The history of photography is vast and fascinating. It didnāt develop like other art forms and comparatively, photography is in itsā infancy. Looking at where our craft came from is a great way to find new appreciation and inspiration for your work in the future. While not a complete history of photography, this weekly column aims to introduce Photofocus readers to some of the aspects of this often overlooked part of learning photography and inspire them to think about their work in new and different ways.
NiƩpce, Daguerre, and Herschel: The Essential Founders of Photography
While the most very basic scientific precursors to photography and social and artistic desires to use light to replicate the world around us into two-dimensional form existed for centuries (described in my last article here), many people argue that the birth of photography wasn’t tentatively until the mid-1820ās. Ā This was when Joseph NiĆ©pceās invented the heliograph. Ā Others point toward the late 1830ās with Louis-Jaques-MandĆ© Daguerreās invention of the Daguerreotype.
It is factual that Joseph NiĆ©pce was the first person to invent a way to make permanent images through the action of light. He experimented with papers coated with silver chloride and exposed inside a camera obscura. The result was essentially a paper negative. The areas corresponding to darker parts of the image were light and the brighter areas depicted were dark on NiĆ©pceās paper. He would be able to temporarily āfixā the image to the paper by washing in water before sending them to his brother Claude to look at. Andre Gunthert, a photography historian, can be quoted saying āWhat is a print on sensitized paper, from an outdoor view, realized into a camera obscura, that can be sent by post and observed by a distant viewer some days later, if not a photographic picture?ā By this definition, NiĆ©pceās efforts in 1816 mark the true ābirthā of photography.
In the late 1820ās NiĆ©pce had evolved his work from the silver-coated paper to silver-coated copper plates and was calling them Heliographs. He was able to create images, but they were far from perfect. They were contrasty and not sharp in focus. Additionally, they took a long time to make and werenāt reproducible. One still survives today, dated circa 1826-27 entitled View From His Window at Le Gras.




NiĆ©pce knew that to be successful, whatever he created needed to be able to be reproduced. Insert Daguerre. Iāve ready varying reports of how NiĆ©pce and Daguerre got together. Some say NiĆ©pce approached Daguerre; others have it the other way around. Iām not sure which contains the full truth, but the main point is that in the mid-1820ās the two got together to continue their quest for a way to record light permanently and reproduce it quickly, easily, and faithfully.
Daguerre had been known since the early 1800ās like a visionary in the Paris art scene. He had developed and perfected many theatrical special effects, particularly in the use of diorama, a type of theater performance. Diorama involved a variety of ways of projecting light and manipulating how viewers saw that light and the impressions it created. As a forerunner in the field, he was constantly striving for ways to produce better and better images with light as well as produce them more quickly. Due to Daguerreās success in the theater, he had the funding, access to prominent society, as well as artist credibility within the Paris and European art communities, all of which NiĆ©pce could find advantageous in his quest to develop the heliograph into something better.
The two worked separately, but in conjunction with one another, sending coded letters back and forth between them discussing their research. After NiĆ©pce died in 1833, Daguerre continued the research, somewhat with NiĆ©pceās son, but mostly by himself. Daguerre had developed the techniques to the point of using highly polished silver plates, heating iodine crystals on the plate while still in the dark, then immediately putting them into the camera for approximately 1-hour exposures in bright sunlight. Without any type of development process, this created a negative image. In late 1834, Daguerre claims that by accident he sensitized the plates with mercury vapor after exposure which was able to render the image (at certain angles) back to a positive image. He then would wash the plate in a sodium chloride bath to stabilize the image. The resulting image of a Daguerreotype is unlike any photograph as we understand it in a modern sense as depending on the angle you hold it in your hand, it can view as a negative or a positive image. However, the detail in which the process replicates life is impeccable and beautiful. (Iāll have more on Daguerreotypes themselves in another post in the future!)


At this point, weāre now in the late 1830ās and astronomer and chemist Sir John Frederick William Herschel approaches Daguerre and tells him that heās discovered a solution to permanently āfixā images produced by cameras. The solution was hyposulphite of soda or āhypoā for short. Anyone whoās had an analog photography background and has been in the darkroom will recall large vats of super stinky stuff called āhypoā or āfixerā. Thatās the same stuff.
Now the Daguerreotype was essentially perfect. Daguerre said, āThe Daguerreotype is not merely an instrument which serves to draw Nature; on the contrary, it is a chemical and physical process which gives her the power to reproduce herself.ā Daguerre went public to the AcadĆ©mie des Sciences, and the AcadĆ©mie des Beaux-Arts with his invention and those of the upper class who could afford it were instantly enraptured. In the years following from approximately 1830’s until the mid-1850ās, daguerreotypes reigned in popularity.
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