the 17th century that the camera obscura became a small portable device with lenses to focus the light inside the small box.
However, it is argued that the first photograph was made by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1830. He did this by exposing a pewter plate coated with bitumen to light, and this created the first recorded image that did not fade quickly. Contrastingly, in my opinion, the Shroud of Turin is the first recorded image. This is because the shroud is a long linen cloth containing a negative image of a man believed by the Catholic Church to be Jesus Christ, and in my opinion is one of the first images that did not fade quickly. How it was produced however is a mystery. Some believe the Shroud is a perfect example of Camera Obscura since some theorise that in the 13th Century men would pose in the camera obscura, have linen cloth at the back of the wall and if you waited long enough, sun rays would burn the image into the linen, i.e. The wave of the hypothetical UV radiation would have been of varying phase at the surface of the skin, yet the negative image demands the image is a minimum at the skin surface.
On the other hand, it is indisputable that Joseph’s success to create a lasting image on a pewter plate did lead to experiments being done which led to the creation of Daguerreotypes, emulsion plates and wet plates in the mid – to late – 1800s.
The most popular first photographic film however was the daguerreotype. It was basically a copper plate coated with silver and exposed to iodine vapor before it was exposed to any light. In order to create an image, you had to expose the plate to light for up to 15 minutes. One drawback for daguerreotypes was the fact they were way too expensive for people of the working class to even think of buying it. Hence the creation of emulsion plates.
Emulsion plates, way cheaper than daguerreotypes and more efficient. These wet plates used a process called COllodion process. However, it meant photographers had to carry chemicals and dark rooms in order to develop these images.
Afterwards, by 1880, George Eastman started a company called Kodak. Eastman created a roll of film that did not require constantly changing the solid plates, such as, the dry plates (dry gelatine plates that were equal to wet plates, had a decrease in exposure times and meant the plates could be stored rather than made). Eastman therefore created a self-contained box camera that held 100 film exposures, the camera had a small single lens with no focusing adjustment.
With Kodak, the consumer would take pictures and send the camera back to the factory where the film would be developed, printed and have a new roll of film fitted. All this while being affordable by average people costing around $1 per camera.
Then we had the Polaroid that used a secret chemical process to develop film inside the camera in less than a minute.
Finally, In the 1950s, Asahi (which later became Pentax) introduced the Asahiflex and Nikon introduced its Nikon F camera. These were both SLR-type cameras and the Nikon F allowed for interchangeable lenses and other accessories.
For the next 30 years, SLR-style cameras remained the camera of choice. Many improvements were introduced to both the cameras and the film itself.
Therefore, we can successfully see how photography has changed through time, from daguerreotypes to SLR cameras that we see nowadays.
For my personal study, the artists i have chosen to research and take inspiration from are Edward Honaker and Gabriel Isak as I’m looking into portraying mental illness through photography. I thought they were the perfect photographers to looking into as they both photograph mental health in their way in the theme of identity.
mood board of Edward Honaker’s photography;
Edward Honaker
mood board of Gabriel Isak’s photography;
analysis;
Edward takes all his images in black and white. I think that this creates a very sad and depressing atmosphere as there’s no colour to his photography, however, that’s the idea he’s trying to create as he’s hiding and blurring out his identity. he uses a simple tonal range, from basic greys all around the background to very dark tones around him and the mirror, this really draws you into him as the contrast between the tones stands out. his photo is taken using natural lighting as you can see there real light coming in through the window behind him, as seen in the mirror. this makes his image seem more natural and simple as there’s no set-up that needed to be done. the composition of the mirror is directly in the middle of the image but slightly to the left which might represent his mental state as it’s slightly off and not in the perfect position. you can tell that either someone took a photo of him or maybe he had a timer set up on his camera with a tripod and did it himself. the background is very simple, just plain wallpaper in a house, showing a slight section of the door. Edward then proceed to edit his image and blur his face out, or he could have even done it with a very slow shutter speed and could have moved his head quickly to create a blurry concept. he does this to his images to blur his identity out and show his mental state, as he doesn’t know quite who he identifies and isn’t confident in how he feels. I think that his photos are very powerful as many individuals are confused about who they really are or who they want to be, and he shows this in a very clever way by blurring his face out. t makes the rest of his image look so put together however when it comes to him, his face is blurry which creates this sense of confusion in his own identity and showing this by standing in front of a mirror was a powerful idea as it looks like he’s reflecting on who he really is by looking at himself.
