Januar 2014

175 Years of Photography - The Fathers of Photography

At the beginning there was Nicéphore Niépce (1765 – 1833). He made the first photographic exposure in the world. Historian of photography Helmut Gernsheim had an apt comparison to hand: “Just as the desire to find India allowed Columbus instead to find America, so with Niépce the intention to create lithographs using an optical and chemical route led to something totally new, photography, which he called heliography.” Joseph Nicéphore Niépce from Chalon-sur-Saône, initially a military officer, later an inventor in different areas found himself as a result of the invention of lithography by a German, Alois Senefelder (1771 – 1834), stimulated into undertaking experiments to make pictures in a camera obscura that could then be stabilised. The idea: if it were possible to make the stone itself light-sensitive and then to fix an image from nature on it in the camera obscura, then subsequently the stone could be etched and prints made on paper. The excessively long exposure times comprising a whole day required for the very slow-working bitumen layer (which hardens under light, while the unexposed parts are soluble in lavender oil) resulted in 1824 in a satisfactory image, but it proved to be too faint for the second process, etching.

In experiments using other bases, Niépce employed a simpler contact process using engravings, which he had made transparent with oil. They resulted after a two-to-three hour exposure to the sunlight in a stronger picture than the photograph made in the camera, which even after eight hours exposure was still under-exposed and unsuitable for etching. In January 1826 Niépce bought from Charles Chevalier, a Paris optician, his first professionally made camera obscura. Using it, Niépce succeeded in the course of the summer in making the first successful image with the camera. It was Charles Chevalier, the supplier of the camera who in 1826 made Niépce aware that Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787 – 1851), theatre painter and owner of the Diorama was engaged in similar experiments. Equally, Daguerre heard through Chevalier of Niépce’s experiments and soon afterwards contacted him by letter. When a year later, Niépce was travelling through Paris, he met Daguerre personally. The initial mutual caution of both inventors nevertheless led to an exchange of ideas and then to the signing of a contract on future co-operation and the exploitation of „the invention perfected by Niépce and Daguerre“. This contract came into effect on December 14, 1829 and was to cover a ten-year period. As early as 1833 Niépce died, and Daguerre reached an agreement with the son, Isidore Niépce (1805 – 1868), who succeeded to the contractual rights of his deceased father. Niépce had already made experiments with silver plates, which he exposed to iodine vapour in order to dissolve unexposed areas. Daguerre discovered (1831), that refined silver iodide is light-sensitive. As a result of a chance discovery in 1835 Daguerre stumbled across the possibility of developing the latent image as a result of the exposure of the invisible image on silver iodide layers to mercury (quicksilver) vapour. When the exposed silver iodide plate was subsequently exposed to mercury vapour, a whitish deposit was formed on the area of the image which had been in the light. In a sense, this amounted to „development“. When silver iodide was exposed to light, this had an impact on the free silver, with mercury atoms being formed on the surface. But in areas which were not exposed to light, the mercury had no effect. How that – which has been called the “quicksilver process“ – was discovered, is not known. There is a story that Daguerre came across this process by chance, when it is said, he placed a number of exposed silver iodide plates in a cupboard, which contained various chemicals. After several weeks, he noticed a beautiful and strong image on one plate. He exposed fresh plates and placed them in the cupboard. After several hours, once again good pictures were produced on them. By taking one substance after another out of the cupboard, eventually Daguerre discovered that the one which enabled the pictures to appear was mercury. Two years later, Daguerre finally found a fixer in the form of cooking salt, and it is from this year that the first surviving photograph dates.

The British independent scientist, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800 – 1877) had a comprehensive education. A good botanist, an able mathematician, he could decypher and translate Assyrian cuneiform writing, and devoted himself primarily to problems in physics. Fox Talbot undertook long journeys. In 1833, while attempting to do a landscape drawing on Lake Como using a camera obscura, the idea occurred to him of stabilising an optical picture chemically. As early as 1834 he started relevant experiments, using silver chloride sheets. Their poor light sensitivity forced him to use extraordinarily long, virtually impractical exposure times. The resulting picture was a negative image, in other words areas of the picture that were naturally bright, appeared dark. Fox Talbot succeeded in fixing the image only with the greatest difficulty, until later Herschel suggested sodium thiosulphate as a solvent of the unexposed silver-salts. When in January 1839, Fox Talbot heard of Daguerre’s results, he immediately drew attention to his own still uncompleted process and claimed the recognition of his rights as inventor – admittedly unsuccessfully, because Niépce and Daguerre had begun their work much earlier. Even if Fox Talbot’s pictures did not achieve the brightness or the sharpness of the daguerreotypes, nevertheless his process had the vital characteristic for the whole future development of photography, that from the original negative, an unlimited number of positive photos could be made. In the literature of the history of photography, there has been a lot of argument over whether Niépce or Daguerre had the most important role in the discovery of the first really practicable system. (Similar problems were presented in the history of photography by the question of whether Fox Talbot was not the true father of photography, because he invented the negative/positive process, which is the foundation of modern photography). Beaumont Newhall regards the argument as superfluous. „Photography“, he wrote, „was not invented by an individual. Without the challenge from Daguerre and his invention of a successful photographic technique, it is possible that Fox Talbot’s work would remained abandoned in the attic of Lacock Abbey, together with his internal combustion engines which were never completed.“ „It is possible“, continued Newhall, „that without the resolute efforts of Nicéphore Niépce, Daguerre would have remained an unimportant painter of fashionable subjects. But again without Daguerre’s contribution, it is possible to imagine that perhaps nobody would ever have heard of Niépce again, after his attempt in England to move his invention towards a breakthrough ended so unsuccessfully and depressingly.“

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, 1765-1833

Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, 1787-1851

daguerreotype, collection Uwe Scheid

William Henry Fox Talbot, 1800