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LESSON 1 - The History of Photography (Part A)
Article by Stephen J. Kristof
© 2010, all rights reserved

When one begins to study any of the traditional "arts" disciplines such as visual art, music, drama/acting or filmmaking, the starting point is usually the history of the particular craft.  Understanding the roots and pioneers of photography gives us better insight into various aspects of the overall culture and progress of image making.

So, where did it all begin?  Would you believe that cameras were invented many hundreds of years before photographic film or recoding media was brought onto the scene?  Why, then would someone build a camera if there was no such thing as photographic film and, similarly, no way of using it to produce a photographic image? Read on and find out.

Camera Obscura

The world’s first camera was not invented with photography in mind! In latin, the two words camera and obscura words mean "room" and "dark". The camera obscura was an idea that Chinese philosopher Mo-Ti documented during the 5th century BC. Aristotle wrote about it over 300 years BC and it eventually came to be used with artistic purpose as early as the 1200’s.

Some history books credit the artist Leonardo DaVinci with its invention in the 1500’s. Whoever actually made the first one is less important than the actual use. The camera obscura, in its simplest form, was a light-tight box or smallroom built for the purpose of allowing light in through a tiny pinhole. This early version of a camera projected an image through a pinhole (or later on, through a lens) onto the back inside wall.

Why did artists such as DaVinci want to project an image inside a box or room? The image could be traced by hand onto paper or canvas to give accurate perspective in drawings of natural scenes, landscapes or other features. For many artists of the day, use of a camera obscura was a fairly well-guarded secret. But, while it seems like a bit of a cheat, similar to painting over a photograph, it was simply one of many artistic tools.

In relation to photography's history, the camera obscura paved the way for images to be focused onto materials such as paper, metal or glass that were coated with light-sensitive materials. In a sense, it was much like the invention of horse carts before the existence of internal combustion engines. When the engine came along, the idea of a vehicle body, two axles and four wheels was already in place.

Johann Heinrich Schulze
1687-1744

This Chemistry and Anatomy professor at the University of Altdorf in Germany noticed that a normally white powdery chemical in a bottle on a shelf of his lab had turned black, but only on the side that faced a sunny window. The chemical was silver nitrate (AgNO3).

Schulze initially presumed that heat was responsible for the physical change, but after conducting experiments by heating the chemical he found that this had no effect. Remember that electric lighting did not yet exist, so the interiors of most buildings were far darker than today. As a result, Schulze's bottle of silver nitrate would not have been exposed to strong light, except on the side that was facing a window. Light was the answer.

In 1727, Schulze isolated light as the catalyst. Thus, he had confirmed the existence of a chemical that was sensitive to light ("photo-sensitivity"). This was a monumental discovery because the central aspect of all photography is light; therefore the identification of a photo-sensitive substance makes the recording of light images possible.

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Thomas Wedgwood
1771-1805

Wedgwood was a chemist and a physicist. He was also the son of the pottery icon who founded the world-famous Wedgwood pottery and china company. After reading Johann Schulze's documention of experiments from almost 70 years prior, Wedgwood began looking into the feasibility of using silver nitrate to create images.

Wedgwood made a solution of silver nitrate and, under very dim light, painted it onto various media, such as paper, wood, fabric, etc. He created reverse sihouettes by placing various objects, such as a watch or scissors on the sensitized surface, then exposing it to sunlight. Through his own experimentation and consultation with others, Wedgwood found a way to 'develop' the image using chemicals that would turn the exposed part of the media black, while leaving white the unexposed shape of the object. He called the resulting creations "photogenic drawings".

He also experimented by putting the coated paper inside back of a basic camera obscura, but the images were very faint. The main stumbling block of his early photographic discovery was that he had no way of removing the remaining unexposed silver nitrate from the coated media. In order to see the image one would have to look at it under light. That light would expose the white part of his reverse silhouettes or of his early photos, which, then, would eventually turn black as well.

Thus, although Wedgwood may well have produced the world's first photograph, he is not credited with such because all of his images eventually turned black.

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Hmmm. "They have good chemistry."
As research into photographic light-sensitivity progressed, it was found that various other compounds of silver were also photosensitive; some to much greater degrees. The precipitate produced by dissolving elemental (metallic) silver in nitric acid produces silver nitrate (AGNO3).  Silver nitrate can undergo further reactions to produce halides which are even more photo-sensitive.  These halides are produced through reactions with bromine (silver bromide - AgBr), iodine salts (silver Iodide - AgI) or in the presence of chloride ions (silver chloride - AgCl).  Most of these silver compounds are not readily soluable in water, so a particularly challenging  task for these early pioneers was to figure out ways of "sticking" the silver compound onto surfaces such as paper, glass, metal or early forms of 'organic plastic' known as celluloid.

Joseph Niepce
1755-1833

The world's first permanent photograph was created in 1826 and Joseph Niepce was the man behind the camera.  This French chemist discovered what he called “heliography” (literal translation from greek: “drawing with the sun”) using an unlikely substance; asphalt!  Called Bitumen of Judea, this dark tarry substance had a special feature that Niepce thought he could use photographically.  Pure Bitumen of Judea - asphalt - hardens when exposed to light.

Here's what he did.  He coated a highly polished plate of pewter with a layer of pure asphalt and placed it inside the back of a camera which was mounted on a tripod.  (He also mixed-in some silver nitrate but it's unlikely that it played any role in producing an image.)  Next, Niepce pointed the camera out of his apartment window.  The view showed the sloping roofs of his building with a tree and pasture in thebackground.
 
Niepce left the lens open for the entire day and he did not move the camera.  Niepce “developed” the image using an equally unusual process.  Because pure asphalt hardens when exposed to the sun, the plate would have a latent image when removed from the camera.  The “bright” areas of the outside scene would be hard, while the dark parts of the scene would remain soft.

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He then wiped the plate with a rag that was coated in Oil of Lavender; a popular solvent of the day. The oil dissolved the soft, unexposed bitumen, revealing the metallic pewter underneath. He then bathed the plate in strong acid, which pitted and darkened the exposed pewter. After drying, Niepce then chipped off the remaining hard asphalt. It revealed a permanent image of the original view out his window. Parts that were bright in the original scene remained bright and shiny, but whatever was dark in the original scene was dark from the acid.

It is said that Niepce also experimented with "prints" by pressing paper on the plate immediately after wiping with oil, which also produced an image on paper much like that of a lithograph. In doing this, the still soft, unexposed dark asphalt transferred conveniently onto paper when pressed on the plate.

Niepce went on to join in a partnership with Louis Daguerre, but died before he could profit from his further research into photography.

World's First Photograph

(click HERE to go to History of Photography - Part B)

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