An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace.
A mix of Environmental Portraits taken by both past and contemporary photographers
Environmental images allow an insight into the lives of those pictured. For example, the image taken by Arnold Newman on the bottom right of the slide above, shows two men posing on a stage in a theatre – you can tell that they have some kind of connection to theatre, without knowing that those depicted, are famous playwrights, Harold Pinter and Tom Stoppard. The ways in which environmental portraits are put together outline the subjects story in ways that don’t necessarily show it so obviously; for instance, the second image on the bottom from the left – all I can infer is that the person in the image enjoys swimming, however her facial expressions denote otherwise – strengthening the idea that despite Michelle Sank’s intentions, viewers could interpret “Georgia’s” story in any way, almost mirroring societal opinions (everyone has opinion on everything, even when they don’t know the full story)
The art of photography has some kind of strangeness about it. It shows the secrets of the world that are often missed by people in their every-day lives. A photograph is objective, whereas the meaning behind it is subjective. The way people see and feel about an image is the most important as the photograph doesn’t just contain what is in the frame, it works with everything outside as well. It turns “the ordinary into extraordinary,” posing the question, “how can something reveal so much, yet keep so much to itself?” Essentially, the photographic medium has no sense of what is important and what isn’t, the camera will record whatever is in the frame in complete detail. Some say that photography began in 1839, however, the overall concept of projecting an image has been around for over 1000 years.
The Camera Obscura
Camera Obscura
A camera obscurer is simply a blacked out box with a small hole that lets in light (the aperture on a camera). As light drips in through the hole, an upside-down image of the outside world is projected onto a piece of paper or canvas. To flip the image so it is shown the right way up, a mirror is placed inside a box at a 45 degree angle. From this, an artist can draw/sketch the image projected but this must be in complete darkness except for the small hole within the wall of the obscura.
Because of this principle, a room can be turned into a camera obscura which creates a mesmerising spectacle on the wall opposite.
This idea brought about the use of ‘Pinhole Photography’. This technique uses the most basic parts of a camera – a lightproof box, an aperture, and a light sensitive material. The process can still be done today on specially made cameras that use a low ISO, long shutter speeds, and a very small aperture. You can use higher ISO values however this doesn’t really change the quality of the image much except for a lot of grain.
It is very simple to make a pinhole camera however, as you simply need a box painted black on the interior, a pin to make the pinhole and a piece of card that can be used as a shutter. This very basic, but there are specially made pinhole cameras that have specially cut pinholes for sharper images and accurate exposures.
Nicéphore Niépce and Heliography
His initial experiment was to put sheets of paper coated in silver salts at the back of a camera obscurer. This produced unfixed negatives that disappeared soon after as they would fade to black under broad daylight. His first image was that of a window view landscape in 1816 – these images became known as retinas, time captured for mere moments.
By coating pewter with multiple light-sensitive substances, Niépce created copies of super-imposed engravings in sunlight – he named this method Heliography (sundrawing). After many experiments to work out the best way to capture these images, Niépce ended up using Bitumen of Judea and created what is known to day as the first photograph; a view from his window in Le Gras, France (1826/27)
This image, like most, had a very long exposure time of about 8 hours. Niépce was unable to reduce this time and his research was halted at this point as he was unable to easily produce images on paper. He later began to work with French physicist and painter Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851) who went on to continue Niépce’s work after his death – creating what is known today as the Daguerreotype.
The Daguerreotype
The Daguerreotype was created in 1839 by Louis Daguerre, six years after his associates death in 1833. Daguerre developed the method to fix an image to a mirrored copper plate, creating a unique visual experience – essentially creating a mirror with a memory, especially as it created an instant positive image. Light was reflected through an image rather than it being held in paper. The edges of the plate are burnt (as you can see below), thus sealing the image in place making the image permanent. This also made it impossible to recreate, making it the only copy of that image ever. This was an expensive process, making it only affordable to the rich.
A Daguerreotype – mirrored copper plate with burnt edges denote this.
Daguerre also produced the first portrait (unintentionally) The top image shows a landscape produced by Daguerre, but within it you can see two people on the pavement (shown more clearly in the image below) This only occurred as the man stood did not move from that position the entire time the the shutter was open, simply because he was having his shoes shined. This is a very busy street in Paris and the only reason that there is no one else there, is because it was all moving will the shutter was open and only blurred or completely disappeared.
When it comes to mass producing images, money is the fundamental issue. When developing these techniques, there were three questions: how cheaply, how accurately, and how widely can an image be produced. Because of these reasons the world majority turned to the invention of Henry Fox Talbot.
The Calotype
The Calotype, created by Henry Fox Talbot, presented him the title of the true father of modern photography. Along with his accomplices John Herschel and Mary Somerville, he used silver salts (chemicals that darken when exposed to sunlight). Fox Talbot experimented with this and created the ‘negative’, a complete opposite of the real world in both colouration and perspective. He named these as photogenic drawings from which, he could produce multiple copies in a positive format.
Robert Cornelius – Self-Portraiture
Robert Cornelius stood in the back yard of his families gas lighting business with the accurate exposure from the sun and stared at a makeshift camera for 10-15 minutes. He stood still for that time and created the first photographic self-portrait. The image produced is commonly regarded today as the world’s first ‘selfie’; however it is more than that as any kind of portraiture in the beginning decade of photography was unheard of, and for him to produce this daguerreotype months after Daguerre had announced the invention in 1839.
Julia Margeret Cameron – Pictorialism
The idea of Pictorialism is to allow personal expression within the photographs, matching it to that of the other fine arts within society.
Julia Margaret Cameron began in 1863 and took many portraits, none of which were with professional interests. She simply photographed friends and family, often costuming them as if it an amateur theatre production. Her creative goals were influenced by the outward appearance and spiritual content of 15th Century Italian paintings, including Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. She said, “to ennoble Photography and to secure for it the character and uses of High Art by combining the real and the Ideal and sacrificing nothing of the Truth by all possible devotion to poetry and beauty.” and “I believe in other than mere conventional topographic photography—map-making and skeleton rendering of feature and form.”
Henry Mullins – Carte de Visite
Moving from London to Jersey in 1848, Henry Mullins set up a photography studio in the Royal Square with his partner, Mr Millward. Not much is known about his accomplice but by 1949, Mullins was working alone where he would remain for the next 26 years. He specialised in making “Carte de Visites”, small single portraits on paper. He would take 16 images at a time, creating around 900 between 1850 and 1873. As pictures were expensive at the time, mostly influential people were the only ones to have the photos taken.
