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The origins of photography: write 500 -1000 words + illustrations

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‘Fixing the shadows’, we started by watching a documentary ’ from BBC Genius of Photography, Episode 1. Which was about the history of photography. This allowed us to gain a richer insight into how cameras and photography developed over time , and all the different unique techniques that were used before professional cameras were developed. It showed us how when one artist developed a new idea about how to take photos, a few moths or years later a new artist worked from their work and developed even more techniques and processes from that. Every time a new process was developed it had a completely different meaning around photography and tried to present images in many different ways. I will talk about some of these early processes in this essay.

A Brief History of Photography | Iceland Photo Tours
Kaptured by Knight | Ten Fun Facts - The History of the Camera

Camera Obscura-

Photography first started to develop and get attention in late 1820s , in France. However the earliest known written account of a camera obscura was provided in 400BC. It was light from an illuminated object that passed through a pinhole into a dark room created an inverted image of the original object. In the 18th centry, a concept/ process was disovered- the camera obscura. This is an optical device which is the ancestor of modern cameras. From the 17th century onwards some artists used it as an aid to plotting compositions. Essentially the camera obscura consisted of a lens attached to an aperture on the side of a darkened tent or box. It is a darkened room with a small hole or lens at one side through which an image is projected onto a wall or table opposite the hole. “Camera obscura” can also refer to analogous constructions such as a box or tent in which an exterior image is projected inside.

A visual representation of how it worked;

Camera obscura and the beginnings of photography | Photoion
CAMERA OBSCURA – AND EARLY THOUGHTS ON LIGHT - Vision Optics

John Nicéphore Niepce

Joseph Nicephore Niepce - Pione

Nicéphore Niépce, in full Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce, (born March 7, 1765.France—died July 5, 1833, Chalon-sur-Saône), French inventor who was the first to make a permanent photographic image.

Joseph Nicephor Niepce: The First Photographer

When lithography became a fashionable hobby in France in 1813, Niépce began to experiment with the then-novel printing technique. He sought a way to provide images automatically. He coated pewter with various light-sensitive substances in an effort to copy superimposed engravings in sunlight. From this he progressed in April 1816 to attempts at photography which he called heliography(sundrawing), with a camera. He recorded a view from his workroom window on paper sensitized with silver chloride but was only partially able to fix the image.

Louis Daguerre + Daguerreotype 

The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process (1839-1860) in the history of photography. 

Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, each daguerreotype is a unique image on a silvered copper plate.

In contrast to photographic paper, a daguerreotype is not flexible and is rather heavy.The daguerreotype is accurate, detailed and sharp. It has a mirror-like surface and is very fragile. Since the metal plate is extremely vulnerable, most daguerreotypes are presented in a special housing. Different types of housings existed: an open model, a folding case, jewelry…

Numerous portrait studio’s opened their doors from 1840 onward. Daguerreotypes were very expensive, so only the wealthy could afford to have their portrait taken. Even though the portrait was the most popular subject, the daguerreotype was used to record many other images such as topographic and documentary subjects, antiquities, still lives, natural phenomena and remarkable events.
European daguerreotypes are scarce. They are scattered in institutional and private collections all over the world. Many aspects of the daguerreotype still need to be discovered. They can help us to understand the impact of photography on Europe’s social and cultural history.

The process;

The daguerreotype is a direct-positive process, creating a highly detailed image on a sheet of copper plated with a thin coat of silver without the use of a negative. The process required great care. The silver-plated copper plate had first to be cleaned and polished until the surface looked like a mirror. Next, the plate was sensitized in a closed box over iodine until it took on a yellow-rose appearance. The plate, held in a lightproof holder, was then transferred to the camera. After exposure to light, the plate was developed over hot mercury until an image appeared. To fix the image, the plate was immersed in a solution of sodium thiosulfate or salt and then toned with gold chloride.

Exposure times for the earliest daguerreotypes ranged from three to fifteen minutes, making the process nearly impractical for portraiture. Modifications to the sensitization process coupled with the improvement of photographic lenses soon reduced the exposure time to less than a minute.

Daguerreotypes | Archives and Special Collections
Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre

HENRY FOX TALBOT and Calotype;

William Henry Fox Talbot was an English scientist, inventor and photography pioneer who invented the salted paper and calotype processes, precursors to photographic processes of the later 19th and 20th centuries.

