DIFFERENT PICTORIAL TECHNIQUES ON PHOTOGRAPHY

Abstract

The ongms of the evolution of photography lie in the optic chamber or what is known as the artificial eye. The precursor of photography is found in the optical principle of the 'camera obscura' as utilized by Aristotle. Later on, this technique was also employed by the eleventh-century Arab scholar Alhacen, who was a pioneer in the use of the camera obscura to observe eclipses. However, not until the eighteenth century and the advent of the use of the camera obscura as a copying instrument can the first genuine step towards photography be detected. The camera obscura of the eighteenth century consisted of a box with a round hole at the top where the lens was placed and a mirror which reflected the image inside the chamber where, by introducing part of their body, someone was able to produce a copy of the image projected from outside. This camera obscura was first used by such famous figures from the world of art as Canaletto, in order to reproduce reality. The next stage in the development of the art of photography was obtaining a photochemical impression of the image reflected inside the camera obscura. In 1758, a German physician called Johann Schulze discovered that silver nitrate darkened when exposed to light. Between 1822 and 1826, Nicephore Niepce obtained the first permanent 'photograph' by carrying out innovative tests on a lithographic stone. Niepce came to realize that bitumen was resistant to the effects of light, but the plates required six or eight hours' exposure when prepared in this way. For many years, he collaborated with Louis Daguerre, the inventor of the diorama, who improved upon Niepce's invention. Daguerre managed to fix the image using a shiny silver or copper plate which was treated with iodine, forming a film of silver iodide. This substance proved to be highly sensitive to light, the image being fixed in three or four minutes in the camera obscura. This process, known as the 'Daguerreotype', became world famous in 1839. This development meant that the visible and three-dimensional images that surrounded citizens of the time could now be captured and transformed into two-dimensional pictures within the photographic chamber. Artists became free to distance themselves from realistic representation of the world around them and to begin to interpret the world as they perceived it with greater liberty, this period witnessing the birth of Impressionism which gave rise to a whole new notion of art. It also meant a bitter blow for those artists who had made their living out of portrait painting and were faced with being marginalized, as photography took hold and forced them to compete and cope with the new technology. The year 1911 saw the advent of what was termed 'colour photography', these being tinted and retouched photographs. The final jump to true colour photography would be made in 1935 when a process developed in a chemical laboratory became what we know as colour photography today. Photography has long been a means of keeping old memories alive. Photography has assumed the role of visual historian for our memories, capturing and preserving for posterity the images that time takes away with it. In the period spanning the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, photography experienced its boom period and took over, in many instances, from painted portraits. Artists began to usc photographs as a support for their drawings, with a view to achieving a greater degree of realism in their portraits. This new tool made the artist's life easier and meant that portraits became more affordable and accessible for the middle classes. Painters turned into photographers and photographers turned into painters. Artists' studios soon became both art and photography studios. At this juncture, photography developed as the basis for a number of different pictorial techniques employed on photographic supports, aimed at achieving the greatest degree of realism and imitating various different pictorial techniques used up until then by artists, such as oil painting, tempera and water colours, until it arrived at the chemical procedures that lie at the heart of colour photography. Painted photographs include: