The Picture History of Photography - Peter Pollack (1958)

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THE PICTURE HISTORY
OF Photography
THE PICTURE HISTORY
FROM THE EARLIEST REGINNINGS

TO THE PRESENT DAY
BY PETER POLLACK
HARRY N. ABRAMS, INC. Publishers, New York

Milton S. Fox, Editor
Philip Grushkin, Book Designer
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER I 5S-II357
A!I tights resened
No part of this book may be reproduced except in the case of brief

quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews without written per-
mission from the publishers Harry N. Abrams, Inc. Publishers, New York
PRINTED IN GERMANY
To
BEAUMONT NEWHALL and
HELMUT GERNSHEIM
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I WISH TO ACKNOWLEDGE M'itli gratitudc gifts of encour- Kelly of the Chicago Public Library; Carl Maas of
agement, advice, and pliotograplts from tl>e brilliant his- Standard Oil Company of New Jersey; Grace M. Mayer,
torians Beaumont Newhall, curator of George Eastman curator of prints. Museum of the City of New York; A.
House, Rochester, and Mr. and Mrs. Helmut Gcrnsheim Llyatt Mayor, curator of prints, Aletropolitan Museum
of London. My thanks are also due Daniel Catton Rich, of Art; Janine Niepce of Paris; Georgia O'Keeffe, for
former director of The Art Institute of Chicago, and Stieglitz material; Mary Frances Rhymer of the Chicago
now director of the Worcester Art Museum: faccjucline Historical Society; Harold White of Kent, England, for
Balisli of Modern Photograpliy; Inge Bondi and fnhn G. Talbot material; Anselnio Carini, Richard Florsheim,
Morris of Magnum Photos; the Crerar Library, Chicago; and Father Raymond Bruckberger, for help in transla-
Bruce Downes of Popular Photography; Minor White tions; Elizabeth Racely, my secretary; and, finally, Helen
of the Rochester Institute of Technology; General Perce, for typing the manuscript.
Oscar Solbcrt, director of George Eastman House; I am particularly grateful to Samuel Cauman, who not
Howard R. Driggs of American Pioneer Trails Asso- only read my manuscript but made invaluable sugges-
ciation, New York City; W. R. Felton of Sioux City, tions; to Philip Grushkin, who designed this volume; and
Iowa, for Laton Alton Huffman material; Raymond to Joseph E. T. Rankin, who arranged the bibliography.
Grosset of the Paris office and Charles Rado of the New My deepest thanks are extended to the photogiaphers
York office of the Rapho-Guillumette agency; T. George who have permitted me to reproduce their photographs.
Harris and Stanley Rayficld of Time, Inc.; Mathilde Specific acknowledgment is made in each case. p. p.
sensitizedalbumen / Blanquart-Evrard's
mass production of positive prints on albu-
Contents men paper / Scott Archer and the wet-collo-

dion plate / Six pioneers: Frith and the
Middle East, Bissau Freres and the Alps,
Fenton and the Crimean War. Beato and the
Indian Mutiny, Notman and Canada
INTRODUCTION 9. Hesler: Chicago Pioneer 12^

Photography as art / as communication / as Hesler's Minnehaha Falls and Longfellow's
memory / as folk art Hiawatha / Three decades of photographs
10. The Stereoscope: Pictures in Pairs 130

PART ONE
Wheatstone and Brewster j Duboscq and
'II ll'-, BEGINNINGS Soleil I Oliver Wendell Holmes
1. The Long Road to Photography 11. Nadar: The "Titian of Photography" 142
Discovery of chemical reaction to light / Lit- Impact of photography on French art: Corot
erary predictions of photography / Ancestors and the cliche vcne/ Nadar and Le Pantheon
of the camera: the camera obscura, the Nadar / First aerial photograph / First use of
silhouette, the physionotrace, the camera photojournalism
lucida / Tom Wedgwood's efforts
12. The Ubiquitous Carte-de-Visite 1^4
2. Niepce: The World's First Photographer --f Etienne Carjat / Adam-Salomon / Pierre
"Heliography," ancestor of photoengraving / Petit / Disderi: the ^-lens carte-de-visite cam-
The world's first photograph / Niepce and era. Napoleon III, downfall
Daguerre
1 3. Julia Margaret Cameron:
Daguerre and the Daguerreotype 3-^ Portraits Out-of- Focus 166
T
The mercury-vapor process / Daguerre as "Primitive" portraits / Allegory
artist and o^\'ner of the Diorama / Arago
14. Rcjlander, Robinson, and "Art" Photography 174
describes daguerreotypy to the Academy
llie composite print / Pictorialism and senti-
4. The Daguerreotype in Europe mentalism / Rejlander's The Two Ways of
Aquatint reproductions of daguerreotypes / Life /Darwin and The Expression of the
Portrait parlors Emotions in Man and Animals
5. Mirror with a Memory: 15. Brady: Cameraman of the Civil War iSS
The Daguerreotype in America Galleries in New
York and Washington /
Draper and Morse and their successors Alexander Gardner / The Lincoln photo of
i860 / Covering the Civil War
PART TWO
16. Pioneers of the West 204
MASTERS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Robert Vance, Timothy O'Sullivan, William
6. Fox Talbot— Paper Negatives and Positives 78 Henry Jackson, Laton A. Huffman
Invention of paper negative-positive process /
17. Muybridge and Eakins—
"Photogenic draM>ings" / The calotype and
Photography of Motion 224
the developed latent image photograph of a running
Muybridge / First
y. Hilland Adamson: The Great Collaboration 9-/ horse / Eakins and the multiple exposure
Fifteen hundred calotype portraits / One and Tintypes 2
iS. Footlights, Skylights, 5cS
painting, 470 Scottish ministers

Falk / Sarony / Mom / Theater personali-
8. Early Wet-Plate Photography 102 ties/ The publicity photograph / The pic-
Niepce de Saint-Victor coats glass plates with ture postcard / Tintype parlors and albums
—
ig. The "Detective" Camera and the Kodak 29. Doisncau: Humorist with a Camera 376
Maddox and the dry plate / Eastman and The funny moments in French life / A pa-
film / Beginnings of candid photography / tiently waiting Lcica
The Kodak, it
30. David Duncan: Lensman of the Marines ^88
PART THREE
Photographs of the Korean War
MASTERS OF THE MODERN ERA 31. Brassai's Probing Vision ^(4
Paris at night / People in side streets and
20. Sticglitz: An American Legend 260 alleys in flawless compositions
Return from Germany / Detective-camera
32. The Discerning Lens of Alfred Eisenstacdt îS
enthusiast / Editor of Camera Notes / A
Pioneer with miniature camera — Photogra-
founder of Plioto-Secession igo2 / The Little
pher for Life Magazine since its inception
Gallery at "291" / Camera Work
33. Callahan and Siskind

21. Steichen: Painter, Photographer, Curator 280
The Magic of the Commonplace 432
Paris and the Salon of 1902 / New York,
The dilapidated and the useless become
Stieglitz, and "zqi" / Colonel Steichen, U.S.
meaningfid and exciting / Fusing of the
Army and aerial photography. World War I
abstract and the real
—Between wars / Captain Steichen USNR
naval photography. World War II / Curator 34. Margaret Bourke-White: Roving Recorder 456
of photography. Museum of Modern Art EavesdropjK'r for Life readers / Photo-
essayist / Chronicler of our time
Atget and the Streets of Paris 28S
Realistic and documentary photographs 35. Van der Elsken:
Storyteller in Photographs 470
2^. Riis and Mine: Social Idealists with
A three-year record of a girl's life in Sahit-
theCamera 296 Germain-des Pres
The photograph as sociological document
36. Cartier-Bresson and the Human Comedy 4S0
24. Genthe— Celebrities and Anonymous Throngs 312 Moments in which ordinary persons reveal
Fashionable photographs in academic man-
their innermost thoughts and feelings
ner / San Francisco's Chinatown / The San
Francisco earthquake and fire 37. Yousuf Karsh— Faces of Destiny 496
Intimate characterizations of world leaders
Edward Weston: A New Vision 322
The familiar world seen anew PART FOUR
26. Germany and the Bauhaus— PHOTOGRAPHY TODAY

Photography for Design 33^ 38. Color: Another Dimension 510
Expanding photography's vocabulary / Ap-
Its challenge to the photographer / Stefjs in
plied photography / Photomontage and
its development / Its coming of age / Color
photogram / The Bauhaus / The German
photography as a tool and as expressive art
Werkbund / Film und Foto, 3929 / Renger-
Patzsch / Moholy-Nagy / Dr. Erich Salomon 39. Extending the Range of Human \îsion ^744
Photography in modern life / Applied pho-

27. Roy Stryker— Documentaries for
tography / Photography and science / New
Government and Industr\'' 3jo worlds of visio7i / The photographer's arsenal
The Farm Security Administration's photo-
graphic program / Training ground for 40. Around the World in Fifty Photographs 560
O.W.I, and Standard Oil Photography as an internaional art today /
An educated public / New frontiers
28. Ansel Adams: Interpreter of Nature /H BIBLIOGRAPHY 61S
Master of harmonious composition and ex-
pressive nuance INDEX 620

Introduitioii
It is with photography as an art and with photog-

raphers as artists— with the vision of the man bcliind the
camera— that this book is largely concerned. It is a book

of many hundreds of pages, despite the fact that lack of
space has forced the exclusion of many photographers

with a clear title to presentation of their work. In the last
twenty-five years, the body of distinguished photographic
art has grown to vast proportions. Nevertheless, the art
of photography is only a small part of the enormous

photographic enterprise, which is one of the momentous
developments in the history of human expression and
communication.
Photography was invented by nineteenth-century
artists for their own purposes. These men were seeking
a lasting, literal record of their visual surroundings, and

they found it. The new combination of illumination,
lens, shutter, and flat surface coated with chemicals sen-
sitive to light produced, within a .short interval of time,
images more lasting, more convincing in their reality,
and more richly detailed than painters could produce

manually in weeks and months of effort. This alone was
enough to throw consternation into the ranks of fellow
artists; and. after their first reaction of pleasure in a new
kind of image, art critics rallied with the haughty charge
that photography was not and could not be an art. The
actual worid in which we live had too strong a grip on
photography, they said, and pictures so dependent upon The production of cameras, photochemicals, and pho-
mechanical means could not be called acts of man's tographic equipment has become a huge, world-wide
creative imagination. industry of strategic importance to the life and economy

Despite the critics, photographers knew that they had of ever}- great nation.
found a new art form, a new form of expression. As Our newspapers and periodicals flood us with pictured
artists, they had extraordinary visual sensitivity, and they reports of events as they happen, and employ armies of
thought and expressed themselves naturally through photographers for this purpose. Merchants expose their
visual images. As artists, they used the new tools as other goods for sale through photographs, and — especially
artists before and after them have used brush and pencil when they present their products in color — we are so con-
—to interpret the world, to present a vision of nature and vinced of the reality of what is shown that we accept
its structure as well as the things and the people in it. pictures as samples, as reasonable substitutes for the
The most important use of photography was in com- goods themselves. Photography is used extensively in
munication. Here the value of photography was seen in advertising and publishing, in basic science and engi-
its quality of immediacy, of literal description and con- neering, in medicine, commerce, city planning, record
vincing presentation of reality. This quality was retained keeping, recreation, and defense. It touches almost every
to a large extent even after pictures had been translated aspect of our indi\idual and social existence.
into forms that made them a\'ailab!e as printing plates Today we live in a technical and industrial world. We
for the illustration of books. Almost anything that could are attuned to an aesthetic in which scientific technique,
be photographed could be printed; and books on travel, mass production, and teamwork for creativity have
medicine, science, and art were published with a wealth shaped the articles that we drive and wear and put into
and authenticity of visual information never before pos- our homes. In such a society old distinctions between
sible. By now, photography has become as important as "fine" and "applied" art have come to have less and less
the word— perhaps more important as all linguistic bar- meaning. The most creative among us today have ac-
riers fell before this "picture talk." cepted the forms and the drives of the technical-indus-
We use photographs as memories, memories of our- trial world, and have been challenged to express its
selves when we were younger, of places where we have strength and its beauty.
lived or visited, of friends and relatives who are no longer In accepting this assignment, the creative leaders of
with us. ^\'ith the ad\ent of the roll-film Kodak, man- our society have accepted also the task of reshaping the
ageable even by a young child, photography became a technical-industrial world and bringing it into greater
folk art— the most democratic art in history. Cameras harmony and order through their art. Men with cameras,
and film are sold everywhere— in newsstands, drugstores, imagination, and sensitive vision show us the actual and
and tobacco shops. The millions practice it, as well as the potential beauty of our time, so that we are able to re-
few who make of it a medium of high art and a tool of member it, enjoy it, correct it, protect it, and learn about
science and industry. it. In the forward ranks of today's creati\c workers in the
This book cannot go into motion-picture photograph\', studio and in the field— in the service of industry, adver-
which is a field in itself. Its beginnings are dealt with tising, publishing, government, humanity, and ser\'ing
here, for they belong to still photography. When it was their own creative needs— are today's photographers.
found that the camera could clearly resolve action that
was only a blur to the human eye, pioneering still photog-

raphers took action sequences and superimposed action
pictures. Thereafter, this great new form of art, enter-

tainment, and mass communication took shape swiftly
and since then has swept the world.
/
y
The Long
Road to
Pliotoi^raphy
It is a popular belief that one man was the inventor

of photography. Mis name was that given to the process
when it was made pubhc in 1839. Curiously, like so many
inventions— the electric light, the automobile, and the
airplane, to mention only a few — several men, working
in complete independence of one another, conceived a
practical solution at about the same time. Actually, the

one man, Dagucrre, did not take the first photograph.
That was the accomplishment of Joseph Niccphorc
Niepce, either thirteen or seventeen years earlier (the
historian Potonnice says 1822; the Gernsheims give evi-
dence that it was 1826). And, four years before Da-

guerre'sannouncement in 1839, Fox Talbot in England
took a photograph on a one-inch-square paper negath'c
placed in a camera.
In the year when Daguerre gave his process to the
wodd (patenting it only in England), Hippolyte Ba\ard
had an exhibition of direct positive prints in Paris. During
that same year. Sir John Herschel, in London, read a
paper before the Ro}al Society showing that august bod\-

a number of photographs which had been fixed by a
method he discovered using hyposulphite of soda (it was
immediately accepted by Fox Talbot and Daguerre) —
the same h\po still used in every darkroom.
The two aspects of photography, chemical and optical,
had a thousand-year history before the fertile minds of

the early nineteenth century completed its evolution, matter, very viscous and proper to harden and dry, by the
perfecting camera and chemicals to capture and fix the help of which a picture is made in the twinkle of an eye.
image permanently. Thc\' do over [coat] with this matter a piece of canvas
The progress of photography was slow. It had been and hold it before the objects they have a mind to paint.
observed for centuries that exposure to the sun's rays The first effect of the canvas is that of a mirror; there are
tanned the skin, and it was recorded that the amethyst seen upon it all the bodies far and near, whose image the
and the opal lost their sparkle in prolonged exposure to light can transmit. But, what the glass cannot do, the
sunlight. canvas, by means of the viscous matter, retains the image.
I'he first person to prove that it was the action of light The mirror shows the objects exactly but keeps none; our
and not of heat that blackened silver salts was Johann canvases show them with the same exactness and retain
Heinrich Schulze ( 1687-1744) a physician and professor

, them all. This impression of the images is made the first
at the University of Halle in Germany. In 1725, while instant they are received on the canvas, which is imme-
attempting to make a phosphorescent substance, he hap- diately carried away into some dark place an hour after
pened to mix chalk with some nitric acid that contained the subtle matter dries, and you have a picture, so much
some dissolved silver. He observed that wherever direct more valuable as it cannot be imitated by art nor dam-
sunlight fell upon it the white mixture turned black, aged by time.
whereas no changes took place in the material protected "We take in their purest source from the luminous
from the sun's rays. He then experimented with words bodies, the colors which painters extract from different
and shapes which he cut from opaque paper and placed materials . . . the justness of the design, the truth of the
around a bottle of the prepared solution — thus obtaining expression, the gradation of the shades . . . the rules of
photographic impressions on the silvered chalk. Profes- perspective. All these we leave to Nature, who, with a
sor Schulze published his findings in 1727, but it never sure and never erring hand, draws upon our canvases
entered his mind to try to make permanent the image images which deceive the eye and make reason to doubt
he secured. He shook the solution in the bottle and the whether what are called real objects are not phantoms."
image was lost forever. This experiment, however, started What an extraordinary prediction from a writer of
a series of observations, discoveries, and inventions in scientific romances whose imagination was undoubtedly
chemistry that, when combined with a practical "camera fired by watching cighteenth-ccntur}- sketch artists work
obscura" a little more than a century later, culminated with the camera obscura!
in the invention of photography. 'I'he original camera obscura ma\ be called "a room
A French science-fiction writer in 1760 first prophesied with a sunlit view." The tenth-century Arab mathemati-
the taking of "sun pictures" and described at the same cian and scientist, Alhazen of Basra, who wrote on funda-
time other mechanical devices which anticipated the mental principles of optics and demonstrated the behav-
telephone, the telegraph, radio, and the use of dehydrated ior of light, recorded the natural phenomenon of the
foods. Tiphaigne de la Roche published a novel Giphan- in\crted image. He had observed this on the white walls
tie (an anagram of his first name), in which he described of darkened rooms or in a tent set in the sunny land-
a paradise set in a "tempestuous ocean of moving sands" scapes of the mid-East, the image passing through a small
and located in an inaccessible desert north of Guinea in round hole in wall, tent flap, or drapery. The camera
Africa. "It was given to the elementary spirits, the day obscura was first used by Alhazen to observe eclipses of
before the Garden of Eden was allotted to the parents of the sun, which he knew were harmful to the naked eye.
mankind." Before the camera obscura was used in Europe, artists
Guided by the "Prefect," a disembodied spirit, he studying the intricacies of perspective often resorted to
walked in an immense gallery, entranced with "images the use of various devices for copying. These machines
equivalent to the things themselves" and other images for drawing (
machines pour dcssiner, as they were known
depicting historical personages ranging from Nimrod and in France) were developed by many artists. In 1525 the
Nebuchadnezzar to Alexander and Caesar. The guide ex- renowned German, Albrecht Diirer, made woodcuts of
plained that "rays of light, reflected from different bodies, four drawing aids— one his own invention signed A over
make a picture and paint the bodies upon all polished D— which he printed in his book Underweysung.
surfaces, as on the retina of the eye, on water, and on Vasari in his Lives of the Artists credits Leon Battista
glass. The elementary spirits have studied to fix these Alberti with the in\-ention of the camera obscura in 1457,
transient images: They have composed a most subtle the year when "Gutenberg discovered the most useful art
13
of printing." \Miat X'asari believed to be a camera ob- enlarged and reflected back onto the wall inside the
scura was actually a viewing box in which a painting on room, unreversed.
glass was inserted and seen as a transparency, according Also prior to Delia Porta in describing a camera ob-
to the description which Alberti gi\cs of his invention, in scura fitted with a lens was Daniello Barbaro who, in his
his Treatise on Painting. book on perspective, conceived the idea of fixing a spec-
A clear and concise description of the pinhole camera tacle glass, convex on both sides, in a small opening in a
obscura appears in the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci darkened room.

(1452-1 519 ) though he does not claim to be its inventor.
, All these references are to stationary camera obscuras,
He records in his journal a diagram showing the camera darkened rooms big enough for a person to enter, in order
obscura, but his drawings remained secret in his note- to observe and draw.
books until deciphered and published b\- J. B. \'enturi in The first mo\able or portable camera obscuras were
1797— practically three hundred years after Leonardo's sedan chairs or tents, first altered for this purpose in the
death. seventeenth century. The noted Austrian astronomer
The camera obscura was first illustrated in January, Johannes Kepler, in 1620, set up a black tent in a field,
1544, as the invention of a Dutch ph)sician and mathe- inserted a lens in the hole of one flap, and traced the
matician, Gcmma-Frisius. Early historians of photogra- image that fell on the paper attached to the flap opposite
phy ascribed to Giovanni Battista dclla Porta (1538- the lens.

1615) the invention of the camera obscura, for he was Portable camera obscuras were gradually designed so
the first to publish a long and clear description of it (in that they were easier to carry. They measured about 2
1 5 58
in his Magia Naturalis ) feet in length, less than a foot in height, with a lens fitted
Another writer prior to Delia Porta in describing the at one of the long ends and a ground glass on the other.
dark chamber was Girolamo Cardano (1501-1576), of A reflex type of camera obscura was designed b}' Johann
Milan, who in 1550 was the first to mention the attach- Zahn in 1685. His box had the additional advantage of a
ment of a convex lens to a frame in the window of a mirror placed inside at a 45° angle to the lens, so that the
darkened room to achieve a clearer image. image was reflected upwards to the top of the box. Here
Dclla Porta was the first to suggest that artists use the he placed a frosted glass which could be covered with
camera obscura as an aid to painting, first cop\ing the tracing paper, so that the image was easily traced. Zahn
shapes and lines and then adding the colors required. also invented an even smaller reflex-box camera obscura
To improve the image he later recommended that a lens fitted with a lens. It resembled the cameras used by
be fitted to the opening and a convex mirror placed in Niepee a hundred and fifty years later.
such a relationship to the image that the image would be During this long interim the camera box was ready.
First published illustration of a camera obscura, which is
By
registering the solar eclipse of January 24, 1^44.
Rainer Gemma-Frisius, sixteenth-century Dutch scientist.
-'
^v Cernsheim Collection, London.
14
Engraving of a large camera obscura shown witli top and front cut away.
A small portable room, it could be easily carried to the scene. The artist then climbed
inside through a trap door, and we see him tracing, from behind, an image cast on
transparent paper M'hich hangs opposite one of the lenses. This was constructed in
Rome bv KircJicr in 26^6. Courtesy George Eastman House, Rochester.
waiting only for chemical processing to be perfected in wall, or onto the top of the paper set in the darkened
order to complete the invention of photography. room. In the same v\ay, the lines of light reflected from
Seventeenth- and eighteenth-century artists were ad- the top will travel to the bottom of the paper, and all
dicted to the camera obscura, not only for portraits but lines in between the top and bottom will similarly pass
for landscapes as well; it became a standard piece of through the center, creating an upside-down image. The
equipment. It was a fine tool, for it obscured an artist's same effect as in a darkened room takes place in a dark-
incompetence in perspective or in catching a likeness. ened box. A lens put into the box refracts or bends the
These disabilities were readily overcome with the new rays, and a smaller but a much more sharply defined
apparatus. image results; and with the aid of a mirror the image can
In addition to portable tents, sedan chairs, and small be seen right side up on the ground glass.
portable camera obscuras, there were beautifully con- Light, natural or artificial, is the source of photogra-
structed table models for the wealthy, who were en- phy. Before the word "photography" v.as conceived by
tranced with the new artistic toy. Sir John Ilerschel, the process in\ented b\- Niepce was
The iuNcrted image of the camera obscura is easily ex- called "hcliography" — drawing by the sun — and the in-
plained, for light passes in straight lines through the small vention by Fox Talbot was "photogenic drawing."
hole cut in the center. The lines of light reflected from Portraits, for centuries, were the luxury of the wealthy.
the bottom of a sunlit landscape will enter the hole With the growth of the middle class in the eighteenth
and continue onward in a straight line to the top of the century, a demand for portraits at reasonable prices first
15
Reflex box camera obscura, 16S5
Germany, invented by Johawi Zahn
Courtesy Gernsheim Collection
developed the "silhouette," which required only that a nent. In 1796 he experimented with sensitized silver salts
person trace outlines or shadows cast on a paper and then to produce images of botanical specimens. He copied the
mount the cut-out likeness. woody fiber of leaves or the wings of insects, which he
The "ph}sionotrace," invented b) Gilles Louis Chre- placed on paper or leather moistened with silver nitrate
tien in 1786, worked on the same principle as the silliou- and exposed to the sun. Had he used ammonia as a
ette, but had the added advantage that a small engraving fixing agent, a discovery of Carl W. Scheelc in Sweden
on copper resulted from the tracing. This plate could be twenty years earlier, or had he washed the image m a
used to pull an edition of prints. heavy solution of common salt, he could have stopped
A third device intended to permit an unskilled opera- any further action of light on the sensitive silver salts.
tor and a machine to do the work of the artist was the Instead, he washed the ncgati\'e with soap, or he var-
"camera lucida" invented by William Hyde Wollaston nished the picture when dry. Though he examined the
in 1806. This enabled the un talented, with the aid of a image by only the weakest of candlelight, it was of no
prism suspended at eye level, to trace images of persons avail, for the image gradually grew black.
or landscapes reflected on a flat piece of drawing paper. How close Tom Wedgwood was to becoming the
The camera lucida was not a camera at all— its most im- father of photography! In addition to contact printing
portant asset was its light weight and transportability. he attempted to secure images on prepared paper placed
Travelers often used it. In 1827-1828 Basil Hall wrote a in a camera obscura. As he met with no success, he aban-
book, Forty Etchings Made with the Camera Lucida in doned further experiments and recorded those he made
North America, praising the instrument because it freed up to 1802. In that }ear his friend Sir Humphry Davy
the traveler and would-be artist "from the triple misery oi wrote a paper explaining Tom's experiments and sent it
perspective, proportion, and form." to the Ro\al Socict\'. The paper was entitled "On an
The eighteenth-century need for the camera came Account of a Method of Copying Paintings on Glass and
close to being realized in 1800 by Tom Wedgwood of Making Profiles by the Agency of Light upon Nitrate
(fourth son of the famous potter, Josiah Wedgwood), of Silver— Invented by T. Wedgwood Esq."
who secured an image but was unable to make it perma- It reads in part, "the images formed by means of a
16
camera obscura have been found too faint to produce, plates to be in the collection of the Royal [British] Mu-
in any moderate time, an effect upon the nitrate ot seum. Mr. Hunt writes, "They pro\c M. Nicpce to have
silver." been acquainted with a method of forming pictures, by
The man who first successfully obtained an image from which the lights, semi-tints, and shadows, were repre-
the sun was Niccphore Nicpce of France who, in 1827, sented as in nature; and he had also succeeded in render-
attempted to present a paper to the Royal Society in ing his heliographs, when once formed, impervious to the
London while he was in England visiting his brother further effects of the solar rays. Some of these specimens
Claude, like himself a dedicated inventor. Since he kept appear in a state of advanced etchings."
his process a secret, refusing to describe it with his paper, It should not surprise us that these prints resembled
his proposal was rejected by the Royal Society. Accom- etchings, since Nicpce actually invented photogravure;
panying his paper, however, were several photographs and the examples Mr. Hunt saw might well have been
either on glass or metal. In 1853 Robert Hunt, one of "heliogravures" and not photographs taken in the camera
photography's first historians, reported several of these obscura.
Engraving of 1^2^ by Albrecht Diirer (1471-1528), German,

sliowing the artist's sighting device for drawing and teaching
perspective. Courtesy The Art Institute of Chicago.
17
Tabic camera ohsciira, i-6q, France.
Courtesy Gerushcim Collection.
right: Sedan-chair camera obscura, 1711.

Courtesy Gernsheim Collection.
center: Guyot's table camera obscura,
1 jjo, France.
An early nineteenth-century portable camera
far right:
obsi
scura.
Courtesy George Eastman House.
Johann Jlcinrich ScJnilze (i68j-ij^^), German.
Uc obtained the first images by the action of light
on a mixture of wliite chalk and silver, in i'/2y.
§M
19
Painting showing the artist's family
with a camera obscura, 176^. By
Charles A. Philippe Vanloo,
(i~0y6^). French. Courtesy
National Gallery of Art, Washington.
Engraving of the German artist
Joachim Franze Beich, by Johann

Jakob Haid, mid-eighteenth century,
showing a small camera obscura as
part of the artist's paraphernalia.
ao
7^
ît.i- X.-j''
I ^ Silliouctte. iyS6, Germany. 'I'hc ciglitccnth-century desire
for portraits was satisfied by the simple method of cutting

profiles from black paper. These were called "silhouettes,"
afterEtienne de Silhouette, comptroller of finances in the
court of Louis XV. Courtesy George Eastman House.
:-L .-.. '/ i.t.r/i.'
IMC
V. *-< x %^^
Silhouette. "Hand cut" of Charles Wage, age 2, and his mother.

182^, America. In the early nineteenth century, Rembrandt
Peale, the American painter, made silhouettes which he
called "profileographs." Courtesy The Art Institute of Chicago.
Portrait of Gilles-Louis Chretien, 1792, French,

who invented the " physionotrace" six years
earlier; resembling the silhouette, the physionotrace
had the added advantage of tracing small engravings.
Courtesv George Eastman 1 louse
21
Camera William I lydc Wollaston in 1806.
lucida, designed by
This model was made fom years later in London. It consists

of three telescoping brass tubes, table
clamp, 45° prism,
adjustable peep sight, and spectacle lens to accomodate
individual vision. Courtesy George Eastman House.
A lithograph of Wollaston from a sketch

made with the camera lucida, which he
invented. Courtesy George Eastman House.
22
A sketcli of the Erie Canal made iSzj-zS witli the camera lucida by
Captain Basil Hall, R.N. It was copied, printed as an etching,
and published in London in 1S30 as one of Forty Etchings from
Sketches Made with the Camera Lucida in North America, 1827-28,
by Captain Basil Hall. Courtesy Chicago Historical Society.
Eflfram I7MLII iMMi

>J»^«« tk.r.M-nUal^lyOrl"hll*U
<J!SSlr3!SK SSSD) BJf IIWE iBIREAT 3JBIIIE iDAHAlti.
Tom Wedgwood, the first to conceive the idea of practical SirHumphrey Davy in 1802 presented a paper to the
photography, in the year 1800. He was unable, however, Royal Society in London explaining the experiments
to fix the image. Courtesy George Eastman House. of Tom Wedgwood. Courtesy George Eastman House.
23
Niepce: The
Workrs First
Photographer
It is gratifying to find Joseph Niccphore Niepce

eclipsed for more than a hundred \ears b\' his one-time
partner, Louis J. M. Daguerre, nou- once again being
honored as the world's first photographer. Niepee not
only produced a picture in a camera obscura; he invented
an iris diaphragm to correct defects he observed in the
full lens (an iuNcntion forgotten for more than fifty years;
it hadto be reinvented). Above all, Niepce was the first
to make the miage permanent.

He called these images caught in the camera obscura
"points de vue" to distinguish them from his "copies de
gravure." In the latter, he made a sandwich consisting of
an engraving (made transparent with oilj placed be-
tween a sensitized plate and a sheet of clear glass; the
glass kept the engra\ing flat while he exposed the array
to the sun.
The images produced by both processes were referred

to as "heliographs." The plates on which they were
made were coated with bitumen of Judaea, a substance

soluble in ethereal oils, such as oil of turpentine, oil of
la\ cndcr, petroleum, and ether.
Niepce in 1S13 had already been interested for several
years in improving the process of lithography, which
Alois Scnefelder had in\'ented in 1796. For Senefeldcr's
hca\\ Ba\arian limestone Niepce substituted a sheet of
tin, upon which lie had his young son draw designs with
a greasy crayon. When the boy was called to the army plate to the fumes of a few grains of iodine, then remov-
in 1814, Niepcc, unable to draw, found himself handi- ing all the bitumen varnish to disclose the bare metal.
capped. He then began a series of experiments with vari- 'I'he result was an image composed by the iodine vapors
ous silver salts, intending to eliminate the need for an which had blackened the silver, contrasted to the shiny
artist's talent by maknig light itself draw for him. He polished silver which had been under the hardened bitu-
achieved the most satisfactory results with a varnish men and which became visible when alcohol dissolved
made of bitumen of Judaea dissolved in Dippcl's animal the varnish.
oil. 'I'his solution he coated on a sheet of glass, copper, Niepce treated a glass plate as he did metal, with this
or pewter, exposing the sheet to the light from 2 to 4 distinguishing difference, that when the asphaltum was
hours to make a cupic dc gravure or fully 8 hours to dissolved in oil of lavender, the plate was then washed
produce a pvint de vue. and dried and viewed as a transparency. It is strange that
When the image on the varnish (or asphaltum, as it Niepce, who was working toward a solution of the prob-
was also called) was hardened and the picture became lem of making multiple reproductions, never seems to
visible to the eye, he brought the plate into a darkroom have used the transparcnc}' as a negative, to make prints
for treatment. First he subjected the plate to an acid from it on paper sensitized with silver salts. This nega-
bath which dissolved the varnish under the lines of the tive-positive principle— from which modern photog-
all
engraving. 'I'his varnish had been protected from the raphy stems— was to be the invention of Fox Talbot
action of light during the exposure, and, accordingly, had se\eral \ears later in England.
remained soft and soluble. Nicpce then sent the plate to In 1829 the sixty-four-} car-old Niepcc was ill and badl\
his friend the artist-engraver, Lcmaitre ( 1797-1870 j who ,
in need of mcjiiey. He and his brother Claude, who had
incised the lines, inked the plate, and pulled an edition died in England the previous }ear, had spent their patri-
of prints as he would have done from any etched or en- mony on all kinds of inventions, prospering from none.
graved plate. Niepce's most successful heliograph was There had never been a need to make money, for the
of Cardinal d'Amboise earh in 1827. Niepce family was rich and well-educated, and lived in
According to the historian, Georges Potoniee, it can a luxurious home at Chalons-sur-Saonc when Joseph was
be proved that Niepce obtained a permanent impression born in 1795. His father was a Councillor of the King,
in the camera obscura during the year 1822. However, his mother the daughter of a noted lawyer. Joseph showed
only one of his points de vue that still exist can be dated interest in inventions even while in his teens but studied
definitely from the \car 1826. This is in the collection of to become a cleric, doffing the collar in 1792 to become
I lelmut and Alison Gernshcim, who found it after a piece an officer in the army, seeing active service in Sardinia
of research lasting )'ears and imolving trailing that would and Italy. Ill health made him resign his commission,
iiave pleased even the incomparable Sherlock Holmes. and for the next seven years he was in Nice as a member
I'his picture seems certain to have been taken in 1826, of the government administration.
because that was the year that Niepce turned to pewter He returned to his ancestral home in 1801 to devote
instead of copper and zinc plates. Exposure took 8 hours, himself immediately with his brother Claude to all kinds
and this caused the sun to light both sides of the view, a of scientific investigations, but it was heliography that
Inuldmg, taken from his room. Niepcc wrote his son was his major interest until he died in 1833.
Isidore explaining that he preferred pewter, since it was Scientific research was costh e\cn then. Nicpce needed
darker than copper and bright when polished, so that the money desperately, but, even so, he didn't answer a letter
contrast of black and w hitc lines remained much sharper. from Daguerrc, the successful entrepreneur of the Dio-
His friend Lcmaitre suggested the perfect metal, silver rama in Paris, until a \ear had passed. And then he an-
plating on copper, which Daguerrc was later to make uni- swered warily, giving no facts, but rather tr\ing to
versally popular in the dagucrreot\pc. Nicpce considered ascertain the extent of Dagucrrc's experiments which,
Lemaitre's suggestion the perfect solution, for he in- according to Daguerrc, had been quite successful because
tended to etch the best of his camera views, making inci- of his invention of a new camera.
sions with a burin through the thin silver plate to the Returning from England later in that \ear, 1827, after
sturdier plate of copper below, which would enable him visiting his sick brother, Nicpce met with the affluent,
to pull an edition of prints. prosperous Daguerre, twcnt\' years his junior. They be-
Nicpce continued to improxe his hcliogra\urc method, came partners in 1829, after Daguerre comineed Niepce
making the image a bit sharper by exposing the metal not to publish his process even though he felt he couldn't
25
..f
«
iS
\
improve it any further. Dagucrrc's letter reads, ". . . there and self-confidence. Above all Niepce had faith m Da-
should be found a way to get a large profit out of the guerre's abiding interest in photography, his conviction
invention before publication, apart from the honors you that the process would be perfected and become a com-
will rccci\e." mercial success. Niepce included in the contract the pro-
In October, 1829, Niepce wrote Dagucrrc, offering to viso that his son Isidore would succeed to the partnership
cooperate with hnn "for the purpose of perfecting the in case he died before the contract expired.
heliographie process and to combine the advantages Niepce sent Daguerre a detailed description of his
which nnght result in a complete success." A ten-year process, a note on heliography, completely explaining the
partnership contract was signed by both parties on De- preparation of silver, copper, or glass plates, the propor-
cember 14, 1829, which reads in part, "M. Dagucrrc tions of the various mixtures, the solvents used in devel-
invites M. Niepce to join him in order to obtain the oping the image, the washing and fixing procedures, and
perfection of a new method discovered by M. Niepce, the application of his latest experiments in the helio-
for fixing the images of nature without having recourse graph—using iodine vapors to blacken the image.
to an artist." Niepce also demonstrated his techniques to Daguerre,

Niepce contributed his invention, Daguerre contrib- who went to Chalons for this purpose. Daguerre left for
uted "a new adaptation of the camera obscura, his tal- Paris several days later and never saw Niepce again. Each
ents, and his labor." man worked on the invention; little is known of their
It appears to have been an uneven bargain, for to the progress other than that Daguerre wrote in 1831, asking
Niepcc-Dagucrre partnership the camera of Daguerre was Niepce to experiment with iodine in combination with
still an uncertain, untried asset and, actually, all that silver salts as a light-sensitive substance. Niepce did not
was known of photography was the contribution of respond enthusiastically. He had not been too successful
Niepce. But Daguerre was a vital half of the partnership; in previous experiments with silver iodide— a silver halide
the aged and ill Niepce was discouraged about the future which only when mixed in exactly the proper proportions
of his experiments and badly in need of Daguerre's youth can be made sensitive to light.
opposite page: Portrait of Nicephore Niepce

as a young man, about ijS^. Artist unkiwwn.
Courtesy Janine Niepce, Paris,
left: Portrait of Nicephore Niepce, inventor
of photography, painted by Leonard
Berger 20 years after Niepce' s death.
Courtesy George Eastman House, Rocliestcr.
27
^ / /
I
iHtf.
fijifîUf'
-/-* i*^ vffzi.r\ vV^fc -2.:/^^*'-- « >'-^ t^î A .C

S'
'^nt tjt' y i'C C ^^îu^/ti'^^'^'^'^ f^ **-
'tîtU: 4mai4. /fttfft4. P%^r*d4Af^ -fiMt^j «;
1/ ' /• /./ /
/ / //
^S^ t- ^jÂâ^»ff£^ ^8*r*îfe#«##*
/'
.1
C/Lt'»4UMV
Letter dated February!, 182-, from Niepee in wiiieli worked; the Mintcr months are not too favorable.
he discourages Daguerre from continuing negotiations. I have considerably improved my process of engraving
Taken from Anales del museo La Plata dociimentos on metal, but the results I have obtained are not yet
historicos rclativos descobrimiento dc la fotografia, Buenos good enough, and so I cannot satisfy the desire -which
Aires, 1892. Courtesy the John Crerar Library, Chicago. you express. I ought doubtless to regret this more
for my sake than for yours, sir, since your mode of
application is quite different and promises you a degree
The letter reads: of superiority over my engraving method. This docs

Chdlons-sur-Saone not prevent me from wishing you all the success whicli
2 February 1827 youcould hope for.
I received your reply yesterday anuM'ering my letter of I remain vour humble servant
25 January 1826. The last four months I have not Niepee
28
ct-'aMit^
Signatures of Joseph Nicephore Niepce and Louis-]

acques-Mande Daguerre
on their contract of December 14, 1S29. This contract,
two letters
from
Niepce Daguerre, and the contracts of Daguerre and Isidore
to
Niepce
were in the possession of Arago. Courtesy the John Crerar
Library.
NICEPIIORE NIEPCE
The world's first photograph.
On pewter, 1826. Courtesy
Gernsheim Collection, London.
ff^ * 'Mit ' t^; 31

NiCEPHORE NiEPCE, Cardinal d'Amboise. Print pulled from a
heliograph engraving made in 1826. Courtesy Gernsheim Collection.
Tomb of Nicephore Niepce and monument erected in 1933 at

Saint-LoupdC'V arcnnes, a century after Niepce's death.
Courtesy Janine Niepce, Paris.
32
DANS CE ViiLACE
WCEPHOPE NIEPCE
INTOuPHOIOGPAPHlE0l82
#..
33
Rcmuerre
and the
Dagiierreotype
Louis-Jacoues-Man'df. Daguerre (1787-18^1) did not

inxciit pliotograpln, but lie made it work, made it pop-
and made it his own.

ular,
Within a )ear after its announeement in 1839 his name

and his proeess were known in all parts of the world.
Honors wêre showered on him and wealth and security
were his. The name of Joseph Nicephore Nicpce was
practicall}- forgotten.
It was Daguerre, howe\cr, who actualh' made the

Nicpee uivention work, using ehemieals that Niepee
never hit upon. His ingenious idea was to bring out the
image by the vapor of mercury. He experimented first
with bichloride of mercur)', which just barely brought out
the image; improved it by using sweet or subchloride of

mercury; and, finally, in 1837, after ele\'en years of experi-
mentation, hit upon the heating of mercur\', letting the

vapors develop the image. He then fixed the image per-
fectly and permanently by using a strong solution of
common salt and hot water to dissolve away the particles
of silver iodine not affected by the light.

