Perceptions of the visible world were greatly altered by the invention
of photography in the middle of the nineteenth century. In particular,
and quite logically, the art of painting was forever changed, though
not always in the ways one might have expected. The realistic and
naturalistic painters of the mid- and late-nineteenth century were
all intently aware of photography – as a thing to use, to learn from,
and react to.
Unlike most major inventions, photography had been long and impatiently
awaited. The images produced by the camera obscura, a boxlike device
that used a pinhole or lens to throw and image onto a ground-glass
screen or a piece of white paper, were already familiar – the device
had been much employed by topographical artists like the Italian painter
Canaletto in his detailed views of the city of Venice. What was lacking
was a way of giving such images permanent form. This was finally achieved
by Louis Daguerre (1787 – 1851), who perfected a way of fixing them on
a silvered copper plate. His discovery, the “daguerreotype,” was announced in 1839.
A second and very different process was patented by the British inventor
William Henry Talbot (1800 – 1877) in 1841. Talbot’s “calotype” was the
first negative-to-positive process and the direct ancestor of the modern
photograph. The calotype was revolutionary in its use of chemically treated
paper in which areas hit by light became dark in tone, producing a negative
image. This “negative”, as Talbot called it, could then be used to print
multiple positive images on another piece of treated paper.
The two processes produced very different results. The daguerreotype was
a unique image that reproduced what was in front of the camera lens in minute,
unselective detail and could not be duplicated. The calotype could be made in
series, and was thus the equivalent of an etching or an engraving. Its general
effect was soft edged and tonal.
One of the things that most impressed the original audience for photography was
the idea of authenticity. Nature now seemed able to speak for itself, with a
minimum of interference. The title Talbot chose for his book, The pencil of Nature
(the first part of which was published in 1844), reflected this feeling. Artists
were fascinated by photography because it offered a way of examining the world
in much greater detail. They were also afraid of it, because it seemed likely
to make their own efforts unnecessary.
Photograph did indeed make certain kinds of painting obsolete – the daguerreotype
virtually did away with the portrait miniature. It also made the whole business
of making and owning images democratic. Portraiture, once a luxury for the
privileged few, was suddenly well within the reach of many more people.
In the long term, photography’s impact on the visual arts was far from simple.
Because the medium was so prolific, in the sense that it was possible to produce
a multitude of images very cheaply, it was soon treated as the poor relation of
the fine art, rather than its destined successor. Even those artists who were
most dependent on photography became reluctant to admit that they made use of it,
in case this compromised their professional standing.
The rapid technical development of photography – the introduction of lighter
and simpler equipment, and of new emulsions that coated photographic plates,
film, and paper and enabled images to be made at much faster speeds – had
some unanticipated consequences. Scientific experiments made by photographers
such as Eadweard Muybridge (1830 – 1904) and Etienne-Jules Marey (1830 – 1904)
demonstrated that the movements of both humans and animals differed widely from
the way they had been traditionally represented in art. Artists, often reluctantly,
were forced to accept the evidence provided by the camera. The new candid photography
– unposed pictures that were made when the subjects were unaware that their pictures
were being taken – confirmed these scientific results, and at the same time, thanks
to the radical cropping (trimming) of images that the camera often imposed,
suggested new compositional formats. The accidental effects obtained by candid
photographers were soon being copied by artists such as the French painter Degas.