What did Henry Fox Talbot do?

In 1851 Talbot discovered a way of taking instantaneous photographs, and his “photolyphic engraving” (patented in 1852 and 1858), a method of using printable steel plates and muslin screens to achieve quality middle tones of photographs on printing plates.

He called his process “calotype”. The original negative and positive process invented by William Henry Fox Talbot, the calotype is sometimes called a “Talbotype.” This process uses a paper negative to make a print with a softer, less sharp image than the daguerreotype, but because a negative is produced, it is possible to make multiple copies. The image is contained in the fabric of the paper rather than on the surface, so the paper fibers tend to show through on the prints. The process was superceded in the 1850s by the collodion glass negative.

Invention of Photography - Fox Talbot - The British Library

Richard Maddox and The Gelatin or Dry Plate photographic process;

Richard Leach Maddox was an English photographer and physician who invented lightweight gelatin negative plates for photography in 1871. This involved the coating of glass photographic plates with a light sensitive gelatin emulsion and allowing them to dry prior to use.

. He combined silver bromide with “vegetable gummy matters” (lichen, linseed, quince), and “starchy substances” (rice, tapioca, sago). “Often I fancied I was just within the doorway when the door closed, and other plans had to be tried. Finally he tried gelatin from a packet of Nelson’s Gelatine Granuals.

Maddox prepared a number of plates, exposing by contact-printing them from other negatives, and putting each through a different exposure trial. “The resulting prints were very delicate in detail, of a colour varying between a bistre and olive tint, and after washing dried to a brilliant surface”. He later described trials on “out-of-door subjects”, but it was “impossible to get some laurels depicted in anything more than black and white” (i.e. without gray-scale tones).

The advantages of the dry plate were obvious: photographers could use commercial dry plates off the shelf instead of having to prepare their own emulsions in a mobile darkroom. Negatives did not have to be developed immediately. Also, for the first time, cameras could be made small enough to be hand-held, or even concealed: further research created ‘fast’ exposure times, which led to ‘snapshot’ photography (and the ‘Kodak’ camera with roll film), ultimately paving the way for cinematography.

Richard L. Maddox

George Eastman + Kodak

In 1888, inventor George Eastman invented a game-changing kind of dry, transparent, flexible photographic film that came in a roll. The film was designed for use in Eastman’s newly designed, user-friendly Kodak cameras.

 His first camera, the Kodak, was sold in 1888 and consisted of a box camera with 100 exposures. Later he offered the first Brownie camera, which was intended for children. By 1927, Eastman Kodak was the largest U.S. company in the industry.

Who Was George Eastman?

In 1880, George Eastman opened the Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company. His first camera, the Kodak, was sold in 1888 and consisted of a box camera with 100 exposures. Later he offered the first Brownie camera, which was intended for children. By 1927, Eastman Kodak was the largest U.S. company in the industry. Eastman committed suicide in 1932.

Early Life and Education 

Named after his father George Washington Eastman, George Eastman was born on July 12, 1854, in Waterville, New York. George Sr. had started a small business school, Eastman Commercial College, in Rochester, where he moved the family in 1860. But he died suddenly when Eastman was eight. One of young Eastman’s two older sisters was wheelchair-bound from polio and died when Eastman was 16.

Eastman’s mother, Mary, took in boarders to support the family, and Eastman dropped out of high school at age 14 to add to the family income. He began as a messenger and office boy for insurance companies and studied accounting at home to qualify for a higher salary. He eventually landed a job as bookkeeper at the Rochester Savings Bank.

Inventions

When Eastman was 24, he planned to visit Santo Domingo and, on the advice of a colleague, decided to document the trip. But the photography equipment alone was enormous, heavy and costly. He bought all the equipment, but he never took the trip.

Instead he began researching how to make photography less cumbersome and easier for the average person to enjoy. After seeing a formula for a “dry plate” emulsion in a British publication, and getting tutelage from two local amateur photographers, Eastman formulated a gelatin-based paper film and a device for coating dry plates.

Kodak Photography

He resigned from his bank job after launching his fledgling photography company in April 1880. In 1885, he headed to the patent office with a roll-holder device that he and camera inventor William Hall Walker had developed. This allowed cameras to be smaller and cheaper.

