VISUAL COMMUN ICATION CASE STUDIES Stacey Courtney 01: Case Studies View from the Window at Le Gras,1826 1765 Niepce 17th-century engraving of a man leading a horse, 1825 Niepce Nicéphore Niépce was born Joseph Niépce in 1765 and was a French inventor. He is one of the inventors of photography and a pioneer in the field. He is most known for producing the world’s first known photograph in 1825. Niépce served as a staff officer in the French army under Napoleon. In 1822, he took what is believed to be the world’s first photogravure etching of an engraving of Pope Pius VII, but the original was later destroyed when he attempted to duplicate it. The first surviving photogravure by Niépce is of a man with a horse. It was printed from a metal plate covered with a ground that was etched following exposure to sunlight. He collaborated with Louis Daguerre and together developed the physautotype, a process that used lavender oil around 1829. He died in 1833 and Daguerre eventually developed a process that little resembled that of Niépce, naming this the “Daguerréotype”, after himself. Stacey Courtney 01: Case Studies 1800 Camera used by Talbot Photogravure of Victor Hugo, 1883 Fox Talbot William Henry Fox Talbot born in 1800 was a British inventor and photographer known for his invention of the calotype process. His work in the 1840s on photo-mechanical reproduction led to the creation of the process of photogravure. He was trying to make a print that would not fade therefore creating photographic images on plates that could then be etched. The etched plates could then be printed using a traditional printing press. His “The Pencil of Nature” (1844–46) was the first book with photographic illustrations. Six decades after his death in 1877 , the negatives of all his early photographs were discovered by his grand daughter Matilda Talbot, and given to the Science Museum, South Kensington. In 1977 an exhibition of Fox Talbot’s photographs was organized to commemorate the centenary of his death, with original photographs of the collections of the Science Museum, the Royal Photographic Society, the Fox Talbot Museum, and the Kodak Museum. Stacey Courtney 01: Case Studies 1820 “Revolving” selfportrait by Nadar, 1865 Félix Nadar Félix Nadar was born in 1820 in Paris and was a French photographer, caricaturist, journalist, novelist and balloonist. He pioneered the use of artificial lighting in photography. In April 1874, he lent his photo studio to a group of painters, making the first exhibition of the Impressionists possible. Nadar became well known for his Panthéon Nadar, a lithographic panorama of contemporary French cultural celebrities, published in the Lanterne magique (1854) and the Le Figaro (1858). Nadar established himself as a photographer with his brother Adrien. In 1854 they produced a series of portraits of the mime artist Charles Deburau, illustrating various expressions. Relations between the two brothers deteriorated and led to two lawsuits in 1856–7. Nadar became the portrait photographer of his time who used well known personalities as his subjects. Stacey Courtney 01: Case Studies 1830 The Horse In Motion, 1878 Eadweard Muybridge Eadweard Muggeridge was born in England in 1830. He changed his last name in 1855 when he moved to San Francisco. Muybridge’s reputation as a photographer grew in the late 1800s and he was asked to help former California Governor Leland Stanford figure out if all four hooves of a running horse left the ground by capturing it in camera. He experimented with an array of 12 cameras photographing the horse in a sequence of shots. Muybridge perfected his method of horses in motion, proving that they do have all four hooves off the ground during their running stride. Because of this first experiment he worked at the University of Pennsylvania between 1883 and 1886, producing thousands of photographs of humans and animals in motion. He published several books featuring his motion photographs and toured Europe and North America, presenting his photographic methods. Muybridge died in 1904. His innovative camera techniques have enabled people to see things otherwise to fast to comprehend. They have helped other inventors including Thomas Edison and Etienne-Jules Marey. Stacey Courtney 01: Case Studies 1830 Fading Away, 1858 Henry “Peach” Robinson Henry Peach Robinson was born in 1830 in Ludlow, England. He was an English pictorialist photographer best known for his combination printing in which he joined multiple negatives to form a single image, known as photomontage. Robinson began to make photographs that imitated the themes and compositions of the anecdotal genre paintings popular at the time. His earliest known work a photo titled “Juliet with the Poison Bottle (1857)” was made by combining separate negatives into a single picture. He encouraged other photographers to produce images that looked like paintings. His third and the most famous composite picture, “Fading