Gabriels photography is very unique. I think he presents the theme of identity and mental health in such a clever way and links them perfectly. in this chosen image he uses an abstract way of showing identity through using two figures. he uses both black and white and colour in his photography however in this image he focuses on black and white. the contrast is so sharp between the two figures in this image which makes it so interesting. it creates this idea of two different identities that everyone has, like your inner mental health (the black figure checking in on you) and then who you show to be on the outside and how you present yourself to the world being the white figure. his images are very powerful as both figures are sad and it leaves the viewer to the interpretation of what emotions he’s trying to present. the composition of the two figures is right in the centre and he left a big space on top of his image, this draws you right to the figures. he takes his images using a setup lighting equipment to achieve these strong contrasts but usually edits a lot of his images on software to achieve these solid colours and edit the figures digitally sometimes too. his images aren’t blurry which suggests he uses a very quick shutter speed to capture his images in one quick clean snapshot. I think he achieves what he wants to show, people have many personalities and identities and the sad state of their links with mental health.
Camera obscura, Latin for “dark chamber”, is when you blacken a room then with one wall they make a tiny hole in the centre so when the light goes through the hole projecting an inverted image of the view on the wall this was used for viewing eclipses of the Sun without endangering the eyes and, by the 16th century this was used as an aid to drawing.
William Henry Fox Talbot
William Henry Fox Talbot was on his honeymoon, sitting sketching by the shore of Lake Como early in October 1833. He had one eye pressed close to a camera lucida (shown in image). A camera lucida is an aid for artists to reflect the image they’re drawing into the paper that was invented in 1806 by William Hyde Wollaston. The camera lucida has an adjustable metal arm fastened at one end to the artist’s sketchbook and supporting a glass prism at the other. William saw a refracted image of the Italian landscape laid over the pages of his sketchbook. It seemed simple to just trace the landscape with his pencil as he later recalled, “for when the eye was removed from the prism—in which all looked beautiful—I found that the faithless pencil had only left traces on the paper melancholy to behold.”
Lights, shadows, contrast, sarcasm, and the hunting of visual poetry. The atmosphere of city life ignites my curiosity, leading me to capture real moments with the camera. Ordinary life creates the most attractive and charming pictures
-Umberto Verdoliva
Umberto Verdoliva is from Castellammare di Stabia near to Naples. he currently lives in Italy. He captures street photos mainly around Italy, focusing on his daily life in depth looking for the beauty in humanity around him. He does not plan his outcomes, he goes out into the city streets and looks into crowds, waiting for the right moment to capture. When taking photos he focuses on the relationship between man and the urban environment. Verdoliva became a photographer to be closer to people and enjoys meeting people when he goes out to take photos.
He shows his love for photography by organising workshops, exhibitions, portfolio readings, presentations, writing articles and insights on his photography. In 2010 he became a member of the international collective “Vivo” until 2017. during this he founded “SPONTANEA” an Italian collective dedicated to street photography from 2013 to 2019.
Verdoliva is inspired by photographers, Fan Ho and Henri Cartier-Bresson for their use of light, shapes and strength in their images.
Two real moments captured over time, merged to create something meaningful, balanced, and unique. Recreating a scene, an atmosphere, an ephemeral reality from something that existed in different times and places has been the leitmotif of my work.
-Umberto Verdoliva
The images from “What is a dream?” are made on film, double exposures which is two or more photos put together. Verdoliva plans these images when making them hoping the final outcome sparks the viewers imagination.
I’m constantly roving around the city looking for “connections” between things, people, feelings. When I’m photographing, I look at everything as if it were a dream. With my double exposures, I try to create new realities: merging, mixing, matching elements far and wide to produce new, unimagined meaning.
I particularly like this project and the outcomes he made and the technique of double exposures. I like how they add more layers to an image and tell a more in depth story.
Why the island? Because it is the point where I isolate myself, where I am alone: it is a point that is separate from the rest of the world, not because it really is, but because in my state of mind I can separate myself from it.
-Giuseppe Ungaretti
Procida is one of the islands part of the Flegrean Islands off the coast of Naples in southern Italy.
In this path, which still continues, Procida has been my transit, the refuge, a door revealed with the key of my camera, it has allowed me to find myself again, to discover, to leave out the tiredness and misunderstandings of a life that I might have wanted. different.
“But most beautiful of all, the Island Not Found” are the lines of a poem by Guido Gozzano, an imaginary place that is there to be continually reinvented by those who perceive its soul and grace.
