CLASS ONE & TWO

Class ONE and TWO Notes

History of Photography PH111

Section A notes from class ONE & TWO

So….. What is history?

his·to·ry     /ˈhɪstəri, ˈhɪstri/

[his-tuh-ree, his-tree]

–noun, plural -ries.

1.the branch of knowledge dealing with past events.

2.     a continuous, systematic narrative of past events as relating to a particular

            people, country, period, person, etc., usually written as a chronological account;

            chronicle: a history of France; a medical history of the patient.

3.the aggregate of past events.

4.            the record of past events and times, esp. in connection with the human race.

5.a past notable for its important, unusual, or interesting events: a ship with a history.

6.            acts, ideas, or events that will or can shape the course of the future; immediate

            but significant happenings: Firsthand observers of our space program see history

            in the making.

Each age tries to form its own conception of the past.  Each age writes the history of the past

anew with reference to the conditions uppermost in it’s own time.

                                                                        - Frederick Jackson Turner

- o r  -

History is fables agreed upon.

                                                                        - Voltaire

Discourse = information exchange how then do we qualify the notion of “exchange”

All communication is, to a greater or lesser extent, tendentious; all messages are manifestations of interest.

…So, are these manifestations imbued within the ‘real world’ ?

The ‘photographic discourse’

A discourse can be defined as an arena of information exchange, that is, as a system of relations between

parties engaged in communicative activity.

Or…

Meaning through a system of codes which definine grammar and syntax.  

Or…

The intelligibility of the photograph is no simple thing; photographs are texts inscribed in terms of what we

May call ‘photographic discourse’, but this discourse, like any other, engages discourses beyond itself, the

‘photographic text’, like any other, is the site of a complex intertextuality, an overlapping series of

Previous texts ‘taken for granted’ at a particular cultural and historical conjuncture.

                                                            -            Victor Burgin

Images & Meaning:

Viewers define meaning based upon the individuals subjective

value system(s).  It is formed through a social process that involves:

           

            The image

            The author

            Viewer interpretation of the image and knowledge of the author

            The context in which the image is viewed

           

So, what about the meaning?

Aesthetics & Taste

Aesthetics:

Philosophy dealing with notions on the beautiful, the ugly,

the sublime, the comic, etc., as applicable to the fine arts, with a

view to establishing the meaning and validity of critical judgments

concerning works of art, and the principles underlying or

justifying such judgments.

Taste:

Informed by class, cultural background, education, and other aspects of identity.

Good taste is often denoted by upper class and educated positions within society/culture.

The Camera Obscura:

Dark Chamber

An apparatus in which the image of external objects, formed by a convex lens or a concave mirror,

are projected on a surface within a darkened chamber/box/room

** Giovanni Battista della Porta (16th Century)

Introduction of a bi-convex lens into the aperture and reflecting mirror

5th Century BC/BCE:

            Mo-Ti formally recorded the creation of an inverted image formed by light rays passing

            through a pinhole into a darkened room.  Mo-Ti called this room a “collecting place”

384 - 322 BC/BCE:

            Aristotle viewed the crescent shape of a partially eclipsed sun projected on the ground

            through the holes in a sieve, and the gaps between leaves of a plane tree

965 -1039 AD/CE:

            Alhazen (Abu Ali al-Hasan lbn al-Haitham) produced a full account of the principles

            including experiments with five lanterns outside a room with a small hole

1490 AD/CE:

            Leonardo Da Vinci established working descriptions of the Camera Obscura in his

            notebooks and the applications the tool would have within art and science

The Camera Lucida (Light Chamber) 1807

 “What is the secret of the invention?  What is the substance endowed with such astonishing sensibility

to the rays of light, that it not only penetrates itself with them, but preserves their impression;

performs at once the function of the eye and the optic nerve - the material instrument of sensation

and sensation itself?”

                                                            - Photogenic Drawing, 1939

Q:  What were some of the cultural and social conditions that allowed for photography

to come into existence?

Early experiments in establishing the photographic process:

Thomas Wedgwood attempted to transfer paintings on glass to

white leather and paper moistened with a solution of

nitrate of silver, describing the resulting negative image as follows:

“where the light is unaltered, the color of the nitrate is deepest.”

Cliché-verre:

A glass plate is covered with ink or paint and a design is drawn through it with a stylus or brush,

producing a negative matrix. A piece of photo-sensitized paper is placed beneath it and it is

exposed to light. A positive, proto-photographic image appears on the paper. It should be noted

that this is a print without printing; there is no ink on the paper.

Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce:

1765 - 1833

Attributed with the discovery of:

Heliography (after the Greek “of the sun”

or “sun drawing”).

And

Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre

à The Diorama!

à And…. That Daguerreian process.

What about:

Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre

&

François Arago:

Eminent astronomer, scientist, and

acting spokesperson for research groups in

physics and chemistry.

Presented Daguerres work to the

Academies of Science and of Fine Arts.

Paris August 19th, 1839

Daguerreotype standard plate sizes…

Whole Plate:                        6-1/2 x 8-1/2”

Half Plate:                        4-1/4 x 5-1/2”

Quarter Plate:                        3-1/4 x 4-1/4”

Sixth Plate:                        2-3/4 x 3-1/4”

Ninth Plate:                        2       x 2-1/2”

Sixteenth Plate:                        1-3/8 x 1-5/8”

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Aquatint:

An aquatint is created by etching sections, rather than lines, of a plate in order to create areas of uniform tone.

An aquatint is prepared by applying resin or a similar ground to a metal plate, which is then heated, thus adhering

 the ground to the metal. This gives a roughness or grain to the plate which adds texture to the image. The plate

is then immersed in an acid bath, which bites or etches the plate and creates areas which will hold the ink. The design

is created with gradations of tone achieved through repeated acid baths combined with varnish used to stop out

areas of lighter tone. Aquatint is an intaglio process, so prints made in this manner will have a platemark. Aquatinting,

 with its areas of tone, was often used to duplicate the feel of a watercolor. Some etching was frequently used in an

aquatint print to create linear elements in the image.

Samuel F. B. Morse and….

The Daguerreotype in America:

- Aesthetics of the mechanical and chemical process of the medium adopted by the social and cultural climate of the "upwardly and spatially mobile" American sosciety

-  A new medium to define unique aspects of American history and experience of the citizenry

-  Method of capture by means of mechanical reproduction.  This process would avoid any artifice inherent within the provincial graphic art throughout mid-century