Eastman also came up with the name Kodak, because he believed products should have their own identity, free from association with anything else. So in 1888, he launched the first Kodak camera (a few years later, he amended the company name to Eastman Kodak).

The company slogan was “You press the button, we do the rest,” which meant the camera was sent in to the company after the 100 exposures on the roll of film had been used; they developed it and sent it back to the customer. 

The Brownie Camera

The Brownie camera was launched in 1900 to target new hobbyist photographers — children — and with its $1 price tag, it also became a favourite of servicemen. Eastman supported the military in other ways as well, developing unbreakable glass lenses for gas masks and a special camera for taking pictures from planes during World War I.

The Original Kodak was fitted with a rotating barrel shutter unique to this model. The shutter was set by pulling up a string on top of the camera and operated by pushing a button on the side of the camera. After taking a photograph, a key on top of the camera was used to wind the film onto the next frame.

Original Kodak Camera, Serial No. 540 | National Museum of American History
the first kodak camera
Kodak Brownie Camera | The Franklin Institute
kodak brownie camera

An example of autochrome from the archive;

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art movements and isms

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ROMANTICISM

Romanticism in Art

Romanticism was an artistic and intellectual movement that ran from the late eighteenth century through the nineteenth century. It focused on strong emotion as a source of aesthetic experience, placing emphasis on such emotions as trepidation, horror, and the awe. It elevated folk art, language, and custom. Romanticism rose as a reaction against the excessive rationalism of the Enlightenment. It drew upon the French Revolution’s rejection of aristocratic social and political norms. It was also influenced by the theory of evolution and uniformitarianism, which argued that “the past is the key to the present.” This lead some Romantics to look back nostalgically to the Middle Ages and elements of art and narrative perceived to be from the medieval period. The ideals of the French Revolution influenced the Romantic movement in other ways. Romanticism elevated the achievements of what it perceived as misunderstood heroic individuals and artists that altered society, and legitimized the individual imagination as a critical authority which permitted freedom from classical notions of form in art.

IMPRESSIONISM

Impressionism in Art

Impressionism was a radical art movement that began in the late 1800s, centered primarily around Parisian painters. Impressionists rebelled against classical subject matter and embraced modernity, desiring to create works that reflected the world in which they lived. Uniting them was a focus on how light could define a moment in time, with colour providing definition instead of black lines. The Impressionists emphasized the practice of plein air painting, or painting outside. Initially disapproved by critics, Impressionism has since been embraced as one of the most popular and influential art styles in Western history. Artists abandoned the traditional landscape palette of muted greens, browns, and grays and instead painted in a lighter, sunnier, more brilliant key. They began by painting the play of light upon water and the reflected colours of its ripples, trying to reproduce the manifold and animated effects of sunlight and shadow and of direct and reflected light that they observed.

MODERNISM

Modernism in Art

Modernism, in the fine arts, was a break with the past and the concurrent search for new forms of expression. Modernism fostered a period of experimentation in the arts from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, particularly in the years following World War I. In an era characterized by industrialization, the nearly global adoption of capitalism, rapid social change, and advances in science and the social sciences, Modernists felt a growing alienation incompatible with Victorian morality, optimism, and convention. New ideas in psychology, philosophy, and political theory kindled a search for new modes of expression. In the visual arts the roots of Modernism are often traced back to painter Édouard Manet, who, beginning in the 1860s, not only depicted scenes of modern life but also broke with tradition when he made no attempt to mimic the real world by way of perspective and modeling. He instead drew attention to the fact that his work of art was simply paint on a flat canvas and that it was made by using a paintbrush.

REALISM

Realism in Art

Realism, in the arts, is the accurate, detailed, and unembellished depiction of nature or of contemporary life. Realism rejects imaginative idealization in favour of a close observation of outward appearances. Realism was stimulated by several intellectual developments in the first half of the 19th century. Among these were the anti-Romantic movement in Germany, with its emphasis on the common man as an artistic subject. Gustave Courbet is often considered the leading figure of Realism. He laid the groundwork for the movement in the 1840s, when he began portraying peasants and labourers on a grand scale typically reserved for religious, historical, or allegorical subjects. Prior to Courbet’s radical emergence, painters did not depict scenes as they saw them; instead, they idealized them, virtually erasing any flaws or imperfections. To Courbet, this approach was detrimental to painting, as it eliminated any sense of individuality.