On the island, however, we also find a landing place, a temporary stop for a transit, a stop to recover strength and then continue. The island and the sea, elements that have always been contained in the narration, have allowed me to abandon myself to the beauty of the wind, the light, the smell of salt and my own silences, giving birth to the ancestral desire to tell and reveal the profound enigma inside me.
In the term “isolation” the word island as a place constitutes its backbone, and the very proximity to the mainland accentuates the dimension of distance.
I like the way these images have strong lines and angles, making them very strong and bold images. If I was to use this style for my own double exposure images it would add texture and shape to my images.
Image Analysis
Content – The image includes a man walking on a pavement into what looks like a plastered picture of a close up shot of a women, almost like he is walking into a new world. The street picture is taken at eye level from a slight distance so he could get the man and the pavement in the picture. Verdoliva takes his pictures at random when he is out and looks for possible outcomes. The image has no specific name but is part of his ‘What is a dream?’ series which is about getting the viewer to use their imagination.
Image from What is a dream?
Formal Elements – The image is in black and white which creates a high tonal range throughout the image emphasising the contrast between light and dark. The lighting would have been from the natural daylight which translates to the images’ softness, it is not harsh and bold. even though the image has layers to it, it still has a short depth of field and feels 2D. There is a lot of textures in the final outcome from the wall in the background, the peeling plaster sheet and the close up portrait adds to the textures. These create quite harsh lines, almost like dry brush strokes in a painting, adding depth and grain to the image. The image contains a mixture of geometric and organic shapes like the hair in the portrait of the girl and the run down wall in the background and geometric shapes like the pavement lines which also is a form of repetition. The white solid line which is the edge of the paper that the man is walking into could link to the idea of walking into a new world as Verdoliva likes to get people to question themselves and their imaginations while looking at his images. The background image with the man walking follows the rule of third as the horizon is in the bottom third and the main subject is off centre.
Mood – The mood overall is very dark and eerie. The softness of the image also creates a ghostly feeling because it is very light and empty. The Women also looks like she is looking over her shoulder as if the man is following her which creates a atmospheric feeling.
With this project I want to explore the subject of family, specifically generational and economic struggles that occur, as looking into my family history inspires me to create images that provide a truthful telling of the past. This topic also allows me to gain a wider understanding of my own identity and how I am in the place I’m in now.
Why it matters to you?
This matters to me as I believe that these issues are a part of everyone’s family identity, but in particular these are struggles that the older generations in my family have suffered and have had to work hard to distance themselves from. However these subjects are usually avoided when looking back on your family identity, due to it sometimes being considered taboo to talk about such topics, meaning you are sometimes unable to fully grasp the reality of your personal history. It is also something that I wish to learn more about myself as I continue this project, and hope to be closer to my family as a result of it. In addition, I believe it is important to talk about these things in order to destigmatise domestic struggles and not feel the need to present a picture perfect family.
How you wish to develop your project?
I wish to develop this project using various different mediums, such as stitching, collage and drawing in order to create my images. This is due to being inspired by artists such as Clarissa Sligh and Carolle Benitah, who produce their work in a similar manner. My aim is to do this using family archive photographs, documents and new sets of images that showcase my family in the present. With this I am hoping to focus on the upbringing and adult lives of my grandparent, comparing it to the lives they have created for their children and myself.
When and where you intend to begin your study?
I intend to begin this study by producing my first set of photographs in my house as well as other domestic settings taking family portraits, which will be staged. Once I create more artist studies I will have a better understanding of the style in which I want to shoot and what my final products will look like, using these artists as inspiration. After this I will be able to start these shoots during the holidays, as my family will be coming over for a short time from England.
The Arab scholar Ibn Al-Haytham (945–1040) is generally credited as being the first person to study how we see; he invented the camera obscura to demonstrate how light can be used to project an image onto a flat surface. Earlier references to the camera obscura have been found in Chinese texts dating to about 400 B.C., and in the writings of Aristotle around 330 B.C. By the mid-1600s, artists began using the camera obscura to help them draw and paint elaborate real-world images with the help of finely crafted lenses. Magic lanterns, the predecessor of the modern projector, also began to appear at this time. Using the same optical principles as the camera obscura, the magic lantern allowed people to project images, usually painted on glass slides, onto large surfaces. They soon became a popular form of mass entertainment.
