Stop the presses! Photography in 1827!

[Sirius Glass]

According to this photographic history books will need to be rewritten.

http://www.bjp-online.com/british-j...1982/photographic-process-force-history-write

Steve

 

[An Le-qun]

Thanks for sharing this--it's huge.

 

[drpsilver]

15 Oct 2010

Steve:

This is big!!!

Thanks for the link.

Regards,
Darwin

 

[removed account4]

This story is well known isn't it ... Joseph Nicéphore Niépce’s story ...
he made images ... and he couldn't reproduce his results
then he died and then well .. you know ...

 

[chriscrawfordphoto]

I don't get it. Its long been known that Niépce made his first photos in the 1820s....why is this 'big news'?

 

[tomalophicon]

I don't get it. Its long been known that Niépce made his first photos in the 1820s....why is this 'big news'?

Did you read the article?

 

[chriscrawfordphoto]

Did you read the article?

Yes. These plates have been known for a long time. The only thing in the article that was new was that researchers had decided that the plates were unmanipulated photographs, rather than ones that had been retouched manually after processing. People in the thread here on APUG seem to be taking a different understanding of the article, namely that these are previously undiscovered early photos that push back the date of our art form's invention. They're not that. As I said, its been known forever that photography was invented in the 1820s and as Newhall mentions in his history, its believed that photographs were made as early as the 1790s, but they quickly faded because they were done by a process that caused the image to appear from exposure alone (like POP paper), and no means of fixing them had been discovered. Niépce's photos were the earliest ones that were done with a process that produced permanent light-proof images that have survived to the present day.

 

[AgX]

Have a look at the subject of the photo. Isn't it a tell tale?

 

[Q.G.]

It is.
If not a drawing (etching?) itself but a photograph, it certainly is a reproduction of a drawing (or etching).
But being the latter, it is one of the earliest photographs known.

In etching, a protective varnish is used, which is scraped away to expose the plate to the etching acid. We all know that.
In soft ground etching, the 'vernis mou' (soft varnish) used often contains lavender oil.

So is it a photo?
The fact that there is lavender oil in the layer is not enough.

On the other hand, Niepce may well have borrowed the technique used to stick a layer to a metal plate from etching.
But still, the fact that they found lavender oil is not conclusive evidence.

Yet if we may assume that it indeed is a photo, the technique (borrowed from etching or not) probably is a new one.

 

[An Le-qun]

One reason it seems like a big deal to me is that, if it is in fact the product of a photographic process and only that, the Harry Ransom Center needs to relabel its display to read "possibly the first, but just as likely the second or third photograph. Maybe the fourth."

 

[Gerald C Koch]

Niepce did make photographs and there is one image which appears in many books on photography. BUT, the method was impractical as exposure took hours in full sun light and there was no way to make the process faster. It was a photographic dead end.

 

[chriscrawfordphoto]

Niepce did make photographs and there is one image which appears in many books on photography. BUT, the method was impractical as exposure took hours in full sun light and there was no way to make the process faster. It was a photographic dead end.

That's the one that's in the museum in Texas. Just because it was a dead end doesn't make it any less a photograph. The fact is, its been known forever that the earliest known photo was done in the 1820s. Its also known that some of the earliest photos were photos of artwork.

 

[removed account4]

he was way ahead of his time.

i remember reading that niepce also made
some of the first color photographs ...
but he wasn't able to fix them
(like his black and white experiments )
and everyone ... thought it was a hoax.

 

[michaelbsc]

... Its also known that some of the earliest photos were photos of artwork.

They were probably good subjects that didn't move around much.

 

[tomalophicon]

Yes. These plates have been known for a long time. The only thing in the article that was new was that researchers had decided that the plates were unmanipulated photographs, rather than ones that had been retouched manually after processing. People in the thread here on APUG seem to be taking a different understanding of the article, namely that these are previously undiscovered early photos that push back the date of our art form's invention. They're not that. As I said, its been known forever that photography was invented in the 1820s and as Newhall mentions in his history, its believed that photographs were made as early as the 1790s, but they quickly faded because they were done by a process that caused the image to appear from exposure alone (like POP paper), and no means of fixing them had been discovered. Niépce's photos were the earliest ones that were done with a process that produced permanent light-proof images that have survived to the present day.

