A Victorian Sensation

"F/8 and be there" ......

       

Unattributed but possibly Weegee (aka Arthur Fellig - 1940s)

I was very pleased to be there though f/8 became redundant with photographs restricted to selfies in Victorian dress in addition to a final interactive opportunity in the Digital World section where you learn that more photographs are taken now globally in two minutes than were taken in the whole of the 19th century!

Visitors to the exhibition Photography: A Victorian Sensation are taken back to the very beginnings of photography and then able to trace its evolution from a scientific art practised by a few wealthy individuals from 1839 to the now widely valuable phenomenon it is today.

The exhibition not only showcases The National Museum of Scotland's extensive early photographic collections, some of which have never been publicly displayed before, but also objects and interactive displays with film clips of actors simulating these early Victorian photography pioneers.  The exhibits are laid out in a time-line format with large interpretation boards leading you along the weay through the journey of photography.   Cameras and related paraphernalia are dotted around in display cases and the large touch screens allow you to select any of the images on display, read a description and zoom in, enabling you to see just how much detail the cameras were able to capture.  Find out more here about NMS's selection process for the displays from the 20,000 plus objects and images available to them:-

http://blog.nms.ac.uk/2015/11/16/selecting-1467-photography-items-to-display-from-a-collection-of-20330/

Victorian Photographic Techniques

• The daguerreotype is a specific photographic process, invented by the Parisian entrepreneur Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851).  A daguerreotype is a single reversed image, made as a direct positive onto a silvered copper plate.  Its reflective surface is an easy way to tell the difference between a daguerreotype and an early photograph taken using a different technique.

  

  Daguerrotype camera - Paris - 1841

  
  

  

  Daguerrotype circa 1852
  Howarth-Loomes collection at NMS

• Henry Fox Talbot patented the calotype in 1841 with this process being the ancestor of nearly all photographic methods using chemistry until the emergence of digital photography during the late 1990s.  The calotype negative was made by projecting an image through a lens on to a piece of chemically sensitised paper fixed inside the camera.  When developed this produced a negative image.  In turn, the negative was placed in a printing frame with a second piece of sensitised paper and exposed to sunlight, which produced a positive image.

Calotype camera with lens circa 1840, used by Talbot

• Photography became cheaper in 1851when Frederick Scott Archer (1813-57) announced his new form of photography - the wet collodion process.  This combined the best of Daguerre and Talbot's methods bust was easier and cheaper than either.  The public loved it and Archer's process became the foundation of photography for the next 140 years.
• Ambrotypes (or wet collodion positives) were formed by painting the back of the glass negative image with black paint, or placing a piece of black card there.
• The tintype, or ferrotype process was a cheaper development of the wet collodion method producing a single positive image on a tinned or enamelled iron support.

  

  ambrotype demonstrating effect of dark background
  under bleached negative

tintype of family group from
Howarth-Loomes collection NMS

• At the Great Exhibition in London in 1851, the scientist Sir David Brewster introduced the stereoscopy for the first time.   Any stereoscopic image is called a stereogram and this originally referred to a pair of stereo images which could be viewed through a stereoscope which present slightly differing images to the left and right eye of the viewer.  These 2-D images are then re-combined by the brain to give the viewer the perception of 3-D. Both stereo-viewers and stereoscopic images became an instant success.

Brewster stereoscope c. 1860

• Parisian photographer André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri (c1857) realised that he could reduce costs by taking several similar negatives on a single plate and created the carte-de-visite craze.  The carte-de-visite was undoubtedly the most popular form of 19th century photography - the Victorian's answer to the selfie.

Carte-de-visite of
  William HenryFoxTal

In 1888, George Eastman launched the Kodak camera in New York, revolutionising the market - this was the beginning of photography as a tool and a hobby for everyone.

"You press the button, we do the rest"

• The digital revolution in photography started in 1981 when Sony introduced the Sony Mavica, the first digital electronic still camera.

George Washington Wilson (1823-93)

I found the displays relating to the famous Scot, George Washington Wilson very interesting.  This crofter's son from Aberdeenshire worked as a joiner but went on to train as an artist in Edinburgh and London, before returning home to set up a business firstly as an artist and then as a photographer.  He was the first person to photograph Queen Victoria at Balmoral in 1853 and then went on to develop photography techniques outside the studio as well as starting mass production of photographic prints. In the 1860s he over from portraits to landscape photography and on is death in 1893, his family firm was employing 40 staff and was one of the largest publishers in the world of photographic prints. In particular I enjoyed his stereoscopic pictures of the Island of Staffa and Fingal's Cave, having visited there myself earlier this summer.

1863  - Fingal's Cave
Stereo albumen print from wet collodian negative

Fingal's cave - July 2015 -
Nikon D600  - DSLR

 Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-79)

I was also tickled pink to view these two photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron, with them both having been presented to the class at the beginning of our course! (Is it only a month ago that I was not really aware of her existence?)

Julia Margaret Cameron's
The Red and White Roses

"I can't be anonymous by reason of
your confounded photographs" -
Alfred Lord Tennyson

Julia Margaret Cameron was a renowned amateur who took up photography at the age of 48.  As she was part of an intellectually-active artistic circle in London, she proceeded to photograph writers, artists, scientists as well as visitors, servants and children.  After visiting the Poet Laureate, Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-92) on the Isle of Wight in 1860, Mrs Cameron bought the property next door to him.  Her many photographs of him led to a critic saying "amateurs are not as a rule successful in portrait-taking, but we must make an exception in favour of Mrs Cameron ...."  This quote was in direct contrast to what Tennyson himself remarked (see above)!  Her photograph of The Red and White Roses" are a simple metaphor of youthful beauty, briefly flowering in early summer and then changed by biting frost or age.

Maeve in sepia - this is my attempt at photography
in the style of Julia Margaret Cameron

Another link to short film clips on Victorian Pioneers 
such as Hill and Adamson and TR Williams here:-


http://www.nms.ac.uk/explore/collections-stories/science-and-technology/victorian-photography/victorian-photography-pioneers/

the very amateur and yet to be discovered photographer
Janet MacLeod visiting the National Museums of Scotland
- Photography - a Victorian Sensation exhibition.




All in all a very valuable and enriching experience!  Now to be mindful of my photography assignment, I need to get back to concentrating on collecting images in appropriate styles for Ruraltopia which has once again been consigned to my next post ........