History of Photography Intro

History of
Photography
Part I

Building on what we know

This basic principle is a natural
optical (relating to sight)
phenomenon where an image on
one side of a wall—or
screen—is projected through a
hole onto a surface opposite the
opening.

Camera Obscura

NOTE: Alhazen was a pioneer of modern scientific method (wikipedia). He was Arab and lived primarily in Cairo, Egypt. He thought he could
control the floods of the Nile. The King ordered him to do so, but when he realized he couldn’t; he claimed to be “mad” and was ordered under
“house arrest”.

Camera Obscura

Discovered and Recorded by Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham - Iraq)

In Latin camera obscura means “darkened room” - but inventors created a device in a shape of a box.

You could also convert a room into a large camera obscura.

A small opening on one side would project the world outside onto the wall of the opposite side.

Multiple Choice

Who recorded the natural phenomena we call camera obscura?

• Alhazen

• Aristotle
• Galileo
• Newton

Joseph Niépce

●French scientist,

●Heliography, 1816

●First photograph 1826.

●metal plate for eight
hours

●Gernsheim Collection
at the University of
Texas at Austin

Rudisill, Richard. "Niépce, Joseph Nicéphore." World Book Advanced, World Book, 2019,
www.worldbookonline.com/advanced/article?id=ar391180. Accessed 19 Apr. 2019.

Optics

●Discovered by Egyptians &
Mesopotamians, 6th Century BC

●Chinese, 5th Century BC

●Study of Properties of Light

●Physics and Engineering

●Natural and behavior of light

●Alhazen (1000’s)

●Galileo (1600’s) telescopes

●Any instrument with lenses

●Optician

Moore, Duncan T. "Optics." World Book Advanced, World Book, 2019,
www.worldbookonline.com/advanced/article?id=ar404220. Accessed 9 Sept. 2019.

Johann Zahn

• 1685 - GERMAN author

• an expert on light

• extensively about the camera obscura, magic lantern, and telescopes, and lenses

• proposed a design for the first handheld reflex camera

• his design would not be created until approximately 150 years later.

What is
the Magic
Lantern?

Multiple Choice

When was the first photograph taken?

• 1826
• 1835
• 1800
• 1850

Louis Daguerre

• French painter

• Partnered with Joseph Niépce in the drive to invent a way to capture an image

• In 1833 Daguerre continued experimenting with the photographic process even after the death of Niépce

• Finally in 1839, the Daguerreotype process was perfected and shared with the world when Daguerre capture the first photo of a person (few minutes exposure)

• 1839 announce invention to French
  Academy of Sciences and the Académie des Beaux Arts

William “Fox”
Talbot - Calotype

"Fox Talbot, William Henry."
World Book Advanced,
World Book, 2018,

/www.worldbookonline.com/
advanced/article?id=ar724570
. Accessed 11 Dec. 2018.

• British scientist

• 1835 negative-positive system called Calotype

• pioneer work with high-speed photography

• etching with photographs

• created light sensitive paper with silver-based chemicals

• 1844 book to be illustrated with
  photographs

Anna Atkins

• 1843 First book with photography, Photographs of British Algae

• English Botanist

Albumen Print

• “A photographic print made by using
  albumen from egg whites to bind the
  photosensitive chemicals to the paper” -
  Merriam Webster

• “The albumen silver positive printing process
  was the most important positive
  photographic process of the second part of
  the nineteenth century.” - Getty

Albumen Print

• Significance

• It changed the way we took pictures.

• Photographic paper print

• Cool

• Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard formally printed the process to create Albumen prints 1850
  

Rise of Paper Photography

●1851 pivotal

●French government’s role

●photographic missions

●nation’s architectural patrimony

Careers of many French photographers:

●Le Secq - historic monuments

●Baldus - building of New Louvre and flooding of
Rhône River

●Adrien Tournachon - animals

●Le Gray - military

●Charles Marville - “photographer of the City of Paris”

Metmuseum.org. Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Web. The Rise of Paper
Photography in France 1850’s.

Open Ended

Why do you think the Albumen Print was such an important part of the history of photography?