In 1826, French scientist Joseph Nicephore Niepce developed the first photographic image with a camera obscura. Niepce placed an engraving onto a metal plate coated in bitumen and then exposed it to light. The shadowy areas of the engraving blocked light, but the whiter areas permitted light to react with the chemicals on the plate. When Niepce placed the metal plate in a solvent, gradually an image appeared. These heliographs, or sun prints as they were sometimes called, are considered the first photographic images. However, Niepce’s process required eight hours of light exposure to create an image that would soon fade away.
View From The Window at Le Gras | Joseph Nicéphore Niépce
In 1829, Louis Daguerre formed a partnership with Niepce to improve the process Niepce had developed. In 1839, following several years of experimentation and Niepce’s death, Daguerre developed a more convenient and effective method of photography and named it after himself. Daguerre’s daguerreotype process started by fixing the images onto a sheet of silver-plated copper. He then polished the silver and coated it in iodine, creating a surface that was sensitive to light. Then he put the plate in a camera and exposed it for a few minutes. After the image was painted by light, Daguerre bathed the plate in a solution of silver chloride. This process created a lasting image that would not change if exposed to light. The daguerreotype gained popularity quickly in Europe and the U.S. By 1850, there were over 70 daguerreotype studios in New York City alone.
Daguerreotypes
One drawback to daguerreotypes, however, was that they could not be reproduced; each one was a unique image. The ability to create multiple prints came about from the work of Henry Fox Talbot, an English botanist and mathematician. Talbot sensitized paper to light using a silver-salt solution. He then exposed the paper to light. The background became black, and the subject was shown in different shades of grey. This was a negative image. From the paper negative, Talbot made contact prints, reversing the light and shadows to create a detailed picture. In 1841, he perfected this paper-negative process and called it a calotype, Greek for “beautiful picture.”
In 1889, photographer and industrialist George Eastman invented film with a base that was flexible and could be rolled. The 35 mm film most people know today was invented by Kodak in 1913 for the early motion picture industry. In the mid-1920s, the German camera maker Leica used this technology to create the first still camera that used the 35 mm format. The drawback to nitrate-based film was that it was flammable and tended to decay over time. Kodak and other manufacturers began switching to a celluloid base, which was fireproof and more durable. Most films produced up to the 1970s were based on this technology. Since the 1960s, polyester polymers have been used for gelatin-based films.
Having perfected roll film, George Eastman also invented the box-shaped camera that was simple enough for consumers to use. Once the film was used up, the photographer mailed the camera with the film still in it to the Kodak factory, where the film was removed from the camera, processed, and printed. The camera was then reloaded with film and returned. Over the next several decades, major manufacturers such as Kodak in the U.S., Leica in Germany, and Canon and Nikon in Japan would all introduce or develop the major camera formats still in use today. Nikon and Canon would make the interchangeable lens popular and the built-in light meter commonplace.
Apple later introduced its smartphone camera with its first iPhone in 2007, and other companies followed, such as Google and Samsung. By 2013, smartphones with cameras were outselling digital cameras by more than 10-to-1. In 2019, more than 1.5 billion smartphones were sold to consumers, compared with about 550,000 digital cameras over roughly the same period.
I made a mind map and mood board for the topic that I chose fo my personal study is on, which is Bouley Bay. This is because I live close to it, and I feel that there is a lot of history that be explore and because it is a landscape that has a wide variety of features I can use lots of photographic techniques to capture the bay.
STATE OF INTENT
My idea is to make a photobook in which I explore the area Bouley Bay, overall I want to capture the activity, views, and close ups of key feature such as rocks, shells, heritage, the hill climb, and the bay. I could also look into the history of the bay and the Jersey Folklore, involving the Black Dog.
It is important to me as I grew up in that area, and have many memories of it. And I hope to capture it in the same way in which remember it.
I wish to develop my project by exploring the bay and collecting lots of objects to photograph in a studio, and also to take long exposure, aerial, and underwater of the bay, as I have been inspired by many photographers, such as, Martin J Patterson (@ mjplandscapes on Instagram), Jaun Munoz (@ drjuanmdc on Instagram), and David Aguilar (@ davidaguilar_photo). Using these images I can look into topics such as, beach pollution, environment and beach life. Hanna-Katrina Jędrosz and Barron Bixler have studied environments, so it would be interesting to analyse them and their work.
FIRST PHOTO SHOOT PLAN
My first photoshoot, I will go down to Bouley at Sunset when it’s not cloudy and high-tide, and take long exposure photos using a tripod, and some neutral density filters.
