Henry Mullins moved to Jersey from London in 1848 setting up a studio called the “Royal Saloon”. In the beginning, he worked with another man but by 1849 he was working alone in the same studio he would end up working in for the next 26 years.
He quite famously did Diamond Cameos, the four headshots of the subjects were presented in a diamond shape using a process in which four separate portraits of the same subject are printed on a carte-de-visite.
His Diamond Cameos:
My attempt:
Rembrandt Lighting
Some examples:
We went to the studio on two occasions, making two separate attempts at Rembrandt lighting.
Our attempts:
Butterfly Lighting
Our attempts:
Rim Lighting:
Rim lighting is a technique which lights up a subject by using an off-camera flash. It highlights the contours of a subject and creates a dramatic and mysterious effect.
Rim lighting, also referred to as back or edge lighting, is created by placing a single light behind the subject.
Some examples:
My attempts:
Camera Obscura or “Pinhole Photography”
In 1685, the camera obscura was properly discovered by people, however, the earliest known account of a camera obscura was given by a Chinese philosopher in 400BC. This was the first invention that allowed people to see the light through a hole in the wall. This made it possible to see the light from objects and this was the first idea of “photography”. The invention of the camera obscura is still used today and can be known as “pinhole photography” now.
First “photograph”
In 1802, Thomas Wedgwood did experiments using silver nitrates to create a photographic image. He discovered that silver nitrate could be used to make light by heating. He managed to produce inside a camera obscura a black and white negative image on paper or white leather treated with silver nitrate. However, he only saw the image for a second, and then the image continued to go black until it disappeared. What he did wrong was that he didn’t know how to prevent the image from disappearing unlike photographers like Henry Fox-Talbot and Louis Daguerre.
Heliography & Joseph Nicephore Niepce
Joseph Nicephore Niepce was the first to make a permanent photographic image. Niepce fled the French Revolution but returned to serve in the French army. Dismissed because of ill health, he remained engaged in research for the rest of his life.
Heliography is a technique that he created, using a printing plate and engraving the image into it, this was done 1825. He worked closely with Louis Daguerre, helping him make the Daguerreotype.
How is heliography done? Traces of solar energy are burnt into the film material using self-constructed devices and lenses. Afterwards, the shots are enlarged and printed on paper or the film sheets are directly shown in light-boxes.
Louis Daguerre and Daguerreotypes
Louis Dagueterre, a French painter and physicist, invented the first practical process of photography, known as the Daguerrotype. He worked closely with Joseph Nicephore Niepce .Though the first permanent photograph from nature was made in 1826/27 it required about eight hours’ exposure time, however Duerrotypes only required 20 to 30 minutes exposure time.
Daguerreotype was the first publicly available photographic process and it was widely used during the 1840s and 1850s. The name refers to an image created through this process, a daguerreotype is not flexible and is rather heavy. The daguerreotype is detailed and sharp, and is very fragile.
The one downside to the Daguerreotype is that only one copy of the image could be created with the technique which is why they were quite expensive to do. Louis Daguerre was believed to just be in it for the money, nothing else.
He was the first photographer to release an image depicting people, here it is:
Henry Fox Talbot & Calotype
Henry Fox Talbot was an inventor that couldn’t draw but wanted to express how he was feeling through images so he invented mousetraps (the camera).
He accidentally produced a negative instead of a positive but then realised that he could make as many positives as he wanted using the negative, then leading to his technique, “Calotypes”.
It was created by using a sheet of paper coated with silver chloride and exposing it to light in a camera obscura; those areas hit by light became dark in tone, yielding a negative image. The biggest 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.
Robert Cornelius & Self-Portraiture
Robert Cornelius was an American photographer and pioneer in the history of photography. His self-portrait taken in 1839 is the first known photographic portrait of a person taken in the United States.
Cornelius attempted to perfect the daguerreotype, Cornelius took a self-portrait outside the family store. The technique he used required him to sit motionless for 10 to 15 minutes, taking the image by removing the lens cap and then going into frame where he sat for a minute before covering up the lens again.