CUBISM

Cubism in Art

The Cubist style emphasized the flat, two-dimensional surface of the picture plane, rejecting the traditional techniques of perspective, foreshortening, modeling, and chiaroscuro and refuting time-honoured theories that art should imitate nature. Cubist painters were not bound to copying form, texture, colour, and space. Instead, they presented a new reality in paintings that depicted radically fragmented objects. The monochromatic colour scheme was suited to the presentation of complex, multiple views of the object, which was reduced to overlapping opaque and transparent planes. Some historians have argued that these innovations represent a response to the changing experience of space, movement, and time in the modern world. This first phase of the movement was called Analytic Cubism.

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personal study statement of intent

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What you want to explore?

In my personal study I am going to be exploring the theme of Identity. Identity is the qualities, beliefs, personality, looks and expressions that make a person. In my study I will be looking into my childhood and objects and drawings from my childhood which I will incorporate into creating a book. I have chose to explore this as it is personal to me and so therefore I feel I can fully capture all the emotions and meaningful imagery that I need to represent my childhood and how that has shaped me into the person I am today. I feel that I will be able to create a more meaningful project as it will be relative and personal to my life and my experiences.

How you wish to develop your project?

To develop my project I will go through all my baby images and diaries to find images that have meaning to me and best represent my identity, I also will be taking and using drawings and writings I did as a kid to help guide the meanings of the images.

When and where you intend to begin your study?

To begin my study I will create a mind map and then develop the into a more detailed and specific mood-board including ideas based on childhood and collect a number of artists that I can look into. When researching artists I found myself most interested in Jim Goldbergs project “Raising wolves” which combines images, texts, drawings and diary notations from runaway teens in Los Angeles. Although in my personal study I will be focusing on my own life I still felt like I could take inspiration from his project as I want to use other parts of my childhood other than just images to capture a more telling story, and then use a disposable to create images similar to Goldbergs style of me now. I will present my final outcomes in a photobook.

For my first shoot I plan on just experimenting with my ideas and different ways I can capture me now and my old memories. This shoot may not be used in my final outcomes however I feel it will be useful to put my ideas into practice to ensure I will be able to capture my idea the way I want to. This shoot can help me plan my final outcome better and give me more of an idea what I hope it to look like.

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History of photography

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A Brief History of Photography and the Camera

Camera Obscura

During our photography lessons we watched  ‘Fixing the Shadows’ from BBC Genius of Photography, Episode 1. We learnt about the historical timeline of photography and how photography grew to what it is now. The documentary went through the timeline of photography and the different influences on photography now. Photography began in the late 1820s in France. In the early 18th century they discovered camera obscura image projection and the observation that some substances are visibly altered by exposure to light. A camera obscura is a darkened room with a small hole or lens at one side through which an image is projected onto a wall or table opposite the hole. The result from camera obscura was that an inverted image of the outside scene was cast on the opposite wall, which was usually whitened. As well as being used for photography they used camera obscura for centuries to view eclipses of the Sun without endangering the eyes and in the 16th century it was used as an aid to drawing; the subject was posed outside and the image reflected on a piece of drawing paper for the artist to trace. Portable versions were built, followed by smaller and then even pocket models, the interior of the box was painted black and the image was reflected by an angled mirror so that it could be viewed right side up.

Optics: the principle of the camera obscura. Engraving, 1752. | Wellcome Collection
Experiment: Making a Room-sized Camera Obscura | Learn Photography by Zoner Photo Studio

John Nicéphore Niepce

Nicéphore Niépce,was born March 7, 1765 in France and died July 5, 1833. He was a French inventor who was the first to make a permanent photographic image. Niépce’s main problem and inspiration for creating photography was an unsteady hand and weak drawing skills, which then led him to attempt to find a way to capture images permanently without relying on his poor drawing skills. He developed heliography, which was a technique he used to create the world’s oldest surviving product of a photographic process: a print made from a photoengraved printing plate in 1825. Niépce experimented with the use of silver chloride, which darkened when exposed to light, but found it was not sufficient to produce the results he desired. He then moved on to bitumen, which led him to creating his first successful attempt at capturing a nature image. His process involved dissolving bitumen in lavender oil (which is a solvent often used in varnish), he then coated a sheet of pewter with this mixture and placed it inside a camera obscura.  Eight hours later he removed it and washed it with lavender oil to remove any unexposed bitumen and was then left with an image.

