The Evolution of Photography

Оглавление

Werge John. The Evolution of Photography

FIRST PERIOD. PAPER, ASPHALTUM, &c

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

FIRST PERIOD

THE DARK AGES

SECOND PERIOD. DAGUERREOTYPE

SECOND PERIOD

PUBLICITY AND PROGRESS

THIRD PERIOD. COLLODION

THIRD PERIOD

COLLODION TRIUMPHANT

FOURTH PERIOD. GELATINE

FOURTH PERIOD

GELATINE SUCCESSFUL

CHRONOLOGICAL RECORD OF

INVENTIONS, DISCOVERIES, PUBLICATIONS, AND APPLIANCES, FORMING FACTORS IN THE INCEPTION, DISCOVERY, AND DEVELOPMENT OF PHOTOGRAPHY

CONTRIBUTIONS TO PHOTOGRAPHIC LITERATURE. BY

JOHN WERGE

PICTURES OF NIAGARA

PICTURES OF THE ST. LAWRENCE

PHOTOGRAPHIC IMPRESSIONS

PICTURES OF THE POTOMAC IN PEACE AND WAR

RAMBLES AMONG THE STUDIOS OF AMERICA

TO DUBLIN AND BACK, WITH A GLANCE AT THE EXHIBITION

PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE NORTH

ERRORS IN PICTORIAL BACKGROUNDS

PERSPECTIVE

PERSPECTIVE IN BACKGROUNDS

NOTES ON PICTURES IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY

SHARPNESS AND SOFTNESS V. HARDNESS

UNION OF THE NORTH AND SOUTH LONDON PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETIES

UNION OF THE LONDON PHOTOGRAPHIC SOCIETIES

THE SOCIETY‘S EXHIBITION

THE USE OF CLOUDS IN LANDSCAPES

THE USE OF CLOUDS AS BACKGROUNDS IN PORTRAITURE

“LUX GRAPHICUS” ON THE WING

“LUX GRAPHICUS” ON THE WING

“LUX GRAPHICUS” ON THE WING

“LUX GRAPHICUS” ON THE WING

PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE IMMURED POMPEIIANS

A SIMPLE MODE OF INTENSIFYING NEGATIVES

A STRING OF OLD BEADS

LIGHTS AND LIGHTING

Отрывок из книги

No previous history of photography, that I am aware of, has ever assumed the form of a reminiscence, nor have I met with a photographic work, of any description, that is so strictly built upon a chronological foundation as the one now placed in the hands of the reader. I therefore think, and trust, that it will prove to be an acceptable and readable addition to photographic literature.

It was never intended that this volume should be a text-book, so I have not entered into elaborate descriptions of the manipulations of this or that process, but have endeavoured to make it a comprehensive and agreeable summary of all that has been done in the past, and yet convey a perfect knowledge of all the processes as they have appeared and effected radical changes in the practice of photography.

.....

M. Niépce appears to have done very little more towards perfecting the heliographic process after joining Daguerre; but the latter effected some improvements, and substituted for the bitumen of Judea the residuum obtained by evaporating the essential oil of lavender, without, however, attaining any important advance in that direction. After the death of M. Nicéphore Niépce, a new agreement was entered into by his son, M. Isidore Niépce, and M. Daguerre, and we must leave those two experimentalists pursuing their discoveries in France while we return to England to pick up the chronological links that unite the history of this wonderful discovery with the time that it was abandoned by Wedgwood and Davy, and the period of its startling and brilliant realization.

In 1834, Mr. Henry Fox Talbot, of Lacock Abbey, Wilts, “began to put in practice,” as he informs us in his memoir read before the Royal Society, a method which he “had devised some time previously, for employing to purposes of utility the very curious property which has been long known to chemists to be possessed by the nitrate of silver—namely, to discolouration when exposed to the violet rays of light.” The statement just quoted places us at once on the debateable ground of our subject, and compels us to pause and consider to what extent photography is indebted to Mr. Talbot for its further development at this period and five years subsequently. In the first place, it is not to be supposed for a moment that a man of Mr. Talbot’s position and education could possibly be ignorant of what had been done by Mr. Thomas Wedgwood and Sir Humphry Davy. Their experiments were published in the Journal of the Royal Institution of Great Britain in June, 1802, and Mr. Talbot or some of his friends could not have failed to have seen or heard of those published details; and, in the second place, a comparison between the last records of Wedgwood and Davy’s experiments, and the first published details of Mr. Talbot’s process, shows not only that the two processes are identically the same, but that Mr. Talbot published his process before he had made a single step in advance of Wedgwood and Davy’s discoveries; and that his fixing solution was not a fixer at all, but simply a retardant that delayed the gradual disappearance of the picture only a short time longer. Mr. Talbot has generally been credited with the honour of producing the first permanent sun-pictures on paper; but there are grave reasons for doubting the justice of that honour being entirely, if at all, due to him, and the following facts and extracts will probably tend to set that question at rest, and transfer the laurel to another brow.

.....