Julia Margeret Cameron & Pictorialism
Julia Margaret Cameron is known for her soft-focus close-ups of famous Victorian men and for illustrative images depicting characters from mythology, Christianity, and literature, she was an ambitious and devoted photographer. Cameron is best known today for her moving and sensitive portraits of eminent Victorians. A paramount example is her 1867 photograph of Sir John F. W. Herschel, in which he looks directly at the camera, emerging from the shadows of the images.
Cameron and her pictorialist contemporaries pursued painterly compositions, subjects, and qualities, hoping to elevate photography to a high quality of art. A representation of a person or thing in a work of art.
Henry Mullins & Carte-de-Visit
Henry Mullins moved to Jersey from London in 1848 setting up a studio called the “Royal Saloon”. At the beginning he worked with another man but by 1849 he was working alone in the same studio he would end up working in for the next 26 years.
His speciality was “Carte de Visite”. Most of the time, he would take 16 images at a time and between 1850-1873 he made around 900 cartes de visites. Because, at the time pictures were expensive, it was mostly influential people that had their photos taken.
When exploring the theme of environmental portraiture, I went to the main bakehouse of Vienna Bakery and took pictures of one of the bakers/managers. They turned out more like documentary style images but here are some of the edits of the images I took that day:
These are some of my personal favourites. Especially the image where some of the only colour is the orange in her cap.
WHO
Baker at Vienna Bakery
WHAT
Of her making different pastries and breads
WHERE
In the bakery
WHEN
In the morning at some point
HOW
In a documentary image style photoshoot with a camera from school
This photoshoot was taken during the lesson so we didn’t have much time to take the images, especially since we had to walk around the school finding where we wanted to take our images. We ended up with 45 images total but I didn’t like them all.
After flagging the images I liked or that weren’t blurred I only had 13.
Michelle Sank
Michelle Sank is a South African photographer born in Cape Town, however, she’s lived in England since 1987. Her images represent her interest in the human condition and because of this, her work can be seen as a social documentary. She quite often targets social and cultural issues with her work.
This is a series of images that she made in Jersey called Insula. Using locals in their homes, places of work, or even somewhere they enjoy being, she made images to develop a lyrical vision within which the defining influences are place and cultural geography.
Another collection of images she has made is “Breathe” was made during the Covid-19 pandemic. First, she documented the social isolation and then the lockdown in this collection of images. As she says on the portfolio of this collection, she felt drawn to how people of all ages were “negotiating” the new way of living and how their relationship to each other changed.
Alongside this, house facades and accompanying objects discovered in the area have taken on a heightened sense of relevance serving as a way of showing that the people were in isolation.
Michelle Sank hasn’t actually finished this project and is continuing as the Covid-19 situation continues on. She is due to release more images in the near future.
Image Analysis
First I’m going to start with how the image came about, Michelle Sank was asked to make a collection about what being a young person in today’s society is like. Michelle did this using people from all different ethnic background and using the cultural divide. She also took the images in the subject’s room, so the objects and decoration could tell us about the person.
In terms of the actual image analysis, the image has a lot of natural light coming in and there are a lot of squares e.g. the mirrors, the window etc. The subject is in the middle of the image sat on their bed, looking straight into the camera. Based on the bedroom, it doesn’t look like she spends a lot of time in her bedroom, there aren’t clothes thrown around the place or there isn’t even that much decoration apart from the mirrors. The girl herself doesn’t look very comfortable, if that’s because of the way she is sat or whether it’s because she’s not that comfortable in her room.
What are environmental portraits?
An environmental portrait is a portrait executed in the subject’s usual environment, such as in their home or workplace, and it illuminates the subject’s life and surroundings.
August Sander
A famous photographer that does a lot of environmental portraits is August Sander, he made a project called “The Face of our People” then producing a volume of portraits titled “The Face of Our Time” in 1929.
August sander took lots of inspiration from Bernd and Hilla Becher, using their idea of Typologies in his portraiture work. Each image was taken in a similar was, with the subject standing “stoically”. He documented German society in between the two World Wars, he wanted to make a record of social types, classes and the relationships between them and discovered that the collection was more powerful than just the images by themselves. This collection was so powerful that the Nazis actually destroyed the images and banned the book.