Joseph Nicephor Niepce: The First Photographer

The earliest surviving photo from Niépce is from 1825. It is said to be taken at his family home in France.

Louis Daguerre + Daguerreotype

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre was born on the 18th November 1787 and died on the 10th July 1851, he was a French artist and photographer, recognized for his invention of the daguerreotype process of photography. In 1829, Daguerre partnered with Nicéphore Niépce. Niépce died suddenly in 1833, but Daguerre continued experimenting, and evolved the process of the daguerreotype. It wasn’t until 1838 when Daguerre’s experiments progressed to the point where he felt comfortable showing examples of the new medium to selected artists and scientists in the hope of lining up investors. François Arago was among the artists Daguerres shared his work with and he offered Daguerre a lifetime pension in exchange for the rights to his process. 

The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process in the history of photography. Named after the inventor, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre. To make the image, a daguerreotypist would polish a sheet of silver-plated copper to a mirror finish then they would treat it with fumes that made its surface light sensitive then they exposed it in a camera for as long as was judged to be necessary, which could be as little as a few seconds for brightly sunlit subjects or much longer with less intense lighting then made the resulting latent image on it visible by fuming it with mercury vapor which removed its sensitivity to light by liquid chemical treatment; rinsed and dried it; and then sealed the result behind glass in a protective enclosure. Each daguerreotype is a unique image on a silvered copper plate. Unlike photographic paper, a daguerreotype is not flexible and is instead heavy. The daguerreotype is accurate, detailed and sharp and has a mirror-like surface and is very fragile. As the metal plate is extremely vulnerable, most daguerreotypes are presented in a special housing. Daguerreotypes were very expensive, so only the wealthy could afford to have their portrait taken. Although the portrait was the most popular subject, the daguerreotype was used to record many other images such as topographic and documentary subjects, antiquities, still lives, natural phenomena and remarkable events.

The Daguerreotype - Photographic Processes Series - Chapter 2 of 12 - YouTube

George Eastman + Kodak

George Eastman was born July 12th, 1854 and died March 14th, 1932. He was an American entrepreneur who founded the ‘Eastman Kodak’ company and helped to bring the photographic use of roll film into the mainstream. Eastman invented the Kodak camera, helping make photography accessible to the public. In 1888, he sold his first Kodak camera which consisted of a box camera with 100 exposures that used paper negatives. Once consumers had used their 100 exposures the entire camera was sent back to the manufacturer for developing, printing, and reloading when the film was used up. Eastman Kodaks slogan was “You press the button, we do the rest”. 8 years later he went on to develop the first Brownie camera, which was intended for children and sold for one dollar These cameras quickly became popular due to its simplicity which helped greatly accelerated the growth of amateur photography, especially among women, to whom much of the Kodak advertising was addressed. By simplifying the apparatus and even processing the film for the consumer, he made photography accessible to millions of casual amateurs with no particular professional training, technical expertise, or aesthetic credentials. Within a few years of the Kodak’s introduction, snapshot photography became a national craze and ‘smiling’ for photos became the new thing rather than previous set up portraiture.

Kodak Photography: This Is the Oldest George Eastman Camera | Time
First Kodak camera invented in 1888


Brownie (camera) - Wikipedia
Kodak brownie camera
Task

History of Photography Essay

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The medium of photography is a well known art form, with it now being more accessible than ever, whether it is taking pictures with your phone or using a film camera. Nowadays we consume hundreds of images a day and are able to produce them at ease, however it has taken many scientists, inventors and artists hundreds of years to perfect this process.

The first known method used to capture and present images can be dated back to 400BC. This was known as a Camera Obscura, meaning ‘dark chamber’ in Latin, which was a method that involved creating a completely dark room with one small hole in it. As a result, this created a projection of the image outside the room onto the walls of the dark room upside down. For hundreds of years this was an invention that was used in order to view the eclipse of the sun, without causing damage to the eyes. Although a revolutionary discovery, this method did not allow for the image to be permanently captured. This was an issue many struggled with for years until the late 1820s, when Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, a French inventor, was able to create a camera obscura which was portable and could expose a pewter plate coated with bitumen to the projected image. This made him the first person to record an image that did not fade quickly after it was captured.

Soon after this, the idea of photography was commercialised by Louis Daguerre after his invention of the daguerreotype, a process named after himself, in 1839. With this new form of photography, extremely detailed images were able to be created. This was achieved by using a copper plate with a thin sheet of silver on, which had to be polished enough so that the surface would look like a mirror. After this plate had been transferred to the camera, it was then exposed to light and developed over hot mercury. This meticulous technique and outcome was something only the rich could afford and most of the time was used to create portraits of them. However, even though Daguerre’s invention resulted in beautifully detailed photographs, each image was one of a kind, as it didn’t use negatives, meaning there was no way to make further prints. In addition to this, portraits usually took around three to fifteen minutes to take, meaning a more inexpensive and efficient alternative had to be made.

Leaving a gap in the market, this allowed British Henry Fox-Talbot to solve this problem by inventing the calotype in the 1830s. This is due to the process that required using a sheet of paper coated in silver chloride being exposed to light in a camera obscura. As a result, the places on the paper which had been exposed to light became dark and vice versa, in turn creating a negative image. With this negative, it meant that photographs could be reprinted by contact printing the negative onto another piece of sensitised paper. As well as this, the Calotype allowed for a shorter exposure time as fast as one minute. This method was then improved by English inventor Richard Maddox, who introduced the dry plate in 1871. Using dry plates meant that the plate could be transported and the negative could be exposed and developed at a later date, rather than in the same sitting. All of this caused photography to become slightly more accessible and appealing to the public.

It was not long after until George Eastman invented the roll of film in 1889, revolutionising the way we take photographs. Eastman developed these rolls on a transparent base, a standard that still remains in the present, containing 100 exposures. He named this camera Kodak, a name he coined himself, therefore starting the infamous camera company that still exists today. With this camera users would send the entire thing back to the manufacturer, with the used film inside, which they then developed and sent back with the reloaded camera. This quick and efficient process meant that less people held poses and more candid photographs were taken. This transformed the image of photography into something enjoyable and a way to capture happy memories, with Kodak even encouraging users to smile at the camera. In 1900, eleven years after first introducing the roll of film camera, Eastman distributed the Brownie Camera. This product was originally made for children and priced at one dollar, making photography more accessible than ever. It can be said that Kodak was the start of contemporary photography.

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Personal Study – Genius of Photograhy Notes

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Andre Kourtez – Meurdon = transformation. “Photography always transforms what it describes. Photography tells a story beyond the frame through intuition.

Fixing the shadows – photography invented 1839 – Louis de Gaye, Henry Fox Talbott. Goes further back than that – Camera obscura used by renaissance artists in the 15th century. The two inventors found a way to fix this camera obscura projection onto a surface. Daguerreotype – copper plate. Abdudlla Morell. Well befor 1839 it was known that materials had a sensitivity to light. Talbott started experimenting as he couldnt draw. He started using silver salts on paper and ‘moustraps’ to start creating negatives. His paper negatives represented the breakthrough of photography. Positives were created from these negatives and produce many copies. Louis – mirrored metal – daguerreotype, immediacy. Depth of field and tonal range and detail. Guild – burning the image into the dag. Talbott system still dominated as daguerreotypes could not be copied many times. Dags are fragile. Beginnings of photography were all about the struggle to see which process will prosper – sense of industry. Photography mid 19th century – industrial revolution – huge technological change. Photography was part of the invention of modernism. Speed. Motion studies – precursor of cinema – Moybridge. Stanford came to Moybridge to study if horses feet all came off the ground. Daguuera never saw photography as an artform. George Eastman – roll of film, kodak. Kodak camera created mass production for photography. You press the button well do the rest. Brownie – low cost more accessible. Vernacular – photography not for art. Pictorialism – artistic photography.

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Personal Study: Photoshoot Plans

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Shipla Gupta

Who?I will not need anyone as a model because I’ll be taking pictures of objects and landscapes.
What?I’ll be photographing places and things that relate to my identity from my whole life, childhood to present day.
Why?I want to take individual things and create some sort of narrative or sequence with them to show how I have evolved but also show the important things to me.
Where?Greve De Lecq,  St Catherines pier, Corbierre Lighthouse, Harve Des Pas, St Aubins and the school studio.
When?I’ll need to do a few different shoots on different days and different times because the places and landscapes are all over the island. I also need to think about the lighting I want for each location and the weather (sun, rain, fog, blue skies?) The pictures of old photos can be taken at any time in the studio at school.
How?I will use my camera and the natural daylight, but for the studio pictures I will use artificial lighting.