I take it as saying that the process was different to the one we KNEW he used for the first one.

 

[Q.G.]

It is about that, yes.
But not, as the thread title suggests, and as some perhaps understood, about discovering that photography existed in 1827. We already knew that.

 

[An Le-qun]

They were probably good subjects that didn't move around much.

That's certainly true, but one of the earliest recognized uses of photographs was as an aid to studying art when the person studying it could not actually visit the artwork on location. It really contributed to the study of art history.

 

[Pat Erson]

and yes "Un clair de Lune" is the 100% correct spelling...

 

[Maris]

The first fully fixed and permanent image of anything dates from 1819. But as a photograph it is somewhat disappointing.

In that year Sir John Herschel coated a sheet of paper with silver chloride, covered half of it with a card, and exposed the combination to light. The exposed silver went dark as expected but the next step was crucial. Herschel washed the half exposed sheet with a solution of sodium thiosulphate, dissolved the silver chloride, and left the dark deposit of silver immune to further light exposure.

In a sense this half dark half light sheet is a "photograph" of a piece of card. It still exists in the Herschel archive.

 

[frobozz]

The article mentions the fourth of that set of photographs resides in a museum at the University of Texas in Austin... where my son is a freshman! I sent him the link and told him he should go see it. He sent me an iPhone camera picture of it He was actually pretty impressed with the rest of the museum too. Over 5 million photos and negatives...

Duncan

 

[totalamateur]

The first fully fixed and permanent image of anything dates from 1819. But as a photograph it is somewhat disappointing.

In that year Sir John Herschel coated a sheet of paper with silver chloride, covered half of it with a card, and exposed the combination to light. The exposed silver went dark as expected but the next step was crucial. Herschel washed the half exposed sheet with a solution of sodium thiosulphate, dissolved the silver chloride, and left the dark deposit of silver immune to further light exposure.

In a sense this half dark half light sheet is a "photograph" of a piece of card. It still exists in the Herschel archive.

Wouldn't that technically be a photogram?

Just jerkin yer chain - If SJH figured out AgX and fixer in 1819, He's alright with me.

 

[An Le-qun]

"...the Harry Ransom Center needs to relabel its display to read "possibly the first, but just as likely the second or third photograph. Maybe the fourth."

It turns out that UT's Ransom Center is now referring to their Niepce as "the earliest surviving image of nature taken with a camera" (Harry Ransom Center--the University of Texas at Austin Exhibition Guide, "Discovering the Language of Photography--the Gernsheim Collection," September 7, 2010-January 2, 2011).

 

[Moopheus]

Wouldn't that technically be a photogram?

Just jerkin yer chain - If SJH figured out AgX and fixer in 1819, He's alright with me.

Yeah, it's more than a bit of stretch to say that what Herschel made was a photograph, since it was more a test of a chemical process than image-making, but it was an important step in any case.

 

[Peter de Groot]

There is a dutch collector who found some photograms made by Adriaan Paauw. Those are dated around 1789 and 1790. He used an amoniasolution to fix the images formed on paper with an silverchloride solution. The collector Arjan de Nooy studied his finding for 10 years before publishing it in his book Beyond The Amateur - A collector's
perspective on the history of photography

I couldn't find much on it on the net but here is a link:
http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/18thcentury-scientist-adriaan

There are some links in dutch but they tell the same story.

 

[Marco B]

There is a dutch collector who found some photograms made by Adriaan Paauw. Those are dated around 1789 and 1790. He used an amoniasolution to fix the images formed on paper with an silverchloride solution. The collector Arjan de Nooy studied his finding for 10 years before publishing it in his book Beyond The Amateur - A collector's
perspective on the history of photography

I couldn't find much on it on the net but here is a link:
http://britishphotohistory.ning.com/profiles/blogs/18thcentury-scientist-adriaan

There are some links in dutch but they tell the same story.

Sorry to disappoint you, but when I first hit on this "Dutch origin story" and a published booklet in a book store about it, I was intrigued too...

Until I discovered the "Dutch collector" Arjan de Nooy was actually named as a former student of an Art Academy with his project about Adriaan Pauw (Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunsten Den Haag):

Dead Link Removed

Scroll down to see his name listed under "Eindexamenwerk"... More references to be found on his / the "collectors" name if you look good.

This is one clever "art project" scam to rewrite history