Early Photography Research Articles

Pyrotechnics and photography: saltpeter and the colonial history of photographic lighting

Bengal light was among the earliest commercial sources of artificial lighting for photographic use, patented as Photogen in February 1857. Essentially, a pyrotechnic flare whose vital ingredient was saltpeter, it was mined by low caste laborers in Bengal, which had emerged as the leading global producer of saltpeter by the eighteenth century. Saltpeter was a coveted global commodity because it served as the primary material for the manufacture of gunpowder and also had wide-ranging industrial applications. Its use for photography provides an early instance of the commodification and trade in lighting technologies and materials, challenging dominant assumptions about photographic light as a freely available natural resource accessible to all. It asserts the presence of artificial lighting in early photography to contest invocations to the sun and divine light that dominate characterizations of the period. Finally, saltpeter ties early photographic lighting into a wider imperial trade of commodities for war, to further cement the analogies between the camera and the gun noted in many photographic studies. Encapsulated in its use is an imperial history of global trade that hinged on extraction of natural sources, colonial labor, and alliances between military and industrial technologies of light.

Сhildin the Image or Image of Achild : Russian Child Portrait in Painting and Photography of the Late 19 th − Early 20 th Century

The stylistics of the child portrait in Russia in the 1850s – early 20th century underwent significant changes due to the emergence of photography (light painting). From the very beginning of its era, the 1850s, early photography borrowed composition, means of expression, and attributes from painting. Towards the end of the century, artists began to pay attention to the achievements of portrait photography, striving to depict children not in a staged way, but rather in moments of play, studies and rest, taking heed of photographic effects, in particular, cropped and “blurred” compositions. Many Russian artists used photo sketches, rethinking and re-creating the image of a child in their works. At the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, the child portrait turned into an expressive medium of the artist’s self. By contrast, child photography focused on a specific child, with an emphasis on the continued documentation of the stages of his or her growth and development. The art form experienced further technical improvement, which led to the flourishing of the child photo portrait in the subsequent periods.

Review: Speaking with the Dead in Early America, by Erik R. Seeman

Review: <i>Speaking with the Dead in Early America</i>, by Erik R. Seeman

“An Inert and Neutral State of Form”: Zero-degree Writing, Photography, and Early Prose Narrative in French

ABSTRACT Part of my project on literary form in translation, this article stages a dialogue between, on the one hand, the formal and stylistic qualities of medieval literary French prose in the first half-century of its practice, and, on the other, Roland Barthes’s essays on zero-degree writing and on photography. French literary prose, which came to the fore suddenly around 1200 ce, presents itself as an impoverished form of writing lacking the vividness and drama of the well-established verse narration. Why, then, did it enjoy international success? The same question may be asked of early photography, self-evidently so much poorer than painting. Barthes helps us to see how a deliberate “loss of color” helps to generate a new vision of the world — which, for early French prose, was linked to the idealism and violence of crusading. Conversely, reading the utopian Le Degré zero de l’écriture and, especially, the melancholic La Chambre claire alongside medieval Grail romances helps us to see how the quest for an (envisaged or lost) ideal inspires both, and to understand the role of form and the impetus for renewal in Barthes’s final published essay.

Cut, Tuck, and Paste: Repurposing Mass-Produced Imagery at Buddhist Shrines in Ladakh, India

This article documents and analyzes the ways in which mass-produced imagery, frequently intended for secular functions, is creatively repurposed at Buddhist shrines in Ladakh, India. I argue that these inventive reformulations of printed material—often requiring cutting, pasting, and reframing—play a critical role in the construction and vitality of Ladakhi Buddhist shrine assemblages. While scholars have recently examined the role of early photography in Tibet and the Western Himalaya, this paper pays attention to a broader spectrum of mass-produced imagery found in newspapers, advertisements, magazines, and travel guides, which is often refashioned and reused at shrines. The article proposes a tripartite typology for mass-produced images, some of which were never intended for religious use though they feature Buddhist content. Case studies illustrate that these innovative practices of repurposing mass-produced imagery are the result of several concerns; central among them is upholding a Buddhist precept about perceiving and caring for images of the Buddha. Other notable motivations and practices of preservation relate to generating blessings and merit.

“Just like us”: migrancy, photography, and visual incorporation

This article considers how the relatively new genre of migrant photography, “the migrant selfie,” fits into the larger visual history of migrancy. From early UNHCR photography to contemporary representations of migration in the news and visual art, this paper traces the visual image of the migrant over time. It then draws on this history to contextualize selfies featured in Tomas van Houtryve’s (2016–2017) video installation, Traces of Exile.