Umberto Verdoliva

Who? I will not need anyone as a model because I’ll be taking pictures of landscapes.
What?Similar to my Shipla Grupta photoshoot I want to take images around jersey that relate to my identity but for this photographer I intend to focus on a more abstract approach like the images from Procida. But also try and incorporate the abstract style with landscapes.
Why?I want to take images of landscapes which relate to me and my current life in Jersey and contrast it with where my parents grew up but also to show my identity through places.
Where?Greve De Lecq,  St Catherines pier, Corbierre Lighthouse, Harve Des Pas, St Aubins.
When?I’ll need to do a few different shoots on different days and different times because the places and landscapes are all over the island. I also need to think about the lighting I want for each location and the weather (sun, rain, fog, blue skies?) For this photographer in particular it would be good to take photos on a sunny day so I can get the same high contrast images.
How? I will use my camera and natural daylight.
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Personal Study – Contextual Studies

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Jeff Wall

ICP Talks: Jeff Wall | International Center of Photography

Jeff Wall is best known for constructing and photographing elaborate mise-en-scènes, which he displays in wall-mounted light boxes as large-scale colour images. He takes his cues from the neorealism of Italian cinema, working with nonprofessional actors to stage scenes of everyday life. The above is Jeff Wall’s image titled, ‘Passer-by’ (1996). It is a street photography image where Jeff has captured a naturally occurring event. An event that he has encountered almost by accident that portrays a scene and can be interpreted beyond the frame by using intuition. This encapsulates one of Wall’s strong views of what makes an intriguing and meaningful image.

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Quote from David Company’s So Present, so invisible

The image is of a sidewalk in what seems like an urban American suburb. Framed in the centre of the image is a tree, and on either side of the tree we see two men. The man in the foreground is wearing denim jeans and a denim jacket, we cannot see his face as he is looking over his shoulder at the other man while continuing to walk. The other man in the background is running towards a stop sign in the distance in the opposite to the man in the foreground. Overall the image has an overwhelming feeling with a low exposure and abundance of shadows the image has a sober emotion throughout. The image has a wide tonal range with the man in the foreground being well lit, along with an illuminated white wall which possesses the images highlights. In the background where the man is running is very dark and underexposed giving the images its pure black’s and therefore this wide tonal range. This tonal range connotes a sense of innocence for the well exposed man in the foreground who can be seen looking over his shoulder into what can seem like a world of darkness he is leaving behind. The man in the background is presented as a more corrupt character in the scene as he can be seen to run towards the theoretical ‘ dark side’. This lighting looks as if it has been achieved using an artificial source of lighting during the night time to achieve the vast contrast between the foreground and background. The lighting casts long shadows from the subjects and the tree in the centre of the image. These shadows aid in making the image significantly more dramatic as it adds more to the dark, ominous aesthetic while introducing a sense of depth. These shadows also connote to the theme of innocence and corruption, almost insinuating the man in the foreground is leaving his dark side behind him. The lighting also adds a shiny highlight to the leaves of the tree in the middle of the image. This gives it a glistening texture adding to the innocence of the foreground, while the background remains without light and therefore keeps a grainy texture adding to the theme of corruption. I think this method of casting shadows shouldn’t be overlooked as it can being a lot more meaning to how photography is interpreted. The development of modern photography has preached a certain aesthetic to be correct, I think Jeff’s work challenges this. Having these drooping shadows can be undesirable by the modern photographer seeking to achieve this ‘correct’ aesthetic with a lot of photographers using fill-lighting to cancel out shadows in the background. Jeff challenged this view and believe in a balance between aesthetics and narrative. He used the shadows to add to the narrative of this image.

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Quote from David Company’s So Present, so invisible
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Quote from David Company’s So Present, so invisible

Jeff used a narrow aperture to achieve the depth of field in the image and get everything in focus which allows him to tell relay the narrative of innocence and corruption between the foreground and background. Shooting with a closed aperture also aids in underexposing the image and making it appear darker. The way the image is framed where the tree separates the two men and the man who represents corruption is hiding behind the tree almost representing hiding from his true identity.

The above gives further insight into Jeff Wall’s perspective of photography and the importance to investigate pictorialism and how imagery can create art. He talks about how photography is like poetry where all elements of a photos narrative and aesthetic qualities evoke emotion and relay purpose like a poem does. This aligns with the above Quotes from David Company’s So Present, so invisible where Jeff discusses the relationship between the vernacular and the pictorial and how there is no one way to create art. I believe that the strongest pictorial images originate from a documentation of accidental circumstances that outline a subject. I believe art can be interpreted in all images that relay a narrative and also the importance of imagery in accurately documenting in a artistic fashion. I therefore wholly agree with Jeff’s view on photography.

Independent, Reading, Task

History Of Photography

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THE BEGGINING – 1826

The worlds first photograph was made in a camera in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore. The photograph was taken from the upstairs windows of Niépce’s estate in the Burgundy region of France. It was the worlds first image that didn’t fade quickly. He used camera obscure to capture his image, however he added a photo sensitive plate coated with silver chloride, which darkened where it was exposed to light. This is how he recorded his image.

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It took 8 hours to record the image. You can see sunlight illuminating both sides of the buildings. He made it by exposing a bitumen-coated plate in a camera obscura for several hours on his windowsill. Which leads to the question what is camera obscure?

Camera obscura is the Latin name means “dark chamber,” and the earliest versions, dating to antiquity, consisted of small darkened rooms with light admitted through a single tiny hole. The light rays enter the tiny hole and inside the box there will be the scene projected on the wall, however it will be upside down. Camera obscura isn’t a camera, it was invented by a Chinese philosopher called Mo-tzu (or Mozi) in 400BC. He noted that light from an illuminated object that passed through a pinhole into a dark room created an inverted image of the original object. Although, the first known date that camera obscura was 1021 AD.

DAGUERREOTYPE – 1837

In 1837, Louis Daguerre introduces the daguerreotype, a fixed image that did not fade. From 1839 on, the popular metal plate process known as daguerreotype opened up this mix of art and technology to the masses. The daguerreotype is a direct-positive process, creating a highly detailed image on a sheet of copper plated with a thin coat of silver without the use of a negative. The process required great care. After exposure to light, the plate was developed over hot mercury until an image appeared.

It was one of the easier metal plate photographic processes, it was still messy, expensive, very time consuming, and somewhat dangerous.

Replica of Daguerre-Giroux camera | Science Museum Group Collection

CALOTYPE – 1841

Calotype, also called Talbotype, is an early photographic technique invented by William Henry Fox Talbot in the 1830s.

In this technique, a sheet of paper coated with silver chloride was exposed to light in a camera obscura; those areas hit by light became dark in tone, yielding a negative image. The revolutionary aspect of the process lay in Talbot’s discovery of a chemical (gallic acid) that could be used to “develop” the image on the paper, it accelerates the silver chloride’s chemical reaction to the light it had been exposed to. The developing process permitted much shorter exposure times in the camera, down from one hour to one minute.

The developed image on the paper was fixed with sodium hyposulfite. However, if you touched the paper it would destroy it, as the emollition sits on top of the image. The “negative,” as Talbot called it, could yield any number of positive images by simple contact printing upon another piece of sensitized paper. Talbot’s process was superior in this respect to the daguerreotype, which yielded a single positive image on metal that could not be duplicated. Talbot patented his process in 1841.

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KODAK – 1888

George Eastman of Rochester, New York had an idea. Use this new roll film, build a simple, easy-to-use camera, and market it as a fun use product. In the history of photography, Eastman was a master of marketing photography to the masses. “You push the button, we do the rest.”

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POLAROID CAMERA – 1948

Edwin Land launches the Polaroid camera. He invented inexpensive filters for polarizing light, a practical system of in-camera instant photography, and the retinex theory of colour vision, among other things. His Polaroid instant camera went on sale in late 1948 and made it possible for a picture to be taken and developed in 60 seconds or less.

Polaroid introduces the instant camera, February 21, 1947 - EDN

CANON DIGITAL – 1984

In 1984 Canon demonstrates first digital electronic still camera, which set the path for digital photography for todays world.