Away” (1858) was both popular and morbid, showing a young girl on her deathbed surrounded by her family. His book “Pictorial Effect in Photography, Being Hints on Composition and Chiaroscuro for Photographers” was published in 1868. In 1891 Robinson and several others formed the “Linked Ring” and later died from poisonous effects of photographic chemicals. Stacey Courtney 01: Case Studies 1831 The first permanent colour photograph, taken by James Clerk Maxwell in 1861 James Maxwell James Clerk Maxwell was born in 1831 and was a Scottish mathematical physicist. He has been called the third greatest inventor in physics after Issac Newton and Albert Einstein, Einstein even keeping a photograph of Maxwell on his study wall. He found that electric and magnetic fields travel through space in the form of waves and at the constant speed of light. Maxwell is also known for presenting the first durable colour photograph in 1861. He proposed that if three black-and- white photographs of a scene were taken through red, green and violet filters, and transparent prints of the images were projected onto a screen using three projectors, when superimposed on the screen the human eye would see it as a complete image. He photographed a tartan ribbon three times, through red, green and blue filters which became the first permanent colour photograph. Stacey Courtney 01: Case Studies 1832 Mary Todd Lincoln Master Herrod William Mumler William H. Mumler was an American spirit photographer born in 1832. His first spirit photograph was a self portrait which showed his deceased cousin. He took advantage of the large amount of people who has lost loved ones in the American Civil War. His most famous photograph is of Mary Todd Lincoln which shows the ghost of her husband Abraham Lincoln over her shoulder. Another one is his photo of Master Herrod, showing three spirits. In 1869 he was charged with fraud for selling photographs that he claimed included images of ghosts or spirits. Several photographers explained that the effects could be achieved by darkroom tricks. Though he was found not guilty of the charges his career was over, and he died in poverty. Today, Mumler’s photos are considered to be fakes. Stacey Courtney 01: Case Studies Shimazu Nariakira (Ichiki Shiro) 1857 1839 Daguerreotype built by La Maison Susse Frères in 1839 The first authenticated image of Abraham (Lincoln Nicholas H. Shepard) Daguerreotype Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre invented the daguerreotype process in France in 1839. The daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process and is a direct-positive process, creating a highly detailed image on a sheet of copper plate with a thin coat of silver without the use of a negative. The silver-plated copper plate had to be cleaned until the surface looked like a mirror. Exposure times for the earliest daguerreotypes ranged from three to fifteen minutes, making the process impractical for portraiture. After alterations an exposure could be made in less than a minute. The cases provided to house Daguerreotypes have a cover lined with velvet or plush to provide a dark surface that reflects into the plate for viewing. Popularity of the daguerreotype declined in the late 1850s when the ambrotype, a faster and less expensive photographic process, became available. Stacey Courtney 01: Case Studies 1840 Talbot, William Henry Fox Bridge of Sighs, St. John’s College, Cambridge Calotype The Calotype also known as the “Talbotype,” was invented by Fox talbot in September 1840 and patented on the 8th of Feburary 1841. It was mostly used by amateurs, artists and scientists and was a technical breakthrough that helped stimulate the world-wide spread of photography allowing much shorter exposures than previous used photogenic drawing. The Calotype proper is a negative image and is made by brushing the best quality image drawing or writing paper with a solution of silver nitrate, drying it and then immersing it in a solution of potassium iodide to form a light- sensitive layer of silver iodide. At this stage, the balance of the chemicals was such that the paper was practically insensitive to light and could be stored indefinitely. To develop the image more of the “gallo-nitrate of silver” was brushed on while gently warming the paper. Once development was complete the calotype is was rinsed, blotted and either washed in a solution of potassium bromide or fixed in a hot solution of sodium thiosulfate then known as hyposulphite and commonly called “hypo”. This dissolved the silver iodide which washed it completely out leaving particles of the developed images and making the calotype completely insensitive to light. Stacey Courtney 01: Case Studies 1864 Winter on Fifth Avenue, 1893 Self-portrait, 1886 Alfred Stieglitz Alfred Stieglitz was an American photographer born in New Jersey in 1864. He was an art promoter who helped to make photography an accepted art form such as sculpture or painting.