Agnès Varda: Photography and Early Creative Process

Abstract Agnès Varda frequently presented her career as encompassing three domains: photography, cinema, and visual art. While her cinema and late-career artistic work are widely accessible, her early photography remains a growing area of study. Moreover, it has often been repeated that Varda began her directorial career with little knowledge of cinema (stories Varda herself echoed). This article excavates little-known 1950s photographic studies from her archives to show how, in her early cinematic career, she utilized her training as a photographer to conceive her early films. The article demonstrates that Varda made extensive scouting photographs to plan the shots and motifs of her first film, La Pointe Courte (France, 1954), and sometimes sketched these compositions directly in her shooting script. The article also features photographs she made to develop themes in L'Opéra Mouffe (Diary of a Pregnant Woman, France, 1958). Photography, the author argues, enabled Varda to work aesthetically and economically, realizing these early films without the support of producers or state subsidies. Her photographs reveal her formal composition and thematic concerns; they also demonstrate the stunning scope of her planning and enable new understandings of her early creative process.

Bennett, Terry. Early Photography in Vietnam

Au cours des vingt-cinq dernieres annees, le chercheur independant Terry Bennett s’est progressivement impose comme l’un des auteurs les plus prolifiques dans le domaine de la photographie ancienne en Asie orientale. A la suite de son premier livre coecrit avec Hugh Cortazzi, Japan : Caught in Time1, il a livre une dizaine d’ouvrages sur le Japon, la Coree et la Chine, avant de porter son attention vers le Sud-Est asiatique2. Son dernier volume, edite chez Renaissance Books debut 2020, traite de la photographie au Vietnam pendant le siecle de la colonisation francaise, entre 1845 et 1945. Cette premiere publication en anglais sur le sujet vient enrichir un champ d’etude encore peu developpe3. A l’image de ses precedents travaux, Terry Bennett adopte ici une approche biographique, abordant un photographe apres l’autre selon un ordre chronologique. Si la plupart des chapitres portent sur une periode donnee (premiers photographes, studios commerciaux des annees 1860-1870, des annees 1880-1890 et photographes du xxe siecle), deux d’entre eux sont consacres a Emile Gsell et Charles-Edouard Hocquard. Comme pour les ouvrages anterieurs de l’auteur, cet opus est en grande majorite illustre par sa collection personnelle. Plus de 500 photographies y figurent, dont une grande partie est inedite, donnant ainsi acces a une production commerciale sous-representee dans les collections publiques. Ce livre vient donc combler un vide iconographique important, mais il presente en corollaire une

Exhibition Review of The Story of Light and Shadow: 20th Century Chinese Photography from Huang Jianpeng's Collection

The following article reviews a collection of photography on view at an exhibition named The Story of Light and Shadow: 20th Century Chinese Photography from Huang Jianpeng's Collection at the National Art Museum of China. Though an exhibition on Chinese photography, it included a sizable collection of Tibet-related photographs taken by early Han Chinese photographers during the early 20th century. Through a brief review of existing scholarship on photography of Tibet and a close reading of the works of Zhuang Xueben, one of the earliest Han Chinese photographers who took photos in Tibetan regions, we see how images produced during the early 20th century in Tibet are coded with layered agencies and complex motivations. Preliminarily contextualizing Zhuang Xueben’s photo-taking aspirations, I argue that early photographers of Tibet are embodiments of complex, overlapping and if not yet incongruous motivations – a complication of their own independent perspectives and professional responsibilities under the larger contextual influence from the society and its aspirations.

The Pencil of Nature: Tracing Intertidal Media through the Development of Early Photography

This paper considers the role of macroalgae (seaweed) in the mid-19c Daguerreotype process and subsequent technical developments in chemical photography. Since antiquity, seaweed has been used as an important supplement to human well-being. Ancient medical literature recommends burnt seaweeds for the treatment of endemic goiter. Centuries later, in the mid-19th century, iodine extracted from kelp was elevated as a medical panacea. Seaweed, and the iodine it produces also has a history in the technical production of images; during the same period, the modern photographic image was born from these briny plants. In 1839 Louis Daguerre used iodine to photosensitize the earliest photographic plates, bringing into focus “the pencil of nature” (a phrase that early adopters of the Daguerreotype process used to describe their invention’s descriptive potency). This notable aspect of human technological development draws the molecular activity of the hydrosphere and complex organic organisms like macroalgae into visual culture. Its traces reveal the commonality of oceanic mediations in natural, technical, and human processes.

Early photographers encounter Tongans

Four early photographers are examined here in relation to their encounters with Tongans and Tonga. These photographers are Andrew Garrett, Gustav Adolph Riemer, Clarence Gordon Campbell and Walter Stanhope Sherwill. Garrett, an American natural historian who specialized in shells and fish, took two ambrotypes of Tongans in Fiji in 1868, which are two of the earliest Tongan photographs known. Riemer, born in Saarlouis, Germany, was a marine photographer on S.M.S. Hertha on an official diplomatic visit and took at least 28 photographs in Tonga in 1876. Campbell, a tourist from New York, took 25 culturally important photographs in 1902. Sherwill, a British subject born in India, moved to Tonga about the time of the First World War. He probably took many photographs with more modern equipment, but only two have been identified with certainty. This article presents information about the photographers and those depicted, where the original photographs can be found and the research that made it possible to glean cultural information from them. These early photographers are placed in the context of other more well-known early photographers whose works can be found in archives and libraries in New Zealand, Australia, Hawai‘i and Germany. In addition, summary information about two Tongan-born photographers is presented, as well as where their photographs/negatives can be found.

Researching early photography of the Pacific Islands: An overview

Historical research on the early years of photography in the Pacific Islands has revealed changes in the practice of photography, the development of Pacific imagery, tropes and stereotypes and changes in the ways images were distributed, archived and used in modern contexts. Research in the field was initially focused on photography’s indexical nature and the role of professional and amateur photographers, travellers, colonial officials and missionaries. The research highlighted here, only in the English language and excluding Aotearoa/New Zealand, reveals how later analyses have begun to grow more theoretical, in keeping with postcolonial approaches to reading cross-cultural representation, and how new directions in research point towards the nature of Indigenous engagement with early photography.

Little history of CAPTCHA

This article traces the early history of CAPTCHA, the now ubiquitous cybersecurity tool that prompts users to “confirm their humanity” by solving word- and image-based puzzles before accessing free online services. CAPTCHA, and its many derivatives, are presented as content identification mechanisms: the user is asked to identify content in order for the computer to determine the identity of the user. This twofold process of content identification, however, has evolved significantly since CAPTCHA’s inception in the late 1990s. Pivoting away from a realist framework, largely dependent on the standard tenets [of] cryptography, toward a relational framework premised on aesthetic contingency and social consensus, CAPTCHA’s arc uniquely illustrates how contested notions of both “content” and “identity” become materialized in contemporary internet infrastructure. Inspired by Walter Benjamin’s exegetical study of early photography, this critical historicization aims to foreground CAPTCHA as a particularly fraught juncture of humans and computers, which, as with Benjamin’s intervention, productively troubles received ideas of humanism and automation, mediation and materiality.

The Harrison D. Horblit Collection of Early Photography: A Strategy for Research, Cataloging, Imaging, and Exhibition

ABSTRACT The Harrison D. Horblit Collection of Early Photography comprises more than 7000 items from the 1830s to 1900. Of special interest are approximately 1000 salt prints, 50 photogenic drawings, and 300 paper negatives from the earliest decades of photography by many key photographers. Formed by Harrison D. Horblit (1912–1988), the collection was given to Harvard University in 1995. Horblit bought widely and without applying aesthetic judgements that tend to shape fine art collections, resulting in a collection containing unique material for the social history of photography and examples of the range of photographic processes used in the nineteenth century. In 2016, Houghton Library, Harvard University’s principal rare book and special collections library, began to update catalog records and digitize the holdings in the Horblit Collection in order to improve access. This paper describes the strategies for safe handling during cataloging, imaging and exhibition of photogenic drawings and early salted paper prints. Harvard Library Imaging Services and Weissman Preservation Center devised a procedure for imaging the many light sensitive and early experimental photographs. These practical procedures, including studio and exhibition space modification and the special handling workflow will be outlined.

X-ray Fluorescence Analysis of Frédéric Flachéron’s Paper Negatives, 1848–1852

ABSTRACT The Harrison D. Horblit Collection of Early Photography at Houghton Library, Harvard University contains 370 paper negatives, presenting an opportunity to study this nineteenth century technique in depth. In a pilot study on the composition and light stability of paper negatives by the French artist Frédéric Flachéron (1813–1883), nine paper negatives were analyzed with X-ray fluorescence analysis and three with microfade testing to ascertain if there was a correlation between the presence of halides and the light stability of the negatives. Technical analysis identified iodine and bromine in the negatives and indicated variability in Flachéron’s stabilization and fixing methods not previously documented.

Four Portraits, No Retouching

Researchers are still raising questions related to the time and place of shooting of certain portraits in the scarce photographic iconography of F. M. Dostoevsky. First of all, this pertains to a set of early photographs, whose dating ranges between 1857 and 1863, according to various sources. The article offers new arguments in favor of attributing several portraits of F. M. Dostoevsky to 1859. This refers to photographs that captured an image of F. M. Dostoevsky that is unusual for most of his admirers, namely, without a beard. Two of them were taken in Semipalatinsk by the photographer S. A. Leibin, while in one of them F. M. Dostoevsky was captured together with the Kazakh educator Ch. Ch. Valikhanov, whom he befriended during the years of his exile. Another photo has not been precisely attributed. A comprehensive analysis of the details depicted on them, the facts of the biography of Ch. Ch. Valikhanov and the letters of F. M. Dostoevsky allows to date the Semipalatisk photographs with greater accuracy. The article proposes that another one of the portraits taken in Tver was carried out simultaneously with the shooting of the portrait of M. M. Dostoevsky. A comprehensive examination of various details and circumstances also leads to the same conclusions. To date, only a few copies of photographs with Ch. Ch. Valikhanov and a photograph allegedly taken in Tver are known. The original solitary portrait made in Semipalatinsk has been lost. The conducted research allows to assert that other copies of these photographs may exist. The proposed conclusions are made on the basis of a study of the originals of photographs in the collection of The V. I. Dahl State Museum of the History of Russian Literature.

Themes in Early South Indian Commercial Photography

While prior to the development of a commercial market for photography, portraiture had been the primary focus, it was demand from the market that led to various new themes that can be identified in the work of the commercial photographers in South India during the second half of the 19th century. The primary market was no longer made up of local residents but visitors who sought mementos of their visit, to remind them of places they had seen, views of the landscape through which they had passed, and the local people, so different in appearance and habit from citizens of their own countries. Photography also served to record events, such as the terrible famine in South India in 1876–77. The doyen of photographers in India was Samuel Bourne (1834–1912). He set a standard and style for all to follow, but paid just one visit to the south. Capt. Edmund Lyon (1825–91), on extended leave from the army, made an extensive photographic record of the historic buildings and sites of South India for the government. The leading commercial photographers of South India were the Nicholas Brothers with studios in Madras (now Chennai) and Ootacamund. They were joined by A.T.W. Penn (1849–1924) who ran their Ootacamund branch from 1865 to 1875 but then acquired it from them and started up under his own name.

Packaging Niagara:The Langenheim Brothers and the Transatlantic Circulation of Early Photography

A few years after opening their celebrated photography studio in their new home in Philadelphia, German immigrants William and Frederick Langenheim produced eight almost identical daguerreotype panoramas of Niagara Falls. Keeping one set for themselves, they sent the others to multiple heads of state. The brothers’ identities as American photographers and experiences as German immigrants, this article demonstrates, shaped their specific photographic vision of the impressive cataracts as well as its circulation abroad. By calling attention to the German dimensions of this project, this article underscores their panorama as an important articulation of German-American identity formation. The article thus highlights the intercultural nature of the Langenheim brothers’ photographic practice, and the fact that the medium itself was rooted in international networks and trade in the mid-nineteenth century. Through a close examination of their advertising campaigns, their relationship with optician Peter Wilhelm Friedrich von Voigtländer and their extraordinary 1845 panorama, this article allows us to better understand how ideas of culture were negotiated through the making and distribution of early photography.

‘Record of my journeyings in the Coral Sea’: Randolph Bedford’s 1906 album of the Solomon Islands

Albums and scrapbooks are rarely the focus of research. This article examines the motivation and context for a unique and rare album compiled by a ‘special correspondent’ – George Randolph Bedford, an aspiring Federal politician, journalist and writer – who visited the Solomon Islands in 1906 on a personal fact-finding mission. His scrapbook contains 212 photographs and a series of articles on the Solomon Islands that he had published in illustrated weekend newspapers in Australia in 1906 and early 1907. The Australian colonies had just federated, Britain had just passed control of Papua to Australia and, in the New Hebrides, Britain and France were about to announce a condominium had been formed. Tonga, Niue and the Cook Islands were also the subject of imperial manoeuvring. In Queensland, Kanakas were being sent home as the labour trade was abolished. The scrapbook is therefore a window on to imperial diplomacy, colonial expansion and Australian visions of a relationship with the Pacific, the boom in illustrated newspapers, early photography and personal ambition to become an expert on the islands.

Early Photography in Vietnam

Early Photography in Vietnam