Daguerre's principle of development by mcrcur\- vapor
was original, a workable process based undoubtedh on
knowledge he gained from Niepee. Niepee, how e\er, con-
tributed nothing to further the invention after 1829, nor
did his son Isidore. Isidore became Daguerre's partner
after Niepee died impoverished at the age of sixty-nine
in the year 1833. 'I'he son, badly in need of money, signed Daguerre then interested scientists in the invention,
a new contract several years later, stating that Daguerre particularl) the influential astronomer, Dominique
was the inventor of the daguerreotype; and he permitted FraiifoisArago (1786-1853). Arago, believing a rumor
the original name of the firm, Niepce-Daguerre, to be that Russia and England were offering to buy the da-
reversed. guerreotype, reported Daguerre's achievement on Janu-

These were the steps of Daguerre's process: ary 7, 1839, to the Academy of Sciences, and proposed
that the French government purchase the process.
1. Thin sheet of silver soldered onto a thicker sheet of
The announcement of the daguerreotjpe produced a
copper.
sensation. Scientific journals printed Arago's report. Da-
2. Silver surface polished to a perfect finish.
guerre became better known for this invention than for
3. Silver plate iodized by fumes of iodine making it
his well-established Diorama. lie showed views of Paris
sensitive to the light.
taken b)' the daguerreot) pe process to newspaper editors,
4. Prepared plate put in light-tight holder in the dark;
writers, and artists, who acclaimed him and his invention.
plate holder placed in camera.
Daguerre asked 200,000 francs for it and told Isidore
5. Camera placed on tripod, set in landscape, and Nicpcc he would with him
split this if it were sold,
pointed to any object in direct sunlight.
deducting the amount Isidore had borrowed from him
6. Lens uncovered 15 to 30 minutes (the best time for
since his father's death.
a picture by Niepee was 8 hours )
Arago convinced Daguerre that a pension by the
7. Latent image developed and made permanent b\ French government would be more of an honor, a na-
the following steps:
tional award of recognition for his invention, and he
a. Plate placed in a cabinet on a 45° angle above a
wrote Daguerre, "You will not suffer that we shall allow
container under which a spirit lamp heated the mer- foreign nations the glory of presenting to the scientific
cury to 1 5o°F. and artistic world one of the most marvelous discoveries
b. Plate watched carefully until picture was made that honor our country."
quite visible by the mercury particles adhering to
A pension was agreed upon— 6,000 francs annually for
the exposed silver.
Daguerre and 4,000 for Isidore Niepee, with half
life to
c. Plate plunged into cold water to harden surface.
pension for their widows. The proposal was presented to
d. Plate submerged in a solution of common salt
theChamber of Deputies on June 1 5, 1839 and passed by
(after 1839 replaced by hyposulphite of soda, the King Louis Philippea month later. On August 19 Arago
fixing agent discovered by Sir John Herschel and made public Daguerre's startling method of obtaining a
immediately adopted by Daguerre). image from nature
pictorial in all its details, unaided by
e. Plate then thoroughly washed to stop the action
the hand of an artist, a picture entireh' drawn by the sun.
of the fixing agent.
Arago's report was brilliant. He dazzled the audience
The result was an individual picture, a positi\e. It v\'ith superb daguerreot) pes taken by Daguerre. The
could be seen only in certain lights; in direct rays of the members of the Acadenn of Sciences and the equalK
sun it became a shiny sheet of metal. The image was revered Academy of Fine Arts were entranced. Some of
reversed as in a mirror. It could not be multiplied or the finest intellects of l''rance and of all Europe were
printed in unlimited numbers, as positives can be from a present. Arago described the history of photography-
single negative— the negative-positive principle of pho- making a number of errors, such as attributing the inven-
tography was the invention of Fox Talbot. Both discov- tion of the camera obscura to Delia Porta and slighting
eries were announced in the same )ear. Nicpce's contribution— but he explained the daguerreo-
To make the most of his invention Daguerre first tried type process in scientific terms and in some detail. With
to organize a corporation by public subscription. When clear insight he predicted its importance for the future,
this was unsuccessful, he attempted to sell it for a quarter the consequences it would have in recording histor\-. He
of a million francs, but to cautious speculators this ap- closed his impassioned speech with the words, "France
peared too much (jf a gamble. has adopted this discovery and from the first has shown
Daguerre created considerable interest, for he took her pride in being able to donate it generously to the
pictures with his heavy camera and equipment along the whole world." Arago was apparently una\\are that, just
boulevards of Paris. But he did not explain the operation fi\e days before, on August 14, Daguerre had secured a
and businessmen remained cold to its possibilities. patent in England. The future looked rewarding.
35
Daguerre and his partner
financially. Only se\eral they opened the Pans Diorama,
Daguerre was again secure built a similar
when famous Diorama Bouton, also a painter of huge canvases,
months before, on March 8, his
dioramas
seemed destitute. structure in London. Most of the thirty-one
was burned to the ground, he had
structure with they painted for Pans were given
an average showing of
huge, special
It was the Diorama, a
sent for viewing in the
that, apparently, had seven months and were then
enormous 72-b)-46-foot canvases, such elabo-
brought Daguerre to experiment with
photography. He London Diorama. The exhibitions included
Sarnen in Switzerland,
obscura, and had rate paintings as The Valley of
was well acquainted with the camera
create an Interior of Chartres Cathedral, Effect of Fog and Snow
made sketches from nature in his attempts to The Begin-
Diorama he painted tremendous Seen through a Ruined Gothic Colonnade,
illusion of reality. In the
The Tomb of Napoleon at St. Hel-
canvases so astonishingly realistic that
visitors believed ning of the Deluge,
in the build- Grand Canal and the Solomons
of Venice,
ena, the
they were three-dimensional constructions
in Pans but
ing' He introduced the innovation
of painting pictures Temple, which burned with the Diorama
this canvas. The demands of the Dio- for which a sketch remains.
on both sides of
Diorama had been waning; it had been
his ingenuity, but he met its challenge by Interest in the
rama taxed tried to gain
creating gigantic pictures with translucent
and opaque operating at a loss xxhcn, m 1858, Daguerre
to control the government support for it asan attraction that brought

paints, inventing shutters and screens
windows; and he visitors to Pans. No funds were forthcoming. Daguerre
natural light that entered through the
m
some scenes by manipu- Diorama and move to London,
threatened to close the
developed spectacular effects
and profitable.
lating oil lamps as spots and, in the last five
years of the where the Diorama was still popular
contribution as a painter
Diorama's existence, by using gaslight for even
more First official recognition of his
h.m
Diorama of the diorama came N\hen Arago had
novel illusionary effects. When he opened the and creator
known as a painter include details of his diorama technique m the agreement
m 1822 in Paris he was already well
the steps for
of panoramas 350 feet long and 5o feet high and as a with the government m
which he disclosed
a ruse to obtain for
stage designer. He had received some acclaim for his easel making a daguerreotype. Ihis was
pension granted by the
paintings in trompe-l'oeil (pictures so realistic
as to "fool Daguerre the greater share of the
Daguerre and 4,000 tor
the eye") One of these paintings, undoubtcdh his best. government, 6,000 francs for
.
advantageous, when Daguerre

had
Ruin Holyrood Chapel, earned him the red ribbon of Isidore Niepce. How
of
the Legion of Honor when it was exhibited
m 1824. He no plans to reopen the Diorama!
daguerreotype proc-
was to receive the rank of offtcier fifteen years
later when He concentrated on explaining the
scientists and artists, sim-
giving demonstrations to
the daguerreotype was announced. ess
by
own complicated scientific account given
This resourceful, colorful showman, who was his phhmg the
Da-
examples of the art.
greatest creation, came from a petit-bourgeois family. Arago and exhibiting his own
apparatus for the da-
He was the son of a clerk employed on the royal estate guerre started to manufacture
Giroux. Giroux, a
in Orieans. The young Louis' formal
education ended at guerreotvpe with his brothcr-m-law,
his other business to
devote
fourteen. He was apprenticed for three years to
an archi- stationer, quickly gave up
of the Giroux camera.
tect where he learned perspective and accurate architec- himself exclusively to production
and each camera was
tural drafting. This experience, added to his
natural gift Chevalier ground the lenses;
and signed by Daguerre,
for drawing, prepared him for another term
of appren- stamped with a senal number,
profits of this partner-
ticeship, thistime for three years, to Degotti, the cele- who thus made it official. Half the
term he ship were to go to Daguerre,
who generously gave Isidore
brated designer for stage and opera. After this
became assistant to Prevost, a noted stage designer of the Niepce Ko per cent of his share. ^,. , 1
Giroux published
period with whom he remained for nine years, until 1813. Hie dav after Arago made his report
manual. All the cameras he
Daguerre's work was singled out for praise by the critics Daguerre's seventy-nine-page
manual were sold out in a few
—he was mentioned among actors, singers, composers, had on hand as well as the in
davs. The pamphlet
went through thirty editions
and conductors. The public applauded his elaborate pro-
out it was translated mto
all
ductions and ingenious stage devices. French. Before the year ^^•as
the capitals of Europe and
The Diorama was his crowning achievement as the languages and pnnted in all
creator of imposing spectacles. It was as popular as the in the city of New York.
quickly m-
and the general public
movies are in our day and met about the same need for Artists, scientists,
process, shortening the
entertainment, travel, and illusion. In 1823, a year after proved and modified Daguerre's
36
Daguerre was often a subject for
artist friends. This lithograph
by Henri-Grevedon was drawn in
1 S37, two years before Daguerre
published the daguerreotype process.
Courtesy George Eastman
House, Rochester.
exposure to several niinutcs, so that portraits seemed be demonstrated in France, .Daguerre would dcri\e a
feasible and in one month became an actuality. "pecuniary advantage." There was no rcpl\ by Daguerre
Samuel F. B. Morse, the artist and inventor of the to this letter.
telegraph, met Daguerre in Paris. Morse had written By September 20, 1839, Morse had his wife and daugh-
soon after the Diorama had burned down to inform Da- ter "sit from 10 to 20 minutes, out of doors, on the roof
guerre that he had been elected an honorary member of of a building, in the full sunlight and with the eyes
the National Academy of Design in New York; that the closed." This is believed to be the first daguerreotype
description of the daguerreotype Morse had sent home portrait taken in the world.
had been published in many American papers; and that, These long exposures were torture. It became obvious
if Daguerre could prevail upon the French government to that the full-size 6i/2-by-8V2-inch plate was too big for
permit an exhibition of daguerreotypes to be shown in portraiture. This was remedied inmiediatcly by reducing
the United States six months before the process would its size to a quarter plate, bringing the required time
37
down to ; minutes. Improved lenses, especially one in- silvery-gray tone that oxidized into a rich, purplisii
vented b> Josef Max Pctzval in 1840, a fast achromatic brown.
lens with large aperture, were decisive factors in making Daguerre received honors and acclaim as his in\cntion
was that of
portraits possible. I'he conclusive discovery
conquered the imagination of people evcpiwhere. He
faster chemicals. Mercury speeded up with bromine and himself, however, made no further contribution to pho-
chlorine vapors made the plate more sensitive, cutting tography after publication of his process. Until he died in
quarter-plate exposure time down to 30 seconds. 1851, he lived in retirement at Br^-sur-Marne about 6
Portraiture became a reality for the multitudes. miles from Paris. In 1843 he claimed to have perfected
A prism turned the image around from its left-to-right- instantaneous photography, to ha\'e taken a bird in flight;
reversed attitude, so that the portrait was seen normally, but he could not prove his claim.
as one is seen by people, not as one sees oneself in a His last work was a return to his first and abiding love,
mirror. decided step forward was the construction, by

A a trotnpe-loeil painting representing soaring columns,
1S41, of smaller apparatus that reduced Daguerrc's no deep vaulting, and stained-glass windows. He placed it
pounds of equipment to less than 9 pounds. Still further behind the altar of a simple church in Bry, transforming
improvement was protection for the daguerreotype sur- the small church b\- his "magical" art into a great Gothic
face which was fragile and easily scratched or damaged. cathedral.
Ilippolyte Fizeau, in 1840, had the thought of tonmg the The inventor of the dagucrrcot\pe lies buried in a
image with chloride of gold. I'his not only increased the tomb, donated by his fellow citizens of Bry, where he was
contrast of the miage; it produced the beautiful deep. interred July 10, i8;i, soon after his death.
The Diorama in Paris, about 18^0, in M'hich Solomon's Temple, a sketch in color for the last
enormous paintings by Daguerre, -jz x 46 feet, ParisDiorama presentation, on view September 15, 1S36,
viere displayed. Wood engraving. Artist unknown. to March 8, 1839, when the Diorama burned to the
Courtesy George Eastman House. sround. Courtesv George Eastman House.
38
Diorama ticket, good for two, signed by
Daguerre, 18^0. Courtesy George Eastman House.
Holyrood Chapel, Edinburgh, oil painting by Daguerre, 182.^. Considered

Daguerre s best easel painting. He was awarded the Legion of Honor
when it was exhibited. Comtesy Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.
Louis-JACQUES-MANDE DAGUERRE, The earliest surviving
daguerreotype. Taken in the artist's studio, 1857.

Courtesy Socictc jranqaisc dc pliotographie, Paris.
40
HISTORIOUE ET DESCRIPTION
The rare title page of the first edition of Daguerre's
instruction manual, with imprint by Alphonse Giroux. Written in

longhand on its face by M. Mentienne, son of Daguerre's closest
friend, the mayor of Bry, is the inscription, "Given to my father

DAGUERREOTYPE by Daguerre in 1840." Courtesy George Eastman House.
FAMi nAtiVEnnts,
}m\u, loviDteui du Diorama, o-Titini lis la LsjifiB-d'HcEDmr, nitobte ti piusif^r* Acad'^Sitcs, tt;., tU
1-1 -> - ' -- '"'ÎSJ/ ,
16 MARS 7840 3 ANNEt

PARIS. 4^~
j I
AI.PHONSF, GiHOUX i:t ir

RUl DU COQ-sMNr-HONORl:. 7,
Oiise r»bri^qurnl lesApparvils,
l»KLI.()YK. l.rBKAUU:.
n »c.r iif 1,.* fininsF, H.
Talent Tlirough Sleep. The press caricatured the

daguerreotype from the very beginning. In the
periodical Today, March 1
5, 18^0, less than a year
after Daguerre's process was announced, Gerard
Fontallard satirized the long exposure necessary.
Courtesy Gernsheim Collection, London.
41
LOUIS- jACQUES-iMANDE DAGUERRE, Paris Boulcvard. Daguerreotype, 1839. Sent by
Daguerre to the King of Bavaria. This photograph (see detail on the facing page) is
the first taken of a human The original, formerly in the National Museum,
being.
Munich, was destroyed during World War U. Samuel F. B. Morse wrote when he
saw this daguerreotype, "The boulevard, so constantly filled with a moving throng of
pedestrians and carriages, was perfectly solitary, except for an individual who was
having his boots brushed." Courtesy George Eastman House.
42
44
Daguerreotypes by Daguerre, made 1859, rediscovered 1955. Dommique-Franqois
Arago showed the following three of a group that Daguerre furnished to him in
August, 1 859, at the meeting of the Academy of Sciences in which he made Daguerre s
process known. Two years later he presented the Perpignan Museum M'ith these
daguerreotypes. On the back of each is written, "Picture which .served to prove
the discovery of the Daguerreotype, given to M. Arago by his very humble servant
Daguerre." above: View of Paris, opposite page, above: Sculpture, left: Still Lifa
45
The official Daguerre camera produced by Dagiierre's brother-in-
law, Alphonse Giroux, witli close-up of label which reads,
"No apparatus guaranteed if it does not bear the signature of
M. Daguerre and the seal of M. Giroux. The Daguerreotype,
made under the direction of the inventor in Paris by
Alphonse Giroux et Cie. Rue de Coq St. Honorc, No. 7."
The camera measured 12 by 14V2 by 20 inches.

JEAN-BAPTISTE SABATIER BLOT

Daguerre. Daguerreotype, iS^^.
47
The official Daguerreotype camera M'as used on February 27, iSô, by
Bartlielmy-Urbain Bianchi, a Toulouse optical-instrument maker, who
exposed 10 minutes to take the city hall of his home town and the
Place du Capitole. An art exhibition, the first ever pJudographed,
hangs on the wall of the city hall. The blob of black beneath the
paintings is from active spectators attending the exhibition who left only
"ghost" images although the sun bathers and seated sentries left
their permanent mark. The image is reversed, as in all early

daguerreotypes. Courtesy George Eastman House.
Camera and equipment designed by Gaudin and manufactured by

Lerebours in 1 Hî for taking and processing daguerreotypes of
1 /6 size. Outer wooden box serves both as camera and as
carrying case for following accessories: glass lined coating box,
mercury bath with sliding support, two single plate holders, slotted
box to hold twelve plates. In little more than a year Daguerre's
110 pounds of equipment had been reduced to less
than 10. Courtesy George Eastman House.
48
Daguerreotype camera designed by Josepli Petzval in iSî for
round plates 9 centimeters in diameter, with lens he designed

the previous year. The all-metal camera manufactured
by F. F. von Voigtlander in Germanv was particularlv popular
in America, where it was sold by tlie Langcuhcim brothers of
Philadelphia. Courtesy George Eastman House.
H
The
Daguerreotype
in Europe
The very first year of Daguerre's in\cntion, enterpris-

ing publishers already saw great possibilities for profit
from the travel books with reproductions of daguerreo-
type views. N. P. Lerebours of Paris, an optieian who
manufactured daguerreotype cameras closely resembling
the official Giroux camera, hired artists and cameramen,
equipped them with his outfits, and sent them to Ital},
Greece, North Africa, Eg\pt, Damascus, Sweden, Eng-
land, and as far west as Niagara Falls in the United
States. Few of the daguerreotypists he commissioned arc
known by name today, and most of their original da-
guerreot)pes have been lost.
Horace \'ernet, romantic painter of battle scenes, ac-

companied b\ his nephew, Charles Bouton, and another
artist photographer, Frederic Goupil-Fesquet, traveled
for Lerebours in Eg}pt; on November 6, 1S39, he wrote
from Alexandria, "We keep Daguerreotyping like lions."
Between 1840 and 1S42 Lerebours published, from the
thousands of daguerreotypes he had coinmissioncd, 114
plates in aquatint as "Excursions Daguerricnnes."
'I'hese aquatints and etchings were reproductions ot
daguerreotypes. Some images were traced directly, a pro-
cedure which scratched or irreparably ruined the silver
plates. Aquatints were preferred to lithographs or wood-

cuts, for it was believed that they retained more of the
daguerreotype's original subtleties of tonality and light.
To his business in dagucrrcot\pe apparatus, lenses, and
publications, Lerebours added the sale of original da- Europe. Two thousand cameras and half a million plates
guerreotypes of travel views. were sold in Paris alone during 1S47, mostly for portrai-
Tourists, writers, and artists took daguerreotype cam- ture. Daguerreotype parlors in France and England took
eras with them on trips, not only to secure records but to portraits, charging $2 to $5 for plates ranging in size from
provide illustrations for future publications. Thcophile 11^2 by 2 to 6V2 by 8V2 inches, which were then set in
Gautier wrote that he went to Spain with daguerreotype papier-mache frames or imitation gilt boxes.
apparatus, but his success was negligible, for he had not Fortunes were reaped by the better-known parlors in
mastered the technical problems of taking pictures. the first years of the daguerreotype craze. Richebourg in
Joseph P. Girault de Prangy went to the Middle East, Paris not only conducted a profitable studio but manu-
returning in 11544, ''fter a two-year sojourn, with iDcrfect factured and handled apparatus for the trade.
daguerreotypes that he used to make illustrations for his Antoine Claudct, a fancy glass dealer in London,
book Arabian Architecture and Monuments of Egypt, bought from Daguerrc for $1,000 the first license to prac-
Syria, and Asia Minor. An impressive selection of his tice in England. He learned the process from Daguerre
original daguerreotypes, recently found in perfect condi- himself, whom he visited soon after Daguerrc publicly
tion, has been acquired by Helmut and Alison Gern- demonstrated his invention. By the following year Clau-
sheim, for their famous collection. dct was selling daguerreotypes of famous views, daguerre-
Photographers often invented cameras for specific pic- otype apparatus, and lenses supj^licd him by his friend
tures. Friedrich von Martens constructed a camera that Lerebours.
allowed the silvered plate to be curved, permitting him to Early in 1841 an ex-coal merchant named Richard
take an exceptionally beautiful two-part panorama of Beard opened the first portrait studio in London, pur-
Paris from the Louvre in 1846. chasing the right to use the mirror camera invented by
Artists and tourists continued to pursue the will-o'-the- Alexander Wolcott in New York the previous year. This
wisp— perfect pictorial landscape. I'he lucrative end of enabled him to take pictures with exposures of 5 seconds
the daguerreotype business was in the thousands of cam- to 5 minutes, depending on the size of the plates and the
era outfits and millions of silvered plates sold throughout amount of sunlight. Beard also paid Daguerre for permis-
A camera in theshape of a truncated pyramid made

in Paris by Bourguin, about 1844, with Petzval-
type lens set in a focusing mount. The bronze

dragons serve only to make it heavier and more
ornate. Quarter plates used: 514 x 4^4 inches.
Courtesy George Eastman House, Rochester.
51
sion to take daguerrcot\pc portraits even though he did taking daguerreotypes, but the courts found in favor of
not use the official camera. Claudet, who w as not compelled to relinquish his license.
When Claudet discovered a faster combination of Claudet was de\oted to developing the artistry and the
chemicals that enabled him to take daguerreot\pes with technique of photography. He invented the darkroom
the Giroux camera in 2 seconds to 2 minutes, he also red light, which did not affect the scnsiti\c plate; and he
opened a professional studio for portraiture in London. concei\cd the idea of using painted backdrops in the
Both studios were busy all day while the light lasted. studio to provide a pleasing change from the monotony
Ever}-one in London wanted to have his picture taken of plain backgrounds behind the subject. Claudet pho-
and gladly paid for the privilege. Beard realized that a tographed both in\cntors of photography— Daguerre and
fortune was to be made if a monopoly of the process Fox Talbot— royalty, and other celebrities, and in 1853
could be secured; quite inexplicably, he was able to pur- he was appointed 'Thotographer in Ordinarj' to Queen
chase from Daguerre full patent rights for all England Victoria."
for less than $5,000. The following year, through the sale Meanwhile, Richard Beard, who seemed to enjoy law-
of license fees alone, he realized more than thirty times suits, sued once too often for infringement of patent
his investment. rights, in an action \\hich took fi\e }ears to result in a
Beard secured an injunction to restrict Claudet from decision; although he won this case, he was soon after
52
FRiEDRicii VON MARTENS, Panorama of Paris. Daguerreotype, 1S46.
View from the Louvre. Taken with a camera that curved the
plates, invented by Von Martens. Courtesy George Eastman House.
declared bankrupt. During the years he held the patent law. Within less than two years X'oigtlander had intro-
for England, Beard had licensed many daguerreotypists, duced an all-metal, conical-shaped camera with the Pctz-
several of whom became famous, particularly the Ameri- val lens that enabled him to take circular pictures about
can, John E. Ma)all, who had conducted a studio in his 3 inches in diameter. With the \'oigtl;indcr-Petzval lens
home town of Philadelphia before he came to London, began Germany's high reputation for high-quality opti-
as "Professor Ilighschool," and who had created ten cal goods and camera equipment.
daguerreotypes to illustrate the Lord's Prayer. ALiyall Some of the finest earh daguerreotype portraits were
made other allegorical pictures which brought him ac- made by two artists-turned-photographer, Cari F. Stclz-
claim, but it was the high polish of the American da- ner and Herman Blow of Hamburg. Stelzner's training
guerreotypes and dramatic, oversize plates that were as a painter of miniature portraits is cxident in his deli-
singled out for praise. He took pictures of the Prince cately delineated daguerreotypes, which he often colored
Consort, who was avidly interested in photography; and by hand to simulate sensitively drawn miniatures on
soon Mayall had in London two very fashionable studios ivory.Both men made daguerreotypes of a terrible three-
which made him independently wealthy. dav fire that demolished an entire section of Hamburg
The art dealer Louis Sachse brought to Bed in, in 1839, in 184:. A Stclzner daguerreotype of the holocaust— the
the first camera made b\' Giroux, Daguerre's brother-in- wodd's first news photograph— fortunately survives.
53
1^
Four aquatints by unknown

photographers, published in 18^0-^2 b\
Lerebours in Excursions Dagucrricnncs.
above: Nazareth
below: Arch of Titus in Rome
upper right: Luxor, Eg>pt
lower right: Great Mosque in Algiers
54
55
Medea, Algeria. Daguerreotype,
about 18 jo. The names Delemotte

et Alary are scratched on
plate m lower left corner.
'îJfA^.
e^'"
.Jsr-
View of the Place de la Con-

corde, Paris. Daguerreotype,
about 1850. Daguerreotypist
unknown. In the distance,
Aiontmartre and its windmills.

The image is reversed. Courtesy
George Eastman House.
'£?^^'l,.--iK!.«MT.1
56
A collapsible camera made by Charles Chevalier in Paris,
iSô, for whole plate, 6V2 x 8V2 inches. Furnished as part
of a complete daguerreotype outfit: could also be used to
take paper negatives. Courtesy George Eastman House.
Return of French Troops from Italy. Daguerreotype, about 185S.

Daguerreotypist unknown. An extremely rare example, with
crowds of people, taken when process had been practically
supplanted by collodion negative. Courtesy George Eastman House.
57
c. F. STELZNER, Hamburg Fire. Daguerreotype,
1 8^2 . The world's first news photograph.
Courtesy Museum fur
Ilamburgische Geschichte, Ilamburs.
STELZNER, Obcrlcutnant H. N. Beseler.

Daguerreotype. Hamburg, 1843. Courtesy
Staatliche Landesbildstelle, Hamburg.
58
'^ s^
^< vV
w«^
>!
L\^J
STF.LZNER, Outing of the Hamburg Art Club.

Daguerreotype, 18^3.
Courtesy Staatliche Landesbildstelle
STELZNER, Caroline Stelzner. Hamburg, 1 8^^
Courtesy Staatliche Landesbildstelle.
59
A clinching argument of the daguerreo-
typist was that he would "draw" the
entire family for the same price as one
member. In this litljograpli by an
unknown artist, about iSjO, the caption
shows the daguerreotypist saying, "1 can
sketch you witli my daguerreotype, you,

your family, and the little Xozor."
Dsjuerreolype, vous, voire famille el k
cnooris d ete
\\C^
Oh Clarise, take a look at that big machine,

it's as though a great big eye was looking at us.
liii Prr'â.-.'iti Itru
PRISES Al' DAGIERREUTYTE

_ All' ... Clarisse vols done celtc 6rHnilf miicUiiiP on dirait ijii 'il
va im (ril i|ui nous Tfdarde !
60
^'"''.
lA DACUERREOTYPONIANIC
The Daguerreotype Craze. Lithograph drawn by A. Alaurisset for

New Year's Day, 18^0. Camera fans dance. Gallows for rent to
engravers. A man struggles with an unwieldly camera marked
"Apparatus for Travelers." A studio advertises portraits for New Year's
presents. A man has his portrait made. Dr. Donne, who made the first
engravings from daguerreotypes, is at work M'ith his plates and presses.
Moving in the distance is a freight train formed by cameras; a camera is
suspended from a balloon; a ship is being loaded with camera supplies;

and over all the sun shines and smiles. Courtesy George Eastman House.
61
irror With a
Memory: The
nagiieireotype
in Aiiierita
I'liE FIRST PORTRAITS taken by dagucrrcot\ pc took so long

that the subjects got sunburned. Portraiture was a terrible
ordeal, suffered by sitting perfectly still in the direct sun-
light for .^s much as 20 minutes. It was permissible to
wink; the process was so slow that it did not matter.
To enable the sitter to keep his eyes open m the sun a
blue sheet of glass was interposed; this did not lengthen
the exposure very much, and soon all studios were
equipped with blue skylights.
Daguerreotypes were hand-colored like miniatures,
often by artists of some standing. The eadiest attempts
to color the fragile image came after experiments with
painting on the protective glass proved unsuccessful.
Dusting colored powders on a gum brushed onto the
image also proved too harsh for the easily damaged
daguerreotype. The only solution was for trained minia-
ture painters laboriously to tint the face of the daguerreo-
t\pe with as much caution and artistry as was necessary
to do a miniature on i\ory.
Dr. John William Draper, in 1839 in New York, said
that he had to pose his models for 20 minutes in the open
sunlight, the face whitened with powder and the eyes
closed, to secure full-size daguerreotypes. Draper, who
was a professor of chemistry at New York University, had
learned of Daguerre's process by reading the first English
translation to reach New York in October of 1S39, but he
had already experimented unsuccessfully for two years commissions he received intermittently. All the while he
with the photograph as applied to science. He made him- was seeking government support to perfect his invention
self a cigar-box camera and with it took a picture of a of the magnetic telegraph.
Unitarian Church from a university window. A month All sorts of people turned to the daguerreotype to make
earlier his colleague, Professor Samuel F. B. Morse, had an extra dollar. Some learned the craft well enough to
taken a picture of the same church from his window in open daguerreotype galleries. Others became professors
the university. On April ig, i8.:jo, Samuel Bemis m Bos- of hocus pocus, making pictures in the mystif)ing dark-
ton took a daguerreotype of King's Chapel burying room, passing off the faint results as the best procurable;
ground in an exposure lasting 40 minutes. By mid-1840, to many dagucrrcotyping was a form of advertising or a
with better equipment, smaller-size plates, and faster sideline to attract customers to their regular business.
chemicals at their disposal, the professors were ready to In addition to the charlatans there were fine workmen,
become partners in a portrait studio, which they built on practicing daguerreotypists whose studios took superb
the roof of the university. portraits of illustrious citizens and charming pictures of
At about the same time, Alexander S. Wolcott was a bygone day in a peaceful America.
issued the first patent in the United States for photog- One of these was John Plumbe, who, besides being a
raphy. This was for a camera with a concave mirror that pioneer in chain-studio photography, was the first to
reflected the sun's rays to the plate rather than with a lens write and pressure Congress for a railroad connecting the
that refracted rays to the plate. The new invention per- Atlantic with the Pacific. Soon after he learned the proc-
mitted more light to fall on the plate. The image was not ess in Washington in the summer of 1840, he opened a
reversed, but neither was it so sharp as the daguerreotype series of Daguerrcan Galleries. During the next five years,
made in the usual lens camera. Wolcott and his partner thirteen Plumbe National Daguerrcan Galleries were
John Johnson opened the world's first portrait studio in established in such widely separated cities as Boston,
New York on March 4, 1840. New York, Washington, and Philadelphia in the east,
Daguerreotypists could operate only on sunny days, and Louisville, St. Louis, Cincinnati, and Dubuque in
which occurred in New York more often than in London the west. He developed the "Plumbcotypc," and hired
—a contributing factor to making American daguerreo- artists to copy daguerreotype likenesses onto lithograph
type portraits universally acclaimed as the best. stones so that the prints could be pulled and sold in edi-
On dull, overcast da}s Morse taught the process to a tions of any number desired by the customer.
number of interested students, many of whom were to The galleries made money, but unfortunately Pl'imbe
become leading daguerreotypists in the United States, was too busy pushing for a national railway, and per-
among them Edward Anthony, Mathcw B. Brady, and mitted his managers to plunder the proceeds. By 1847 he
Albert S. Southworth. Using a regular daguerreotype was declared bankrupt, the galleries were closed, and he
camera, they were able to take studio portraits in sittings was on his way to California. It would be a fitting climax
of 30 seconds to 2 minutes, and could cut this time in if we could report that this intrepid man found another
half by posing the subject directly in the sun. fortune in the gold fields, but the truth is more sad;
far
After only six months Professor Draper dissolved the he returned to Iowa and died by his own hand at the
partnership; he was to utilize photography for scientific carl)' age of forty-six.
purposes the rest of his life. Professor Morse moved to Edward Anthony, trained as a civil engineer and grad-
another roof-top studio in the Observer building. uated from Columbia at the age of twenty in 1838,
Morse's purpose in pursuing the perfection of the learned the daguerreotype process as soon as it was intro-
daguerreotype was to accumulate portraits of models he duced the next year. As there was work to be found
little
could use in painting. He was the first to take a class in his professional field, he accepted a commission to
picture, at the thirtieth reunion, in August, 1840, of his take dagucrreotjpes of disputed territory at the Cana-
Yale University class. Morse needed to realize some profit dian-American northeast boundary. These were the first
from his daguerreotxpe researches, for in the depression pictures taken for a government survey.
years of 1839-1840 he was spending much more than he A short time after this, Anthony and a partner, J.
^L
could afford from his small salary as professor of litera- Edwards, were permitted by Anthony's friend and patron.
ture and design at New York University. This salary was Senator Thomas Hart Benton, chairman of the Senate
supplemented by the little tuition he received from his Committee on Military Affairs, to use the committee
students in the daguerreotype process and by the portrait room in Washington to take daguerreotypes of distin-
63
guished political figures. Among these was John Ouincy ish-American revolutionary Narciso Lopez who was in
Adams, who recorded in his diary, April 12, 1844, that he Washington for three years until 1851.
sat for three likenesses and that, as he walked out, "Presi- The most notable name in American photography is
dent Tyler and his son John came in, but I did not notice Mathew B. Brady (he always spelled it with one "t" and
them." never told anyone what the "B" stood for) . A later chap-
Anthony took pictures of everybody of consequence, ter will be devoted to this exceptional man, historian
and formed a National Daguerrcan Gallery which was on documenter of the Civil War, publisher, and altogether
exhibition in New York City. This enterprise was sup- the greatest recorder of American life in his day.
posedly entirely destroyed by fire in i852 except for a The first decade of the daguerreot\pe saw a thousand
single full figure portrait of John Ouincy Adams. practitioners in the United States. There were seventy
A collection of daguerreotypes of prominent national galleries in New York City alone, among them that of
politicians who were in Washington during the nine Jeremiah Gurney, a jeweler turned cameraman. His
years Anthony and his partner had their galler\- is now famous galler}', later conducted by his son Benjamin,
in the Chicago Historical Society. Though these cannot moved ahead with photography as it developed, and sur-
be positively identified as Anthony's, the consistent qual- vived for more than half a century.
ity of the portrait, the dramatic posing of the subject, Oliver Wendell Holmes called the daguerreotype "the
and the search to interpret the character of each person mirror with a memory." His native Boston competed
carr)' the mark of someone well trained, as Anthony was. with New York in refining the silver image. Yankee inge-
Further evidence about dates and age of subjects de-
nuity made possible the excellence of American daguerre-
picted leads me to bclie\'e that these may be some of ot\pcs. John Whipple utilized a steam engine to run the
Anthony's lost daguerreotypes.
buffing wheels to give the plates the highest possible
The collection includes Thomas Hart Benton, senator polish, to heat the mercury, to prepare the distilled water
from Missouri; Lewis Cass, senator from Michigan and for washing the plates, to cool the clients by running fans
in 1848 Democratic candidate for the prcsidenc\'; Presi-
in the waiting rooms, and also to re\olvc a sign on the
dents Martin \'an Buren, John Tyler, Millard Fillmore,
facade of the gallery.
and Franklin Pierce; Louis Kossuth, Hungarian patriot One of the justifiably famous galleries in Boston was
who was in the United States 1851-1852, and the Span-
the establishment of Southworth and Hawes. This gal-
SAMUEL A. BEMis, King's Chapel,

Boston. Daguerreotype, 1S40. One of
the earliest American daguerreotypes.
Label on back reads: "April 19, 1S40
Samuel A. Bemis first daguerreotype
experiment. Iodizing process 2 5
minutes (apparatus new) Camera
process 40 minutes, Wind N. W.
sky clear air dry—very cold for
season. Lens meniscus. Time 4:50 to
5:30 p.m. Daguerre's apparatus.

N.Y. Plate ordinary." Courtesy
George Eastman House, Rochester.
64
JOHN SARTAiN, Portrait of Jolin William Draper. After Portrait of Samuel F. B. Morse. Daguerreotype,
an engraving from M
A. Roof, The Camera and the
. about 18.^^. Photographer unknown. Painter,
Pencil, Philadelpliia, iS6^. Two years before the professor, inventor of the telegraph, Morse is
daguerreotype was announced. Professor Draper was believed to be the first American to learn the
experimenting with pliotograpliy; he made one of the daguerreotype process. With his colleague,
firstphotographic portraits in 1839 and tlw first Professor Draper, he established a photograpliic
successful photograph of the moon the following studio on the roof of New York University.
year. Courtesy George Eastman House. Courtesy George Eastman House.
lery's portraits of celebrities are lifelike, free from the 8V2 by 61/2 inches, and cost $5 or more. Competitors'
usual stiffness resulting from the rigid forked headrests prices were $1 for a quarter plate, with a free case.
and from the fixed pose often induced by filling out the The fine daguerrcot\pc was doomed. It had lasted
subjects' hollow cheeks with wads of cotton or by fasten- longer in America than anywhere else. At the Great Ex-
ing their jug cars to their skulls with sticking wax. hibition in the London Crystal Palace of 1851, Americans
Albert S. Southworth learned the process from Profes- received three of the five medals awarded for daguerreo-
sor Morse in New York, and returned to Boston to enter types. I'he French by then excelled in photograph}' on
into partnership with Josiah Johnson Hawes, who re- paper.
mained a photographer until his death in 1901. The da- America soon turned to the cheaper process of the
gucrreot\pes made by Southworth and lawcs during I the glass negative, from which a dozen or more positives
first ten years of their partnership are today celebrated could be made at the price of one good daguerreotype. It
and sought as some of the finest examples of the art. was the end of an era; a beautiful and unique art had
These portraits were most often taken on whole plates died. The daguerreotype would never be revived.
65
Portrait of John V. Farwell, Chicago merchant. ED-WARD ANTHONY, Scnator 'I'hoinas Hart Benton.
Daguerreotype, 1845-47. Photographer unknown. Daguerreotype, about 1S4S. Taken in Wasliingto
Courtesy Chicago Historical Society. Courtesy Chicago Historical Society.
ANTHONY, LEWIS CASS, Senator from Michigan and in Portrait of fohn W'cntworth. Daguerreotype, 1S4
18^8 Democratic candidate for President. Courtesy Photographer unknown. Taken in Chicago
Chicago Historical Society. before Wentworth became Mayor. Courtesy
Chicago Historical Society.
66
Portrait of Thomas Sully 0783-1872). Daguerreotype,
about iS^8. Photographer unknown. American portrait
painter. Courtesy Chicago Historical Society.
ANiiiONV, iMartui \ an Burcn. Daguerreotype,

about iS.::j.8. Van Buren left the presidency in iS..î
but remained a political power for years. This

daguerreotype appears to have been taken when he
was about 66 years old. Though it is not certain, the
picture seems to be one of the daguerreotvpes which
Anthony made for his National Daguerrean Gallery,
which M'as destroyed bv fire in 1S52. Courtesy
ANiiiONY, Louis koiiûth, Hungarian patriot.
Daguerreotype, iSî, Washington. Courtesy
67
Dagucrreotxpe,
Unidentified Gold Miner in California.
5I/4 inches. Daguerreotypist unknown.
about 1850. 25/4 X
The leather pouch m which the miner sent the
daguerreotype to a young lady in Illinois is at
bottom. Courtesy George Eastman House.
"Z^m^
y <\h^ /iP
J(fs.
68
FRED COOMBS, San Francisco, corner of Clay and Montgomery Streets.
Daguerreotype, 1850. A sharp eye can see, on the druggist's signboard "opium
for sale" along with paints and varnishes. Courtesy George Eastman House.
69
-i^li^^ 'i —- —
Wood engraving of Gi/rney's Dagiierrean Saloon in New York.

Typical of the ornate galleries established in the late iSôs in most of
the country's principal cities. Courtesy George Eastman House.
LUTHER HOLMAN HALE, Joscph Da\is. Grandfather of Beaumont Newhall.

Daguerreotype, 1850, Boston. Case is of pressed paper made
to imitate leather. Courtesy George Eastman House.
70
souTHWORTH AND HAWES STUDIO, BOSTON, Ladv Surroundcd by
Eight Smaller Portraits of Herself. Daguerreotype, about 1S55.
Courtesy Metropolitan Aluacuin of Art, New York.
SOUTHWORTH AND HAWES STUDIO, BOSTON,

Portrait of an Unknown Lady.
Daguerreotype, about 1855.
Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art.
71
Little Smoke, Grandtson of Shabbona. Daguerreotype, about 1S50. PJwtograpIier unkno^yu.
Daguerreotype, 1S56. Illustrates early use of props in daguerreotype.
Taken by an Illinois photographer. 2% X 3^/4 incJies. Courtesy George Eastman House.

Courtesy Chicago Historical Society.
Alan in two-wheeled cart. Daguerreotype,

about iS^S. Set in a pinchbeck frame
and leather case. The image is reversed
as in most early daguerreotypes.
s. w. HARTSHORN, Edgar Allan Poe.

Daguerreotype, 18^8. Taken a year before the
poet died. Poe was much enamored of the
daguerreotype. In 18^0 he wrote, "In truth
the daguerreotyped plate is infinitely more
accurate in its presentation than any
painting by human hands." Courtesy
Brown University, Providence.
73
SOUTHWORTH AND HAWES STUDIO, BOSTON
above: Harriet Bcccher Stowc. Daguerreotype, about i<S^6.
above, right: John Ouincy Adams, President of the

United States. Daguerreotype copy,, about 18^2. From an original
daguerreotype made in 1 8^8, the year when President Adams
died. Both, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Assembling a daguerreotype. The made of

first cases M'ere
tooled leather, but soon cheaper substitutes became popular, among
them imitation leather and plastic cases made of saM'dust and
shellac with elaborate pressed-in designs. The glass, the
oval frame, and the daguerreotype were assembled in a
flexible gilded metal frame known in England as "pinchbeck"
and in America as "preserver"; then the assembly was placed
in the case. Courtesy George Eastman House.
74
souTiiwoRTii AND HAWES STUDIO, BOSTON, Looking Down Brattle Street
Toward Brattle Square Church. Daguerreotype, 1852. The silver
image is reversed, as can be seen in Hudson (5- Company's awning.
These fii'o illustrations show that, when

sunlight fell directly on a daguerreotype the
silvered image became a negative — a turn of the
wrist and the image became a fully recognizable
positive. Courtesy George Eastman House.
75
w
•
Nm
I
1^
1
PART TWO
Masters of the
Vineteenth Century
I Fox Tell hot
Pa|)er Negcitives
and Positives
The daguerreotype held everyone enthralled—

painter, engraver, eteher, lithographer, scientist. Its deli-
cate tonality and immense detail, discernible by magni-
fying glass, seduced everyone away from the rougher
picture on paper invented by Henry Fox Talbot and
announced the same month.
Sir John Hcrschcl, who named Talbot's invention
"photography" and who also coined the words "nega-
tive" and "positive" to explain the process, considered
the grainy paper print child's play compared with the
silver image.
The beauty of the dagucrrcot}pc was unique, its im-
pression on silver not to be compared with a photograph
on paper or a print made by any of the graphic arts.
Today we recognize its fineness and appreciate its grace-
fulness without expecting the photograph or etching to
emulate its qualities.
It was Talbot's invention of a paper negative from

which multiple prints could be made that became the
foundation of modern photography. The daguerreotype,
uniquely beautiful as it was, had had its day a little more
than a decade after it was invented.
Arago's preliminary announcement of the daguerreo-
type on January 7, 1839, before the Academy of Sciences
in Paris, goaded Fox Talbot to publish his process first.
He feared that, if Daguerre's invention was similar to

liis own, all his years of work would go for naught. Before The small cameras his wife called "mousetraps." Tal-
the end of January Talbot had the noted scientist bot placed a number of them around his home, Lacoek
Michael Faraday present at a meeting of the Royal In- Abbey, near Chippenham, Wiltshire, and succeeded in
stitution in London several of his pictures of flowers, securing in each, after only a 30-minute exposure, a per-
leaves, and lace, figures from a painted glass, and a view fect "miniature picture of the objects before which it
of Venice, all made by superimposition of object or en- had been placed." He fixed this inch-square image by
graving on sensitized paper. In addition, Faraday exhib- washing the paper in a strong solution of common salt
ited a number of Talbot's "pictures representing the or with potassium iodide.

architecture of my home in the country . . . made with After Talbot's invention was announced. Sir John
the camera obseura in the summer of 1855." Herschel suggested to him that the unused silver chloride
On the last day of January, 1839, Talbot read before could be more effectively removed, so that the image
the Royal Society his report, "Some Account of the Art would not change in sunlight, by using hyposulphite of
of Photogenic Drawing, or the Process by Which Natural soda, which Sir John had found twenty \ears before, ni
Objects May Be Made to Delineate Themselves without 1819, to be the best solvent of silver salts.
the Aid of the Artist's Pencil." In it he referred to the Talbot discovered, in 1840— as had Daguerre two years
experiments conducted by Wedgwood and Davy, devot- eadier— that he did not have to wait for the image to
ing a paragraph to "the art of fixing the shadow," which become visible. Development of the latent image enabled
is what they admitted they were unable to do, but Talbot him to take a picture in minutes where it had formerly
did not explain how he accomplished it. Three weeks taken him hours. No longer was it necessary for him to
later, on February 20, Talbot sent the Royal Society a peep through a hole cut in the camera to ascertain when
second letter, in which he listed further discoveries in the image was visible. Magically, the image appeared
"photogenic drawing" and then gave full particulars of when the paper was developed in gallic acid. After devel-
how he fixed the image— in a solution of common salt. opment, Talbot used a hot solution of hypo to fix the
In The Pencil of Nature, published in 1844, the first image, washed the negative in pure water, dried it, and
book illustrated with photographs, Talbot describes what then made it transparent by waxing the paper. lie
gave him the idea of making permanent the pictures that contact-printed these negatives by sunlight on silver
he saw through the camera obseura. He writes that it was chloride paper, the simple paper that he had used from
in October, 1833, while he was at Lake Como in Italy the beginning of his experiments.
and was trying to copy nature with the aid of Wollaston's These brilliantly improved negatives he called "ealo-
camera lucida. "I came to the conclusion that the instru- types," from the Greek meaning "beautiful pictures," but
ment required a previous knowledge of drawing which he later called them " Talbotypcs."
unfortunately I did not possess. I then thought of trying Quite unexpectedly, in 1841, the wealthy Fox Talbot
again amethod which I had tried many years before. patented the process, limiting the number of photog-
The method was to take a camera obseura and to throw raphers to those who would pay his license fee. The
the image of the objects on a piece of paper in its focus- daguerreotype had been patented in England; interna-
fairy pictures, creations of a moment, and destined as tional recognition and a substantial pension had been
rapidly to fade away. It was during these thoughts that given Daguerre in France. Talbot had received little rec-
the idea occurred to me, how charming it would be if it ognition in England for his paper process, which he had
were possible to cause these natural images to imprint not patented when he had published it two years before
themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper!" and was deprecated as inferior to Daguerre's process.
Talbot reasoned that, since light could effect changes Pique and the desire to reap some financial benefits-
in materials, all he had to do was to find the proper he had spent $35,000— seem to have moved him to patent
materials. Paper was the answer for him. He found that his process. This was the first of many patents Talbot
he could submerge a sheet of paper in a weak solution of was to secure, exacting royalties from all and vigilanth
salt and then, when it was dr)-, dip it in a solution of prosecuting those who dared infringe.
silver nitrate, thereby forming in the fibers of the paper Many patents he secured were for inventions that were
the light-sensitive chemical, silver chloride. He first made already in existence, such as the method of development
copies of engravings, flowers, and lace, but, by the sum- by means of gallic acid, which had been employed by
mer of 1835, he had experimented with both large and the Reverend Joseph Bancroft Reade in 1837 but never
small cameras. published or patented.
79
In his patent of June i, 1843, Talbot included hyposul to license photographers taking portraits for profit. For-
phite of soda as a fixing agent; this had been suggested to tunes had been made in this field: Richard Beard in
him four years earlier by its discoverer Sir John I lerschel. London had realized $200,000 in one year, and huge sums
He also included an enlarging process in this patent, the had been made by Claudet, Mayall, Collcn, and others,
same procedure for which Alexander Woleott had been and by many photographers in Europe and America.
given a patent a few months before. Portraiture by Talbotype and daguerreotype was al-
There was no scientific board in England at that time ready doomed. The collodion process on glass had been
to check on originality or to appraise the merit of a invented in 1851 by Scott Archer, who had given it freely
patent. In 1843 Talbot also patented books illustrated to the worid. Talbot claimed that the new process was a
with photographs, for he was contemplating publication variation of his patent and basically the same— the nega-
of his Pencil of Nature. This six-part book contains, as tive-positive principle applied to glass instead of paper.
well as an explanatory text by the author, the history of The celebrated ease that broke Fox Talbot's monopoly
his invention and 24 actual photographs of architecture, was brought to court in 1854. A professional portraitist
still lifes, sculpture, and scenes around Talbot's house. named Silvester LaRoehe refused to pay license fees.
During 1845 Talbot published his second illustrated Talbot sued. The jury heard arguments regarding photo-
book, containing 23 photographs, entitled Sun Pictures chemistry which gave the perplexed judge a hard tmie as
in Scotland. he summed up the case for their benefit: "Is pyrogallic
Talbot was rebuked and criticized by indignant writers acid, though it may differ in shape, in its actions with
who demanded that he relax his monopoh- on discoveries reagents, in its composition, is it or is it not a chemical
that others had gi\en freely to the world. This did not equivalent with gallonitrate of silver? If it is, the defend-
deter him. He continued to prosecute and would not ant is guilty; if it is not, he is not guilty."
abandon any of his patent rights. The president of the The jury found LaRoehe not guilty. They also found
Royal Academy and the president of the Photographic Talbot to be the first and true inventor of the Talbotype;
Society appealed to him to relinquish his stifling controls. this they explained as meaning the first to publish or dis-
At long last, in the summer of 1852, he freed the process close the process to the public.
for artists, scientists, and amateurs, but retained the right Talbot's hold could have been broken eadier. Sir John
ANTOiNE CLAUDET, Portrait of Fox Talbot. Daguerreotype

1S44. Courtesy George Eastman House, Rochester.
^^^
/^
^^^^<i\.
'"
Jte-— --^^^:
Sketch by Fox Talbot made M-ith WoUaston's camera lucida,

October 6, iS^^. Courtesy Royal Photographic Society, London.
81
Herschel in 1859 made photographs on glass and had fessional dagucrrcotypists, \\'îlliam and Frederick Lan-
pubhshcd his findings. Talbot's patents applied only to gcnhcim of Philadelphia, for $6,000. The Langcnheims
paper. never sold a single license in the States, where the
SirJohn Herschel was one of the greatest inventors of daguerreotype remained unpatented, was faster and
photographic processes. A most important invention of preferable, and where the little demand created for mul-
his that is still in use is the cheapest, simplest permanent tiple prints could be satisfied by lithographing copies of
process for copying drawings or maps, the common blue- photographs or by rephotographing the subject or the
print. dagucrreot\pe.
Talbot did strange things. He patented the Talbotype It is nevertheless to Fox Talbot that the entire world
in the United States six years after he patented the is indebted for the invention of the negative-positive
process in England. He sold the patent rights to the pro- process, from which all modern photography stems.
FOX TALBOT, Wiltou Housc. Ccilotypc, about iS^^.

Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
FOX TALBOT, Lace. "Photogenic drawing," 18^3.
Courtesy Gernshcim Collection, London.
FOX TALBOT, first pdpcr ncgutivc, one inch square. Lacock

Abbey, August, 1S35. Courtesy Science Museum, London.
Au^^^y^ /PoS'
83
FOX TALBOT, Breakfast Table. Photograph, 18/^0. Technique,
usmg paper negative, called "photogenic drawing' by inventor.
Sir John F. W. Herschel's photograph on glass, of his
father's observatory, 1S59. Courtesy Science Museum,
London, for all three pictures.
Fox Talbot's two earliest cameras with peep holes, and a

third designed for the later calotype process. Before development
of the "latent image," peep holes permitted photographers

to see when image was fully exposed on negatives.
85
Fox Talbot's Pencil of Nature,
first book published with original
photographs. Issued in six parts
between 18^^ and 18^6, with

pictures pasted in by hand.
FOX TALBOT, The Broom (left) and Books (above).
From Pencil of Nature. Calotype, iS..^.j-..^6. Courtesy The

Harold White Collection, Bromley, Kent, England.
86
FOX TALBOT, Lacock Abbey {left) and The Ladder (below)
From Pencil of Nature. Calotype, 1844-46. Courtesy The
HaroldWhite Collection, Bromley, Kent, England.
^
Fox Talbot's calotype establishment at Reading, England, about 18^5. His assistants,
seen from left to right in two separate exposures, are copying a painting, taking a
portrait from life, printing by sunlight, and photographing a piece of sculpture.
What the man kneeling at the right is doing is a mystery. Courtesy Science Museum.
89
Paper envelope of the firm W. 6- F. Langcuheiin
of PInladelphia, iS^S,towliom Talbot sold patent rights
for the United States. Courtesy George Eastman House.
Paper negative and print signed "Made by W. (5 F. Langenheim,

Alarch 5, 1849." Courtesy George Eastman House.
90
w. & F. LANGENHEiM, The Merchant's Exchange, Philadelphia. Calotype, 18^9.
Signed and sent to Fox Talbot as a sample. Gift of Miss M. T. Talbot,
Lacock Abbcv, Endand. throuiih Harold White, to George Eastman House.
91
Cathedral at Evreux.
Calotype negative, 18^0.
Unknown French photographer.
HENRI LE sEco, Fisliiiig Boats Pulled up on a Beach in France.
Paper negative and calotype, i8p. Courtesy George Eastman House.
92
Hill and
Adamsoii:
The Rreat
Onllcibomtion
I'he greatest exponents of the calot\pc process were

two men of Edinburgh, Scotland (where Fox Talbot's
patent restrictions did not extend), a painter, David
Octavius Hill, and a chemist-photographer, Robert
Adamson. Collaborators for onh fi\'e years— Adamson
died at the age of t\vent\ -seven in the )ear 1848— they
took more than 1,500 pictures, including some of the
finest portraits in the histon,- of photography.
How necessary the young technician Adamson was to
the association is evident from the fact that Hill pro-
duced few memorable photographs after Adamson's
death, although he attempted to collaborate with other
photographers whom he directed.
Together Hill and Adamson made some superb pic-
tures, posing people singly, in pairs, or in groups in open

sunlight, simulating interiors by placing chairs and other
props and backdrops behind and around the figures. The
subjects held head in hand or posed leaning body against
a prop and assuming a relaxed, natural pose for exposures
lasting 1 to 3 minutes.
Character is boldly expressed in each portrait. No at-
tempt is made to hide lined features. Often deep shadows

arc left to emphasize the black and white masses of the
face, repeated dramatically throughout all parts of the
picture, in the hands, in the garments, as well as in the

backgrounds. Detail was sacrificed, for the paper negative
could never compete with the daguerreotype in securing graphs depicting scenery in Perthshire, Scotland. He
seductive detail. Areas of light and dark were handled later became a painter of moody, literary, romantic land-
like the chiaroscuro in a drawing by Rembrandt. scapes. He painted a series of canvases interpreting the
It was in 1843 that Hill turned to the use of the camera poems of Robert Burns; these were engraved and pub-
when he was commissioned by the Free Church of Scot- lished as Tlie Land of Burns.
land to paint an enormous picture, n'4" by 5'o", Signing In 1866, four years before his death. Hill's culminating
the Act of Separation and Deed of Demission. On this work to which he had devoted twenty-two years of his
monumental canvas Hill was to portray all 470 minister- life was and the huge canvas was
at long last finished,
delegates who resigned from the Church of Scotland, on accepted by the sponsor, 1 he Scottish Free Church. All
the grounds that the congregation had the right to choose the ministers can be identified, as can Hill himself, his
own ministers, and then met in general assembly to
its wife, and the lamented Adamson with his camera. The
commemorate their freedom from Queen and landed picture still hangs in the Presbytery Hall in Edinburgh.
gentry. Hill's paintings are not often remembered in discus-
Hill and Adamson secured likenesses and character sions of nineteenth-century art. Flis work, with some few
studies of practically all the delegates in the few short exceptions, pieces like the small painting Leith Pier now
years of their partnership. Besides these photographs, in the National Gallery of Scotland, would perhaps be
they took pictures of celebrated men and women, people entirely forgotten if it had not been for his collaboration
of nobility, sailors, fishermen, and women, as well as with Adamson in photography.
landscapes of their native Scotland. Each of their pic- It is to the everlasting credit of J.
Craig Annan, a
tures was marked with the unique artistry of their col- photographer in the 1890s who made prints from their
laborative seeing. I'hey devised a perfect way of using old paper negatives, that interest was revived in these two
creatively the imperfect paper negative. pioneering Scotsmen, whose penetrating portraits are
Hill was an accomplished lithographer; before he was now conceded to be some of the finest ever made in the
nineteen he had published a portfolio of thirty litho- field of photography.
D.wiD ocT.wius HILL, Lcith Pier.

Oil painting on wood panel, 1S40,
iiYi X 1^ Vi inches.
Courtesy The National Gallery
of Scotland, Edinburgh.
95
DAVID OCTAVIUS IIII.I, AND ROBERT ADAATSON
above: John Henning and Alexander Handyside Ritchie.
Calotype, about 18^^. The two noted sculptors, friends of Hill,
were his associates in the Royal Scottish Academy,
above right:Photograph of a Man. Calotype, about iS.:^6. Both,
courtesy The Art Institute of Chicago, Stciglitz Collection.
96
above: hill and adamson, fames Nasnn th.
Calotype, i8^y Portrait of the engineer
and inventor of the steam lunnuicr.
Courtesy The Art Institute of Chicago,
Steiglitz Collection.
above left: robert adamson, David Octavius

Hill. Calotype, about iS^^. Courtesy
Ceorge Eastman House, Rochester.
HILL AND ADAMSON, Portrait of a Minister.
Caloty{:)e negative and print, about iS^j;

contemporary print made from the original
paper negative. Courtesy George Eastman House.
97
HILL AND ADAMSON
right: Mrs. Anna Browncll Jameson, author. Calotype, about 1S46.
Mrs. BrowueU's works included Visits and Sketches, a
four-vohnne account of her impressions of travel in Germany
Courtesy the Art Institute of Chicago, Steiglitz Collection
below left: Newha\-cn Fisherwomen. Calotype, about 1S45
Contemporary print made from original paper negative
Courtesy George Eastman House
below right: Lord Patrick Robertson. Calotype, about iS^j
Jurist and Lord Rector of the University of Aberdeen, to wlunr
Walter Scott gave the nickname, "Patrick of the Paunch.'
Courtesy The Art Institute of Chicago, Steiglitz Collection
HILL, Detail jrom Signing of the Deed of Demission.
Fainting completed in i S66. Hill is seen with pencil and sketchbook,
Adanison with camera. Courtesy Gernsheim Collection, London.
HILL AND ADAMSON. Two rare calotype photograplis of
landscapes, both taken between iS^^ and 18^8.
above: St. Andrews.
right: Ruins of Castle and Sea.
100
lOI
Early
Wet ricite
Photography
Sir Jciiin IIersciiel experimented, none too success-

ful]}, witli glass instead of paper or metal as a backing
for sensitive silver salts. Niepce de St. Victor, a cousin
of Niccphore Niepce, perceixcd in 1847, upon studying
Sir John's report published in the Journal of the Royal
Society, that Sir John had failed to coat the glass with
a suitable organic substance to serve as a binder for the
sensitive silver.
A soldier b}- profession but an amateur scientist by

a\ocation, Niepce de St. Victor lost his laboratory in the
Re\olution of i8^S when the barracks in which he re-
sided were destroyed. lie nevertheless continued his

studies, experimenting first with starch and gelatin and
then more satisfactorily with whites of eggs. To the
white of egg he added a few drops of iodide of potassium
and bromide of potassium plus a few grains of common
salt, thoroughh u hipped it into a froth, and then strained
it through fine muslin.
This solution of iodized albumen he used to coat a
sheet of glass and, when it was thoroughly dry, sensitized
it by immersing it The plate could

in nitrate of silver.
be used wet or dry in the camera, but when dry it required

a much longer exposure than did a daguerrcotjpe or calo-
type. Con\inced that his invention would have some im-
portance in the world of photography, Niepce de St.
\'ictor communicated his albumen process in June, 1848,
to the Academy of Sciences in Paris.

Immediately after publication of the proeess, modifi- solved guncotton, ether, and alcohol to make collodion
cations and improvements were suggested for speeding (this formula had already been known to medicine for
up the sensitized albumen so that it could be used for several years) and blended this with a solution of silver
taking portraits and figures, as well as architecture and iodide and iodide of iron. This mixture was coated on a
landscape. clean glass plate, which was then immersed in a solution
To eliminate the grain and other imperfections in of distilled water and silver nitrate, and exposed wet in
paper, L. D. Blanquart-Evrard conceived the idea of the camera. The plate had to be developed while the
coating paper with albumen for positives. After de- collodion was still moist. The new proeess was faster
velopment, he dipped the print in a solution of chloride than albumen or any of the other photographic methods.
of gold, to achieve a range of cold pleasing tones in It required only 2 or 3 seconds exposure in direct sun-
browns and grays as well as to make the image more light, and the resulting subtleties of tonality were un-
permanent. equaled by any existing processes.
The consumption of eggs for albumen paper, which Mow generous was Scott Archer! He could have
lasted as the most popular paper for more than forty patented his invention and made untold fortunes for
years, was astronomical. All over the world hundreds of himself and his heirs, for the wet-collodion process was
millions of eggs were broken open annually for the not to be superseded until more than thirty years later
whites, the yolks either being wasted or sold to tanneries when the gelatine dry plate was marketed commercially.
and bakeries. Archer announced his invention without restrictions and
Blanquart-Evrard, who had improved the calotype died impoverished at the age of forty-four in 1857. His
process but who never mentioned 'I'albot as its original name today is hardly known even by the innumerable
inventor, established in Lille, France, the first mass- commercial photoengravers all over the world who still
production, assembly-line method of printing. He em- use his invention of the wet-collodion process.
ployed about 40 girls, each of whom was trained to per- Since the ether in the collodion evaporated quickly,
form a specific operation. Blanquart-Evrard published in it was necessary to develop the plate directly after ex-
1S51 in France the first album of views with original posure. In extreme climates of desert or mountain this
photographs, and in the following year was the first to caused considerable difficulty, particulariy since all
publish a book, Egyptc, Niibic, Palestine et Syrie, illus- preparations of the plate had to be done in total or semi-
trated with original photographs. This was an exception- darkness. Not only was it necessary for the photographer
ally attractive volume consisting of 125 brilliant prints to move with cameras, tripods, lenses, chemicals, glass
from paper negatives taken by Maxime Du Camp, a plates of various sizes to fit his cameras, distilled water,
noted writer turned photographer, who toured the mid- measuring pots and trays, he had to lug along also a
East for two years with the brilliant author and critic, darkroom; all of this paraphernalia weighed about 120
Gustave Flaubert. pounds. A tent was invariably used for developing,
The paper negative experienced one further major im- although wicker baskets, boats, railway cars, wagons, and
provement before it, like the daguerreotype and all other handcarts were at times transformed to serve this
early processes, fell into limbo with the advent of purpose.
Scott Archer's invention of the wet-collodion process. The wet-collodion process was immediately applied to
Gustave Le Gray, in 1851, immersed the paper negative portraiture. In America, where the daguerreotype held
in wax until it was completely impregnated, and then in fashionand demand longer than anywhere in Europe,
dried and sensitized the paper. The negative was now a patent was issued for "ambrotype" portraits made in
transparent; imperfections of the paper were now elimi- the same sizes as daguerreotypes and advertised as Inning
nated; and, above all, the negative could now be kept up the adxantagc of being \isiblc at all times, not, like the
to two weeks and then used dry. In addition to inventing mirror-like surface of the silver image, only in certain
the waxed-paper process, Gustave Lc Gray experimented lights.
with collodion on glass and claimed to have invented Ambrotypes (from the Greek for "imperishable")
the collodion process— but this was several months after were negative portraits on glass deliberately underex-
Scott Archer in London had announced the substitution posed to make a faint image. These were backed up
of collodion for albumen on glass and had published his with black paper or velvet or sometimes painted black.
formula in TJie Chemist, March, 1851. As the image was reversed, it was often the practice to
Scott Archer, a British sculptor and photographer, dis- lay the glass negative face-down on the paper or velvet
103
to make it appear as a positive. Wîth a sheet of glass Thebes, and fragments of architecture peering through
as a protecting co\er, the entire assembly was then placed the backed up waters of the Nile at Philae.
in an elaborate designed "union" case, uhich made it How spectacular a series of pictures! What fortitude
resemble even more closely the costlier daguerreotype. and resourcefujness it required of Francis Frith to get
Three photographers who took superb pictures \\-ith them! In the dry heat of Egypt the wet-collodion dried
the collodion process, one in the deserts of Egypt and much faster than the usual 10 minutes it took on a hot
the other two m the Alps of Switzcriand, were Francis summer da}" in England. E\er\' movement in the stifling
Frith of England and the Bisson brothers of P" ranee. darkroom tent had to be carefully husbanded. The
The Middle East was part of the Grand Tour during fumes evaporating from the ether, held inside the airless
the latter part of the nineteeth century, creating a tent, were suffocating. I'he heat of the desert outside the
constant demand for photographs of Egyptian antiqui- tent would often reach 110 degrees, and inside, at tem-
ties and \iews of the Nile River and of the Holy Land.
peratures of 130, the collodion boiled. At times the
Publishers in Europe and England sent expeditions of sudden sandstorms would pockmark the plates or ruin
photographers to appease this public demand from which them entirely. Despite all these hardships Frith secured
they reaped considerable profit. A publisher who was sufficient negatives to make a selection of extraordinary
also a talented photographer, P'rancis h\ith of London, pictures for publication the following year in a book on
in i8'56 traveled up the Xile taking pictures with \arious- Eg\pt containing original photographs and descriptions
sized cameras, one for tremendous plates measuring 16 of his experiences. From his three trips to Egypt and the
by 20 inches. Starting from the Delta, he went up the LIol)- Land Frith published a total of seven books.
river more than 800 miles to the Fifth Cataract, beyond Though he assembled many more portfolios of photo-
the present border of Egypt and the Sudan. He took graphs covering his extensive travels throughout western
magnificent pictures of the Pyramids and the Great Europe and also made twenty-four photographs illustrat-
Sphinx at Gizeh. the Temples at Karnak and Luxor, ing Longfellow's Hyperion, his finest photographs are
the monumental sculpture submerged in the sands at those he took the first years with his camera on his trips
PK.\<'Tir A I, r lIOT'M'rR A PHBE.
Advertisement for albumen paper, about i860.

Glace albumen paper

FINK, WHITE AND PEARL.
(BtTPBRlOB COLOR AKD prNIBE.)
JNo ^ Gelatine or Blood

'"::x^.^ "HjEJJST^FjR utt/'^-S'^h'îs
Will not Blister or soften in the Solutions, and is
not aflectcd by i-hangcs of temperature. No speeial

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Price, per Ream, S38.00 Per Doien, SI .OO
104
If you -want a reliable paper, send yo\ir orders to
DOUGLASS, THOMPSON & CO.,

QiTTod A. Doooum. 229 & 231 STATE STREET, CHICAGO.
Niepcc de SaintA'ictor. Photographer
Portrait of
unknown. The inventor of the albumen process,
from a photoeopy of an albumen origmal, about
1S4.S. Courtesy George Eastman House.
to the Middle East. Frith hved to be seventy-six years zero cold of the Alps and, after development, were
old, dying in 1898. washed with melted snow. Despite the imperfect coating
To some photographers using the collodion process, of the plates, which accounts for the uneven quality in
the hot light and hardships of the desert were not com- the skies, the photographs of the mountains are superbly
parable to the cold light and hardships of the mountains. designed and dramatically composed in bold areas of
It became a feat of endurance to take pictures in the black and white. The brothers repeated the ascent the
intense cold of ice and snow on windswept peaks at following year, setting out from Chamonix with guide
approximately 1 6,000 feet, in the heady atmosphere of and a band of porters to carr}- their photographic gear.
the Alps. Some of the finest piiotographs of mountain They reached the summit in the early morning, broke
scenes ever taken are the work of Louis Auguste Bisson out the equipment, heated the collodion over weak
and his brother, Auguste Rosalie. In an album owned lamps in the bitter cold, sensitized the plates, took the
by Eastman Mouse the pictures contained are all marked pictures, developed them before the collodion hardened
with a stamp in red ink on the lower right corner, "Bisson or froze, then washed the developed negatives in ice-cold
Freres." Entitled Mont Blanc and Its Glaciers, the water. From the top of the mountain they managed to
twenty-four photographs range in size from 9 inches by get three pictures, repacked their gear, and started down
15 inches to 12 inches by 17 inches. I'hey were made by the dangerous descent. Lower down the dedicated men
the brothers Bisson in i860 on a mountain-climbing ex- again assembled the camera and equipment for several
pedition when they accompanied Emperor Napoleon III more excellent views on the open glacier.
and Empress Eugenie to Switzerland. The plates were Louis Auguste Bisson was known to have made da-
coated with collodion which bareh flowed in the below- guerreotypes as early as 1840, portraying a smiling infant,
105
Portrait of George Cruikshank. Wet-collodion Portrait of Frederick Scott Archer. Ambrotype, iS^y The
process, 185^. Photographer unknown. The English inventor of the wet-collodion process, which revolutionized
caricaturist and wit. Courtesy George Eastman House. photography. Courtesy Science Museum, London.
a mourning procession, and the bridges of Paris. In the boldly emblazoned "Photographic \'an," he took pic-
first daguerreotype exhibition licld in Paris in 1844, tures of the fortifications, ships and stores, installations,
Frangois Arago singled out one of Auguste's daguerreo- battlefields, officers, and men, and some of the most
types for an award. attractive behind-the-lines canteen operators seen in any
The Bisson brothers were the sons of an artist who war, who doubled as nurses for Florence Nightingale.
specialized in heraldic painting. Louis Auguste studied The heat of the Russian peninsula in the Black Sea,
architecture and chemistr)-, but became a pupil of coupled w illi the necessary long exposures, created hard-
Dagucrre the year the process was announced and in ships in preparing the short-lixed collodion glass plates,
less than a year opened a studio with his brother. which often kept Fenton from taking photographs
It is not for their daguerreotypes, however, that the during the several hottest hours of the da\-. Despite all
Bisson brothers are remembered, nor for their land- discomforts and the sicknesses epidemic in the area,
scapes, architectural subjects, and copies of paintings that Fenton succeeded in securing more than 300 negatives in
they used to illustrate books, but rather for their fearless less than four months. A trained painter, Fenton over-
assaults on Mont Blanc when they secured a mere hand- came the obstacle of his big cameras, which prohibited
ful of exceptionally beautiful pictures. instantaneous pictures, by encompassing in his ground
Another courageous photographer, the first to cover a glass vast subjects and wide vistas creating engaging
war under fire, was Roger Fenton, who photographed the compositions. These are often dramatically theatrical, re-
Crimean War in 185;. Equipped with a darkroom wagon sembling the romantic painting of the period in mood.
106
Equally theatrical are his posed portraits of the fashion- He took a series of moose and buffalo hunters in "the
ably appareled generals. bush" seated around a tent, trappers and guides wearing
Photographers the world over turned to the use of the snowshoes in snow made of salt and white-fox fur, an
wet-plate process. The Indian Mutiny of 1857 was re- Indian boy with a loaded toboggan, all held rigid in most
corded by F. Bcato, a photographer whom Sir John complicated poses inside his Montreal studio, where he
Campbell (later to become Lord Clyde) included in his created elaborate settings praised as more realistic than
command when he stormed and subdued Lucknow and those actaially found in nature. The faster and versatile
other centers of the massacre. wet-collodion process freed the artistry and imagination
William Notman in the 1860s became internationally of photographers, who left astounding records of their
famous for his wet-plate pictures of Canadian pioneers. day throughout the entire world.
GUSTAVE LE GRAY, Scascapc. Wet-collodiou photograpli, 1S56, For the first time,
clouds, rolling waves, and a ship in motion have been stopped with "instantaneous"
photography. Le Gray was an artist, photographer, and inventor of the
waxcd-papcr process. Courtesy George Eastman House.
A. MACGLASHOx, Bullock ^\âgo^ in Melbourne, Australia. Wet-collodion
photograph, 18^6. One of the earliest photographs taken in Australia. MacGlashon
later collaborated briefly
with David Octavius Hill in Edinburgh in 1S62.
108
v^
jSr'
/
Two wood engravings of the pJwtograpIiefs pack, jo to 120

pounds of equipment, during the wet-collodion period. In the
iSyos the Scoville trademark was overprinted on the engraving
made earlier in France. Courtesy George Eastman House.
log
n. B. FIELD, Shabbona. Ambrotype, 1S57.
Portrait of the cighty-two-ycar-old Indian cliief.
Courtesv Chicago Historical Socictv.
Ambrotype with bhick backing on one half

toshow its negative-positive character.
MAXiME Du CAMP, Colossus of Abu Simbcl, Egypt.

Calotype, 18^0. Printed by Blanquart-Evrard.
Courtesv George Eastman House.
no
:y>i-S«:*=^^^^^ ^-f^';^-"^ -i^'^'i^^^
.i^,^j>î ^'I
[:asa»a»^v'^"~v
112
FRANCIS FRITH. Wct-pldte photogruplis.
above: Entrance to the "Greek Temple," Luxor, Egypt. 1S56.
opposite page, top: Assouan, Egypt. 1S56.
Both, courtesy The Art Institute of Chicago.
opposite page, bottom: Pyramid of Cheops and the Sphinx,
Gizch, Egypt. 1S5S. Courtesy George Eastman House.
113
-N
^1
FRITH. Wet-plate photographs, 1S56.

left: Hypostylc Hall, Luxor, Egypt.
below: Approach to Philac, Egypt.
Both, courtesy The Art Institute of Chicago.
"5
BissoN FRERES. Five photographs of the Alps. Wet-phitc process, i860.
Taken by the Bisson brothers M'hen they ascended Mont Blanc, accompanying
Emperor Napoleon III and the Empress Eugenie. Courtesy George Eastman House.
above: Halfway Point.
right: Entrance to the
Valley of Chamonix.
116
top: Ascension of Mont Blanc.
middle: The Range of Mont Blanc.
bottom: Vmv of the "Garden"
from Mont Blanc.
117
ROGER FENTON
Wet-plate photographs of the Crimean War, 1855.
above: The Fort at the Entrance to Balaclava Harbor.
upper right:Graves of Crimean War dead.
right: A "Cantini^re" in the Crimean War.
All, courtesy George Eastman House.
118
,,,M|TiIll»'''.^
119
120
FENTON. Wct-plate photographs, iS^^.
left: Balaclava Harbor during
the Crimean War.
opposite page: Portrait Group of Crimean War Officers.
Both, courtesy George Eastman
House.
-'i^-agînrw.;
/'/ôiogmp/.s, i8s7-s8. Taken during

T°'i?t^'''' Indian Mutmy
above: The Fish Boat and the King's Yacht on Ri\er
Jumna
right: Destroyed Barrack of
General Sir Hugh Wheeler.
Both, courtesy George Eastman House.
121
WILLIAM NOTMAN
Four photographs of the early 1 86o's. Aloutrcal, Canada,
right: Colonel Rhodes' Indian Boy.
below: Trapping the Carcajou.
opposite page, above: Moose Hunting.
opposite page, below: The Hunters' Camp.
122
123
Hesler:
Pioneer
Alexander Hesler, a pioneer photographer of Chicago,

was considered in tlie 1850s "one of America's greatest
daguerreotypists." In 1S51 he was photographing the
frontier on the upper Mississippi in the Minnesota I'erri-
tory where he took fuh-size daguerreotype plates of the

Falls of St. Anthony, Fort Snelling, and Minnehaha
Falls. It was in connection with this last picture, which
he exhibited in his Chicago studio two years later, that
his early reputation as a sensiti\'c photographer was es-
tablished nationally. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,

in a letter as well as in an autographed first edition of
Iliawatlia which he sent to Hesler, acknowledged that
the daguerreotype of Minnehaha Falls given him by his
friend Senator Charles Sumner of Massachusetts was

the inspiration for his poem Hiawatha. I'he daguerreo-
type was bought by the Senator's brother from Hesler
either in Chicago or, as one story has it, while they both
happened to meet in Minnesota.
In his journal dated June 22, 1854, Longfellow records,
"I have at length hit upon a plan for a poem on the
American Indian which seems to be the right one and
the only. It is to weave together their beautiful traditions
into a whole." On June 29 Longfellow decided to call it
Iliawatlia.
What seems possible is that Longfellow had been con-
sidering a poem on the Indian for some time and that
Lleslcr's captivating daguerreotype of the poetically
named Minnehaha Falls gave him the impetus to begin
and complete what was to become one of his most cele- for his photographs, particularly for his portraits of
brated works. children. He learned child photography by personal ex-
In 1852 the twenty-nine-year-old Hesler was using his perience, for he was the father of eight, four of whom
daguerreotype apparatus in Galena, Illinois. It had been lived to maturity. In 1857 he took the famous ruffled-
five years since learning the art in Buffalo, practicing it hair portrait of Abraham Lincoln later used as the fron-
for a couple of years in Madison, and taking portraits tispiece of the book by Nicolay and Hay. He photo-
of the Wisconsin legislature in session before his trijj graphed Lincoln in Springfield and in Chicago. His
to the Minnesota Territory. Though born in Montreal, gallery was a rendezvous for politicians and celebrities.
he was but a boy when his family moved to Racine, One wet-plate picture he took in i860 of ar. unbearded
Wisconsin, and for the rest of his life (he died in 1895] Lincoln was discarded, but fortunately prcser\ed and
he was considered a midwestern photographer, conduct- recently found. It is now in the collection of the Chicago
ing studios at various addresses in Chicago. The first of Historical Society and, by their permission, is here re-
these he established in late 1853 on La Salle Street. He produced for the first time in any book.
prospered. He opened another. He added a miniature In later years Hesler was to win fame for such photo-
painter to his staff. He learned paper photography, the graphs as Picturesque Evauston, but this was in the da\s
wet-collodion process, and the stereograph, which en- of art photography and carbon prints, which b\- then had
abled him to advertise that he could take any kind of lost the intrinsic beauty and honesty that Hesler had
photographic commission from a portrait in miniature instilled into his early works. His best photographs were
to one more than life size. taken before the Chicago Fire of 1871. Many of these
In 1855 he won an award at the American Institute early efforts survived, but unfortunately the original letter
Annual Fair held in New York. This was the first of sent bv Longfellow is believed to have been burned in the
many prizes and a\\ards he was subsequently to receive great holocaust.
ALEXANDER HESLER, The Mississippi River

Packet, Ben Campbell, Galena, Illinois.
Daguerreotype, it>^2. The daguerreotype
lias been printed in reverse so that the name
can he read. The Ben Campbell was built

in 1S51 and burned the summer of 1S60.
"^J
125
HESLER. Ambrotypes, iS^^-^S.
right: Sidewheel Steamboat Planet.
At dock in Chicago River.
above: Grain Elevator and
Freight Cars. At mouth of Chicago
River, Chicago, Illinois. Both,
courtesy Chicago Historical Society.
126
iiESLER, left: Levee at Galena, Illinois.
Daguerreotype, 1852. The U.S. mail and

passenger packet, New St. Paul was built
at New Albany, Indiana, in 1S52. The
packet Nominee, built in iS.^S, sank in the
upper Mississippi in iS^.^.
above: Panorama of Chicago. Wet-plate

photographs, about iS^8. Two of eleven
views forming a complete circular
panorama of Chicago, from dome of City
Hall and Court House, summer of 1S5S.
All, courtesy Chicago Historical Society.
127
.'n?©®^4.g> ^,
Nos. 22, 24, 25 and 27 La Salle Street,
This is the most eiU'c&ivc cstabli?hnieut of the kind in the worlJ, and includes
every branch of
DACCKItREOTVrES ANU AMBKOTVrES Of EVERY STYLE AND SIZE.
From tin' smallo't MiiiKiUire, to llic ful] lift- *uc, or full loriîzMi Portrnil. Thry are furnished
I'luin, siiiiiliir, I-m iimr'' Uantifiil ami Irultitiil tln\n Uic rinci-l ."^Lit-l Iliifirtivinga.
MINIATURES PAINTED BY MR. WINTER,

WUo 9tau')s unrivftlr-'l in hi-; iTunrh of Hil- art.
OIL POBTBAITS. OF ALL BTYLES AND SIZES. BY MR. C. MEBCK.
(Who has painteO wiili lunrkcJ jii--ccs6 in Fiiiroj^.'. tin'l stan-U nt (lie licml of liis profession,)
illuT from l.ilc or l)iigin;rrfot\ \u- .1\ K Ini "J?
gaguemolnpcs or J^mbrolupfs of ^bscnt or f cccasclJ ix'mls.

Can have Ibein COPIED of any &iz«. wilh nil the fidelity and licauty of life. The public are
rcsiK-clhilly invittd lo c:tU ami see fur llionisvhca.
,Ê&* All kinds of Ariis.!?' Daguerrcolyiif, Anibrolypf and riiOtui;rafliic Goods for srtle, at
the Juwirat prices. Orders suliciled aud promptly ullcudcd to.
A. HESLER.
HESLER. Daguerreotypes,
each 2% X 3^/4 inches, Chicago, about i8^^.
right: Portrait of Ida Ilcslcr.
above: Portrait of the Photographer and His Wife.

Botli, courtesy George Eastman House.
128
HESLER, Portrait of Abraham Lincoln.
Previously unpublished photograph, Chicago, iS6o.
129
The
Stereoscope:
Pictures in
Pairs
Sir Charles Wheatstone, in 183S, described the stereo-
scope, which he had imciitcd 111 an attempt to re-create

mechanically the natural phenomenon of binocular
\ision. In binocular vision each of our eyes receives a
different image. Tliis is important to our perception of
depth because, although our brain combines both images
into one, tliat one unified image con\e\s three-dinien-
sionalit) and distance as neither of the two fiat images
could by itself. In a \iewing device Sir Charles offered
the eyes two flat drawings of solid objects, each in per-
spective, each as it might have been seen by a different
eye, expecting to create the illusion of the third dimen-

sion. It worked none too satisfactoril}. \\ itli the au-
nouneement of photograjDhy the perfect solution to
successful stercoscopy seemed at hand. Fox Talbot made

calotypes of still lifes for Sir Charles' invention, w^hen the
shiny surfaces of the dagucrrcot_\pe were found to be
unsatisfactory.
It was 1849 that Sir Da\id Brewster invented a
111
stereoscope with two magnifying lenses separated by

2 1/2 inches, the usual distance between the eyes in human
beings; he limited the height to 3 inches, making it easy
to handle. Brewster showed a number of pictures in-
cluding a binocular portrait of his good friend Dr. John
Adamson, but could get no English optician or photog-
raphy iiouse to manufacture and market his stereoscope.
Jules Duboscq in Paris the following year undertook globe were available in shops or by mail at the nominal
the eonstruction of Brewster's stereoscope and the prepa- prices of today's picture postcards ranging from a nickel
ration of daguerreotypes to fit. to a quarter. The studio of John Mayall continued to
In the Crystal Palaee Exhibition of 1851 in London prosper by offering for sale cartcs-de-visite of Queen
the Duboseq and Soleil (Duboseq's father-in-law) stereo- Victoria and Prince Albert.
scope was exhibited with a fine collection of daguerreo- Oliver Wendell Holmes was entranced with the travel
type stereo images.The stereoscope became tremend- pictures. The details, evoking the illusion of reality,
ously popular when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert enabled him, he said, to be "a spectator to the best views
admired the display and evinced interest in this new the wodd had to offer." He wrote three articles in two
form of photography. Not only did Duboscq and Soleil years for the Atlantic Monthly, the first in 1859 entitled
in Paris manufacture the stereoscope; the demand was "The Stereoscope and the Stereograph,"— the latter word
met by photographic houses all over Europe and the coined to describe the stereopicture. Holmes urged his
United States. In Philadelphia J. F. Mascher early in readers to travel with him, by stereoscope and the
1853 received a patent for a simple folding stereoscope imagination, to the remotest parts of the world "to view
made of a leather box holding two images and two the wonders of the Nile, the ruins of Baalbeck, Ann
lenses. More than a million prism stereoscopes of the Hathaway's cottage, the rawest Western settlement and
Brewster type were sold by 1856 in England alone. The the Shanties of Pike's Peak" (photographers with their
London Stereoscope Company, which offered a wide stereoscope cameras had penetrated the frontier for
selection of stereo slides to choose from at about a photography supply houses in the East). Holmes then
quarter each, advertised, "No home without a stereo- called attention to such a uni\'ersal thing as a clothesline,
scope," and offered a viewer for sale at less than a dollar. which appears in pictures taken all over the world, and
Sir David Brewster, by 1849, had also invented the he writes, "The very things which an artist would leave
binocular camera but had not had it produced. Until out or render imperfectly, the photographer takes infinite
1853 either an ordinary camera set in a groove moved care with and so makes its illusions perfect."
sideways for the second exposure or two single cameras Holmes predicted that the stereoscope would be used
were used to make stereo pictures. The two-lens camera to record "the next European War" and that the time
with the lenses separated by 2V2 inches taking two small \\ould cume when there would be "imperial, national
pictures simultaneously was produced in 1853 by an and city stereographic libraries," and operation of ex-
English optician who was followed immediately by many change depots for slides, and he concludes, "we are look-
European manufacturers. ing into stereoscopes as pretty toys . . . but before another
Duboscq and Soleil took stereoscopic daguerreotypes generation has passed away, it will be recognized that
with their new camera, among them a still life of optical a new epoch in the history of human progress dates from
equipment consisting of an hourglass, binoculars, lens, the time when 'He Who ne\er but in uncreated light.
telescope, globe, planetary system, telegraph instrument, Dwelt from eternity Took a pencil of fire from the
. . .
an alphabet in the round and, in the lower right-hand hand of tlie angel standing in the sun and placed it in
corner, their Brewster stereoscope. the hand of a mortal'."
In 1855 Warren Thompson, an American, had already Holmes by 1861 said that he had viewed a hundred
been in Paris at least six years while working in photog- thousand slides and it took only twenty-five to give one
raphy. Me had received an award in 1849 at the exhi- a headache. He designed and made a more practical
bition held at the Academy of Sciences and in 1851 his stereoscope instrument, a hand viewer consisting of a
daguerreotype of an eclipse of the sun had been officially light, portable horizontal board slotted to receive the
praised. Using the new binocular camera 1855 he in stereograph slides and a small handle below to hold the
made a series of stereoscopic daguerreotypes of which device up to the eyes. Some few small modifications were
three magnificent, penetrating portraits survive: a lady made in the history of the stereoscope— such as the
china painter, a hunter with flower in buttonhole hold- sliding carrier- but the basic design for the most practi-
ing a dead hare, and a pensive man with head in hand. cal stereoscope Holmes gave to the world.
By i860 the London Stereographic Company slogan E. & H. T. Anthony Company of New York and
was practically a reality; few homes were without a stereo- Langenheim Brothers of Philadelphia commissioned
scope and a batch of slides. Hundreds of thousands of photographers to take not only \icws but pictures of
stereographic slides depicting nearh e\cry corner of the events of the da\ , which thc\ then sold along with those
131
they imported from Europe. Untold numbers were the next two decades it was again re\'ived for several
bought. Hohnes's suggestion to develop public stereo \ears. The Holmes stereoscope was now made of alumi-
libraries was never aetcd on. It is in our generation that num and, again after the turn of the century until Wodd
these stereoscopic cards are considered of historic im- War I, the stereo was popular at various times. All photo-
portance and are now being collected. graphic processes as they developed were turned to the
Interest in the stereoscope went through several waves. making of stereographs. This is true today, with the fool-
The first popularity of the later fifties was superseded by proof special stereo cameras, electric viewers, and the
the carte de visite, a fabulous fashion of the sixties. In latest of fast color film.
EDWARD ANTHONY, Broadwav, New York.

Stereograph card, 1859. From the
series: "Anthony's Instantaneous Views."
CourtesY Geonie Eastman House.
right: A fancy Brewster-type stereoscope, made in England about

18^0. The
was opened to view stereos on metal plates. The
lid
bottom was opened arid the top lid closed to view stereo transparencies
on glass; the stereoscope was then held up to the light.
center: Daguerreotype case with lenses for viewing stereo pair. Patented
by Stull, Philadelphia, iS^^. Both, courtesy George Eastman House.

far right: Folding pocket stereoscope, 1855, made in England by
W. E. Kilburn. J. F. Mascher, Philadelphia, patented the identical
construction early in 185^. Courtesy Gcrnshcim Collection, London.
132
FERRiER AND soLiER, Paris Boulevard. Detail of one part of
a positive stereographic pair on glass, i860. An extraordinary early
instantaneous photograph. Courtesy George Eastman House.
133
IPI»
?^
i^^
^•^
i!
w
I.
STAFF CAMERAMAN, E. & H. T. ANTHONY,

View of Broadway, New York.
One part of a stereographic pair, about i860.
'.> Collection of Dr. G. L. Howe, Rochester.
A\i Courtesy George Eastman House.
135
kv'
A jeweled stereoscope with Arabic inscription set in lid,
t'^m made by Emmanuel Loudon, 1S62. Courtesy Gernsheim Collection.
'^^^
,i»*-'"=' *JBi*-7i.:,:
right: Oliver WcndcWUohncs. Wet-plate photograph, iS6^.

Photographer unknown. Courtesy George Eastman House.
far right: The Holmes stereoscope, manufactured by Joseph L. Bates,
Boston, 1865. Courtesy Bcitinuant Newliall. Rochester.
136
Stereoscopic daguerreotype made by Duboscq and Soleil, Paris optical
firm that first manufactured and marketed the stereoscope invented by
Sir David BrcM'ster (one is shown in lower right corner). Their product,
purchased by Queen Victoria at London Crystal Palace iSî, started
world-wide interest in stereophotography. Courtesy George Eastman House.
137
138
WARREN THOMPSON, American. Three
stereoscopic daguerreotypes, Paris, 1S55.
above: Lady China Painter.
opposite page, top: Pensive Man.
opposite page, below: The Hunter
Who Brought His Props. \
Courtesy George Eastman House. 1
One part of a comic stereographic pair.

About i860, France. Photographer unknown.
ANTHONY. Stereograph, i S59-70.
From the series:
"Anthony's Instantaneous Vfeivs."

top: Fourth of July Regatta, New York.
center: Fourth of July Regatta,
Preparing for the Start.
Botli, collection Dr. G. L. Howe,
Rochester, and courtesy
George Eastinan House.
bottom: Looking up Broad\va\
from the Corner of Broome Street.
Courtesy Museum of
the City of New York.
140
top: UNDERWOOD AND UNDERWOOD,
publishers, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt
of the Rough Riders. Stereogruph,
about i8g8. Plwtographer unhiown.
Courtesy George Eastman House,
center: Interior of C. A. Marsh's
Drugstore, 3d Avenue at 125th Street,
New York City. Stereoscope,
1S65. Photographer unknown.
Courtesy Museum of
New York,
the City of
bottom: W. E. Bowman of Ottawa,
Illinois, and his Photographic
Wagon. Abouf 1S70.
Collection Dr. G. L. Howe.
141
Nadar: The
//
Titian of
Pliotograpliy''
Many painters, printmakers, and sculptors in France

reacted violently against photography and its incredible
popularity. Condemnations were showered upon it in
press articles and caricatures. Not only had it become an

economic threat to the artist; its claims as an art torni
were resented.
Baudelaire in the Revue Franqaise, 1859, wrote "We
must see that photography is again confined to its sole
task, which consists in being the servant of science

and art, but the ver)' humble senant like t\ pograplu and
stenography which have neither created nor improved
literature."
What a far cry from the triumphant shriek of Paul

Delaroche on first seeing a daguerreotype, "From today
painting is dead!"
The camera was a threat. The purpose of art was being
changed by the public's demands for more e.xact like-
nesses, more perfect rendition of detail. I'he camera

supplied the people with what they wanted.
Good artists domesticated the camera. Corot said that
the lens made him view nature dilTercntly. He used the
new technique, combining it with his work m the graphic
arts to create a new kind of print, the c/fc7ie verre. He
covered a sheet of glass either with black paint or w ith
albumen, uhich he exposed to sunlight to make opaque.

With a st\lus he then scratched a design on the coated
He had hit upon the same idea as had Da\ id Octavius
surface of the glass and used the finished state as a nega-
tive. He then printed an entire edition on sensitized Hill: to photograph his subjects before drawing their
photographic paper, respecting the finished product as he caricatures. Nadar's great portraits of the literati and the
would his etchings. The cliche-vene process was prac- celebrated appeared not as caricatures but as perfect re-
ticed also by Delacroix, Daubigny, Rousseau, Millet, and productions of his original photographs, in the expressive
others, but Corot seems to have been more attuned to volumes of Galerie de Contemporain.
the process than the others; he finished his si.xty-sixth Nadar opened his own photography studio on the
plate on his seventy-eighth birthday, though none were Boulevard des Capucines. Writers, artists, and composers
sold during his lifetime. of note found the atmosphere so cordial that they met
It was the unimaginative artists, who painted the there regulady. Nadar photographed them all: Manet,
superficial appearances of things rather than their emo- Corot, Dumas, Monet, Baudelaire, Georges Sand,
tional responses and interpretations of nature, who found Delacroix, Sarah Bernhardt, Daumier, Dorci, Beriioz,
in the camera a crutch and aid, often abandoning pencil Wagner, and an uncountable number of others. He in-
and brush for the heavily detailed pictures they could
variably signed his prints, as an artist would his etchings
make with chemicals and lens. These inept artists left

or lithographs.
memorable work medium. It was the realistic, sharply delineated daguerreotype

little in either
Too few goodartists turned to photography and used

of an earlier day that he emulated rather than the work
it Those who did are remembered as artists

creatively. of later photographers who were striving for the fuzzy,
with the camera. "Nadar," pseudonym for Gaspard Felix hazy effects dear to the Impressionists. The Impressionist
Tournachon, was such an artist. Daumier caricatured painters were as much obsessed with sunlight and the
photography in his lithographs, ridiculing it as spiritless

out-of-doors as the most enthusiastic photographer. The
solid objects occupying seen reality the painters trans-
and satirizing the bourgeoisie for their attitude toward
formed with their palette of misty color into a hazy,
the new invention. Nadar, however, he respected as a
man and as an artist, for, despite the mechanical quality created unreality of shimmering beauty. The public re-
of the camera, Nadar concentrated on face and gesture jected their work, as did the academic painters and their
and emphasized the psychological characteristics of his coterie of critics.

Nadar turned over his studio for the first Impressionist
subjects. He made the pose exj^ress the character of a
subject as much as did the face, and he made every Exhibition 111 1874. It took daring and courage to flaunt
salient feature of body and face stand out by permitting the official Salon and the press, but this action was typi-
no props or backgrounds to interfere with the person.

cal of the Radical Republican, Nadar, who fifteen years
How extraordinar)' were the photographs of Nadar is

eadier had refused to follow Napoleon III with his
attested by the fact that the great French classicist

balloon photography because he had not believed m the
painter, Ingres, sent to Nadar every person whose like-

Emperor's Franco-Prussian War.
ness he wanted. According to Ingres's biographer, E. Nadar was the first aerial photographer, taking pictures
de Mireeourt, Ingres painted his remarkable portraits successfully from a balloon m 1856. His first efforts
from these photographs without having a need for the failed, for the gas seeping out of the balloon caked the
collodion on his plates. Nadar had to coat and develop
subject to be present. Artists called Nadar "the Titian
the wet-collodion plates, crouching in a little darkroom
of Photography."
set up in the swinging, lurching basket of the balloon.
Nadar came to the camera by way of the theatre; he
was a playwright. As an artist he was a well-respected He took a dozen views of Paris. In 1863 he built the
painter of portraits. As a journalist he worked with wodd's largest balloon, which measured 90 feet in di-
Daumier as a caricaturist for Charivari. At the age of ameter and was named "The Giant." He tried to initiate
Nadar was the darling of the boulevards, aerial passenger service within France, but on its second
thirty, in 1850,
celebrated for his wit; but neither theatre, salon, nor ascent The Giant lost control and came down in
journal offered him sufficient livelihood. Though prej- Germany; the passengers were dragged for miles before
udiced against photography, like most artists, he joined the basket caught and held.
his brother Adrien's studio in 1852, but the partnership The siege of Paris was an ideal opportunity for Nadar
soon ended in the law courts. In 1854 Nadar published and aerial photography to play an important role. On
September 18, 1S70, the capital was left without any
Le Pantheon Nadar, a huge lithograph composed of 280
means of communication with the outside wodd.
caricatures; this was the first in a proposed set of four.
143
Through Nadar's instigation the balloon Neptune was pictures with artificial light. He took electric-light pho-
aloft within less than a week. Prussian guns could not tographs of the catacombs and sewers of Paris in about
reach the heights at which the balloon soared. During 20-minute exposures as early as i860.
the 131-day siege, fifty-five balloons left Paris with Nadar lived to be ninety jears old, dying in igio.
passengers, mail, and carrier pigeons. 'I'he birds returned Thirty years earlier he turned o\cr his studio to his son
with microscopicalh' photographed messages on thin Paul, who continued pseudonym and
to use his father's
collodion film— a special process conceived by M. Dagron made it officially his for Le
own. Together they created
—rolled into minute tubes and affixed to their tails. Journal Ulustre a feature which has since become stand-
When the pigeons arrived in their Paris dovecots, the ard in photojournalism. Paul, acting as cameraman with
cylinders were opened and the film was placed between a stenographer to record the ensuing conversation verba-
two sheets of glass and projected onto a screen. This tim and with Nadar as questioner, interviewed the
process of enlarging a picture by projection worked on French scientist Marie Eugene Chcvrcul on the eve of
the same principle as the eighteenth century's magic his 101st birthday in 1886. The photographs showed the
lantern. The carrier pigeon-balloon post kept Paris in enthusiastic response of the aged man to Nadar's queries
contact with the world all during the siege. on "The Art of Living." The stenographer's notes served
Nadar was also one of the first photographers to take as captions for the original pictures.
A. GREviN, Nadar the Great. Wood engraving, about 1870.

Friend of artists, many who came to
boulevardier, popular with the
his studio for portraits, Nadar was a subject for cartoons and caricatures
in the press of his day. Courtesy George Eastman House, Rochester.
NAJIAII LC GHA1ID(I>;
144
NADAR, Portrait of Edouard Manet. After a Woodbury reproduction
of a wet-late photograph. Nadar's real name was Gaspard Felix
Tournachon. A contemporary said to him: "Your name isn't
Tournachon—it's 'tour-nadar.' You stick in a stiletto and
turn Tournachon liked the word, and took its latter half
it."
for a pseudonym. From Nadar, Galeric contcmporaine, 1870.
NADAR, Portrait of Sarah Bcrnliardt. 1859. Both

photos this page, courtesy George Eastman House.
145
NADAR. Four photographs, all courtesy George
Eastman House.
Portrait of George Sand. After a Woodburytype reproduction
of a wet-plate photograph. From Galerie contemporaine, 1870.
Portrait of Charles de Lesseps.

Wet-plate plwtograph, 1S60.
146
Portrait of Franz Liszt, iSS6. Portrait of AlexanderDumas.
After a Woodburytype reproduction
of a wet-plate photograph.
From Galcrie contemporaine, i8~o.
147
COROT, Lc Petit Berger. Negative and positive of cliche
verrc, about 1S5S. One of the sixty-six he made in this
medium. Glass was coated with paint or albumen; the drawing

was scratched in with a stylus; the design formed in the emulsion M'as
used as a negative; an entire edition was then printed on photographic

paper. Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sew York.
148
NADAR, Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot. Wet-plate
photograph, about iS6o. Courtesy George Eastman House.
149
NADAR, ekvanl la Pholo^raphie a la kuteur de I Ar
iiONORE DAUMiER, Nadar Elevating Photography to a High Art.

Lithograpli, May, Shows Nadar as an aerial plwtographer,
1S62.
and suggests how
free Nadar was from the usual earthbouiid
photography studios spreading all over Paris. Nadar did not take
Ins pictures from a tripod as shown; he either attached the camera
to the side of the basket or put the lens through the bottom.
XAD\R, Portrait of Ilonore Daumicr. 1S77. After aWoodburytype

reproduction of wet-plate photograph. From Galerie contemporaine.
Both photos this page courtesy George Eastman House.
^ ifc^g..
150
NADAR, Aerial View of Paris. Taken from the
Print from wet-plate negative, 1S59.
swinging basket of a balloon over Paris. Courtesy Gernsheim Collection, London.
'^:
«
X\^\
PAUL NADAR, M. Chcvrcul. Wet-pldtc photographs, i8S6.
The first photo interview. M. Chevreul, on the eve of
his loist birthday, talks with Nadar on "the art of living
a Inindred rears." Courtesy George Eastman House.
\^. '
-SB;
152
153
The Ubiquitous
Carte deVisite
The career of Etienxe Carjat (1S2S-1906) ran

strangely parallel with Nadar's. Carjat was also an artist,
a caricaturist, and a writer as well as the editor of the
journal Le Boulevard, which flourished for several years
in the 1860s. In 1S62 Dauniicr's caricature of Nadar
taking aerial views of Paris from a halloon appeared in
Carjat's publication.
Carjat ran a photostudio as a hobby, taking time from
his other interests to photograph celebrities— famous
men and \\omen he met in his role as editor and dis-
tinguished people who were his personal friends. Like
Nadar, he attracted people in all walks of life through

the warmth of his personality. Unlike Nadar, he had no
assistants in his studio. He therefore produced fewer
portraits, but many of these are considered finer expres-
sions of the sitter's character than any others.
Another figure who enjoyed a considerable reputation
in the Second Empire as photographer and sculptor was
Adam-Salomon (1811-1881). Photography was part-
time work with him also; he used the camera for extra
income and alwa}S charged the highest prices. His
photographs were remarkable for tiieir lighting, which
he used to model the planes of the face, creating deep
shadows and highlighted ridges to echo the effect of
modeling in cla\'.
Adam-Salomon also made photographs that dcliber-
1
ately resembled sevcntccnth-ccntury Dutch portraits. Emperor Napoleon III and the Empress appointed him
These chiaroscuro photographs, in wliich the head and oflScial court photographer.
hands compose the white areas, patently emulate an- Disderi earned millions and he spent millions. He
other form of art. The closer his approximation the more bought houses and horses, elegant mansions, and stables
praise his photographs received from critics of both art of thoroughbreds. He was a lavish host; he acquired
and photography. The highest praise a photograph could princely habits. In 1866 the insatiable demand for cartes
receive was that it resembled a painting. With Salomon de visite ceased as suddenly as it began. Disderi thought
photography went off on a tangent. It took more than up novelties to revive his flagging business or touted
fifty years to bring the art of photography, a graphic art tricks in photography which already existed, such as
in its own right, back to the honest purpose in which pictures on silk and ceramics. Nothing worked. He could
the camera does its best work. not compete with the cheap competition that he had
A little-known photographer of high caliber was Pierre created; the price of the carte de visite had been driven
Petit, in the i86os considered with Nadar and Carjat in down to $1 a dozen.
the front rank of his profession. Petit was born in 1S25; Four years later the Franco-Prussian War caused the
by the time he was seventeen he was an accomplished dethronement of the Emperor. The Second Empire
dagucrrcotypist and, by i860, in partnership with a man collapsed and so did Disdcri's entire fortune. He was
named Trinquart, he was conducting a studio titled bankrupt. He went to the Riviera. He walked the beach
'Thotographie de Deux-Mondes." It was said that he at Nice, it was said, with a camera, taking pictures of
stored there 229,000 negatives he had taken in less than tourists for a pittance. Through the lens he saw visions
twenty years. Petit was appointed official photographer of his astounding days in Paris. He died with his dreams,
of the Paris World's Fair of 186S, and he was commis- a pauper, forgotten; it must have been in the summer
sioned to photograph the raising of the Statue of Liberty. of 1890, for he was not seen on the beach again.
Portrait photographers, in order to compete with The carte de visite revolutionized photography. Mil-
lithographers and etchers, tried to make ever larger and lions of people, as the craze swept England and America,
more imposing photographs. In 1857 Adolphe Eugene went to have their portraits taken. Studios also sold cards
Disderi (1819-1890?) patented in Paris the "carte de of the royal family and of the famous. Tens of thousands
visite," a camera with four lenses that made eight small of cards were sold of the pictures of Queen Victoria and
photographs measuring 3V4 by 2^^ inches on a full-size the Prince Consort taken by Mayall in 1861. Cartes of
plate of 51/2 by 8V2 inches. These eight photographs, celebrities enjoyed the same kind of popular sale in the
each on an average-size 4-by-2Vl!-ineh visiting card, sold United States.
for about $4, less than half the price a portrait photog The carte de visite was a standardized, stereotyped
rapher usually charged for a single full-size print. kind of picture. Most often a full figure, the picture
Disderi was a colorful, self-confident, publicity-con- showed a person standing next to a column, or a table
scious salesman who, though uneducated, did things piled high with books, in front of a heavy, velvet drapery.
with a flourish that captivated commoner and king. The The head was so small in relation to the card, about
14 inch to the 3 V2 or 4 inches of the total length of card,
Emperor Napoleon III, marching at the head of his
troops to Italy for another of his "prestige wars" with that it required but a second to hold the pose and was
Austria, stopped his army, which waited on the street therefore most often a likeness in focus. The photograph,
while he and his staff walked into Disdcri's studio to sit
however, usually revealed little of the subject's character
for carte-de-visite portraits. The story spread. Immedi- through lighting or pose. At the prices charged no indi-
had have vidual attention could be given the small carte de visite.
ately every person in Paris to carte-dc-visitc
photographs made by Disderi. What a showman! Disderi There had to be some way to save the untold thou-
rose to the occasion. He dressed extravagantly. His wide sands of cards which piled up from family and friends
full beard he draped over satin blouses of shrieking colors who either called and left cards or exchanged them on
which he bound at the waist with enormous belts; below, birthdays and holidaxs. The answer was the carte-de-
he wore short hussar trousers. Dressed in this outlandish

visite album. Some albums sold at nominal prices and
costume, Disderi took pictures in his studio with dra- others were very elaborate, bound in fine, tooled, ex-
matic, imperious gestures. The crowds loved it; they pensive leather. The album became a required feature,
flocked to his studio. He opened a second studio in the perfect conversation piece for every 'Victorian parlor
southern France and still others in London and Madrid. and drawing room.
155
MULNiER, Jules Brcton, French Painter. From Woodburytype
reproduction of M'et-plate plwtograph, i S82. From Galerie
contemporainc. Courtesy George Eastman House, Rochester.
ETiENNE CARjAT, Portrait of Charles Baudelaire. From
Woodburytype of wet-plate photograph, 186^. From Nadar,
Galcrie eontemporaine, 1870. Courtesy George Eastman House.
CARJAT, Puvis do Clia\'anncs, French Painter. From

Woodburytype reproduction of wet-plate photograph, itiyS. From
Galerie eontemporaine. Courtesy George Eastman House.
157
^ ^
The carte-de-visite camera patented by Disderi in
18^^. Eight
exposures were obtained on a 61/2 x SV2 inch plate. The
print
was then cut up and mounted on cards approximately 4x2 V2 inches,
the size of a visiting card. Courtesy George
Eastman House.
159
Disderi and the strange garb he affected. Wood
engraving caricature by Van der Acter, which Disderi
used as an advertisement in the Paris journals
of iS6i. Courtesy GcrnsJicim Collection, London.
A rare cartc-dc-\isite album by various photographers

of the late i8ôs and early iS6os in France. Opposite is
the page to which the album is opened, with four

photographs of the Emperor Napoleon III. The two at top
are by Disderi, bottom left is by Mayer and Pierson, and
bottom right by Alpert. Courtesy George Eastman House.
i6o
ii\\\ A
/ /
r J
?.»:' PATENT
3 C
left: JOHN MAYALL, Oiiceo Victoria and the Prince Consort
London, iS6i. Carte-dc-visite. Courtesy GernsJieim Collection,

below: Portrait of Queen Victoria. Photograpli on silk, about 1866.
Photographer unknown. Courtesy George Eastmaii House.
Another page from the carte-de-visite album,

upper left: Delacroix, by pierre petit
upper right: Ingres, by disderi
lower left: Horace \êrnet, by disderi
lower right: Courbct, by pierre petit
Courtesv George Eastman House.
163
Album card inviting contributions, 186^.
Courtesy Gcrnshcim Collection.
Lithograph props by R. de Moraine, which photographers

used in attempting to revive business after the cartc-de-visite
craze suddenly stopped. Courtesy George Eastman House.
164
A French fashion plate of i8^j, featuring a camera. Lack of cliaracter
in themodels and the proportion of head to body shown here became
the ideal of the cartc-dc-visite. Courtesy George Eastman House.
'3k
165
Julia Mari>aret
CI
Cameron:
Portraits
Oiitof-Focus
Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-1879) was endowed

with a combination of eecentrieities, energy, and inspira-
tion that prompted her to photograph great Vietorian
personahtics and enabled her to reflect their spirit, power,
and character better than any portraitist. She concen-
trated on mind as
their heads, reveahng their depths of
she revealed her own depth of feeling about them. Titans
of their day they were — among them Tennyson, Darwin,
Browning, Longfellow, Sir John Herschel, George Fred-
erick Watts, Anthony Trollope, and Thomas Carlylc.
It seemed ludicrous; her "head hunting" was without
parallel and was not confined to celebrities. She would
pursue perfect strangers, "kidnap" them, make them

pose stock still, without a head long as 7
rest, for as
minutes, and repeat the torture again and again until she
was satisfied. Once Robert Browning, admonished to
wait for her return and overwhelmed by her command-
ing personality, sat for three hours while she busied
herself in the darkroom.
It was the soul of the subject she was after. The camera
provided her with the ideal instrument to record the
facial characteristics of her intellectual heroes. Her studio
was her gallery of the sanctified; she created ikons to
worship. Her photographs of plain people were compara-
tively uninteresting, merely records containing little
more than fuzzy likenesses of persons she obviously did

not worship.
Mrs. Cameron was never known to photograph a lady at Little Holland House in London, where Watts
landscape. The forms of the land and of grow ing things Cameron's sister and brother-m-law, Mr.
lived with Mrs.
did not satisfy her as did portrait subjects as a vehicle and Mrs. Thoby Prinsep. Watts was the original "man
for expression of her feelings. However, her illustrations who came to dinner": invited for two weeks, he stayed
of Tennyson's romantic poems and of her own complex more than twenty years. Then, to prove how much he
allegories pleased her artistic sensibilities. She learned enjoyed their company, he built a house on the Isle of
illustration from her mentor, George Frederick Watts; Wight, near Mr. and Mrs. Cameron; the Prinseps stayed
her allegorical photographs, like Watts's allegorical there with him for an additional several years. Watts
paintings, were tasteless and sentimental. sought protection against loneliness and melancholia in
Her forte, as we see it today, was the direct, close-up the family life of others. Mrs. Cameron's sister, Mrs.
portrait. She permitted no retouching, no enlarging; only Prinsep, conducted m Little Holland House a literary
contact prints were made from her enormous wet plates and artistic salon around the painter, whose afl[airs she
which measured 8 by lo or 12 by 15 inches. A Herculean managed, and made a red-doored studio available to him
task, hardly a proper one for a strange, wealthy woman in her house. She arranged the marriage of the forty-
not too particular about her dress and habits— often there sevcn-year-old Watts to the sixteen-year-old Ellen Terry,
were thumbprints, dust spots, cracked glass negatives, a marriage which lasted long enough for Mrs. Cameron
and editions of uneven prints. to take one of her most beautiful photographs.
She was a dedicated artistic "primitive" with a camera. Watts was the major influence on Mrs. Cameron as a
Her photographs are out of focus, not deliberately soft photographer. Aspiring to become England's Michelan-
focus— this was later to become the vogue in photography gelo, he had become a philosopher with a paint brush; he
—but literally not sharp because the lenses she used moralized in frescoes on public walls and in tremendous
could not be made to photograph sharp details. Had she romantic canvases. These paintings were really bad litera-
compromised with the size of the camera and substituted ture. Like the Pre-Raphaelites, Watts believed "a picture
a smaller one, had she pulled back from the subject so after all is but an open book where those who have eyes
that his every movement and tremor would not have to see can read strange matters." Watts was considered
registered, or had she concentrated all the light possible to be not only a painter but a prophet and teacher who
on the subject rather than the small amount of top light painted the ultimate truth.
she permitted to enter her small glass studio, the photo-

The him for lengthy literary mes-
Victorians revered
graphs would have been sharper and the sitter would not sages Death Crowning Innocence,
on such themes as
have been subjected to the misery of such lengthy expo- and When Poverty Comes in at the Door, Love Flies out
had she had any consideration either for sub- at the Window- small ideas and puny emotions, blown
sures. But,
ject or herself, she would not ha\c been Julia Margaret up through saccharine scntimentalism.
Literary ideas replaced plastic ideas for Watts; and he
Cameron.
Her lavish idolatry of eminent poets, painters, and instilled this conception in Mrs. Cameron. Her photo-
writers she disclosed in her portraits. She presented what graphic allegories are no more respected or remembered
she felt were their finest attributes. In each the face is

today than those painted by Watts. She posed and pho-
unsmiling; it fills the plate. She was intent on securing a tographed such allegorical subjects as Faith, Hope and
lasting expression that she considered beautiful— by Cliarity, Peace, Love and Faith. Watts praised these ef-
which she also meant spiritual. She rarely photographed forts, not her portraits.
the body or hands of these men. She followed no one's Mrs. Cameron photographed her children (she had
style. She was attacked persistently for her bad technique six )
, her grandchildren, her maids, her sisters, and her
by critics and members of the Royal Photographic So- nephews whenever celebrities or strangers were not avail-
ciety. Nothing fazed her. She persisted in taking immor- able, and she used them as subjects for her photographic
tal photographs of men's heads. illustrations of 'I'cnnyson's poetry. In 18-6 she moved to
Her philosophy, akin to Carlyle's hero worship, seems the Isle of Wight, in Freshwater Bay, to be near Tenny-
to coincide with the early aims of George Frederick son, then Poet Laureate.Her friendship with him and his
Watts, the celebrated Victorian painter. In his early por- famih- had started in the same way as many friendships
traits, many them sensitive, ^^'atts attempted to paint
of she had sought. She would begin with a gift of an Indian
the soul. Mrs. Cameron knew paintings and painter well, shawl, then several da\ s later another shawl, then carved
years before she took up the camera. She met him regu- ivories, jewelrv, and bric-a-brac— all this from India
167
where she had been born and where slic liad married a cess of Germany and the Princess Royal of England."
well-to-do jurist and plantation o\\ ner; she had come to Photography was competing \\ ith the brush and using
England with an inexhaustible supply of silks and arti- moti\'ation detrimental to both.
facts from the East. Though her gifts may have embar- In the latter part of 1875 Mr. Cameron suddenly de-
rassed the recipients, even the most irritated e\entually cided to return to Ce}lon. The story goes that one day
gave and counted on the friend-
in, sat for his portrait, he borrowed a son's o\ercoat and strolled down to the
ship of the ebullient Mrs. Cameron. Tenn\son and his sea, the first time he had left the grounds of his house in
poems were her inspiration for allegoric and illustrative twelve years, and the sight of the ocean filled him with a
photography. Mrs. Cameron's first volume, containing yearning to see Ceylon again and to be with his two sons
twelve photographs illustrating Tennyson's Idylls of the who were managing his plantations.
King and Other Poems, appeared in 1875; a little later a It was a perfect departure for Mrs. Cameron. Quite
second \olume with an additional twelve photographs incongruously she tipped the railroad-station porters with
was published. Both received critical acclaim in the press portraits of Carhle and Tennyson, saying that she had
"as they had been executed at the Laureate's own request no more money. Some of these pictures are still to be
and dedicated by gracious permission to the Crown Prin- seen on the station walls.
HENRY HERSCHEL HAY CAMERON,

artrait of Julia Margaret Cameron, iSyo.
Taken by Mrs. Cameron's son. Comtesy

Gernsheim Collection, London.
X68
JULIA MARGARET CAMERON
above: Portrait of niomas Carlyle,
about 1 S6y. Out of focus, plate cracked
and spotted. Characteristic of Mrs.
Cameron's equipment arid technique.
right: Portrait of Charles Darwin, 1869.
Both, courtesy The Art Institute
of Chicago, Stieglitz Collection.
169
above: Portrait of Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
June 3, 1869.
right: Portrait of Ilenrj'Wadsworth Longfellow,
1S69. Longfellow visited Tennyson on
the Isle of Wight, and was prevailed upon by
the insistent Airs. Cameron to sit for his
portrait. One of the rare portraits in which
she included more than the head.
opposite page: Portrait of Sir John Herschel.
Wet-plate photograph, 1S67. The pioneer in
photography and noted astronomer at the age of
seventy-five. One of Airs. Cameron's

greatest photographs.
All, courtesy The Art Institute
of Chicago, Stieglitz Collection.
170
"^
'% ^
:*^
'
-W^Tt*
.^
'""mfm-.f
L-*'
<:*•
Terry, 1864.
JULIA MARGARET CAMERON, Portrait of Ellen
married
The famous actress at age sixteen, then recently
tothe painter G. F. Watts, more than thirty years her

senior. Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art.
172
above: The Foolish Virgins. Allciôricdl photognipli, about 1865.
above left: Summer Days. About 1865. An early pliotograph of
servants and friends' children. Both, courtesy George Eastman House.
left: Portrait of Joseph Joachim, 1S6S. The famous
violinist, to whom Brahms dedicated his violin concerto.
Courtesy The Art Institute of Chicago, Stieglitz Collection.
173
Rejiander,
Robinson
and 'Ai t^'
I'liotoj^raphy
The art of the sentimental \'iciorian age was the

idealized storytelling genre or allegorical painting, as be-
loved in the academics of the Continent as it was in
England.
Thoroughly grounded in this literary atmosphere of art
was Oscar G. Rejlander (1813-1875) of Sweden, who

studied painting and sculpture at the Academy in Rome.
His subsequent stay in Paris served to confirm his ap-
proach to painting; his portraits glorified the sitter extra-
vagantly and his complicated allegories became ever

more inxohed.
He went to England when he married an English-
woman and decided to pursue photography for a liveli-
hood; but he continued to paint portraits sporadically

and several of these were exhibited at the Royal Academy
over the years.
Telling about his conversion to photography, Rejlan-
der writes that he took all five lessons in one afternoon,
the ealotype, the waxed-paper process, and a half-hour on
the collodion process. He then writes, "It would have
saved me a year or more of trouble and expense had I
attended carefully to the rudiments of the art for a

month."
Despite this inadequate training in technique, Rejlan-
der opened a studio. \\ hat he had learned of art and
particulady the keen eye he had developed in observing
unique facets of character in people benefited him greatly Rejlandcr continued with combination printing, but
in photography when he emulated with the camera the never again attempted such a complex picture as The
vast theatrical and literary allegories he had made with Two Paths of Life. The Head of St. John the Baptist he
the brush. made from only two negatives and The Dream (i860)
In 1856 he made a composite print, 31 by 16 inches, from one straight negative. This was a strange allegory
from thirty different negatives. It was an immediate sen- charged with Freudian meanings.
sation. This allegorical picture. The Two Paths of Life, Five years later he was still enmeshed in the pictorial
represents a venerable sage introducing two young men aims of "high-art" photography. Ever the experimenter,
into life. The serene, philosophical one turns to religion, however, he developed the double exposure and the pho-
charity, industry, and the other virtues, while the second tomontage, superimposing one negative on another to
young man rushes madly into the pleasures of the world, make a modern-appearing multiple-exposure photograph
t\pificd by various figures representing "Gambling, entitled Hard Times. From these experiments he realized
Wine, Licentiousness and other Vices, ending in Suicide, considerable recognition but little profit. His main source
Insanity and Death." In the front center of the picture of income for the rest of his life was from making por-
is a figure of "Repentance with the Emblem of Hope." traits and from supplying artists with nude and clothed
Thus was this allegory described when it was first shown. studies of adults and children. These pictures of children,
Praise was heaped on the print, although in Scotland convincingly enacting his poses and embodying the emo-
it was refused admittance in an exhibition for being too tion he tried to convey, found praise from the Reverend
nude. Show n the same year at the Art Treasures exhibi- Charles L. Dodgson— Lewis Carroll— who came to study
tion in Manchester, it was purchased by Queen \'ictoria. with Rejlander. The creator of Alice in Wonderland
Neither sensual, natural, nor moral, the allegory ap- took some unforgettable pictures of artists, fellow pro-
pealed to the Victorian romantic, who was literary- fessors, and particularly of children. Rejlander made a
minded. Had Hogarth been alive and painting his epic sensitive photograph of Dodgson holding a big lens and
Marriage a la Mode, or his Harlot's Progress, his work a focusing cloth.
would not have been stomached. It was a long time before photography stopped looking
Rcjlander's combination photographs made up of arti- to painting for guidance. Henry Peach Robinson (1830-
ficial poses and contrived scenes from retouched nega- 1901), a talented painter who turned photographer in
tives, with desired effects painted in and undesired effects the year 1858, followed Rejlander into the vehement con-
painted out, were loved in their day and still hold the troversy over combination printing by exhibiting a pic-
"arty" photographer enthralled. ture, Fading Away, made from five negati\es. This was a
The Impressionists were rediscovering nature and the picture of a dying girl seated in a chair and sadly watched
effect of changing light on form and color while the by and mother while father looks out of an open
sister
artist-photographer lost himself in the false art prevailing window; it had printed on its mat a verse from Shelley's
in the Victorian studio. Queen Mab,
If Rejlandcr had had fast film and a candid camera in
Must then that peerless form
his hands, he might have left a penetrating and valid
Which love and admiration cannot view
record of his da)-. His artistic training caused him to seek
Without a beating heart; those azure veins.
and register the intensity of emotional feeling he ob-
Which steal like streams along a field of snow;
served in the swarming streets of London. The slower
That lovely outline, which is fair
collodion process caused him to direct people to assume
As breathing marble, perish?
and re-enact the emotions he observed and mimicked for
them. Charles Darwin, seeing these posed but nonethe- The "art photograph," as Robinson described these
less emotionally charged portraits, approached Rejlander elaborately fabricated pictures, was severely criticized for
to collaborate The Expression of the Emo-

on a book, misrepresenting the truth, but the Royal House was im-
tions in Man and Animals. Rejlander made twenty-eight pressed with combination prints and purchased Fading
photographs of men, women, and children, whom he Away. The Prince Consort gave Robinson a standing
directed in displaying various emotions; for several of order for one print of each such photograph that he
these he posed himself. His plates were too slow or else would make. Robinson became not onl\- the leading pic-
he was not interested in animals—no pictures of emo- torial photographer of England but a prolific writer of
manuals and treatises on photography. His first book.

tions of nonhunians appear in the book.
175
OSCAR G. REjLANDER, Two Gcotlcmeii Taking Wine. Composite
photograph, about i860. Courtesy George Eastman House, Rochester.
RKjLANDER, Two Patlis of Lifc. Composite picture, 51 16 inches, 1S56.

.\
Made from thirty negatives. Courtesy George Eastman House. ^
176
' .'A
Pictorial Effects in Photography, was published in 1869; could not accomplish the desired results pictorially.
toward the end of his life he pubhslied Picture Making Ik produced some charnung single-negative pictures
by Piwtograpliy and Art Pliotograpliy; ail three were neither sentimental nor "high art." These were realistic
translated into many languages and printed in many edi- pictures posed but not obviously so, unretouchcd, and
tions. with an honest intent to portray the character of the sub-
Robinson became the most bemedaled photographer ject. In his later writings Robinson derides the soft-focus
of his day. His hidebound, academic rules of balanced exponents and he is offended by receiving the commen-
composition and his pedantic preachments to photogra- dation that one of his prints did not look like a photo-
phers to "avoid the mean and ugly"— "correct the unpic- graph. He writes, "Wliy should we try to make our pic-
turesque"— "mix photography with drawing," and to tures look like the results of other arts?" and he con-
prefer the artificial atmosphere constructed inside the cludes, contradicting his earlier writing in which he fa-
studio to the world outside have had a stultifying efTect vored the mixing of the artificial with the realistic, by
on pictorialists to this day, as have his sentimentally writing, "What the photographer has to do is to make
poetic titles. pictures with the means at his disposal, and to present
Robinson continued to write and lecture on photog- them as having been done with those means and no
raphy, always stressing the making of a photograph in- other." He closes with these words, "The limitations of
stead of the honest taking of one. His influence was felt photography as an art have not been definitely fixed."
in photographic circles everywhere, especially after his Robinson's later admonitions, however, seem never to
retirement in 1888, when he became vice-president of the have been read by his followers. Contradictions served
Royal Photographic Society. He discontinued his advo- only to confuse the who work by rote and
pictorialists,
cacy of composite pictures, suggesting the use of multiple rule. It was the rare photographer who read Robinson
negatives only in emergencies when single negatives and then used his tools creatively.
-Mm^Stf
178
REJLANDER
above: Hard Times. "Spiritistical photo" printed from
two superimposed plates, iS6o.
opposite page, above: The Dream. iS6o. A crinoline hoop,

an artist's mannikin, and a troubled dreamer,
opposite page, below: Mead of St. John the Baptist.
Composite photograph from two negatives, about iS6o.
All, courtesy George Eastman House.
179
REJLANDER. TluCC pllOtOgrapllS,
1S73, for Cliarles Darwin's book,
Expression of the Emotions.
Courtesy The Art Institute of Chicago,
above: Sneering and Defiance.
h'ft: Fear [Self-portrait)
riaht: Grief.
180
f
REjLANDER, Tlic Chicago Fire. iSji.

i8i
REjLAXDER, Portrait of The Re\'crcnd Charles L. Dodgson
(Lewis Carroll). 1S63. Courtesy GernsJieim Collection, London.
182
LEWIS CARROLL
above: Portrait of Alice Constance Westmacott. 186^.
left: Portrait of Mary Millais. 186^.
right: Portrait of Ailecn-Wilson Todd. 1S65.

All three, courtesy Gernshcim Collection
183
HENRY PEACH ROBINSON. TwO COmpOsHe photOgMphs.
below: W'licn the Day's Work is Done. iSyj.
opposite page, below: Caroling. 1SS7.
184
RALPH W. ROBINSON
Portrait of Henry Peach Robinson. 1897
A portrait of the photographer's father.
Courtesy Gernshchn Collection.
i«5
ROBINSON, right: Dawn and Sunset.
Composite photograph, about iSS^.
Courtes}' George Eastman House.
below: Pencil sketch, about i860, for a
composite picture. One photograpJuc
figure is already pasted in. The three
or four other photographs necessary
to complete the picture would have been
joined and rephotographed; such
prints were sold as M'orks of "high art."
opposite page, top: Fading Away.
Composite photograph, 1S58.
Made from five negatives, the joints
The Prince Consort
subtly hidden.
was so impressed with such photographs
tliat Robinson was given a standing
order for a copy of every composite

print he made. Courtesy Royal
Photographic Society, London.
ROBINSON
Women and Children in Country.
Composite photograph, fune, i860.
CourtesY George Eastman House.
186
Brady:
Cciiiieranicin of
the Civil War
It is often forgotten that Mathew B. Brady, the most

representative photographer of his day, took his portraits
of the mighty and tlie famed with a sensitivity and art-
istry that he had first learned to put into pictures with a

brush. His teaeher was Wilham Page, tweh'e years his
senior, whom Brady met when he was only sixteen years
old in 1839. lie had just left his birthplace of Lake
George, Warren County, New York. Brad\- painted por-
traits under the guidance of Page while thc\- traveled as
itinerant limners from Saratoga to New York City. Early

the next \ear Page took Brady, still encouraging him to
be a painter, to meet and perhaps study with his former
instructor, Samuel F. B. Morse. Instead of signing up for
courses in art, Brady enrolled in a class which Professors

Morse and Draper were conducting on the daguerreotype
process.
Brady's energy was boundless; he experimented with
the lenses and the chemicals and made himself thor-
oughly proficient in all of the many delicate operations.
He had to learn daguerreotypy completely for although

his slight, 5-foot-6, square-shouldered, trim figure was en-
dowed with inexhaustible energy and initiative, Brady
was cursed with exceptionally weak and ever-failing eyes.
There are no pictures extant showing Brady without

glasses; year by year he was fitted with ever-thicker lenses.
In 1841 and for the following three years, to make
1
money not only to pay his tuition at the university but sidered it money well spent for a prestige piece and con-
also to aceumulatc capital so that he could open a gallery, templated issuing another volume.
Brady owned a factory which manufactured cases for He continued to gather daguerreotypes not only of
jewelers and dagucrrcotypists.dated June 17, A letter statesmen and soldiers but of practically all people in the
1843, in the Boyer Collection of Eastman House, ad- public eye, including actors and actresses, doctors and
dressed to A. S. Southworth in Boston, describes a new professors, engineers and architects, opera stars and chess
ease he is manufacturing and offers for sale. The letter is players. The people who made news in their day were
undoubtedly written and signed by Brad}-. Mr. James D. recorded for posterity in elusive quicksilver made perma-
Horan in his recently published, highly readable biogra- nent through its vapors. Brady and his assistants took
phy of Brady, Historian witli a Camera, asks whether thousands of portraits which were used for wood engrav-
Brady was able to read but not write or whether, perhaps, ings and lithographs to illustrate pages of the pictorial
it was bad eyesight that kept him from writing. Mr.
his journals, newspapers, and books, until the nation's best
Horan's conclusions are that no truly ascertainable signa- known was "From a Daguerreotype by Brady."
by-line
ture of Brady has been isolated, though what must neces- In 1847 Brady opened a branch gallery in Washington
sarily have been his signature Mr. Horan calls attention where it became the practice for the President and his
to as appearing on a bill of sale of a piece of land in 1869, cabinet and members of Congress, at one time or an-
on a paper of his bankruptcy proceedings in 1873 and other, to entrust their heads to Brady's "immobilizer,"
below the lithograph which was made of Brady by Fran- as the torturous head clamp was called.
ôis d'Avignon in 1851; all are quite different. What now Both galleries thrived with business. Brady never dis-
seems to be a positive signature of Brady of should pla>cd more energy, working every moment while there
18-J.3
pro\c that Brady could both read and write. However, he was light, despite his weak eyesight. Though he colored
favored his ailing eyes and practically never wrote to and tinted daguerreotypes, some on sensitized ivory, he
anyone himself once he could afford to hire secretaries. sent forty-eight black-and-white images on silver to the
Following the practice of Samuel F. B. Morse, Brady London Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851. His work was
opened a skylight-roofed studio on Broadway and Fulton awarded a medal and singled out by critics as "noble
Street in 1844. He had just reached his majority. That examples of this style of art."
first year he was awarded a prize at the American Insti- By 1853 Brady had almost forsaken the daguerreotype
tute in New York for a daguerreotype; the following year for ambrotype photographs made by the wet-plate proc-
he reaped more recognition by winning a gold medal; and ess. He relied more and more on his assistants to man the
the top award was his a year later. Brady then began to cameras— the strain on his eyes was too tiring. He started
accumulate the most historically important pictorial to specialize in "imperials," enlargements of 17 by 20
record of the nation's statesmen and celebrities for a inches, often life-size heads tinted or painted by artists
period of nearly fifty \ears, from President John Ouincy on Brady's staff. This process made a photograph more
Adams to President William McKinley. costly than the usual oil painting procurable in the days
Just a few days before Andrew Jackson died on June 8, before the Civil War. Orders for imperials by the wealthy
1845, Brady dispatched a photographer to the Hermitage and powerful were balanced by the mass business during
in Nashville to take several daguerreotypes of Old the carte-de-visite craze as hordes of customers crowded
Hickor}', seventh President of the United States. One of his two establishments. As another source of income
these was recently donated to Eastman House by A. he and his assistants operated a school of photography.
Conger Goodyear, and is now published in a book for In 1S53 Brady opened anew gallery two flights above
the first time. Thompson's saloon on Broadway. It was decorated at
Brady conceived the idea of publishing books of like- enormous expense with "satin and gold paper on the
nesses of the notables who sat for his camera. In 1850 walls, embroidered draperies over the windows, an enam-
Brady published The Gallery of Illustrious Americans eled chandelier hanging from the ceiling and the floors
with twelve lithographed reproductions, elc\en made carpeted with superior velvet tapestry," according to the
from his daguerreotypes by Francois d'Avignon, whom editor of Humphrey's Journal, who concludes, after de-
he paid $100 a stone. The text he commissioned C. E. scribing the "superb rosewood furniture," by writing:
Lester to write, but it is not stated how much he paid "On the wall we find the Daguerreotypes of Presidents,
for the writing. The impressive volume received critical Generals, Kings, Queens, Noblemen— diid more nobler
acclaim and, though it was a financial failure, Bradv con- men— men and women of all nations and professions."
189
In 1S56 Brady paid the fare to bring Alexander Gard- Lincoln said of this picture two }ears later, "Brady and
ner from Scotland to New York. From then until 1S63, the Cooper Union speech made me President of the
when Gardner left Brady to eover the Ci\il War as a United States." Brady's portrait of the tall, unbearded
free-lance photographer, the two men made an ideal lawyer introduced Lincoln, through the illustrated press
working team. An experienced photographer, especially and Gurrier and Ives prints, as a man of profound dignity
in the wet-plate process and in enlarging, Gardner or- and inner strength. I'his was only the first of many sit-
ganized Brady's establishments to make impressi\'e, deli- tings Lincoln was to give Brady.
cately retouched and monumental portraits.
profitable It was with Lincoln's election and the beginning of
In 1858 Brady made Gardner manager of his Washing- the war that Brad\ lost interest in collecting a gallery of
ton gallery. Brady's business flourished. Early in i860 he the illustrious and determined to document through
moved his New York gallery for the third and last time. photography the entire Givil War. His historic pictures
Always located on Broadway, this time he mo\cd to enabled people to follow the course of battle, to be wit-
Tenth Street, opening the most ornate, elegant, and ness to scenes of actual conflict, and to feel the devasta-
fashionable gallery of the day. The imperials of the tions of war.
mighty covered the reception-room walls. The fashion- Brady visited Lincoln, who \\TOte "Pass Brady" on a
able came to add their pictures to the roster of the dis- piece of paper, ga\'e him his blessing but no money, and
tinguished, and all flocked to Brady's after the visit of cautioned him that there would be no money forthcom-
the Prince of Wales. ing for such a project. Brady did not need money when
One photograph that Brad\' himself took on February the war started. By the time it was o\er he had spent
changed the entire course of his life. Abraham his fortune of more than 5ioo,ooo, and owed $25,000
27, i860,
FRANCOIS d' AVIGNON, Portrait of Mathew B. Brady. Lithograph,

1S50. First published in Tlie Photographic Art Journal, January,
1851. Courtesy George Eastman House, Rocliester.
190
BRADY STAFF, Portrait of Mathcw B. Brady.
About 1865. By one of Brady's assistants.

Courtesy Gernsheim Collection, London.
more to Anthony's for photographic materials. But, in was at Gettysburg and Richmond; and others whose
the beginning, Qwry man from buck private to general names known, remembered by a credit line given
are
had to have his picture taken and ordered cartes de visite below pictures in albums published after the war, were
by the dozen; the entire day there were lines before
J. F.
Coonley, C. N. Barnard, Louis H. Landy, T. C.
Brady's establishments. The cheap and popular tintype Roche, Wîlliam R. Pywcll, David Knox, Samuel C.
Brady left to others, who took literally millions in army The Gonfederate Army's
Ghester, and D. B. Woodbur>'.
camps and bivouac areas. most prominent photographer, George F. Cook of
Brady took many of his best men with him into the Gharieston, was one of Brady's helpers.
field; by war's end he had financed twenty teams which Brady himself took the first pictures of the war, the
had covered practically every major engagement in every rout at Bull Run. He returned with his wagon and a
theater of war. Each was equipped with a wagon of pho- number of negatives which the press hailed as "reliable
tographic material which the soldiers dubbed a "What- records," buying them for wood engravings and litho-
Is-It?" \\agon. Alexander Gardner and his son James were graph illustrations. Again beneath most pictures, this time
with the Army of the Potomac; Timothy H. O'Sullivan of \\ar, appeared the credit line "From a photograph by
191
Brady." He had organized the first newspicture agenc\-. still lites \\hich reflected the action frozen in death. The
The War Department suddenly saw the \ahie of pho- battlefield, littered like an upturned wastcbasket, shower-
M. Barnard to the Engi-
tography and assigned George ing papers and pictures amidst the ungraceful, sprawling
neers to take pictures of army installations and the dead, made for poignant pictures of readily imagined
terrain. Barnard's best war pictures were made as he ac- fierce action.
companied General Sherman on his march to the sea. Oliver Wendell Holmes saw Brady's own pictures that
It took strength of purpose and disregard of danger to he took at Antietam and wrote in the Atlantic, "These
coop oneself up in a wagon which invited a marksman's terrible mementoes of one of the most sanguinan,- con-
bullet, and prepare glass plates in the semi-darkness for flicts of the war, we owe to the enterprise of Mr. Brad\-
cumbersome cameras like the popular stereo and the of New York. . . . Wlio wishes to know what war is, look
8-by-io-inch view camera, loo slow to stop action, Brady at this series of illustrations."
and his men trained themselves to see and take grim It was the sale of stereo cards which Gardner hoped
i-xptTWii-t ha" »ti"«rB <*«' itiliW* i-* l-'ilJIor* <« '><• "w*
MIC« uiU] mi, bf llw- f m>l«.i->n tlii»«> "Vi^-, ,
vbi.-li •cjiUrtrJ twcnlnp U»c?urn.t» in- 1-^»'«. lli»« 1>M«^ l» Itw ''"•t"^' "'«' "* "** i *** -* '*'^' "* ••'*''
(Mm ..w lliiw UkK-h in AfpXU. .« 1--Uk! »vrt U* t-y*

OTW » xtty iu-^f tn-A "f wirfac*. r!f mort-T. «..
Bttt howif rer riToctiw tmr fire il<^ at ilic tt«« j'>l-l«. "l«"n wl>t'I> »*"• «'>"*fn "•""< »< llw r"«. M»y hM.U
«>«* of trilb-wl .Ha^t^wkftH-it l" t** fi>'*
p»rlm»^l« in*y be. and whatewr 11II.1 biinictl i»»ay. in flr*. .
u>.-iivU,v it c xttnjMi I'll tori) t <if lire* j..iht.. iinwiJwl Iw Miticfly f li**<l in Ihr «« ll'n;
«ll Hi«iii«)pi
l*!-*. wM
may t« *x!ii!'iti-ii, It i* .liîraJilc sntllli* wirtbcn Ibiorncxi Unyt. !)«.'«' »l".wW t* imi«r^ti«*.
H »•
ilial our t'ttixMio nliMiM torn Iheir
U cf i<l.>6l that In the --cir* .»f -^-w 'j^tiiUm aitims lo *«'»T
^t'xittion tn Ihc Mv-rlimi of btiilil |.ri,--_il
m inwwnw will otvM.*Ily V* **'•»
ini!* aA w» ta~^\y hwcjil awny l>y ioriK.naion» a .llBcroiiro of mir*
U-liwl up.>n bBiMinir« «I thU u«tnrc—« '^ evident that, in tho (^"n* •<
Iho Jti'oiirinK dPiiiotil.
I'ijtiu. ATid
In
oiImt K'lropcan tlliM,
I.«i>i]nii,
t.mc.n-nU mt.î .levlliw.Mnd wilt Un* AfHw wUl l* "Wlthi

wy
(•iiII«gnitloiwar«'Ofrjre«*ciitTrnp*. m.-lcu.|p<*enrt.k»ofnre. "W* n.rtiW bf'^fcdto •«« U» »i>.«i w-k
It is nttribiilalilo tu n viirirty or cpiiitiionce.
t'
I- r-vl
If i# Ifr r'^^^^^ ^'^LLEK.
Vy
n^^-
BRADY STAFF, Bradv's Galler)'. Wood engraving from a photograph, about iS^^.
Brady's ornate and elegant establishment was opened on Broadway above
Thompson's Saloon, 1 855, where he placed his own sign and a huge camera.
Engraving made from "A photograph by Brady." From Glcason's Pictorial Magazine.
192
JCu>il/r^kj. , i.j_ // 'Yi+O
.Au vUjku>vi^.
l^tA*- '/'
?^
/ f
W.^ (.tie . *: tÂZ-a-'^./' -i-
^ y,^-'^^-
J'teâCli I /fi*¥ i>-<^ cÂ
("ilT-/" A /effcr definitely by Brady and

signed by him, dated June ly, iS^^,
7.li <3
f vMJL
"ij'<^/' /i-u yiv
wlien he was making jewelry and
daguerreotype cases in New York.
Courtesy George Eastman House,
,/ Boyer Collection.
I OlA. If^-ÔT^*
'Y^^ /k^^^ /?ii^ /'^ /4^ -^ ty/'>i^-^ '/ ;i^ ./^^^^^ .^^
<- ^-»L.-t^
. Jf
would be a source of income when he opened his gallery Brady's war pictures. He and his teams took thousands
in Washington a year after he left Brady. What caused of grave and penetrating documents. Grant's march on
them to separate is not definitely known, but money Richmond was a nine-month campaign. T. C. Roche and
matters could well have been behind it. Brady owed Tim O'Sullivan were along most of the time, exposing
Gardner money for services as he owed Anthony for sup- themselves again and again in the midst of bombard-
plies. Some of the prints Gardner took for Brady during ment to get a picture. Brady came to Richmond innne-
the war Brady must have given him when they parted diately after the surrender. He called on General Robert
in lieu of salary owed. These photographs appeared in E. Lee, whom he had photographed in Washington, and
albums along with pictures identifiable as Gardner's or convinced the revered leader of the Confederate Arm\- to
his son's taken after they left Brady. pose with his son and his aide, Colonel ra\lor; they sat
No matter what happened, Brady's resolve never les- on the back porch of Lee's home on Franklin Street.
sened; he persisted in recording the nation's greatest con- This is one of Brady's greatest historic photographs.
flict. His galleries in New York, without him, made In Washington the returning armies again lined up at
portraits of visiting celebrities; this income supported Brady's for pictures to compare their war-lined faces
193
Rare daguerreotype case, made in New York, and signed
M. B. Brady. On opposite page is a detail of the name.

Brady was in this business from 1S41 to 18^4, when he
opened his first gallery. Courtesy George Eastman House.
with the proud face of youth Brady had captured when one took the time to find out; meanwhile an untold num-
they sat tor him the day they donned their uniforms. ber of glass plates were broken, irreparably scratched, or
General Sherman and his staff came for a group picture lost. The first catalogue in 1897 disclosed 6,000 plates
but without General Blair. Brady or one of his assistants still in good condition.
took the general at a later date, and pasted the deli- A third representative group of negatives, the Brady-
berately posed and perfectly proportioned picture onto Handy collection, was recently purchased by the Library
the board already imprinted with his name. of Congress for $25,000, paid to the two daughters of
The excitement of the postwar period in Washington Levin C. Handy, Brady's nephew-in-law. Handy had
and in New York died down; business at Brady's stood conic to Washington in 1866 at the age of twchc seeking
still. His wife, Julia, was ill; Brady was broke. People work, and within two years Brady had made him into a
wanted to forget the war; there was no market for war fine portrait photographer. Handy ran the gallcr)- in
pictures. To pay Anthony's bill for supplies Brady relin- Washington, continuing Brady's practice of securing the
quished a duplicate set of his war negatives; he sold his distinguished and the fashionable to sit for portraits.
New York studio and some real estate he owned. After the death of his wife, Brady made his home with
The War Department, in July, 1S74, P^^'*^' ^ storage his nephew. One day in 1895 Brady, now practically
bill Brady owed amounting to $2,8.^0, for which they blind, was run over by a vehicle. He recovered and went
secured a large number of photographic negatives of war to New York City, where he was planning an exhibition
views as well as pictures of prominent men. General of his war photographs, but on January 15, 1896, two
Benjamin F. Butler questioned the War Department's weeks before the show opened, he died.
title to this property. He and General James A. Garfield Mathew B. Brady lies buried in Arlington Ccmcten,'
(later President) evaluated the collection at $150,000 with the great Ci\-il War heroes whom he photographed
and succeeded an appropriation of $25,000
in getting and whom knows as li\ing men primarily
the nation
paid to Mathew B. Brady on April 15, 1875. How many because of one man whose most honorable medal was
pieces were in the collection? For twenty-two years no a by-line "Photograph by Brady."
194
'jsmw-*^'^!
BRADY STAFF, Portrait of Andrew Jackson. Daguerreotype, 1S45. The

seventh President, in the year of his death. Taken at The Hermitage in
Nashville, where Brady had sent a team to make sure that Old lliekory
would be included in his proposed Gallery of Illustrious Americans.
Courtesy George Eastman House, a gift of A. Conger Goodyear.
195
MATHEW B. BRADY
above: Portrait of the Due dcChartres. iS6i.
Robert d'Orlcans, Due de Chartres, grandson of King
Louis-PIiilippe of France, Captain in the United States
Army 1S61-62. He took the oath of allegiance
but served without pay.
left: Portrait of C\rus West Field. 18^8. Taken
in the year when Field laid the transatlantic cable
between the United States and England.
opposite page, left: Portrait of Jefferson Davis, i860.
Taken in Washington the year before Davis became
president of the Confederate States.
opposite page, right: General Ro1:)ert E. Lee and Staff.
1S65. At left is Major General George Washington

Custis Lee, son of General Lee; at right Colonel
Walter Taylor. One of five photographs Brady took
of Lee on the back porch of his house
on Franklin Street in Richmond.
All four, courtesy Chicago Historical Society.
196
197
ALEXANDER GARDNER, President Lincoln and General McClellan
on the Battlefield of Antictam. Wet-plate photograph, October 1S62.
Two tintypes, one of an unknown corporal in the uniform of the Union Army.
the other of the only identifiable Negro soldier of the 200,000 who served—
Sgt. J. L. Baldwin of Company G, ^6th U. S. Colored Infantry, organized August. 1 S63.
Photographer unknown. Courtesy Chicago Historical Society.
198
\.'
\A ^Ji^î
ricf^
GARDNER, Portrait of Lewis Payne. Wet-plate photograpli, about

1S65. Conspirator in the assassination of President Lincoln. On
the night of April i^,iS6j,he attacked Secretary of State William
H. Seward with a knife. Courtesy George Eastman House.
199
200
left: BRADY STAFF, Ruins of Richmond, Virginia. April 12, 1865,
by an unidentified Brady team. Courtesy George Eastman House,

below, left: timothy ii. o'sullivan. Quarters of Men in Fort Sedgwick,
Generally Known as Fort I lell. May, 1S65. Print by Alexander Gardner,
below: GARDNER, Homc of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg.
Wet-plate photograph, 1S65. Both, courtesy Chicago Historical Society.
->^
a^-<?
- ^ ' '*!.
%
% *•»,
^-r'^-^^.*^
^^.
t^-t;^
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-.•v^
.rr^^
: 'w^-
>'*-'^ 4lf:M
below: brady staff. On Deck of a Union Warship. Wet-plate
photograph, 1S64. Stamped "Brady" on mount, it was taken by
an unknown team Brady sent out to cover the navy.
opposite page, above: o'sullivan, Pontoon Bridges Across the
Rappahannock Used at the Battle of Fredericksburg. Wet-plate
House,
photograph, December, 1S62. Both, courtesy George Eastman
opposite page, below: brady and Gardner, Ambulance
Drill
by Zouaves. 1S62. Courtesy Chicago Historical Society.
.-^.y
r'!^',. ^
.».J.— _w-™
203
Pioneers
of the West
With the cry of gold in 1849 and the race for it across
the countr)^, a dagiierrcotjpist, Robert H. Vance, trun-
dled along with his equipment in the \\ake of the miners
with their tools. It is evident that Vance was in California
during 1849 and 1850, for in 1851 he brought to New

York three hundred whole-plate daguerreotypes of
miners panning gold and a number of magnificent views
of California's sccner)'. A contemporary account de-
scribes and praises the daguerreotypes and then reports
that he sold the collection to Jeremiah Gurney for much
less than the $3,700 he spent in securing the silver images
and their fitted plush cases.
The collection's next owner was J.
W. Fitzgibbon of
St. Louis, himself a daguerreotypist of the expanding
frontier, who showed \'ance's work in his galler)'. The
final disposition of the collection remains a mystery; no
more than seventy-five years.
trace has existed for
Vance learned the wet-collodion process while he was
in the East, substituting an ii-by-14-inch camera for the
smaller daguerreot\pc and returning to California to
open a studio in San Francisco. An album of sharp prints
taken in 1859 on ii-by-14-inch plates, attributed to

\'ance and recently acquired by Eastman House, depict
temporary camps along the sand and rock bars and min-
ing operations in dried river beds.
Another album of original photographs published in
1856-1857 by Herre and Bauer at the office of the San O'Sullivan photographed the White House ruins at
Francisco Journal are pictures by George R. Farden of Canyon de Chelly, one of his most superb pictures. The
the wooden streets, intimate parks, views of the sea, and name is a distortion from the Navaho, Tse-Yee, mean-
the tall four-story buildings of the lively city on the ing "within the rocks." The drying up of the wells be-
Pacific. cause of a drought which lasted for most of the later
One of the really gifted cameramen who photographed thirteenth century made the Indians abandon their hal-
the West was I'imothy H. O'Sullivan, who had been lowed cliff dwellings.
with Brady at Gettysburg and Richmond and who had In the O'Sullivan picture the overhanging cliff is given
seen three full years of misery through liis ground glass. prominence and the texture emphasized by the striking
He had survived, but not even Brady himself could have sidelight cutting across the striated wall. It is a brilliantly
lured him back into the sophisticated atmosphere of the envisioned wall seen floating above the ancient dwellings,
studio. Celebrities and cities, though he had been born which are set in a semicircular cave on a ridge seventy
in New York, held no more fascination for him. feet above the canyon bed. Below, two barely discernible
He sought continued adventure through his camera: men hold a rope attached to two other men standing on
the sight of unexplored lands and out-of-the-way places. the roof of the ruins.
The government, in 1867, sponsored a geological explora- Not much is known of O'Sullivan after the 1874 ex-
tion of the fortieth parallel, to be directed by Clarence pedition conducted by the now-promoted Captain
King. O'Sullivan was official photographer for the three Wheeler. It is believed that he worked off and on for
years of the expedition. He took pictures of nature's Alexander Gardner in Washington. It is definitely known
grandeur in the falls, lakes, rivers, and mountain ranges that both Brady and Gardner recommended him for a
of the towering Rockies, and he went down hundreds ot job as chief photographer in the Treasury Department,
feet inside mines to take pictures by magnesium flares. for which he was hired. He worked in Washington about
What an impression they made as the nation saw them six months, fell ill, and resigned. Two years later the
reproduced in the illustrated press! scant record lists O'Sullivan's death, January 14, 1882,
In 1870 O'Sullivan came down from the mountains to age forty-two, perhaps forty-three. His exact birth date
take his cameras into the steaming jungles of Panama. was never certain. What is certain is that in his sick
For a year he was with the Commander Selfridge expe- body, suffering with tuberculosis, was a courageous spirit,
dition, which the government had sent out to survey and an alertness to the art of the camera, and an indomitable
map a possible ship canal across the Isthmus of Darien, \\ ill to leave a li\ing record of the terrors of war and the
as the Isthmus of Panama was then called. Insects, splendors of nature.
swamp fevers, impenetrable jungle, and wild beasts were A contemporary of O'Sullivan who lived a year less
among the hardships that he encountered, and often than a century, from 1843 to 1942, was William Henry
made it as difficult to secure pictures as it had been Jackson. He served the year 1862 in the Civil War. His
during the war. O'Sullivan endured it all and was not enlistment over, he resumed work in a Vermont photog-
deterred from his purpose. Using an ii-by-14-inch cam- rapher's studio. He left in 1866 for St. Louis, \\'hcre he
era as well as a stereo, he made hundreds of negatives, become a bulKvhackcr of an ox train crossing the plains.
turning them over to Commander Selfridge who four He sketched, worked as a hired hand, tried prospecting
years later incorporated them into his official report. when he was in California early the next year, and then
The next year O'Sullivan was again in the West. Thor- hired on to drive wild horses back east as far as Omaha.
oughly trained in the rough life required by expedition Here, in late 1867, his career as a photographer really
photography, he was immediately signed up by Lieuten- began in partnership with his brother Edward, who came
ant George M. Wliecler, who was directing a series out from their home town of Peru, New York. Tlicy
of surveys in the Southwest. O'Sullivan was to make opened a studio, but Edward soon tired of photography
two subsequent annual expeditions with Lieutenant and returned to farming.
Wheeler, skipping 1872, when he went East. The very In 1869 Jackson took a series of pictures along the
first year O'Sullivan made more than three hundred Union Pacific railroad, trading photographs for bunk and
negatives, using large cameras to retain all the detail pos- board \\ith the section hands. He roamed the country
sible in contact prints of the majestic scenerj' of the with his camera, going to Salt Lake City and the Black
canyons of the Colorado River. Hills of Wyoming, taking side trips, and returning to
In 1873 the Wheeler survey explored Arizona, where some out-of-the-way station where he caught a train for
205
Omaha and his gallery. Dr. Ferdinand V. Hayden of the colors when he did not photograph, was pleased to find
United States Geological Sun'ey of the Territories hired the famous New York artist, Thomas Moran, accom-
Jackson in 1870 to join a three-month expedition from panying the expedition to paint Yellowstone's scenic
August to November, at no pa\ bnt expenses and per- marvels. Other members of the part\ were divers scien-
mission to keep the negatives with the proviso that tists, geologists, topographers, and naturalists, who re-
prints be made available to Hayden when he requested corded in cold reports what Jackson photographed so
them. beautifully. Nine of his photographs saved Yellowstone
Jackson photographed along the Oregon-Mormon for the people of America, making an area of 3,578 square
trail, the North Platte River where a dry gorge was named miles into the countPi's first national park.
Jackson Canyon in his honor, along the badlands of Dr. Harden bound nine of Jackson's best photographs,
Wyoming, the Uinta Mountains, down the Green River including Mammoth Hot Springs, Tower Falls, Grand
through Bridger's Pass, then on to Pike's Peak and Canyon of the Yellowstone, The Great Falls, and the
Denver in the cold and snow of an early winter. Jackson Crater of the Grotto Geyser, into individually gold-
liked the life. He deliberately went to Washington to embossed volumes for each member of the House and
sign up with Dr. Ha\den as official photographer for Senate. The bill passed b\' a good margin, and President
the following year. He closed his studio in Omaha. Grant signed it March 1, 1872, removing one of the
Yellowstone was the expedition's field of operations nation's wonders forever from commercial exploitation
in 1871. Jackson took an 8-by-io-inch and a stereo camera for private gain.
plus 200 pounds of equipment, mostly packed on his The third expedition of Dr. Hayden extended explora-
nuilc "n\po." Jackson, who sketched and painted water tion of Yellowstone, but Jackson took off with one assis-
:h-
^"5!^
'^
ROBERT H. VANCE, Wet-plate photographs, 1S59.
View of Maine Bar from the East.
left:
above: View of Poverty Bar to Oregon Bar.

River-Bed Mining in California.
Both, courtesy George Eastman House, Rocliester.
207
208
f^,r^ ^
GEORGE R. FARDEN, Three Views of Sail Francisco.
Wet-plate photographs, 1856. Courtesy George Eastman House.
tant and three different-sized cameras for the Great The Mount of the Holy Cross, located in the Red Table
Teton Range near the head of Snake River. In the snow Mountains of Colorado at 14,176 feet. The snow here
and cold at 11,000 feet he took some superb panoramic lies permanently frozen in a hundred-foot crevice in the
views of the Three Tetons as they towered above him. shape of a cross 1,500 feet and 700 feet in width.
in length
The highest, 13,858, named after Dr. Ilaydcn, was 7,000 On the same expedition Jackson photographed the
feet above Jackson's Lake, the second natural site named weathered and deserted chff dwellings of the Mesa
after the dedicated photographer. Verde, now also a national park, in the San Juan Moun-
In the 1873 expedition Jackson directed a botanist, an tains of Colorado. Jackson Butte of the Mesa Verde was
entomologist, a cook, and two assistants as a unit. Start- named after him on that trip. The following year, 1875,
ing from Long's Peak in Estes Park, Jackson took a series he again visited the region; this time, in addition to his
of connected views, panoramas, and close-ups of Gray's usual cameras, he hauled along on an extra mule a cam-
Peak, Pike's Peak and Torrcy's Peak, the ic\ front-range era capable of taking negatives 20-by-24 inches. ^\niat
summits of the Rocky Mountains. At the foot of the skill it required to coat c\eiily a glass plate two feet wide,
mountains Jackson photographed the eroded sandstone expose, and dc\clop, all in a maximum of 15 minutes
shapes of Monument Park and the Garden of the Gods. while the collodion was still moist!
On August 24, Jackson photographed for the first time Jackson's impressive record, according to a catalogue
209
TIMOTHY II. o'suLLivAN. Tluee wct-platc pliotographs
above: Panama-Limon Bay at High Tide. 1870.
right: Sclf-Portrait. From a stereograph, 1870. Taken
during the Selfridge Daricn (Panama) expedition,

opposite page: Black Canyon, Colorado River. 1871
The photographer's boat and equipment.
All three, courtesy George Eastman House.
210
SSSJ-Jl
of his photographs published in 1875 which covers his roads of the west bought many of his old prints and com-
seven expeditions with Dr. Hayden, consists of 973 missioned him to take new pictures for promotional
stereos, 308 negatives 5-by-8 inches, 107 ii-by-14, 526 purposes. His photographs made people aware of the
8-by-io, and 12 2o-by-24. I'he best day he could expose breathtaking beauty to be seen in America; and trips to
only thirty-two negatives. Exposure was by hand tap, the the national parks became one of the country's grand
smallest of openings used to gain the sharpest of defini- tours. The millions of photographs of Old Faithful and
tion demanding 15 seconds exposures. the other wonders of Yellowstone taken with advanced
The year 1876 Jackson devoted to the construction of equipment have never surpassed the pictures taken by
a model based on his photographs of the cliff dwellings Jackson with his messy wet plates and unwieldy cameras.
for the Philadelphia Centennial. The next year was a Not the w-onders of nature but rather soldiers, buffalos,
lost one. Exploring the Pueblos of New Mexico, again and the landscape of the "Big Open," as he called the
for Dr. Hayden, he used the new dry plates manufac- prairie and badlands between the Yellowstone and Mis-
tured commercially for the first time. What a heart- souri Rivers, were the subjects for the unique pictures of
breaking experience to see a year's results all come out the frontier taken by Laton Alton Huffman. Ihiffman
black from the developer! The manufacturer's guaranty became post photographer at Fort Keogh, Montana 'I'cr-
did replace the defective plates free of charge. ritory, in 1878.
Jackson opened a studio in Denver three years later. In below-zero temperatures Huffman followed the sol-
All over the world he sold famous views of nature on diers dressed in their indispensable buffalo coats as they
stereoscope cards, large prints suitable for framing, and drilled in knee-high snowdrifts. He photographed the
smaller sizes to book publishers for illustrations. The rail- officers, men, scouts, trappers, and famous Indian chiefs
with nostalgic names, Sitting Bull, Spotted Eagle, Two sands in just one corner of Montana alone, for hides
Moon, and Rain in the Face, either in his studio in the w^hich brought around $2.50 each. Huffman photo-
fort or in their buffalo-hide tepees surrounded by their graphed the willful destruction of the prairie-lording buf-
squaws and children. falo. Later he photographed hunting parties shooting elk,
In 1880 Huffman opened a studio in Miles City, Mon- antelope, bear, and other game, but by 1883 the loping
tana, but for days the camera was with him photograph- bison killed for hide and tongue was only a topic for
ing "buffalo by the thousands in every direction," as he conversation around the fire.
recorded on May 12. Three years later the hide hunters In his Miles City studio Huffman photographed such
with their hcavv rifles had killed off hundreds of thou- celebrities as Calamity Jane, Teddy Roosevelt, noblemen
^
^— %?!
*^*^ Ji
o'suLLi\'.\N. Wet-plate photographs.

above: Lieutenant Wheeler's Expedition in the "^'oscmitc. 1 Sji
O'Sullivan was the official photographer.

right:Canyon de Chelly, Arizona. 1873. Wheeler expedition.
212
'/Hirx
from Europe already pursuing the legend of the red man, steader in his sod hut, the barbed wire and the plow,
and unnamed eolorful visitors to the wide open cow and the closing of the open prairie forever.
town. Cattlemen and eow punchers sat for his camera, Geographical memorials should be named in honor of
mostly in the open. He roamed with them on roundup L. A.Huffman and 'i'. H. O'Sullivan to rank along with
to secure an honest and impressive graphic record of the Mt. Watkins in Yosemite National Park, Mt. Millers in
straight-backed, pigeon-breasted, unglamorizcd cowboys the Henry Mountains of Utah, Mt. Haynes in Yellow-
who were fighting a losing battle with the sheep herder stone National Park, and the Canyon, Butte, and Lake
for the land. Huflfman saw the changing frontier, and named in honor of W. H. Jackson, all commemorating
photographed it honestly and with insight— the home- photographers of historic and artistic prominence.
() SULLIVAN
left: Church of San Miguel, Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Wct-pldtc plwtograph, iSj^. Wheeler expedition,
opposite page: Ruins of White House, Canyon de Chclly,
Arizona. Cliff dwellings abandoned in the thirteenth century.
Two explorers in the bed of the canyon attached by
rope to tM'o others standing on the roof of the ruined
house. Wheeler expedition.
\v. H. JACKSON, The Rio San Juan, Colorado.

Wet-plate photograph, about iSy^.
215
JACKSON, above: Train and Steep Grade in the Canyon of
the Rio Las Animas. Wet-plate photograph, i8y6.
Courtesy Division of Colorado State Archives and Public Records
right: Old Faithful, Yellowstone National Park.
Wet-plate photograpli, i8~o. First picture taken of the geyser.
Courtesy George Eastman I louse.
210
•s.
V--
L"a»««'
below: jackson, Mount of the Holy Cross. Wet-plate photograph,
18-^. Courtesy George Eastman House.
right: W. II. Jackson in the Rockies. Wet-plate photograph, 1873.
Photographer unknown. Courtesy Denver Public Library, Western Collection.
218
Latoii Alton Huffman's studio, in Miles City, Montana, about iSSo.
Courtesy W. R. Felton, Sioux City, Iowa.
220
LATON ALTON HUFFMAN
left: Typical Sheep Herder.
idkcn in Miles City, Montana,
jjhoto studio, about iSSo.
bi'low: Guard A[ount,s in Buffalo
Coats. Wet-plate photograph,
I'ort Keogh, Montana.
Both, courtesy Mrs. Ruth Huffman
Scott, Miles City, Montana.
ff. ^
.sSXi
HUFFMAN
above: After the Buffalo Run. North
Montana, 1S79.
right: the Tongues of Buffaloes. Montana, 1S78.
Taking
Both, courtesy Mrs. Ruth Uuffman
Scott.
HUFFMAN, Red-Armed Panther, a Cheyenne

Indian Scout. Fort Keogh, Montana, 1879.
Courtesy Mrs. Ruth Uuffman Scott.
222
HUFFMAN
right: High Bear, an Ogallalla Sioux. About it
Courtesy Mrs. Ruth Huffman Scott.

below. Sioux Chief Hump and His Favorite Wives.
Miles City, Montana, iSSo. Courtesy W. R. Felton.
Miiybri(l<»e
and Eakiiis-
Plioto<>rcipliy
of Motion
One of the great contributors to the iincntion of
the motion picture was born in England as Edward

James Muggcridge, but changed his name early in life to
uhat he bclie\cd was its true Saxon spelling, Eadwcard

Muybridge (1830-1904). He migrated to the United
States and is first mentioned for a series of large photo-
graphs he took in Yoscmite in 1867. The superb cloud
effects printed in from a second negative received praise
from admiring critics awarding medals in International
Exhibitions; and twcnt\- of these composite photographs

were in the first guidebook to Yosemite's wonders.
In 1868, less than a \ear after the United States go\-ern-
mcnt purchased Alaska from the Russians, Muybridge
was sent along as official photograhcr with the military
force empowered to take o\er the newly acquired terri-
tory formally.
Ex-Go\crnor Leland Stanford in 1872, according to
the traditional ston,-, bet a friend $25,000 that a race
horse had all four feet oflF the ground at one time during
its running gait. Muybridge, who had an established rep-
utation as a photographer, was hired to photograph

Occident, a famous trotting horse in Stanford's stable.
Despite a fast shutter that Miu])ridgc had in\-cntcd and

white sheets covering the track to give extra light, the
/
wet-plate process of that time was too slow to give proof,
but there was sufficient indication that the ex-Go\-crnor
was correct, and Mu\bridgc was asked to continue.
He was not to resume his experiments, however, for tion, as was the celebrated French painter of cavalry and
five years. In 1873 he photographed the guerrilla fight- battle scenes, Ernest Meissonier.
ing amidst the lava beds in the Modoc Indian War at On May 14, 1880, the San Francisco Art Association
the California-Oregon border. I'he next postponement presented the first photographs of a galloping horse pro-
was caused not by an assignment but by a scandal and a jected on a large screen by a special magic lantern. It was
murder that sent him to Panama and Guatemala for so realistic, a reporter covering the program wrote, that
several years until he felt safe to return to California. the only thing missing was the clatter of hoofs. Animated
In 1874 Muybridge shot and killed his wife's lover. He cartoons and the movements of a dance (the sequence
was acquitted by a jur}', which accepted as evidence of photographed in frozen poses so that the music could
Muybridge's temi3orary insanity testimony given by his be played in perfect time to it) had been projected on a
former employer who said, "He was most eccentric. In screen a decade earlier, but Muybridge had actually pre-
his work he would not take a picture unless the view sented the first motion picture.
suited him." Within the California code of honor Muy- This "zoogyroscope," or "zoopraxiscope" as he later
bridge was justified, but it was wiser not to tempt fate called it, worked on the principle of an old toy, the zoe-
and he left the country. trope. The Muybridge projector used two glass disks, one
Late in 1877 the truthfulness of a wood engraving containing twelve images revolving in one direction and
based on a Muybridge photograph of the trotter Occi- a second slotted disk, caused to revolve in the opposite
dent was questioned, since the photograph was admit- direction, which served as a shutter.
tedly retouched. In June 1878 ex-Governor Leland Stan- Muybridge did not pursue motion-picture photogra-
ford invited the San Francisco press to witness Muy- phy. Improved machines were to be developed by Pro-
bridge photographing a trotting horse and a racing mare. fessor E. J. Marey, G. Demeney, and the Lumiere
Twelve cameras were set up, each fitted with a drop Brothers in France, and by Thomas A. Edison in the
shutter triggered by a spring or rubber band. From each United States, all of whom acknowledged their debt to
camera a fine wire was stretched across the track, acti- Muybridge.
vated by the iron rim of the wheel of the sulky, which Photographing animal and human locomotion was
closed an electrical circuit, thereby releasing the shutters Muybridge's main interest, and for this he received a
one after another. grant from the University of Pennsylvania, where he
The track was prepared to concentrate the maximum stayed for three years until 1887. The eleven volumes
amount of light for the fastest exposures. The ground published that year under the auspices of the university.
was sprinkled with powdered lime; the background Animal Locomotion: Electro Photograpliic Investiga-
screen was intensely white, co\'ered with rock salt; every- tions of Consecutive Phases of Animal Movements,
thing was in the brightest sunshine; and, though Muy- cover Muybridge's photographic experiments from 1872
bridge still used wet plates, the collodion had been to 1885 and consist of more than 100,000 photographs.
speeded up by "ripening" or aging. The animals shown are not only the domestic dog, cat,
For photographing the handsome mare Sallie Gardner and horse, but also moose, elk, bear, raccoon, lion, tiger,
twelve fine black threads were placed across the track, monkey, and birds.
striking her breast high and releasing the shutters. The Most of his photographs of humans are nudes, a num-
resulting photographs proved conclusively that the four ber depicting cripples in abnormal movements, antici-
feet of a galloping horse are all off the ground only when pating a great demand by artists who would substitute
they are bunched together under the belly. photographs for live models.
The English mezzotints depicting pink-coated riders Muybridge retired to England, but returned briefly in
astride galloping hobby horses, with the front feet 1893 to lecture on animal locomotion at the Columbian
stretching straight ahead and the hind feet extended be- Exposition's "Zoopraxographieal Hall" in Chicago. He
hind, were now seen as quaint and the representations published the Human Figure in Motion in 1901, but he
of centuries were refuted. Artists all over the world rec- never left England again and did little in photography
ognized that personal obscr\ations, no matter how keen, the rest of his days; he died at his birthplace, Kingston-
could not compare with the instantaneous vision obtain- on-Thames, in 1904.
able by camera. Frederic Remington and Charles Rus- It is not generally known that Thomas Eakins (1844-
sell, famous painters of cowboys and horses, were influ- 1916), today accepted as one of America's great nine-
enced by these revelations of Muybridge's Horse in Mo- teenth-century painters, was also an ardent photogra-
225
pher. The stark realism and honesty with which, in his which, however, Muybridge did not adopt. In 1884
painted portraits, he brought out the inherent strength Eakins, as head of the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine
and character of the subject, Eakins tried to achieve as Arts, the oldest art school in America, invited Muybridge
w ell when he photographed. His strong will and his rejec- to lecture. He also helped interest people in raising funds
tion of clever and fashionable likeness kept him from for Muvbridge to continue his experiments at the Uni-
copying photographs when painting portraits. versity of Pennsylvania. Eakins was appointed a member
He photographed and painted his favorite younger of the supervising committee.
sister in 1882 (the year she died) and painted their child- A brilliant anatomist, Eakins had studied human and
hood friend, Miss Marj- Adeline Williams, "Addie," animal anatomy for scxcral years at Jefferson Medical
more than a decade later. Both portraits he made cor- College; he embraced enthusiasticalh- the opportunity
respond to what he conceived as artistic truth. The blunt, to collaborate with Muybridge. They soon differed.
realistic, detailed photograph is an artistic end in itself; Eakins's scientifically trained mind readily obscrxed that
the painting constructed stroke by stroke reflects his ex- twelve or twenty-four separate cameras could not follow
pert knowledge of anatomy and his skillful draftsman- the speed of a subject exactly. He preferred a simpler and
ship. \\liat is inherent in both the painting and the more accurate method, using a single camera. In front of
photograph of his sister is Eakins's realistic, humanistic its lens re\'olvcd a disc with a hole in it which permitted
approach to art, stressing within the limitations of each a series of superimposed distinguishable images to be
medium the dignity and spirit of the subject. taken on one plate. It \\as Eakins's contention that the
A friend of Eakins once said that he would not pose sequence of movement relating one shape to another
for him, for "he would bring out all those traits of charac- throughout an entire action could be followed more
ter that I have been trying to conceal for years." easily than the separate actions photographed by Muy-
Eakins's keen interest in photography prompted him bridge's multiple cameras.
to correspond with Muybridge. In 1879 he recommended A man walking, polc-\'aulting, running, a woman
a more accurate method of measuring the horse's gait model jumping or lifting an object, all became fit subjects
EADWEARD MUYBRIDGE, Horsc I'rottiug at 36 Fcct per Second.

From a wood engraving after a wet-plate pliotograph of i Syj.
Exposure: i/iooo second. Courtesy George Eastman House, Rochester.
226
II 11 12 K{ 11 15 1ft 1^11 lU 13 It 15 1ft 17 18 ij 11 15 1ft i: 5 1 8 9 li
/O '/'
MUYBRiDGE, Hoisc in Motion. Wet-plate plwtograpJis, iSjS. The horse

Sallie Gardner, owned by Leland Stanford, runnmg atai .40 gait over
Palo Alto track, San Francisco, June 19, 1S7S. First successful photographs
of moving horse. The negatives were made at intervals of 27 inches to
illustrate consecutive positions assumed during a single stride of the mare.
The vertical lines are 2- inches apart; the horizontal lines represent
elevation of 4 inches each Exposure of each negative, less than
.
1/2000 second; twelve cameras used. Courtesy George Eastman House.
Camera used by Muybridge in i8y8

to stop image of running horse.
227
for Eakins in 1884. He did not publish his pliotographs. was a preferable way, he gave up his experiments. His
Professor E. J.
Marey of France, whose camera principle purpose, like Muybridge's, was to analyze motion, and
of revolving discs for fast photographs Eakins modified in this they were both successful; both contributed
and used, did publish similar experiments with the mul- through their experiments to the development of the
tiple shapes of a nude figure superimposed on a single motion picture.
plate. None of the photographs published created a stir Eakins, the artist, continued to use the still camera for
of protest. In igi2 Marcel Duchamp translated similar graphic art. A photograph was to be respected and re-
experiments into an oil painting, Nude Descending a tained as a fine-art print, such as an etching or lithograph.
Siciircase, which created a furor of protest and, strangely A master draftsman, he compared a fine photograph to
enough, is still often \ilified. a master drawing and felt therefore that it deserved the
Eakins continued his experiments with nude athletes best of paper. Accordingh , he printed on costh- platinum
and models as well as with horses in motion. In 18815 he paper capable of retaining the most subtle and delicate
lectured at the university with a projector he either in- tones.
vented or borrowed from Muybridge. Having succeeded As an artist Eakins was neglected until the latter \ears
in establishing the principle that a single camera taking of his life; as a photographer he is only now coming into
pictures of a subject in motion from a single viewpoint his own.
Zoogyroscope. Motion-picture projector invented 18S0

by Muybridge for showing sequence photographs made on
glass discs. Courtesy George Eastman House.
228
MuvBRiDGE, Figure Hopping. iSSj. Sequence of eight stages of movement,
simultaneously photographed by multiple cameras at three different positions.
Courtesy Cooper Union Aluseuni Library, New York.
229
MUYBRiDGE, Figure in Motion. iS8y. Sequence of twelve stages
of moverncnt, simultaneously photographed by multiple cameras
at three different positions. Courtesy Cooper Union Museum Library.
MUYBRIDGE, Fenccrs. Twelve sequence photographs,

Philadelphia, October ii, 1885. Published in Animal
Locomotion. Courtesv George Eastman House.
230
6
m^f' ^.
f
THOMAS F.AKiNS. Three platinum prints.
Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York,

above: Two Girls in Greek Dress. About 1880.
opposite page, above: Portrait of Mary Macdowell.
About 1886. Sister of Mrs. Eakins.
left: Nude Model. About 1880.
233
1
b|k^M^Mv'
EAKINS
above: Portrait of William H. Macdowell. Albumen
print. About iSgo. Macdowell, an engraver, iras father-in-law
of the artist. Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art.

opposite page, above: Portrait of William H. Macdowell.
Oil painting, iSqi Courtesy Randolph-Macon
. Woman's
College, Lynchburg, Virginia.
234
EAKINS
left: Margaret in Skating Costume. Oil painting,
i8yi Courtesy Philuclelphia
. Museum of Art.
above: Portrait of Margaret Eakins. Glass positive,
1882. Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art.
235
236
EAKINS
left: Pole Xâulter. Wet-plate photograph, 188^.
below, left: Man Walking. Wet-plate photograph,
iSS^. Courtesy George Eastman House.
MARCEL DuciiAMP, Nudc Dcsccndiug a Staircase.
Oil painting, 1912. Philadelphia Museum of Art,

The Louise and V^'alter Arenshcrg Collection.
Footlights,
Skylights, and
Tintypes
There were more than ihree hundred photographers'

galleries in New York City alone by 1870. Brady was still
there, though he was soon to close his establishment on

Broadway in order to concentrate on his Washington
practice; Giirney's widely know'n gallery flourished, and
that of Frederick, his former partner; but the three most
elegant galleries in New York operating in the seventies
were those of Napoleon Sarony, William Kurtz, and Jose

Maria Mora.
All three— like Falk, who opened his gallery a decade
later — specialized in photographing celebrated actors and
actresses. I'heir pictures of the glamorous and beautiful
in turn attracted socict\ women and first-nighters to their
studios. A considerable profit was enjoyed by all galleries
in the sale of cabinet-size (4-by-5'/2-inch) and carte-de-
visite (3%-by-2 '/4-inch) portraits of the nation's promi-

nent theatrical personalities, dressed in the costumes of
their most popular roles. F.ach gallcn,- accumulated thou-
sands of negatives and sold innumerable pictures through
the theater, hotels, the mail, and various other channels,
pacing a small royalty, if any, to the pictured actor or
actress. The photographs were considered such good ad-
vertising by management and performer that a commis-
)ion for posing was rarely exacted.
Of the three galleries, Sarony's was the best known,

Mora's the most profitable, and Kurtz's the most artistic.
William Kurtz, born in Germany in 1834, was an artist- actor in a pose best portra)ing a role without forced ef-
adventurer who had served his time as a boy with the fects or awkward stiflfncss.
German army and had fought with the English army The warm, dramatic, and excitable personality of
during the Crimean War and with the Union Army in Sarony made a profound impression on his sitters. Those
America's Civil War. In London he had been trained as who did not respond or fall under his spell he refused to
a lithographic artist and had also taught art. Upon open- take at all or turned over to one of his assistants. I'honias
ing his New York gallery soon after the close of the Nast wrote, "He made everyone he photographed look
Civil War, he introduced a method of lighting, modeling like Sarony . . . the same feeling was in e\'cr\ picture . . .
the subject's entire face through an arrangement of tin- all his sitters seemed to catch the Sarony trick of expres-
foil reflectors, which became known as "Rembrandt" sion and pose."

photography. A sensitive portrait photographer, Kurtz He worked hard to get a picture that satisfied him. He
dispensed with elaborate or painted backgrounds, elimi- dressed up in a hussar's uniform. (His father had been
nated incongruous costumes, and used contrasty, simple an officer in the Black Hussars of the Austrian Army and
backgrounds in order to secure as wide a range of tonality had migrated after the battle of Watedoo to Quebec.
as possible with the wet-collodion process. The subtle 'I'herc the future photographer had been born and named
Rembrandt photograph became enormously respected after Napoleon, whose death had taken place the same
and popular among competent photographers, who were year, 1821.)
able to control and capture the nuances of lighting and When Sarony photographed Jim Mace, the English
modeling demanded by this style. Kurtz received man)- pugilist, he sparred with the delighted champion until
prizes for portrait photography, including the highest he had found a pose acceptable for the camera.
award of the International Exhibition, Vienna, in 1873. Sarony always complained that Sarah Bernhardt never
Jose Maria Mora, born in Cuba in 1849, studied art and arrived early enough to take ad\antagc of the best light-
photography in Madrid, but received two years' addi- He photographed her as the dying Camillc— a representa-
tional training in the intricacies of the camera from tive pose, since, on her first American tour, in the eight
Sarony before he opened his own gallery in 1870. Imme- plays she performed she was dead by the final curtain
diately he prospered, and became famous for his pictures in six.
of renowned actresses whom he posed with rich accesso- A few days after Oscar Wilde made his famous quip
ries in front of painted scenic backgrounds. Mora's repu- to the customs officer at New York's port of entr)', "I
tation grew with his designs for his painted backgrounds. have nothing to declare except my genius," he was stand-
Soon he had hundreds of them standing one behind ing in his get-up of knee breeches, although without the
another ready to be used for any kind of effect from gilded lily he was wont to carry, in front of Sarony's
drawing room to log cabin, from desert to mountain top, camera.
with appropriate props to complete the picture. The elder Sothern, Sarony photographed as Lord Dun-
L. W. Seavey introduced painted backgrounds for dreary in Our American Cousin, the role he was perform-
photographers; these quickl\- became standardized as ac- ing at Ford's Theater the night Lincoln was shot. The
cessories for the trade, along with automatic head sup- ever-remembered Joe Jefferson, who pla\cd Rip \'an
ports, retouching machines, false pianos, balustrades, Winkle off and on from 1859 to 1904, Sarony photo-
stairs, and chairs. graphed posed before and after his long nap.
Photography's most famous chair was Napoleon Saro- The many-times-marricd Adah Isaacs Menken, who
ny's, in which consummate actors and actresses sat and loved dogs and "fed them cubes of sugar soaked in
played to his camera as to an immense audience. When brandy and champagne," according to Mark Twain who
the exact pose, the precise expression, was struck, the im- watched her do it, came to Sarony's in London in 1864
perious five-foot-one-inch Napoleon, the same size as the when Napoleon worked there for his prosperous brother,
Little Corporal and just as indomitable, hollered "Hold Oliver, who ran a successful galler\- and photograph
it," and for the 15 seconds to the 1 minute required, they suppl\- house. In New York Sarony again photographed
all held it. \\niere other photographers forced the sub- Adah Menken the )ear he opened his gallery in 1866.
ject's head and body into vise-like clamps, asking them She posed costume she wore in Mazeppa,
in the elaborate
at the same time to "smile and look pleasant" (a cartoon daringly exposing her legs and limbs in tights. At the
of the period was captioned "You may resume your natu- climax of the play she was bound "naked" to the back
of a wild horse "which galloped up a succession of run-
ral glum look in just a moment"), Sarony caught the
239
ways to the top of the theater while audiences roared Moran, and the writer, F. Hopkinson Smith. Smith wrote
their tribute." a novel. The Fortunes of Oliver Horn, in which Sarony
Showman and picturesque figure, Sarony printed his figured as the character Julius Bianchi; in it an artist-
flowing signature in red ink on c\er\' size photograph lithographer known to his fellow "skylarkers" as "the
that left his gallen,-, and across the facade of the fi\e-stor\ Pole'" brings to the club a countess— obviously a takeoff
structure he painted his name in huge script. He stocked inspired by Sarah Bernhardt.
the building with a fantastic assortment of curios and Trained as an artist in Paris for six years before he
antiques including stuffed birds, tattered tapestries, turned to photography, Sarony continued to make litho-
sleighs, sleds, altars, Buddhas, armor, and sculpture, over graphs and paint canvases all his life, puerile efforts re-
which an Egyptian mumni}- stood guard at the head of sembling the commercial hack work of the period. Of his
the slow-ascending hydraulic elevator just big enough to years spent in photography he complained, "all day long
accommodate him and one customer. He picked from I must pose and arrange for these eternal photographs
this theatrical treasure house the props he needed for his 'I'hcy will have me. Nobod\' but me will do . . . [but] all
pictures. my art in the photograph I value as nothing."

In May 1896 Sarony sold at auction this tremendous If Sarony underestimated his life's work and displayed
hodge-podge curio collection. Six months later he was little pride in the art of his camera, the itinerant tintype
dead. Pall bearers were fellow members of the I'ile Club, "professor," the ever-present man with the black box at
the reputable painters William M. Chase and Edward beach, carnivals, and congested streets, or located in
Napoleon Sarony in Hussar's Uniform.

Taken by Sarony' s assistant, about iSjo.
240
nMJ^j^.
Surony's advertisement for cartcs-dc-visite.

Courtesy Museum of the City of New York.
special tintype galleries near the board walks of the The poor and lowly tintype was invented by an Ameri-
country, knew that the pictures he took on thin sheets of can, Hamilton L. Smith, in 1855, who called them
iron, lacquered and sensitized, had no artistic value at all. "melainotypcs" from the prefix meaning black. They
The whites came out a dull gray and, though black were also called "ferrotypes" meaning iron. They were
patent leather, oilcloth, and enameled papers were tried introduced to Europe in the 1870s, and were advertised
as substitutes, the cheap single positive picture on "tin" as American ferrotypes, mounted on a paper cutout, and
never lost its popularity. The results could be seen in a sold more cheaply than any other existing photographic
few minutes; the pictures were permanent; and, though image.

easily scratched, they were less fragile than the more The was fortunately preserved in a
distinctive tint\pc
costly anibrot\pcs on glass. Assembled in a union ease, fancy, tooled album; so also were the enormously popular
the tintype became a family heirloom along with the "gems," which measured less than an inch. Not consid-
earlier daguerreotypes. eredart, tintypes preserved for our day the honest and
'l'int\pcs in miniature appeared on rings, brooches, tie untouched face of the unsophisticated who posed for
pins, cufflinks, and were the first political buttons con- this picture and not for public or posterity. Tiie ingratiat-
taining pictures of the candidates. A patent was granted ing, unique, and unidentified tintype image often cap-
for tintype photographs to be attached to tombstones. tivates the spectator.
241
SARONY
Joe Jefferson as Rip \an Winkle.
Before and after liis long nap.
Cartes-de-visite, 1869. Courtesy
Cornelia Otis Skinner, New York.
GURNEY. Cartes-de-visite, iSjo.

right: Mark Twain.
far right: Edwin Booth.
Courtesy Cornelia Otis Skinner.
242
gi Nt«f amtaiit i
S ST. LOUIS PHOTOGRArHIC STOCK DEP
)VED
CLIP
> ciii:.n\
Tlir Nrw S^ HitntlaoiuK Aeeowory.
oiijt: ll I" rrvcrvil
tlin|n; of the i'r"i'jr-,

•r^llitiH-. IhIwxi ti llu-
Sole Agt. '. 1. rtrrilar Birk. 1**\ Uk* ( lulr nllh <
rub vclvrtwn,
t'Slirrpily for lli« ph«|n;cniih'T. M
having fhe HLiniKO D>liii<tal>t« bwk miJ «
t'o 'lUMlity. tiny 3te Ibe lica|**I goo.js in
'i<tpfl.i^' Uio lo.irkcl. Wp '
Lithograph of drawing by Sarony

for sheet-music cover.
fn UNION SQR N Y
SARONY, Otis Skinner with Edith Kingdon

in a Daly Company Performance. 1SS5.
LILLIAN RUSSKLI-
ill lilt' "Ilri:;:m'l-" pj
3^0 ft'.
FALK, Lilhan Russell.

Cabinet-size photograph, 1889
244
LOTTA.
707 BROADWAY. N.Y.
AiORA, Lotta Crabtree.

Cabinet-size photograph, about iS8^.
SOT+^tBlV.
SARONY, eSO BROADWA Y
SARONY, E. H. Sothern as Lord Dundreary.

About 1SS5.
245
/^
246
SARONY
kff: Oscar Wilde. 18.82.
opposite page, above: Adah Isaacs
Menken in "Mazeppa." 1SS6.

opposite page, below: Sarah
Bernhardt in "Camille." 1S80.
All three, courtesy
George Eastman House.
247
Miniature albums for the "gem" tintypes,
measuring %x V-t inches, about iSSo
248
A group of four tintypes, about i8So. Photographers unknown.
Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
249
//
The 'Uetective
Camera and
the Kodak
In 1S71 Dr. Richard Leach Maddox, an English physi-

cian and amateur photographer, substituted gelatine for
collodion. This new process, the gelatine-bromide dry
plate, published on September 8 in the Britisli Journal
of Photography, permitted free use to all interested.
Unfortunatch' the first dry plates were slower than wet

plates. Tlie new invention was not generally adopted
until 1878, when the improved, ready-made plates, by
then faster than any other process, could be bought com-
mercially, stored, exposed at will, and dc\cloped at
leisure. Before 1880 most amateurs and practically all
professional photographers had abandoned the unwieldy,

messy, demanding collodion process in favor of the cost-
lier but more advantageous dr^' plate.
A pioneer maker of gelatin dn,- plates in America was

George Eastman, \\ho worked during the day in a
Rochester, New York, bank and at night coated glass
plates by hand with the liquefied, sensiti/cd gelatin. East-
man soon improved the uniformity of the plate by in-
venting a machine to do the coating. In 1879 he patented

the machine in England and the follow ing year secured
a patent for the same invention in the United States.
That same year E. and H. T. Anthony, the largest dealers
of photographic materials in the countn,', were handling

Eastman dn,- plates. Prices of cameras were cut as An-
thony's ad\-crtised "dr)-plate photography for the mil-
lions." A small 4-by-5 camera with a lens, a tripod, and "detective cameras" to the strange box without bellows.
a dozen Eastman dry plates, could be bought tor as little Most of these were manufactured by the Scovill Manu-
as $12.25. facturing Company and by Anthony, companies which
In 1881 Eastman left the bank to devote full time to later merged to become Ansco. Some of this sleuthing
his expanding dry-plate factory, which, throughout the was necessary if one wanted to be a candid-camera man.
previous winter, had been sending the packaged dry Social etiquette of the 1880s and i8gos would hardly
plates to Anthony's in anticipation of the spring and sanction a stranger's approaching a person and asking
summer business. All these plates went bad. They him to pose; a formal introduction was obligatory just
quickly lost their sensitivity. Complaints poured in to to ask for permission to photograph. Efforts to circum-
Anthony, who sent them on to Eastman. His next move vent these difficulties led to strange solutions: detective
made him friends and staunch supporters among camera- cameras were disguised in a number of ways. Hidden in
men ever\whcrc. First he located the cause of the trouble; a derby hat one camera was advertised as a "practical
then he replaced all defective plates with corrected ones. secret camera that defies detection" and sold for 42
During the next two years Eastman improved the shillings in London. A Frenchman marketed a "detective
plates, increasing the sensitivity of the emulsion and its camera" in the form of a pistol, strangely belie\ing that
stability in any kind of climate. Professional photogra- the operator would go unnoticed pointing at a person
phers swore by his products. He prospered. He built a what obviously appeared to be a gun. More discreet hid-
larger plant and Anthony's looked forward to greater den camera instruments were fitted into binoculars,
sales of Eastman's rapid gelatin plates. books, read\-for-mailing packages, coin boxes, canes, and
Eastman continued his experiments, searching for a cravats— the lens in the cravat camera masqueraded as a
new system of photography to supersede the gelatin dry
plate. He went back to using paper as a base and invented
a machine to prepare and coat a roll of paper. After
exposure and processing, the paper negatives were treated
with castor oil to make them transparent— just as Fox
Talbot's calotypes had been dipped in oil back in the
early forties. These negati\'cs did not compare with glass
plates for clarity. Eastman then tried coating the paper

with two layers of gelatin. After developing and fixing
the bottom layer was dissolved in warm water, leavmg
the image on the sensitized upper layer of gelatin, which
was then dried in contact with a sheet of heavier gelatin.
The greatest virtue of this new "American film," as
Eastman called it, was its flexibility. A roll holder could

be fitted to any existing camera, even one hand-held.
The fast dry plate of several years earlier had made
possible the hand-held camera, thereby eliminating the
tripod. Instantaneous photography was an actualit\ . The
snapshot had come into its own. No longer was photog-
raphy the field of the professional and the dedicated
amateur willing to undergo the hardships demanded by
the wet plate. Box cameras held in the hands of gumshoe
amateurs trjing to catch candid pictures gave the name
w. F. DEBENHAM, Dr. Richard L. Maddox. Portrait, about 18S0,

of man who invented the gelatine dry plate in London, i8yi.
stick pin, and the shutter was operated by a string or bulb The No. 1 Kodak was not a pinhole camera. It was
held in the pocket. fitted with a lens and masked to take a circle negative
Eastman in 1886 designed and patented a box camera 2V4 inches in diameter. One hundred negatives were on
with a standard roll holder for forty-eight 4"-by-5" nega- the roll. When the roll was fully exposed the entire
tives, a focusing lens, and what he termed an "alligator camera was mailed back to Eastman, who returned the
shutter," but it did not work too well. Two years later camera reloaded plus the negatives and one hundred
he developed the perfect amateur camera of its day and mounted prints (or as many as were not blanks) from
coined a word which has been synonymous with "cam- the first roll, all for the sum of $10. The original outlay
era" ever since, "Kodak." The Kodak was a small box, was $2 5 for the first loaded camera. Ever}' purchaser be-
a little over 6 inches long, 3V2 inches wide, and less than came an avid amateur.
who, according was George Eastman's slogan, "You press the but-
4 inches high. Anyone could operate it It
to the Kodak Manual, was able to: 1. Point the camera. ton, we do the rest," that accounted for what was to
2. Press the button. 3. Turn the key. 4. Pull the cord. become the first world-wide folk art.
(?^^
/(i^(/^M^ ^
George Eastman. 1^%^. Photographer unknown. Eastman

made this print on his new film, February 8, iS8^, and
wrote "Made on paper with a soluble substratum
developed after transferring." Signed across the lapels.
252
above: fred church, George Eastman on Board Ship.
Taken 1880 with No. 2 Kodak identical with one Eastman liolds in his hands.
left: PAUL NADAR, Gcorge Eastman. Paris, 1890.
253
254
4^'
manamas^ssa^
above: Enlarged print from No. iKodak camera, invented iSSS by

George Eastman, original size 2 inches diameter. Photographer unknown.
',2
left: GEORGE EASTMAN, Paul Naclar. Taken with No. 1 Kodak
in the Place de I'Opera, Paris, 1S90. Both, courtesy George Eastman House.
255
Eastman Kodak Company advertisement, 1892
left:
below, left: Model No. 1, Kodak camera, 18S8.

A circular negative on roll film was used,
below: "Hat" detective camera, about i88g,
for sale in London at two guineas, with fitting.
All, courtesv George Eastman House.
"My piiliircs were 'all taken wiili a K'li.ik'
and I ri;j,'aril ihf K <lak as rcsp in>ilik' rur my

llavint' iihlaini'.l a srrus <if puluri-i wliiili in
ijiialitv anil quantity i-.\<w<l any tliai liavc lu-i-n
lir uL'lit hack Irnni (inx-nlanil ;uiil ihr Smi;li

S>'iMi(l rrL''"n.
R. K l"i ^l.^, r S N
S90 THK BBinSB IOc-.-aL ALMANAC ADTBRTISKHKNTS.
KA5TMAN KODAK CO.,
ADAMS & CO.S
'HAT' DETECTIVE CAMERA.
(PATENT.) Takea PUtu 4'x31.
42/- Net
NCLUDINQ FITTING
A*4lHC *H»
FJg. 150A. Fig tfoA.
A pr«ctic»l «»cr«t Camera that ilefies <l%tection. Is worn v*iih comfort, and is :Uwa>'i
raady for ui>c.
Inaumcrable been luade to construct Cameras that may l>e carried tAiil>
altei)ipt» Itave
aud secretly alxiut the uer«on but whilst posseuliig many piiints of ingenuity, it ha;
;
hithetto been only pofi-iiUe to dass ihem ^* i(h toyv. llie sue ol" tlit plate is usuall> nc
Urifcr than a postage stamp, but, -is will be %ocu, our Hal Cimer.i lakcT. plaiei 4} X tV
'
tbiu making 11 .i really u&eful In'^tmment, and one which in capable of prv>ducin^ -.ery
good work.
LEN8.— Thii 14 a rapid rectiline*r of special construct ion, working at /'tt. at which
»p«i'turc it covers ^ qu^trter pUic iiuirfly to the corners, and renders cveryihiug in focui
from about a distance of % feet and upwards.
SHUTTER. -Thii worky tfciwecn the two lenses, and prnnils of time as well a<
ii)%ianianct)U» cvposures being bîveo,
FITTING TO HAT. -They are »*nt out correctly fix:us*ed. and no .litfiruUy nenl
b« eiiperience«i in fittmi; to hat. But if preterred, upon reteipt ol' hat, «»: undertake thr
titling ouriclve% tree of charge. 'l>ic figures above -.how the appliraiiori.
WEIGHT. The Camera alone weighs 1) o>c&. only. It is nut aectT«s«ry to can)
the lens and ihutter, as this itiay be iminetliately placed in jx>sition by a bayonet joint
256 Kven with lcn*i and stiutier, the weight is only *\ o». A Focussing S<.T<-eo is alsc
uppJted, and one [tark Slide.
Price £•% 2s. kci. Including fitting.
Kxlra Dark Slides, 4/- each. A ncjt leather casu- ik supplied for the lens and shutter
.M.L (.iOODS .\T I.OWKST STOKE PRICES.

s((>\ii,i.s .\M\ii:rK sim:(I.\i;iiI':s. 33
THE SCOVILL DETECTIVE CAMERAS.

'W^^!<»
^^l
above: Detective cameras for sale in 1 886

by the Scoville Manufacturing Company,
top: A pistol camera for candid photographs,
about i8S8. Both, courtesy George Eastman House.
257
PART T
Wasters of the
JVlodern Era
Stieolitz:
in
An Aiiieritan
Legend
There are some early photographs by Alfred Sticglitz
( 1S64-1946) that are poetic gems, superb pictures which,

more than fifty years later, hold their own as works of
graphic art. Repeated vicwings do not dull their esthetic
impact— barren trees bordering a Munich road in No-

vember, 1885; Paula intently writing a letter in Berlin,
the sunmier of i88g; a Fifth Avenue horse car at the

terminal in the snowstorm of 1893; sparkling wet streets
at night taken in 1896 m front of New York's Plaza; deli-
cate, budding leaves of a young tree, and an unconcerned

sweeper on a soft street in Spring Showers of 1902; and,
closing this portfolio of everlasting appealing photo-
graphs. The Steerage of 1907.
It was not that Sticglitz did not continue to take
memorable pictures. All his long life he saw the wodd
ill terms of the camera. Photography was his basic me-
dium as an artist though he let his personality expand by
becoming editor and writer, pioneer art dealer for avant-
garde artists of two continents, and champion of con-
stantly changing photographic-art movements.
In the beginning, in 1890, when he had just returned
to his native land after eight years in Germany where
he had forsaken the study of engineering for photogra-
phy, New York first exerted its power over him. He then
revealed through his pictures his imaginative response
to such exciting visual stimuli. It was not reportage that

he created with his camera, although his work was strik- tographic imposters, pickpockets, parasites and vanity-
ingly honest; through his cultivated eye and comprehen- intoxicated amateurs." He called attention to the limita-
sive technique it went beyond the limited validity of a tions of photography: "The indi\'iduality of the photog-
mere record. rapher is cramped . . . control of the picture is possible to
Sticglitz was to say in later years, "I have found my a slight degree . . . the powers of selection and rejection
subjects within sixty yards of my door," and he spoke of are fatally limited ... it is impossible in most subjects to
alter your values as you wish ," and, in differentiating
the "exploration of the familiar." In 1890 these thoughts . .
.
were revolutionary. Those were the days of sentimental between sharpness and diffusion, he wrote, "If the work
genre pictures, composite and "high art" photographs, is for scientific purposes work sharply, if for amusement
which Dr. P. H. Emerson, the author of Naturalistic Pho- please yourself, if for business do what will pa) ." Stieglitz
tography had attacked in London but w liich were still the in his overwhelming desire to see photography accepted
criteria of excellence in New York's camera clubs, where as an championed sharp and diffuse photography.
art
their artificial images hung cfn the line in every annual Whistler's heady remarks worked oppositely on
arty salon. younger photographers in America. His nocturnes, har-
During these years, 1890-1895, Stieglitz tried to make monies and arrangements, his organization of patterns
himself financially independent by conducting a photo- and compositions based on Japanese prints, all became
engraving business. The photogravure process was always more important than the subject. The ideal in photog-
to intrigue him; he considered this mechanical reproduc- raphy was to be achieved through soft focus, intense,
tion process second only to an original platinum print. brilliant whites and velvety, deep-black shadows on
Every free moment Sticglitz stalked the streets with rough, specially prepared drawing paper. Whistler's
his hand-held "detective camera." He took straight pic- butterfly monogram was emulated; so were the pastel-
tures; he did not retouch, enlarge, or indulge in any cam- colored mounts and the distinctive gold frame he de-
era tricks. In this he followed Dr. P. H. Emerson, who signed. Critics and visitors were unstinting in their praise
in 1887 had given Sticglitz his first bit of encouragement of photographs believed to be copies of paintmgs. A
by awarding him two guineas and a silver medal. This complicated gum-bichromate process had been discov-
was the first of 150 medals Stieglitz was to win in the ered in which the photographer could apply sensitized
early 1890s, at a time when he was advocating the aboli- pigment with a brush, building up weak areas or painting
tion of the medal system. out and washing away undesirable sections or details.
Stieglitz joined the Society of Amateur Photographers Robert Demachy of Paris, who adopted the gum-
and became editor of their publication. The American bichromate process later, wrote in a Camera Work
Amateur Photographer. He advocated pictorial photog- article on the straight versus the modified print that there
raphy and recommended a new annual photographic v>as "no limit to what a photographer can do to make
salon without prizes or medals. The Society and the New a photograph a work of art . . . meddling with a gum
York Camera Club combined in 1897 to form The Cam- print may or may not add the vital spark, though with-
era Club; Sticglitz was elected vice-president and editor out the meddling there will surely be no spark whatc\'cr."
of its publication. Camera Notes. That year he saw pub- Stieglitz at the opening of the "Photo-Seeession" exhi-
lished his first portfolio of photographs. Picturesque Bits bition in 1902 said, "It is justifiable to use any means
of New York. upon a negative or paper to attain the desired end." Pho-
In England a row had been shaping up in the form of tographs now resembled charcoal drawings, mezzotints,
pure photography versus pictorial photography. Dr. P. water colors. Several \ears later Stcichen wrote, "Camera
H. Emerson held that soft focus corresponded to natural photography can never compete with the brilliant
vision and that soft-focus photography was an art supe- \irtuoso performance of Winslow Homer's brushwork
rior to all other graphic arts, surpassed only by painting. [marine paintings] but in every other way of pictorial
Then he either attended Whistler's "Ten O'Clock" lec- reality, it is superior, especially so when color will have
ture or spoke with Whistler, who convinced him that he been perfected and a phonograph record of the waves
was confusing art with nature. Emerson rc\'crscd himself. added to it."
He wrote a black-bordered pamphlet entitled Dcatli of had resigned the editorship of Camera Notes
Stieglitz
Naturalistic Photography, A Renunciation. A master of and had founded Photo Secession along with John
vituperation, he defined "photographic Impressionist" as G. Bullock, William B. Dyer, Frank Eugene, Dallett
"a. term consecrate to charlatans, and especially to pho- Fuguet, Gertrude Kasebier, Joseph T. Keiley, Robert S.
261
Redfield, Eva Watson Schutze, Eduard J. Steichen, Ed- Stieglitz was the director. For the next twelve years pho-
mund Stirling, John Francis Strauss, and Clarence H. tographs by the members vied with paintings and draw-
White. The official organ of the group was Camera Work ings by Matisse, Marin, Hartle\-, Weber, Rousseau,
with Stieglitz as editor and publisher and Keiley, Fuguct, Renoir, Cezanne, Manet, Picasso, Braque, Pieabia, Dove,
and Strauss as associate editors. The purpose as outlined and O'Keeffe, sculpture b\- Rodin and Brancusi, Japanese
in the prospectus of Photo Secession was "to hold to- prints and African Negro carvings. Many of these artists
gether those Americans devoted to pictorial photography were shown for the first time in America, years before
... to exhibit the best that has been accomplished by its the shattering Armory Show of 1913 and long before
members or other photographers and above all to dignify any American museum purchased a sculpture by Bran-
that profession until recently looked upon as a trade." cusi or a painting by Picasso.
Its purposes were similar to the Linked Ring in Lon- The first Matisse exhibition, held at 291 in April, 1908,
don. In 1905 Photo Secession opened the Little Gallery, had been arranged through Steichen in Paris. Critics
designed by Steichen, at 291 Fifth A\'enue in New York. reviled the "wild man." "His idea is that \ou should in
All photographs in this chapter
are courtesy The Art Institute
of Chicago, Stieglitz Collection,
unless otherwise noted.
ALFRED STIEGLITZ, November Days. Municli, iS.Sj.
262
Fifth Avcnnc. 1S95. Courtesy George Eastman I louse, Rochester.
STIEGLITZ, Winter on
263
STiEGLiTZ, Siiow-Cappcd Mountains. About 1887.
painting get as far away from nature as possible," wrote graphs ranging in treatment from pictorial realism to
Chamberlain of the Evening Mail, and Elizabeth Gary imitation painting were installed on specially prepared
of The New York Times said of paintings by the Fauve walls. Fifteen were purchased for the museum's perma-
Matisse, "ugh' and distorted, many of them amounting nent collection. An important battle had been won, for
to carieatures without significanee." official and dignified recognition. Photographers rejoiced,
The Camera Club, of whieh Stieglitz was a founder, but under Stieglitz, who footed all its bills and found
expelled him because he exhibited Matisse, whom they himself short of funds, 291, the Little Gallery, devoted
regarded as an "areh Satanist" and a "menace to artistic more time to art exhibitions that helped defray expenses.
morals." Stieglitz never let the club reinstate him, al- Camera Work also devoted more space to reproduc-
though they made several overtures. tions of artists' works plus articles and a box-score reprint
In 1910 the Albright Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, of all that the newspaper art critics wrote about any art
fell to the persuasive blandishments of Stieglitz, turning exhibition at 291. Reproductions by photogravure of
the Museum over to Photo Secession for an international paintings and photographs appeared regulady. Some
exhibition of pictorial photography. Five hundred photo- photographers, particularly Stieglitz in America and
264
Emerson in England, preferred this commercial form of hand, which will always go its own single way and no
printing for any large edition of prints. It was a short- other." Exaggerated claims for photography, even by
lived contention of Stieglitz at this time that only one Shaw, did not lessen the photographic artistry of Coburn
perfect print could be got from a negative, thereby whose portraits remain rich and delicate examples of the
claiming uniqueness for a photograph as for a painting. platinotype and gum-print processes.
The fifty uniformly printed issues of Camera Work Arguments about what constitutes an artist appeared
contained special articles by George Bernard Shaw, in the pages of Camera Work; "Pros and Cons" was a
Maurice Maeterlinck, Sadakichi Ilartmann (whose first page title for Frederick H. Evans. J. B. Kerfoot wrote
pieces were signed Sidney Allan ) , Robert Demachy, Ben- "The Rubaiyat of Kodak McFilm." Shaw in "The Un-
jamin de Casseres, Frederick H. Evans, J. B. Kerfoot, mechanicalism of Photography" cautioned the exhibitors
Gertrude Stein, and a host of other writers on modern of the London Photographic Exhibition (for which he
art or photography. Shaw, writing an appreciation of had originally written the article as a foreword to the
A. L. Coburn, compares his efforts to Bellini, Hals, and catalogue) as follows: "Let nobody suppose that the
Holbein, whose "st5les he can emulate at will," and he critics who stood for Sargent against Bouguereau, for
closes with, "he is free of that clumsy tool, the human Monet against \'icat Cole, nearly twenty years ago, are
SiiEGLiTZ, Paula. Berlin, 1SS9.

STiEGLiTZ, The Terminal. iS'Qj.
now going to stand for the photographers who nnitatc who attended Mitchell Kennerly's Gallcr}-, where there
Sargent and Monet against original photographers." were exhibited i-j.5 of Stieglitz's prints from 1886 to 1921.
What and who was original was aired in every issue, The press extolled their virtues. In the catalogue Stieg-
and Stieglitz, brilliant editor that he was, gave eaeh litz's statement read in part, "My ideal is to achieve the
writer, photographer, and artist the right to discover new ability to produce numberless prints from each negative,
and personal paths. It was a costly publication. I'he finest prints all significantly alive, yet indistinguishably alike."
of paper and type faces, hand-pulled gravure reproduc- Stieglitz photographed parts of the human body:
tions on "nee silk" paper tipped into each issue, and hands, feet, breasts, buttocks, torso. These portraits with-
expensive individual designing of each page, made it out faces were followed with photographs of clouds
hardly profitable to publish. The original price was $4 which Stieglitz called "equivalents." He started out to
for an annual subscription of four issues. Tow ard the end prove that the merit of his photographs was not depen-
it was $8 a year, but, by 1917, when publication was sus- dent on the sitter's personality and appearance or upon
pended, there were lessthan forty subscribers. One of the influence Stieglitz exerted over him. In photograph-
the country's most distinguished magazines had folded, ing clouds by sunlight and moonlight or shimmering
and soon 291 closed its doors. leaves and blades of grass, he endowed these with the
Stieglitz photographed his friends: the artists of his equivalent emotion and excitement he had instilled in
gallery, John Marin, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, the portaits of artists or in the buildings of New York.
Georgia O'Keeffe, Charles Demuth— clear and incisive Stieglitz continued to extend his concepts of photog-
pictures, brilliant characterizations. For the eight-year raphy, re-evaluating his work according to the contem-
interval between the closing of 291 and the opening of porary requirement of using the full negative sharply. In
the "Intimate Gallery" in room 303 of the Anderson the new Intimate Galler\ he sponsored and exhibited
Gallery in 1925, Stieglitz arranged exhibitions of his the work of Paul Strand, a photographer of brilliant
artists' works in various New York galleries and held three promise he had added to his roster. In 1924 Stieglitz
retrospeetive exhibitions of his own photographs. The married Georgia O'Keeffe. That same year the Boston
contributions of his career were impressively clear to all Museum of Fine Arts acquired twcnt\-scvcn of his pho-
266
STiEGLiTz, \ênice Canal. 1894.
STiEGLiTz, Steerage. 1907.
268
tographs and the Royal Photographic Society awarded am not a salesman, nor are the pictures here for sale,
him the Progress Medal. although under certain circumstances certain pictures
In 1930 he opened An American Place at 509 Madison may be acquired."
Avenue in room 1710. His camera lay idle most of the Stieglitz was a powerful and positive personality in the
time; he had suffered a heart attack and rarely left the annals of American art. In his lifetime he became a leg-
gallery. He saw the artists whom he had handled become endary character of whom a collective panegyric portrait,
accepted internationally and their work enter the na- a eulogy, was published twelve years before his death.
tion's major museums. Stieglitz never ceased his efforts Today myriads of people recognize him as one of Amer-
to demonstrate the genius of his artists, but his sales ica's pre-eminent photographers, as all over the country
methods were decidedly untraditional. He put a possible they view his prints in museums to which Georgia
client out of his gallery and explained, "I am not in busi- O'Kccffe donated for posterity the life production of
ness, I am not interested in exhibitions and pictures, I Alfred Stieglitz.
STIEGLITZ, The "Acjuitania" Lca\ing Harbor. 1910.
'i^« tr
m mumm^k
STiEGLiTZ, Paris. 189^.
270
271
«.4.
^'.'4
'•*».;>
*>
STiEGi.iTZ, Spring Showers. iqo2.

STiEGLiTZ, Reflections at Night. 1S96. Collection the author.
273
•^ »_
STiEGLiTZ, City of Ambition.
274
STiEGLiTZ, New York City. 1 951 Looking north from 509
.
Madison Avenue.
U;,-
IIII'
iiu.:i
1 R W
1 s r> i\
I r ,
1^
II I I ^ 1^1 114
'
! 1 1
III
1 1
!l
1
. klLJ
li
ill
3i"
STiEGLiTZ, below: Georgia O'Keeffe. 191S.
opposite page, above: Georgia O'Keeffe Wearing Hat. 1930.
opposite page, below: Georgia O'Keeffe's Hands. About 1919.
>/•%
277
*^tM.m?m
STIEGLITZ, John JNIarin. 1920.
278
STiEGLiTZ, Lake George. 1 954.
??=ifcft,
^^fi^^^
279
Steiclieii:
Painter,
Photo«rai)her,
Curator
Edward Steichen was born in Michigan in 1879, and

raised in Wisconsin, for the family soon moved to Mil-
waukee. At the age of fourteen he came to Chicago to
see the art and photography exhibitions at the World's
Columbian Exposition. He was going to be a painter.
se\'eral years he sent canvases
During the next to the Art
Institute's annual exhibitions, but not one was accepted.

He took a job as illustrator in a lithography plant. He
made snapshots of people and photographs for advertis-
ing. One sold. Again he submitted pictures to the Art
Institute of Chicago. This time they were photographs

and they were accepted by a jury that included Alfred
Sticglitz and Clarence White. Stieglitz and White were

impressed with a photograph entitled The Pool, which
Stieglitz bought two j'cars later and called a "master-
piece" (a term art critics accused photographers of using
quite casually).
Milwaukee could not hold Steichen much longer after
this bit of encouragement. He went to see Stieglitz in

New York soon after the turn of the centun,'. The fol-
lowing year he was in London photographing George

Bernard Shaw, preceded by his friend Alvin Langdon
Coburn. Shaw was an amateur photographer of three
years standing. Why had he taken up the camera? In
1949 he urote Helmut Ccrnshcim, in answer to this ques-
tion, "I always wanted to draw and paint. I had no
literary ambition: I aspired to be a Michael Angelo, not but for the portraits of Theodore Roosevelt and William
a Shakespear. But 1 could not draw well enough to Howard Taft a national magazine paid $500 each for the
satisfy myself; and the instruction I could get was worse privilege to reproduce. In the first issue of Camera Work,
than useless. So when dv)' plates and push buttons came January, 1903, Steiehen wrote a statement on "ye fakers,"
into the market I bought a box camera and began push- claiming that all artists take liberties with reality and
ing the button. This was in 1898." make a picture. In the second issue of Camera
"fake" or
Then Steiehen was in Paris. In 1902 he entered two Work, three months later, eight of Steichen's photo-
paintings in the Paris Salon and sent also a bunch of graphs were reproduced plus a tribute to him and his
photographs labeled drawings, but the jury rejected these work written by the Japanese-Irish-American art critic,
just before the opening — not, they explained, because Sadakiehi Hartmann. Stieglitz published a Steiehen sup-
thev were not so good as the paintings but because they plement in the April, 1906, issue, reproducing sixteen
feared an avalanche of photo entries. photographs by photogravure, one in two colors, and in
Steiehen photographed Rodin flanked by his sculp- the following issue published a three-color reproduction
tures of Victor Hugo and The Thinker. He became fast of a powerful portrait of G. B. Shaw by Steiehen.
friends with the dynamic sculptor and his family. He In 1905 the London Salon reviewer, A. C. R. Garter,
photographed all Rodin's work, including the monolithic wrote on seeing the Steiehen show, "Is photography an
Balzac which, fifty years later, he was to photograph art? Let the answer be, 'Yes, if it's Steiehen.' And, some
again when the Museum of Modern Art acquired a day doubtless another man will spring forth and be to
bronze cast and installed it in the sculpture garden. Steiehen as Steiehen is to Stieglitz. The services rendered
Steiehen returned to the United States in 1902. He to the cause of pictorial photography by Alfred Stieglitz
designed the Photo-Secession Gallery at 291. Stieglitz must not be forgotten, for it was his pioneership which
bought prints from him, paying him $50 to $100 each. cleared the tangled ground and made a Steiehen pos-
Stieglitz demanded respect for photography and he de- sible."
manded a price for photographs. Advertisers not only Robert Demaehy wrote, "The best results I have ever
paid handsomely for the use of photographs; they had to seen in the gum process are Steichen's, Puyo's, Watzek's
insure the print against the slightest smudge of the and Kuhn's . . . they have always reminded me forcibly
printer's thumb. of fine engravings, fine etchings, fine lithographs and fine
Stieglitz exhibited and sold Steichen's paintings and wash drawings."
photographs. The usual price was $50 or $60 per print. An American art critic, Fitzgerald of the New York
PETER POLLACK, Edward Steiehen. Three photographs taken with

a mm. Minox camera, 1955, during installation of the
9^/2
Family of Man exhibition, at the Museum of Modern Art, Ncm' York.
\
Evening Sun, seeing a similar show a bit later, wrote, He took a year out after his discharge to experiment
"I am ignorant whether Eduard [he spelt it with a "u" with straight photography. He photographed a white cup
until after World War I] Steichen is more painter or and saucer against a black \elvet background more than
photographer." a thousand times. He sought perfect control to achieve
In 1908 Steichen was again in France, this time for a maximum realism and the faintest, most subtle grada-
Not content to be painter and pho-
sojourn of six years. tions in white, gray, and black. He put away his brushes,
tographer, he became immersed in the study of plants, burned his paintings. What he knew of art and design,
not only photographing them but actually breeding flow- the keen eye he had developed in painting portraits, now
ers for which he was awarded a gold medal by the Horti- combined with a masterful technique, enabled him to
cultural Society of France. portray forcefully the diverse personalities, the intellec-
Worid War I changed his life. He returned to the tuals and the socially prominent who came to pose.
States. During the Second Battle of the Marne he was Elegant fashions and industrial advertising became his
appointed technical adviser of the army's aerial photo- forte in photography. He made commercial photographic
graphic services. Here was the end of the gum prints; the art pa}-. In 1923 Frank Cro\\ninshield induced him to
arty, fuzzy photograph was a thing of the past. Sharp and join Conde Nast's staff as photographer for Vogue and
brilliant detail was required; photographs had to be so Vanity Fair. Wedding gowns and silver, toothpaste and
clearly defined that everything could be recognized from cold cream, matches and watches, a rich variety of the
aerial views. Lives depended on it. I'he Army taught nation's most highly touted products sat for his camera
Colonel Steichen a new way of photography. and appeared in the slick magazines along with his por-
are courtesy The Art Institute
of Chicago, Stieglitz Collection,
unless otherwise noted.
EDWARD STEICHEN, right: Sclf-Portrait. Gum print, igoz

opposite page: The Pond. Steichen's first important
photograph. Stieglitz wrote on the back, "Original platinum
print bought from Steichen for $5.00 in 1900."
282
/ r.1^.
Jh i
^ i
^
»4,' '*'
'"ÎS^^ t^
^2J
41 V
•*%
«j^'
STEiCHEN, above: Rodin with His Sculptures
'Victor Hugo" and "The Thinker." Gum print, 1902.
right: Clarence White. Gum print, about 1905.
284
traits of the lettered and the celebrated from all walks of He arranged photography exhibitions by creative pho-
life. His photographs of the twenties and thirties form tographers who used any camera or style they chose.
a pictorial record, like Nadar's and Brady's in their day. Through his eilorts photography as an art form found
The United States Navy in the early days of World acceptance among critics and visitors along with paint-
War II waived age limitations for Captain Edward ings and prints. No excessive claims were made for pho-
Steichen, USNR. His "Road to Victory" photography tograph}-; no academic form was insisted upon. Onh'
exhibition, which was shown in Grand Central Station "good" photographs were eligible for exhibition. This
soon after Pearl Harbor, was a powerful force in unifying example in free expression for creative photography inau-
the nation's will. There was no one better qualified to gurated by Beaumont and Nancy Ncwhall, Steichen's
organize a department with an avowed purpose to photo- predecessors at theMuseum of Modern Art, and carried
graph the entire war at no matter how long it would
sea, forward by him is now followed by progressive museums
take. The record of the men he commanded adds up to all over the country.
a remarkable pictorial account of every engagement of "The Family of Man," the most popular photography
theNavy that will be a boon for all future historians. exhibition ever assembled, was selected by Steichen from
An army colonel in World War and a navy captain
1 among two million prints sent in by photographers from
in World War II, the high-ranking officer Edward all over the world. This creative exhibition of photo-
Steichen fought his valiant battles with film carried by graphs on a theme is still touring the world. Seen by
some of the nation's prized magazine and press photog- innumerable visitors, the resulting paeans of praise reflect
raphers. He doflfed his uniform to serve as director of to the glory of a leader in present-day photography,
photography for the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Edward Steichen.
STEiCHEX, above: Alfred Stieglitz. Gmn print, igi 5.
right: Morgan. About 1903. Steichen's most famous portrait,
J. P.
commissioned by the artist Carlos Baca-Flor, whose portrait, painted

from this photograph, lies forgotten in a storage bin. The highlight
on the arm of the chair resembles a poised dagger held in the financiers
hand. Courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
286
Atget and
the Strêets
of Paris
Two YEARS BEFORE THE TURN of the twentieth century,

at a time when the woolly, the soft-focus, the arty, the
polished, and the overpictorial were the stales most likely
to receive recognition in the journals of the day, Alfred

Sticglitz in New York, Paul Martin in London, and
Eugene Atget in Paris set their cameras to capture au-
thentic photographs of what they saw in the places where
they lived. Atget brought honesty into focus for an inti-
mate and direct record of the man\-sided Paris that he

explored. This record has smce become the inspiration
for straight, documentary photographers everywhere.
Atget turned to the camera in i8g8, when he was
forty-two years old. For a decade he had tried to be an
actor, playing bit parts in the provinces of France and
the suburbs of Paris. He seems hardly the matinee-idol
t}'pe, this taciturn man who had shipped out as a cabin
boy at thirteen and had followed the sea for more than
fifteen years before putting on grease paint.
With the decision to leave the stage came the necessity
of finding work to support himself and an ailing wife ten
years his senior. He tried painting for a year; this was not
the answer. He wanted to record everything that he
felt was of importance in Paris; for this the brush was
inadequate. He acquired a bulky, heavy, view camera
with a simple and not very sharp lens; it never left the
tripod on w Inch he mounted it. For the next twent\-nine
3'ears, until he died in 1927, Atget reeorded as realistieally subjects, monuments and markets, staircases, fagades,
as possible whatever appealed to him in his beloved iron grilles, balconies and circus fronts in the flowering
Paris. He would carry this cumbersome equipment, trav- style of Art Nouveau, cobblestones and curbstones of
eling by bus in all seasons of the year, often before dawn, empty streets, reflections in store windows and dressed
to capture the morning light on the silent streets. All mannikins. All these he photographed with lemarkable
districts knew this wizened man, hands and especially clarity of detail, making a graphic historical record of his
fingernails permanently blackened by photographer's personal and often poetic vision. Critics have since re-
chemicals, who was seen standing in a long, stained over- ferred to him as "the Walt Whitman of the camera."
coat, pockets bulging with plate holders for his big -jVi- He asked people to pose; for with his camera even the
by-gVi-inch negatives. slightest movement would cause a blurred image-
His camera was little suited to stop action. He photo- though he didn't mind ghost images in his pictures of
graphed architecture steeped in the atmosphere of the architectural or inanimate subjects. He photographed
nineteenth century during the first quarter of the twen- hawkers of the streets, umbrella men, ragpickers, and
tieth. Decaying chateaux and miserable shacks were his streetwalkers. In one photograph a streetwalker stands
EUGENE ATGET, Street Circus. Paris, about iqio.
289
in the doorway of a house, obviously pleased to pose in pher, but his direct use of the camera is in the tradition
her newfox-fur neckpiece, high lace boots, and the pert of Fenton, Nadar, and Brady, lie continued photograph-
short skirt of her profession. Atget saw beauty in all man- ing one subject until he was satisfied that he had said
ner of things, places, and people. something original about some overlooked aspect of Paris
He made a precarious livelihood by taking commis- or until he was commissioned to do something else. His
sions from authors; for one author of a book on prostitu- work grows out of the subject; it is not something derived
tion he made photographs of brothels in Paris; for the from the art of painting. I'hat may well be why his work
French Archives he made a documentary series of photo- was never exhibited in any photographic salon nor given
graphs of historical buildings and medieval statuary; and any official recognition.
to the artists of Paris he made a\ailablc photographs of Man Ray, painter and photographer, introduced Atget
a thousand subjects. On the ground floor of the building to the Surrealists. And Berenice Abbott, in 1927 while
where he had a fifth-floor apartment and darkroom was \\orking for Man Ray in Paris, photographed Atget (still
a sign, "Atget— Documents for Artists." Braque and in his long coat but quite unexpectedly with face washed
Utrillo were the first to walk up and buy some of his and hair slicked down for the occasion) shortly before
prints at the most reasonable prices; he was so proud to he died. After his death she rescued most of the 8,000 or
see his photographs being used by the artists. His photo- so negatives that constituted his life's work. She bought
graphs served as the artists' memor\-, substitutes for detail a superb collection of about 2,000 negatives from Atget's
drawings or pictures of mood and atmosphere of a given landlord, brought them back to New York, made perfect
scene that the artist was painting. prints, wrote enthusiastic articles and a book about his
Atget had that incredible quality of character inherent life, and arranged international shows of his photographs.
in some great artists who willingh' spend a lifetime hap- All contemporar}- documentar)- photographers are in-
pilv working without bothering about fame; men like debted to Berenice Abbott for preserving the vital con-
Henri Rousseau, Van Gogh, Modigliani, and Soutine. tribution Atget made to photography. His pictures are
Atget was honored by the artists as was Rousseau; Picas- so inspiring and powerfully honest that they have the
so, Marcel Duchamp, and especially Man Ray joined his quality of transporting the viewer to the time, place, and
circle of admirers. He served the Surrealist painters with mood of the image. Atget reveals the perfect instant that
authentic documents related to their conception of best expresses the image he felt so deeply; it is that inborn
painting incongruous elements in juxtaposition. They emotional capacity that is Atget's impact on the seeing
honored him in 1926, when he was seventy years old, by of our day. He is the spirtual ancestor of today's best
reproducing two of his photographs in La Revolution documentary photographers, who carry forward \\ith
Surrcaliste, their official organ. faster and better equipment his passion for honest,
Atget's vision aflêctcd painting, but his photographs straight photography, endowing the image with explicit
were not influenced b\- the paintings of his contempo- fullness composed from accidental arrangements of vis-
raries or of the past. He imitated no artist or photogra- ual elements.
All photographs in this chapter are
courtesy George Eastman House, Rochester.
290
2 ^
ATGET, Uml^rclla Peddler. 2910.

291
ATGET
below. Welllicad. Paris, about 1910.
right: Paris Scene. 1905.
,
^"-^J^.
^^.^
^ '•î
>»J
ATGET
above: Girl in Doorway of Brothel. About igzo.
right: Shop Window. Pans, about igio.
294
295
Uiis aiul Hine:
Social
Idealists with
the Caiuera
JACOB A. RllS
Like the pamphlets of Voltaire, the photographs of

Jacob A. Riis (1849-1914) helped to start a revolution.
The revolt was in New York in 1S87 against the wretched

slums, the degrading tenements, and the venal corrup-
tion that permitted this miser>' to exist. Riis was a police
reporter for The Evening Sun, America's first journalist-
photographer. His writing was con\incing, but his camera

was decisive in making his work an incontrovertible,
powerful weapon. Riis knew the underprivileged. In

1890 he wrote How the Other Half Lives, a book about
his observations in the overcrowded, diseased, and
criminally dark tenements which Lord Br\ce in his
American Coninionwealth had called "the conspicuous
failure of the city."
Riis was one of the first to use flash when it was intro-
duced in the United States. This consisted of a mixture

of powdered magnesium and potassium chlorate; it was
first manufactured as cartridges to be used in what
appeared to be a pistol. Because it brought out many a
concealed weapon of those he would photograph, Riis

soon substituted a fr\ing pan to hold the powder which
he ignited by hand. It burned in a blinding flash and
exploded in the air; Riis photographed and, amid the
resulting dense smoke, grabbed camera and tripod and
ran. In this way he photographed the Alulberry Bend photographs he made slides which he used m lectures;
Hideout under a bridge, Lodgings in Pell Street, and The he wrote magazine articles and books. He was to see nine
East Side Gwwier Gang. books published altogether, including Children of the
He continued to gather evidence, in words and Poor, 1S92; Out of Mulberry Street, 1898; Battle with
pictures, of the monstrous horrors in the tenements. the Slums, 1902; Children of the Tenements and
Some of these five- and six-story wooden firetraps were Theodore Rooserelt, the Citizen in 1904.
without Hght and ventilation except for twilight air Theodore Roosevelt, as police comnnssioner of New
shafts. A typical block housed 2,781 people and had one York City, abolished the noisome horror of police lodg-
bathtub. A half million people lived in the slums, nine ing houses when Riis called his attention to them.
or more to a room. Sweatshops abounded in the tene- Twenty-five years earlier, in 1870, when Riis had arrived
ments, where no child-labor law could protect the in New York from his native Denmark, he had spent
children who worked an average of twelve hours a day nights in the reeking jails. They had grown grimier since
in permanent semi-darkness for an average of 5 cents an that day; the few pennies charge remained the same.
hour. I'raincd as a carpenter and writer, he wandered America's
Riis poked his camera into every unsavory street, into eastern cities from one job to another for the next seven
the most unattractive, unglamorous facets of the great years, until in 1877 he found work as a reporter on The
city. His pictures and stories appeared in The Sun; of his New York 'i'ribune.
JACOB A. RIIS, The Street, The Childrens' Only Playground. 1892.

It was as a journalist \\ith pen and camera that Riis documentary evidence the truth of w hat he was writing.
made his tremendous pioneer reforms. Through his un- He would never have considered his pictures works of art;
tiring efforts rear tenements were destro>ed, child-labor he would not have indulged in such discussions. His
laws were amended and enforced, a truant school was interest would have extended to techniques that would
established, and desks became compulsory equipment guarantee a clearer, more detailed picture. Ncxcrthclcss,
for children in the schools. One of his greatest triumphs this dedicated man left a mighty series of pictures moti-
was the elimination of Mulberr)- Bend, a hangout for a vated by the depth of his humanitarian feelings. Their
bunch of toughs. A year later an appreciative city built purpose accomplished, his photographs remain persua-
a park and settlement house on this site, naming it in si\e and moving pictures deepb' appreciated e\ery time
his honor. Today housing projects, schools, parks, and they are exhibited. Riis's son. Dr. Roger William Riis,
playgrounds all over the country are named to com- presented 412 of his father's glass negatives to the
memorate Jacob A. Riis. Museum of the City of New York, where, under the di-
It is Riis the photographer who concerns us. He used rection of curator Miss Grace Mayer, exhibitions of
the camera only to illustrate his stories, to prove with Riis's photographs are often shown.
All photographs in this section are made by John H. Heffrcn from the
original Riis negatives, courtesy Museum of the City of New York.
.^*R
'>^
Riis, above: Bandits' Roost, 591/2 Mulberry Street. 1888.
opposite page: In Sleeping Quarters. Rivington Street Dump. About iSgz.
299
h T.
Riis, above: Little Susie at Her Work. About 1888.
opposite page, above: Home of an Italian Ragpicker.
One of earliest flash pictures in the United States, 1 Sgo.
left: Reporters Office, 301 Mulbcrn,- Street. 1SS8. Riis
served here as a police reporter for the Evening Sun.
301
Riis, above: Necktie Workshop in a Division Street Tenement. iSgo.
right: A Class in the Condemned Essex Market School with Gas Burning by Day. 190:2
302
LEWIS W. i//NE and flash gun. He learned control of his equipment
through trial and error as he took photographs intended
The unending polemic regarding art and photography to dramatize the school's program.
that raged among the members of Photo Secession and He gave up teaching to become a full-time photog-
in the pages of Camera Work touched Lewis W. Hine rapher. He became a free-lance conscience with a camera.
( 1874-1940) hardly more than it did Jacob A. Riis. Hine Ellis Island, New York's port of entry where millions of
was a trained sociologist who learned how to use the immigrants first saw the "promised land," drew him to
camera in order to satisfy an urgent need to take honest photograph sad-eyed "madonnas" surrounded by their
pictures telling forceful truths about intolerable injus- bundles and children. He followed them through the
tices which he saw all around him. gates into the overcrowded slums, the swarming streets,
Lewis Wickes Hine was born in 1874 in Oshkosh, and the impossible, ensla\ing jobs. All this he put into
Wisconsin; as a boy he worked long hours a day in a sharp focus as a social indictment against the conditions
factory, learning first-hand what he was to photograph offered its new citizens by the nation's largest and richest
later. He studied at the State Normal School in his home city. The magazine Charities and the Commons pub-
town, then attended the Uni\ ersit\- of Chicago and New lished these pictures in 1908. The same year the maga-
York University, from which he received a master's zine's editors hired him to make a complete, sociological
degree. study with his camera of miners' lives; a truthful and
In 1901 Hine went to teach at the Ethical Culture comprehensive portrayal of their housing, health, chil-
School m New York. Two years later he acquired camera dren, education, and death, which was published as The
All photographs in this section are courtesy George Eastman House, Rochester.
LEWIS w. HiNE, above: Little Spinner in Carolina Cotton Mill. 1909.
left: Group of Newsboys. Taken with flash at midnight on Brooklyn Bridge, 1909.
Pittsburgh Survey. 'I'hree jears later he was appointed their health, their habits, and all he encountered. The
staff photographer for the National Child Labor Com- nation reacted immediately. His vivid photographs, pub-
mittee to investigate child-labor conditions existing in lished as human documents, were strikingh- clear. A pro-
the United States. Iline returned with a series of appal- tective child-labor law was passed. Mine had made the
ling pictures that shocked the country. Children as camera into a formidable weapon for social progress.
young as eight years old worked in cotton mills tending In World War he was with the American Red Cross
I
machines, were hired as coal breakers in dangerous mines, overseas as a photographer, and after the armistice he
and sold newspapers in freezing weather late at night. remained with Red Cross Relief to feed the desolate and
These starving, exploited children had little chance for help the wretched in the Balkans.
an education or hope for the future. I line took notes of He returned to New York in 1920. He still lugged his
what they said and estimated the children's size by mark- big camera. He was a sociologist; not all America was
ing his vest buttons. He kept a sociological record of sordid and slums, not all \\orkers were exploited and
305
enslaved. He believed in his country; he believed in the when the last girder of the mooring mast was riveted,
people from all over the world who came to this land Hine had himself swung out on the end of a crane. His
and built this country. He took hundreds of pictures of legs twined around the hook, a clumsy 4-by-5 camera in
Men at Work, vigorous men with pride in themselves both hands, intent only upon capturing the historic mo-
and in their work. A positi\e statement was to be made. ment on his film, he knew no fear. No one v,as there to
What was more positive than the Empire State Building take his picture hanging perilously over New York's
then being erected? He was hired as its official photog- streets. The men's job was done. Hine had a scries of
rapher. All the languages heard in the tenements were fine photographs, not a mere record glorifying labor.
heard here also. Floor by floor Hine photographed the Hine, humanitarian with a camera, wrote his own best
men building the nation's tallest skyscraper. He toasted explanation of his purposes: "There were two things I
his bread alongside them in the forge used to heat rivets. wanted to do. I wanted to show the things that had to
His photographs ingeniously reflect the men's attitude be corrected. I wanted to show the things that had to be
towards the work and the building. "Topping Out Day," appreciated.
306
iiiNE, below. Breaker Boys Inside the Coal Breaker. 1909.
left: Tenement Dweller Carrying in County Coal. Chicago, igio.
HiNE, bclo-\v: Sidewalks of New York. 1910.
right: Italian Family Seeking Lost Baggage. Ellis Island, 1905.
opposite page: Madonna of Ellis Island. 1905.

309
HiNE, above: Derrick Men, Empire State Building. 1931.
right: Riveting the Last Beam, Empire State Building. 1931.
310
'''.--".: A'^'^
At
i;^^
Ceiithe
Celehrities ciiid
Anoiiymous
TluoniJs
Arnold Gentiie (1869-1942) thought he hud invented

the candid photograph about a lialf century ago, but
what he actuall)- created is as formahzed as the portrait
technicjue he so valiantly fought.

For thirty years he took pictures of the world's great.
Three Presidents sat for him: Theodore Roosevelt, Wil-

ham Howard and Woodrow Wilson; two of the
Taft,
nation's wealthiest men: John D. Rockefeller and An-
drew Mellon; many international celebrities of the stage
—Bernhardt, Pavlova, Isadora Duncan, Kllcn Terry,

Greta Garbo, Eleanora Duse; and the highborn every-
where. With his camera he traveled the entire world.
Dr. Gen the (it was not an honorary title; he received
a doctorate from the Uni\crsit\- of Jena for work in
philology in 1S94, before he was twenty-fi\e }ears old')
was an urbane bachelor, six-foot-two, charming, and an

accomplished linguist. With his beautiful head and
courtly manners he was considered one of the most ar-
tistic candid photographers of his time.
But his was not candid photograph}' as we see it today.
The only thing candid about it was that he snapped the

shutter when the sitter didn't expect him to. What
Genthe tried for was "art" photography; his purpose was
to make the photograph resemble one or another of the
graphic arts.
A familiar nude was a copy of some ancient Greek

torso; he called it "living sculpture." A portrait of an creating his conception of a romantic picture. A soft
American girl's profile was skillful when it was made to moonglow suffuses all his important portraits. Through
resemble that of the Venus dc Milo. Portraits, no matter film, lens, lighting, and the use of mat paper for printing,
of whom, were most successful \\hen they were mistaken the age lines of his sitters were eliminated.
for mezzotints. Pictures of dancers on the beach were In several portraits he indicated ideas which have been
deliberately made to resemble soft-ground etchings or further developed in our day by magazine photographers
charcoal drawings; landscapes in effect became muted who portray the subject set in the midst of his profes-
water colors. sion's symbols. In the twenties Genthe made a series of
Emphasis was on soft focus with velvety blacks and photographs in which the subject is surrounded by props:
brilliant whites, ideas he took from the chiaroscuro paint- Henri Charpentier, the chef, is seen wearing a huge white
ings ofRembrandt and Caravaggio or from lithographs cap, holding a pot lid open over a stove; Childe Hassam
by Toulouse-Lautrec; he created what became known as stands beside an etching press. I'hcsc were made in the
the "Genthe style." studio and bear the imprint of Gcnthc's academic roman-
Still, he was a radical with a camera, for he gave it the ticism—he strove, he said, "to show the mind and the
respect an artist has for his equipment, and he made it spirit of the person."
work for him creatively. He broke with the muscle-bound His greatest pictures he took in 189.11. when he first ar-
traditions, the uniform sharpness, the characterless stiff rived, in San Francisco's Chinatown, and, a little more
poses that were the characteristic of photographers of the than a decade later, when he photographed the earth-
day, especially in San Francisco, where he opened his quake which destroyed San Francisco. It is for these ex-
first gallery around the turn of the century. Nor did ceptional, honest pictures, deeply charged with feeling,
Genthe indulge in the practice prevalent in commercial rather than for the Genthe style of art portraiture that
studios and arty photographic circles of retouching or he will be remembered.

drawing on a negative. San Francisco's Chinatown sixty years ago was a trans-
He was selective, a master in modeling with light, planted Canton; few changes were made when it was
always attempting to capture the poetic mood, thereby moved from the opposite shores of the Pacific. It was
All photographs m this

chapter courtesy The
Art Institute of Chicago.
ARNOLD GENTHE, Pigtail Parade,

San Francisco. About 1897.
313
]m
q
an Oriental city within the city of San Francisco. Ten
thousand black-clad men shuffled silently in the sandal-
wood-scented streets, streets with such descriptive names

as the "Street of the Sing Song Girls," "The Street of
the Gamblers," "I'he Street of the Butchers," and

many
others including the "Devil's Kitchen." Genthe
shuffled
along with the denizens of the district. He became a
familiar figure. Unobtrusively he slipped a small camera
with its fast Zeiss lens from his pocket.
To the superstitious Chinese, young and old, the cam-

era was a "black devil box" which contained all
the evils
of the worid ready to pounce out on them when the
box clicked.
Genthe took the only complete record extant of China-

town and the strange people and places that flourished
with their Oriental flavor m
the dissolute, beautiful city
of the Pacific Coast. He took photographs of the derelict
dope addicts and murderers, the rich, silken-embroidered
costumes of the merchants and their children as they
lived within painted frame buildings supporting
bal-
conies festooned with flower pots and gay, multicolored

lanterns hanging in the cool courtyards.
It was all wiped out in one angry day, April 18, 1906,
the day of the earthquake of San Francisco. Genthe's

powerful pictorial record remains, a remarkable series of
documents made }ears before the word was ever used in
connection with photography in America.
The day it happened Genthe's studio fell apart at the
first tremor. Fire wiped out everything a little later. By
thistime picture taking with him was automatic. He
borrowed the first camera he laid hands on in a store he
found open. It was a simple box, a 3A Kodak Special. He
stuffed his pockets with film and he roamed the devas-
tated city from Fisherman's Wharf to Nob Hill, shoot-
ing pictures of the collapsing, dynamited buildings, the

consuming fires, and the dazed, wandering people.
Genthe lost his studio, his equipment, his precious
library of three thousand volumes, but he fortunately
saved the negatives of his Chinatown pictures. Will
Irwin, a writer with whom he later collaborated on a
book, had prevailed upon Genthe to put his Chinese
GENTHE, Street of the Gamblers,

Chinatown, San Francisco. About 1S96.
315
negatives in a vault. They came through the fire un- here he perfected his internationally popular technique.
scathed and now are in the Archives of the Library of In his autobiography written late in life he commented,
Congress. "Today I have only gratitude, untouched by regret, for
Genthc was to stay in San Francisco five more years. my part as one of the pioneers in the development of an
From 1911 to his death in 1942 at the age of seventy- art which has done so much to spread the gospel of
three, his studio was in New York, on the top floor of a beauty ..." [I helped] "lift photography from the me-
building in the heart of the shopping district. He roamed chanical, lifeless medium it had become to the dignity
the world taking pictures of people and places, in his and status of a real art."
soft-focus Genthe st}le, not like the cadicr sharper, pro- It is strange— a lifetime as a portrait photographer of
founder pictures he had made in San Francisco when he great names, and Arnold Genthe's most memorable por-
first took up the camera. traits were made in the first decade of his life as camera-
In New York Genthe gained an enviable reputation as man in San Francisco's Chinatown, where there were no
a photographer of tycoons and celebrities in all fields; names of importance, onl\- anon) mous throngs.
GENTHE, below. Chickcn \êndor.

right: Street of the Balconies,
Chinatown, San Francisco. About 1S96.

yt>ii^ .a> ,
318
.^v^'W^fP-' IV
I •»^
-SSBSSS^ ^^f
a t
r^l
';J
f 'i
320
GENTHE, below: Greta Garbo. About 1925. /
left: Isadora Duncan.About 1920.
far left: Eleanora Duse at the Age of Sixty-four. 1 923 «5
right: Margaret Severn. About 2920.
•^•^?-3W5t-i
> ;
e'''
321
Edward
Weston: A
New Vision
Very few creative photographers were trained as

cameramen. Most were artists, others teachers, engineers,
musicians, writers, sociologists, following professions
w hich gave them little if any aesthetic satisfaction. Often
as mature men they became photographers to experiment
and explore a personal way of seeing, to create their kind
of a picture.
Edward Weston is the exception, the rare creative pho-
tographer \\ ho knew his destiny. He
as a bo) definitely
told me m his cabin near Carmel, California, in 1952, "I
saw my first exhibition of photographs at the Art Insti-
tute of Chicago exactly fifty years ago when I was sixteen.
It changed my whole life. I made father buy me a camera

and from that moment on I was absorbed with it."
Three years later, in 1905, he was in California can-
vassing door to door, hauling a post-card camera, and

taking pictures of babies, family groups, marriages,
funerals; a dollar a dozen was the usual price. He worked
in commercial studios, he studied and mastered the intri-
cacies of the darkroom. Portrait photography was to be

his livelihood.
Hemarried in 1909 and in the next decade fathered

four sons. In igi 1 he opened a portrait studio in Tropico,
California. He specialized in portraits of children and he
started to use natural light inside his studio. Soon Weston
became a name to reckon with in portrait and pictorial
photography. Honors were heaped upon him; he was paring his former work with the portraits and the pictures
elected to the London Salon and, eloser to home, he of maguey plants he now photographs. He is not satis-
demonstrated and lectured on iiis techniques. One-man fied. He goes back to experiments, photographing still
shows added to his reputation but his soft-tocus "arty" lifes of the toys and objects found in the house. He
photographs, so acclaimed by the amateur and the cam- visits Mexico's pyramids and small towns, searches land-
era clubs, left him fcclmg empt) and unsatisfied, lie scape, sky, and people for new visions with his camera,
knew that the pictures were tricky, but what qualities he for photographs to perpetuate the peak of his emotional,
wanted to capture with his camera, he still did not know. artistic seeing. He is seeking the precise pinpoint in time
Had not been for the San Francisco Fair of 1915,

it before he snaps the shutter, and for his income he care-
where Weston was introduced to modern art, creative fully tends a little portrait studio in Mexico City.
music, and contemporary literature, he might have con- In September, 1925, after a brief visit to California he
tinued to photograph "exalted portraits" to meet the returns with his son Brett. He holds an exhibition of his
financial demands of his growing family. Under the stnii- photographs in the State Museum of Guadalajara. The
ulus of abstract art Weston generated a creative response powerful painter of protest, Alfaro Siqueiros wrote, "In
within himself. He broke with his former successes; he no Weston's photographs the texture, the physical quality
longer submitted his pictures to the salons. But he had no of things is rendered with the utmost exactness, the rough
steady means of income; so his conservative friends and is rough, the smooth is smooth, flesh is alive, stone is
family frowned on these Bohemian antics. hard. 'I'he things have a definite proportion and weight,
Weston went back to his camera. He experimented and are placed at a cleariy defined distance one from
constantly with the extreme close-up and the abstraction. another . . . the beauty which these photographs of Wes-
He created heightened effects in shadows by mixing arti- ton's possess, is photograpliic beauty."
ficial and natural light and he photographed fragments His stimulating friend, Diego Rivera, wrote, "Few are
of the figure rather than the entire human body. He the modern plastic expressions that have given me purer
found he could express himself as an artist with the cam- and more intense joy than the masterpieces that are fre-
era; he was as original with his chosen medium as the quently produced in the work of Edward Weston . . .
artists he respected and he did not have to emulate their There is not in Europe, by far, a photographer of such
styles. dimensions . . . Edward Weston is the American artist,
Beginning in 1922 in Ohio, he made the first of his one whose sensibility contains the extreme modernity of
dramatic compositions revealing the clear forms and the plasticity of the North and the living tradition of the
rhythms inherent 111 the great manufacturing plants of Land of the South, Mexico."
American industry. 1 he abstract designs to be found in The third of the triumvirate who fathered the Mexican
the substantial reality of architecture which Weston dis- Renaissance, the one-handed Jose Clemente Orozco, did
closed in his photographs immediately influenced pho- not write about Weston, but five years later he arranged
tographers who still exploit his conception. and installed Weston's exhibition of photographs in
August2, 1923, on board ship from New York to New York City.
Mexico, Weston makes a first entry 111 his Day Book. One entry in the 1926 daybook Weston kept in
"Certainly it is not to escape myself that I am Mexico Mexico, reads, "Give me peace and an hour's time and I
bound ... I am good friends with myself. Nor do I hunt create. Emotional heights are easily attained, peace and
new subject matter, that is at hand out the back door time are not," and a later entry the same year, "I have
anywhere ... I feel a battle ahead to avoid being swept been slow developing, perhaps laying the stronger foun-
away by the picturesque, the romantic." dation. Almost forty and am now beginning to realize-
Three weeks later in Mexico City he notes his exhi- to see."
bition is attended b) "men — men — men — ten to one Cezanne's old complaint in his exact word "realize."
woman. I have never before heard such intense and The cry of a creative artist used when he could not satis-
understanding appreciation." factorily complete a painting as he sat in front of Mont
B) January of next year he records, "I am now only St. Victoirc in southern France, now, unawares, used in
approaching an attainment in photography that in my the same way by Weston trying to create his kind of a
ego of several \cars ago I thought I had reached long picture before the mountains of Mexico.
ago. It will be necessary to destroy, unlearn and rebuild." Weston loved the country, the landscape, the people,
He scrupulously scrutinizes all he had produced, com- and the art worid of which he had become a vital part.
323
but Mexico couldn't keep liiiu; his roots were to the In 1936 he discoxcred the sand dunes at Occano with
north. In January, 19-7, he writes, "During these three their long undulating shapes, soft rounded forms, deep
mouths since returning to Cahfornia I have done nothing black shadows, and myriads of textured sands; here he
for myself ... I am not yet an integral part of these made what many consider to be his greatest pictures.
surroundings, one foot is still in Mexico." In 1937 he became the first photographer to receive a
A fertile artist does not lie fallow long. By April he had Cuggcnheim Fellowship. $2,000! He was free for a year
photographed t\\'o nudes, "which go beyond those con- —no portraits, no pictures for anyone but himself and
sidered fine in Mexico" and a month later he records, his new wife, Charis. They bought a car, a tarpaulin to
"I have two new loves, bananas and shells." That sum- convert it into a darkroom, sleeping bags, some canned
mer he added radishes, eggplant, canteloupes, artichokes, goods, and they were off for Death \'alle\-. Most of their
cabbages, and peppers. \'egctablcs became vital to his money went for photography. They carried twelve hold-
artistic life. He saw sculpture in growing forms ever- ers which could take twenty-four pieces of cut film for
changing in the light. New discoveries in seeing, surface his 8-by-io-inch camera. There would be no enlarging,
textures, interrelated rhythms, movements in shapes, and only contact printing. Big camera, small shutter stops,
designs which critics called erotic symbols. I'he selective and contact printing for the finest details possible. Each
power of Weston had conceived of a shell and a vegetable piece of film he made count. Nothing was left to chance.
as something monumental just as he had reduced a "When I look on my ground glass before exposure must I
mountain to the mtmiaey of a figure. He had created an know and see exactly how my finished print will look,"
artistic entity with his camera, willfully isolating his sub- Weston wrote.
ject, deliberately selecting film, lens, paper, and chem- He didn't wait for a picture, for the light to change,
icals to complete a photographic image he envisioned or for animals or people to come into or go out of a scene.
before he exposed. He explains, "If I must wait an hour, I put up ni)' camera
The following summer he and his son Brett closed a and go on, knowing I am likely to find three subjects just
portrait studio they had tried in San Francisco and moved as good same hour."
in the
south to Carmel in the mountains near Monterey. With For the purposeful Westons the money went far;
his S-by-10-iuch view camera he was soon out taking pic- $2,000 took them 33,000 miles. Weston \\as "realizing,"
tures of tangled tree stumps, eroded rocks, and the sea creating pictures in the vastness of nature through his
at Point Lobos which his poet friend, Robinson Jeffers, ground glass —a profound artistic emotion instantane-
had described as "strange, introverted and storm- ously captured. The following year he saw the results;
twisted." It had a beauty that stamped itself on his it took him all of 1938 to print his 1,500 negatives; the
emotions, resulting m a series of his most exciting photo- Guggenheim Fellowship had been extended to make this
graphs of nature. possible. His wife, Charis Wilson Weston, had kept a
In 1932 Ansel Adams, then a pianist with an amateur's log. It was published along with ninety-six of his photo-
portfolio of pictures, Willard Van Dyke, Imogen Cun- graphs two years later as California and the West. The
ningham, several other young independent photogra- photographs he took are for the most part spontaneous
phers interested in sharp focus, and Edward Weston, and direct translations of nature portraying his sensitive
formed a group they named "f64" after one of the small reactions to desert, mountain, and sea. He does not de-
shutter stops which allow for straight, clear detailed pic- scribe or record what he sees; he makes pictures of his
tures. It was a stand in the mountains of the West against sensuous contact with nature.
the plague of the pictorial salon rolling across the coun- The Fellowship over, back he went to his kind of
try.The group held its first exhibition of straight photog- honest, unretouched portraits for which by this time he
raphy in the De Young Museum in San Francisco. The had a few customers. Often he would take the subject
exhibition won the respect of photographers everywhere. near his shack or on the rocks near the sea close by.
Within a year Weston withdrew from the group to In 1941 he was commissioned to make photographic
live at Carmel a free, Thoreau kind of life. He took his interpretations all new edi-
over the nation to illustrate a
camera into the huge ranches of southern California tion of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass which when
shooting orchards and fields, geometric patterns of grow- published contained fifty of his photographs.
ing things, monumental vistas instead of close-ups, but The war years he spent at his cabin in Carmel photo-
with as much attention paid to the forms and the com- graphing with his big camera the graceful, living sculp-
position as he had to a single pepper or to a nude figure. tural forms of his many cats as they entered and left
324
All photographs in this chapter courtesy Edward Weston, Carvicl, California.
EDWARD WESTON, HaKcd Cabbage. 1930.

through their own little door he had cut for them. His hands, the undaunted Weston directed his sons Brett
four sons were in service. One of his favorite views, Point and Cole to print editions of prints from his original
Lobos, was under Army jurisdiction. Restricted, the pro- negatives resulting in albums of his superb photographs.
lific photographer worked with objects, animals, people. On January- i, 1958 (while this chapter was being
He had once written, "Limitations need not interfere written) Edward ^^'eston died, aged 71. As a photog-
with full creative expression." rapher he has done much for our da\-, shaping the ideals
Health, never one of his problems, suddenly became and purposes of photography. His best works are pro-
his major concern when he fell ill with crippling Parkin- foundly spiritual interpretations of nature, photographs
son's disease. Unable to hold a camera in his trembling in his own distinct style.
326
WESTON
below: Nude on Beach. California, 1936.
left: Pepper. 1930.
.s
328
WESTON, above: Dunes. Oceano, 1936.
opposite page, above: Dunes. Oceano, 1936.
left: Rock Erosion. 1942.
329
5i¥*.Ayycr:if»;^T
.Sî
i->.^l
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»-«OTa»,iC'^K2L.:
llv ed
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WESTON, Gulf Oil.
Port Arthur, Texas, 1941.
331
tm^.
^'m^::^
WESTON, above: Church Door. Hornitos, 1940.
left: Field of Lettuce. Salinas, California, 1934.
333
Reriiiciny ciiul
the B(UihcUis
riu)toj>rci[)hy
tor Desiiin
It was during the 1920s that photography came of age,
attaining essentially the depth and breadth that it shows

today. The depth was American, the breadth German.
'lypicall)-, the Americans pursued photography as a
discipline in itself. The great American photographs are

poems— crisply focused, beautifulh composed, produced
wholly by photographic means. Their integrity and their
intensity of vision have been a contribution of the first
order. German}' in the 1920s had its own representatives

of such a "straight" photographic school, notably Renger-
Patzsch, but her most important contribution was to ex-
tend the boundaries of photography into abstract and
applied photography.
In the Bauhaus at Dessau, the great school for artists
and designers and the center for basic experiment in
e\ery field of the visual arts, the camera was valued as an

instrument for creative imagery. These images were used
as elements in constructing designs for exhibitions, pho-
tomurals, posters, advertising, layout, and typography;
thc}- became a new photographic \ocabulary used to com-
municate ideas. Such uses, commonplace today, were
first concei\ed b\' the Bauhaus group before 1930. Since
then applied photography has become firmly woven into

our daily life.
The moving spirit in the Bauhaus photography was

Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, born in Hungary, 1895. Moholy
taught at tlic Bauliaus during the years rq23 1928. lie Americans created a profound impression. The aesthetic
came to tlic United States in 1937, and from that time beliefs held by this group were written for the official
until his death in 1946 was director of the New Bauhaus, catalogue by Edward Weston, and in the main coincided
Chicago, later called The Institute of Design and now a with those of Renger-Patzsch and exponents of the New
division of the Illinois Institute of Technology. Wher- Realism {Neue SacJilichkeit ) who strove not only for
ever he was, Moholy taught that the photographic image crystal-sharp, literally accurate photographs but also for
should be a fresh, original interpretation of visual experi- an intensified realism that had the feeling of life.
ence. He stressed photography without regard for story Albert Renger-Patzsch had, in 192S, published Die
or landscape, and advocated the use of mixed techniques Welt 1st Sclion {The World Is Beautiful), containing
and manipulations: distortion, enlargement, blanking one hundred of his own photographs. These wêrc
out, montage, double exposure, double printing, negative straightforward and unretouched pictures of nature pro-
effects, bird's-c\e and worm's-eye views. duced by purely photographic means. The poetic realism
Moholy himself created many abstract photographs, of these exaggerated close-up views of objects of our
inspired by — and in turn inspiring — abstract painting. lie common perception strongly influenced European read-
was among the first to create the kind of image, made ers and prepared the way for the great reception accorded
without using the camera, known as the photogram: an theWeston group at "Film und Foto."
abstract photographic print made b\- placing opaque The scope of modern photography was further ex-
objects and objects of varying degrees of transparcncv' on tended by "miniature" photography. The 35-millimeter
a sheet of scnsiti/ed paper, exposing with a flashlight, Leica camera, invented by Oscar Barnack in 1914 and
and developing to secure a single print. He reawakened placed on the market in Germany in 1925, brought new
artistic interest in photomontage, often adding fanciful flexibility to pioneering workers. It brought changes to
touches and Surrealist incongruities. He produced other all contemporaPi^ photograph}- and dealt a telling blow to
startling effects through negative images and multiple
overprintings, frequently emplo\ing forms taken from
radiography and microscopy. Through his experiments
with light and the photographic image in Germany and
America, he became one of the greatest influences on
modern design all over the world.
The tradition-shattering "Film und Foto" interna-
tional exhibition of more than a thousand photographs
was held in Stuttgart, 1929, under the sponsorship of the
Deutsche Werkbund, an arts-and-crafts organization led
chiefly by the Bauhaus group. This exhibition included

the photograms of j\Ioholy-Nag\-, the similar "Rayo-
graphs" of Man Ray, and the new photographic visions
of the Bauhaus; aerial. X-ray, news, advertising, and
scientific photographs notable for form and movement;
and the "straight" photographs of an American group
including Edward and Brett \\'cston, Edward Steiehen,
Charles Sheclcr, Imogen Cunningham, and Berenice
Abbott, and of a similar German group. The sharply
defined and classically composed photographs of the
ALBERT RENGER-PATZScii, Iciclcs at a Wâtcrfall. 192S.
Courtesy the photographer, Westphalia, Germany.
V
the pictorial school by enabling photographers to see
commonplace e\'er\day objects in new and bolder per-
spectives, and it gave them a new freedom in treating
shapes and forms in space. The miniature camera espe-
cially changed the practice of photojournalism. Behind-
the-seene glimpses of internationalh- famous political
personalities at League of Nations conferences in the late
1920s \\cre taken b}' the brilliant multilingual lawyer,
Dr. Erich Salomon, one of the first to use a miniature
camera for news pictures. It was said of him, "there are
just three things necessary for a League of Nations con-
ference, a few Foreign Secretaries, a table and Dr. Erich
Salomon." Magazine and press photographers have since
followed his unposed candid-camera st\le as an ideal.
(He was to die in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.)
Dr. Paul Wolff, another early Leica enthusiast, taught
his students how to select the most effective angle, wait
for the precise instant, stop movement at its peak, and
see and compose simultaneously. I lis principles of minia-
ture photograph)— although without his outmoded aes-
thetic intention of achieving a soft, salon-type photo-
graph—are still adhered to by the best of photographers.
The great photographers in Germany during the 1920s
were men of rare abilit\' and intellectual breadth who
taught that a heightened perception of form and beauty
could be developed consciously through camera vision.
They ardently advocated that photographers as well as
painters and designers be allowed the freedom to experi-
ment in order to establish new identities for their art.
Under Hitler, crcati\e development in art and photog-
raphy was interrupted in Germany. Neither experimen-
tation nor free expression was permitted; and the leading
teachers and practitioners in all branches of the arts left
the country. When the Nazis destroyed the great pub-
lishing house of Ullstein with its three picture magazines,
for which men like Dr. Erich Salomon, Alfred Eisen-
stacdt, Philippe Ilalsman, and Fritz Goro took cele-
brated news pictures, brilliant photographers and editors
went to France, England, and America to found maga-
zines that have since become world-renowned. Almost
all of the important Bauhaus personalities— Walter
Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, Herbert Bayer, Lyonel
Feininger, and others— eventually came to the United
States, where they continue to exert a powerful influence
on the visual arts.
J
336
RENGER-PATZSCH, Pottcr's Haiids. 19-9- Courtesy the photographer.
-'îS.K^^-v'^"
RENGER-PATZScii, abovc: Thistle Blossom. 1929.
left:Crabfisher. 1929. Courtesy the photographer.
LASZLO MOHOLY-NAGY, abovc: PliotograiTi. 1926. Courtesy George Eastman House,
right: Nude. Negative print, 19-9. Courtesy Museum of Modern Art, New York.
340
341
342
MOHOLY-NAGY, abovc: Fishboiies. 1930. Courtesy George Eastman House,
left: From the Radio Tower. Berlin, 192S. Courtesy Museum of Modern Art.
343
MOHOLY-NAGY, bclow. Jcalousy. Montage, 1930.
right: Stairway in the Bexhill Seaside Pavilion. 1956.
344
DR. ERICH SALOMON
above: Stanley Baldwin and Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald
During a Press Conference. London, September, 1931 One of the
.
first iriformal photographs taken at the Foreign Office.

right- King Fuad of EgT.pt and Entourage in Berlin State Opera Box
of President Hindenburg. 1930. Both, courtesy Peter Hunter, Amsterdam.
346
w
'. . A-
_ set'-
SALOMON, above: It's That Salomon Again! Paris, 1931.
Aristide Briand points to the photographer who, he had bet,

would get into a secret session of the French Foreign Office.
right: Reception in Berlin, igî. British Prime Minister Ramsay

MacDonald explains the theory of relativity to Albert Einstein.
Einstein expounds on his hopes for the peace conference.
Both, courtesy Peter Hunter, Amsterdam.
348
Roy Stryker
Dnciimentciiies
for Covei niiient
and Industry
During the depression Roy E. Strjkcr, an inspired

teacher, used photographs as visual aids for teaching the
entire nation something about the somber, seamy exist-
ence endured by Americans residing in rural slums. In

1935, when Professor Rexford 'I'ugwell was head of the
Resettlement Administration (R.A.), he called on iiis
former student, Roy Striker, to head a new photography

project intended for the Farm Security Administration
(F.S.A.), the alphabetical successor to R. A. Stryker left
the sheltered academic life of Columbia University,
where he had been teaching, for the three-ring circus of
politicians, idealists, and brain-trusters then starring in
the marble tents of Washington, D.C.
Strykcr's objective was to investigate and record the
human problems which beset millions of people li\ing
on impoverished, drought-stricken land. He turned a
spotlight on the conditions of the lowest third, that third

whicli President Roosevelt had referred to as "ill housed,
ill clothed and ill fed."
F.S.A. became a vigorous factor in presenting the
truth, creating indignation at the plight of the migrant
worker, and propagandizing for a break in the destructi\c

grip in which economics and the elements held the
marginal farmer. In the early days Roy Str)ker sacrificed
quality in his desire to secure accurate photographs; too
many pictures in F.S.A. files are mere documents with as
much feeling for photographic beauty as a photostat. John Steinbeck credits Dorothea Lange's studies of the
These are crowded with detail, insensitive, and liarsh. Okies and other migrants with inspiring his classic novel
Fortunately, the sensitivity of the photographers Grapes of Wrath.
whom Stryker hired, combined with his own sympathy It was Stryker's desire to secure a record of social sig-
for the farmer and his keen interest in providing effective nificance, a vital picture of the hectic, harrowing days
pictures for the nation's press, produced in time a series which the nation was enduring. Reproductions w'ere used
of truly remarkable documentary photographs. These are not only in the nation's newspapers and magazines, but
dramaticall) organized around a central idea, they are also to illustrate such books as Forty Acres and Steet
penetrating interpretations of how people fared on the Mules, by Herman Nixon, Washington Nerve Center,
land. Stryker permitted no posed shots, no tricky angles, by Edwin Rosskam, and Land of the Free, by Archibald
or darkroom manipulations. He talked with his photog- MacLeish, who wrote in his preface, "The original pur-
raphers—six was the most F.S.A. employed at any time- pose had been to write some sort of text to which these
suggested books to them on the geography, history, and photographs might serve as commentary. But so great
economics of the proposed story. Only after thorough was the stubborn inward li\ ingness of these vivid Ameri-
indoctrination did they go out to take their pictures. can documents that the result was a reversal of that
Some of today's best known names in documentary plan."
and journalistic photography joined his staff— Ben Shahn American PJiotographs by Walker Evans, published
(now more famous as a painter), Edwin Rosskam, by the Museum of Modern Art, included many pictures
Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Arthur Rothstcin, Carl Evans took for the F.S.A. Richard Wright collaborated
Mydans, Marjorie Collins, Russell Lee, John \'achon, with Edwin Rosskam on 12 Million Black Voices.
Gordon Roger Parks, Marion Post Wolcott, and Jack Stryker did not overlook the positive facets of America.
Delano. They took a composite picture of the country He sought for a full-rounded picture, and said to his
that was a revelation to the nation of how the "sub- photographers, "Do not forsake the country for a one-
merged third" existed. sided picture of its poor in rural slums." A representative
Stryker's photographers had their troubles. Rothstcin of the German Embassy looking for photographs ot
photographed a cow's skull against scrub grass where he "typical" Americans intended for the Nazi press was
had found it; he then moved it several feet to photograph shown by Stryker only photographs of prosiêrous farms
it on sun-parched soil that made for a better background. and full employment in industry.
Both prints were sent to the papers. One editor spotted In the eight years of the existence of F.S.A., more than
the discrepancy and Striker was accused of deliberately 200,000 photographs entered F.S.A. files, ranging in
making distorted propaganda pictures; the skull became subject matter from courthouses, crops, and culture to
the celebrated expose of an election year, 1936. Stryker churches, criminals, and farm workers (all now in the
admitted that the photographer had moved the skull and Library of Congress). Roy Stryker inspired the photog-
said to an investigating committee, "What the hell, the raphers "to give their fraction of a second's exposure to
point of the picture is that there's a drought. Cattle are the integrity of truth." He did not insist on a picture of
dying; and don't tell me that the photographer got out squalor, of sickly, impoverished people. What he asked
of the drought area by moving 10 feet." John Vachon for wasdocument as opposed to the pictorial, romantic,
a
was pitchforked by an irascible. New Deal-hating farmer, false, or smug. He wanted a direct, honest record of a
and Jack Delano was jailed by a security-minded police- particular society and its environment, with an informa-
man in Pennsylvania who stopped him from photograph- tive rather than a fanciful approach.
ing a steel mill. Stryker and F.S.A. went to the Office of War Informa-
Some F.S.A. photographs remain great pictures today, tion soon after the war started. Str\ker recommended
symbols of that terrible time in America; they become unsuccessfully that his realistic procedure in photography
for today harbingers of what ma\' beset the nation again be applied to the war effort. The dull pictures required
if the people are not wary. Arthur Rothstein's photo- of him and his crew were too confining; he soon left to
graph of an Oklahoma farmer and his children fighting take the opportunity offered him by Standard Oil of
their way through a gritty duststorm never fails to elicit New Jersey. He was to organize for Standard Oil a library
an emotional response, nor does Walker Evans's child's of documentary photographs recording the essential role
grave, a picture of a saucer burial taken in Alabama, or of oil in the life of America. It was to be a free picture
Jack Delano's Negro family in a rural house in Georgia. file available to Standard Oil's house organ The Lamp
351
and to schools, libraries, publishers, editors— all for a able climate, a lonely outpost, a man's relation to his
courtesy credit line. home, his work, and his fellow men— every aspect of the
Stryker used the same method that he had used at oil industry and its operation was recorded.
F.S.A.; his work became an extension

for Standard Oil Harold Corsini learned all he could in New York about
of the pioneering program that he had developed for the weather conditions, geography, Eskimo mores and Es-
government. He hired some of the best photographers kimo history in anticipation of a ten-week stay in the
who had worked for him on F.S.A. and sent them to far Northwest territon,' of Canada— Stryker always seeks
Standard Oil installations all over the worid, from the resourcefulness in his photographers. Edwin Rosskam
hot sands of the Persian Gulf to the permafrost of the and his wife, Louise, portra\cd the immense refineries in
Arctic Circle. The resultant photographs were of great Louisiana with insight and artistry, purposefully select-
technical efficacy and dramatic artistry, and again clearly ing parts of pipes, tubes, tanks, and towers to capture
revealed men's relation to their cn\ironmcnt. A miser- mo\ing compositions. John \'achon took a superb pie-
352
^
,i.f
above: Arthur rothstf.in, Farmer and Sons

Walking in Dust Storm. Cimarron, Oklahoma, 1936.
left: DOROTHEA LANGE,

California. 1936.
353
All photographs in this section courtesy the Librar}' of Congress,
Farm Security Administration Collection, Washington, D. C.
below: russell lee, Southeast Missouri Farm, Son of Sharecropper Couibing Hair. May, 193^
right: ben shahn, Rehabihtation of Chents, F.S.A. October, 1935.
354
ture of derricks rising out of the sea in Venezuela, and a truth that is far removed from the one-sided muckrak-
Todd Webb's picture of Pittsburgh spells a city's surging ing of Ida Tarbell a generation earlier.
power. Public-relations purposes financed the program of posi-
There was now better equipment, more time for pre- tive photography for Standard Oil, and does so now for
liminary study, and better pay for the cameramen. the steel industry (Striker is presently head of Jones and
Stryker enthusiastically directed them in securing a com- Laughlin Steel Company's photo file), but the truthful,
prehensive picture of the tremendous oil industry that historic penetration in depth is the unique personal con-
everyone could understand. Their pictures of the vital tribution made by Roy E. Str)ker to photography in
role which oil plays in the economy record reality with industr}', as to photography in government.
355
-r(¥f»^
^ ^'
356
r
below: walker evans, Graveyard in Easton, Pennsylvania. 1936.
left: JACK DELANO, Interior of Rural House. Greene County, Georgia, 1 941
opposite page, below: walker evans, Child's Grave. Alabama, 1936.
All photographs in this section courtesy the Standard Oil Company of New Jersey.
358
above: Charles roikix, Reef in Barataria Bay, South of \c\\ ( )rleans. iQ-fts'.
left: JOHN VACHON, Wcstem Venezuela— Tia Juana Field. 1944.
359
1**'
.<«.
above: harold corsini, Refinery. Baytown, Texas, 1946.
left: EDWIN AND LOUISE ROSSKAM, Oil Train on Prairie. Cut Bank, Montaiui, iq^^.
361
TODD WEBB
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
1948.
363
Ansel Adams
Interpreter
of Nature
In a time when so much in modern art escapes the
understanding of the great majority of humanity, the

incredibly skillful photographs of Ansel Adams exert a
tremendous appeal whenever they are exhibited in the
nation's museums.
Adams's best photographs represent the aspirations
held by innumerable pictorial cameramen of all the
world, amateur and professional. Ansel Adams's distinc-
tion is in the sensitivity and poetry that he introduces
into his photographs and in the control that he maintains
over his medium through his formidable scientifie knowl-
edge. He is the founder of a complex "zone system of
planned photography." This system separates tonal
values of subjects according to "zones" or le\els and,
after readings are taken with a light meter, provides the
photographer with step-by-step guidance in exposure,
development, and printing, to achie\'e a predetermined
structure of tones.
Adams, in addition, is ever alert to arrangements in
nature that make for dramatic masses, counterbalance
of forms, and subtle tones, as well as for stability of de-
sign to control the over-all image. In his best photographs

each element is considered in relation to the whole pic-
ture, which shows his instantaneous interpretation of the
ever-changing, accidental play of light on landscape.

Several of his finest photograplis go far beyond the of the Rockies; a nineteenth-century Romantic poet's
purely visual and the teehnicalh' perfect. These are ideal- attachment, a soul-searching affinity for nature's most
izations of nature that border on the profoundly spiritual. impressive manifestations. Themes and conceptions that
Were it not for his inherent deep feeling for the exalted could be interpreted perhaps more readily in abstract
landscape of the West, feeling that he instills into his music he attempts to interpret pictorially. A panorama
works, his photographs would be merely the best obtain- that he has seen immediately in its entirety he feels to
able in picture postcards. It is the sensitive, interpretive require a prolonged subsequent reading for the yielding
seeing of Ansel Adams, who constructs his photographs of its full importance, like the sustained listening to a
as pictorial architecture, that carries him far beyond symphony. As the camera catches the landscape with its
photographers of ordinary vision. Copyists who attempt single eye, he freezes movement, relating diversified ob-
to follow him inevitably secure only superficial, over- jects, textures, and tones with an almost musical point
dramatized imitations of his work, and miss the vision of and counterpoint, and compressing deep space into a flat
the mysterious, living forces in nature that inspires sheet of film, usually 8 by 10 inches. About his work
Adams in all seasons of the year and at all times of day Adams wrote, "Before exposure of the negative, I must
and night to compose pictures of specific landscapes and visualize the final print. My creative concept is based on
to transpose what he sees to sensitized plates at the peak my response to the subject before me in space, and on
moments of his perception. the aggregate of emotional and intellectual experience
To the geometry of composition Adams supplies back of me in time."
mathematical patterns from music (he was a gifted If communication were the only criterion in art, the
pianist who gave up the concert stage for the camera beautiful, recognizable, and evocative photographs of
in 1930 when he was twenty-eight years old). He com- Ansel Adams would be considered the most significant
poses photographs with a musical rationalism and repeti- creations of our time. The enchanting, aesthetic power
tion: slight variations on a theme in photography. There of Adams's finest photographs remains effectix'C despite
is a similarity in his compositions: foreground, mountain repeated viewing. Each photograph is a perfect rendition,
peaks, and sky, a harmonious balance of dark, light, and to be seen as often as one would listen to a recording of
lighter shades of gray, with only rarely a deep impene- a virtuoso musical performance.
trable black. Adams is always mindful of perspective and To enable a wider audience to see his pictures than
horizon, of patterns in horizontal and diagonal lines, of that which usually attends his exhibitions, Adams has
strong verticals and repeated triangular forms. developed a means of reproducing his prints in halftone
Recognition of the object is always important in Ansel engravings, using special inks, reminiscent of the quality
Adams's work organized though it is in decorative pat- demanded by Stieglitz and Emerson a generation ago.
terns with countless details. Abstraction and transforma- Nineteen books and extravagantly produced portfolios
tion of the object, the core of strikingncss and power in of his photographs have been published to date— /o/in
modern art and photography, are alien to Adams's pur- Muir Trail, Four Seasons in Yosemitc, My Camera in tlw
pose. Adams's later photographs conceived in all-over National Parks, and several "how to do it" books, for
textures and patterns of leaves, ferns, trees, stones, and the most part excellent technical treatises illustrated with
boards can be compared to musical sonatas and fugues. fine halftone reproductions of his own photographs.
They are less complex in composition than his earlier In 1944 he made the photographs, wrote the text, and,
elaborate pictures of imposing mountainous landscapes at his own expense, prepared an exhibition of documen-
inspired by soaring symphonies. tary pictures of the Japanese-Americans e\acuated from
I lis deep response to nature is Ansel Adams's poetic the West Coast to the flat desert expanse of Manzanar
lever, for without it he would be bogged down in his Valley. The six-foot photographs, which were exhibited
scientific system of photography. What enables artists at New York's Museum of Modern Art, became a rally-
like Scurat in the last centur)', with his belief that anyone ing force for all who, in the name of justice, wished to
could become an artist who learned his "Pointillist" sci- help loyal Japanese-Americans to regain their rightful
ence of applying color, and like Ansel Adams in our day, positions as peaceful citizens.
with his zone system of composition planning, to reach Several years earlier Adams had been appointed photo-
creative heights is their power to rise above their own muralist for the U.S. Department of Interior, and, in
self-imposed, confining formulas. the same year, had assisted Beaumont Newhall to found
Adams has an unappeasable appetite for the grandeur at the Museum of Modern Art the first department de-
365
voted to photography as a fine art. During World War
II he served as a consultant in photography to the Armed
Services.
At the war's end Adams started classes at the Cali-
fornia School of Fine Arts in San Francisco for advanced

amateurs and professionals, teaching his own scientific
system of unmanipulated straight photography and
his own aesthetic philosophy. This credo was based on

thoughts of Stieglitz, who first showed Ansel's photo-
graphs in 1936, and of Edward Weston, who was an
influence in the eariy days of their association in the
group known as f.64.
Grants from the Guggenheim Memorial Foundation

in 1946 and in 1948 permitted him to photograph the
national parks and monuments in Hawaii, Alaska, and

all over the United States. Today, with his teaching, he
operates studios in San Francisco and in Yosemite and

takes assignments from national magazines— Lffe, Time,
Fortune, Arizona Uigluvays, etc.— if the work appeals to
him. Industrial firms have commissioned him to photo-
graph and produce portfolios of considerable beauty and
prestige. A series of his photographs with text by Nancy
Newhall were issued as impressive pamphlets on Death

Valley and the Mission of San Xavier.
A skilled musician, an erudite naturalist, a gifted
writer and teacher, and an exuberant, warm personality,
Ansel Adams willingly embraces the term "photogra-
pher" as belonging to a noble profession. This profession,

he once wrote, "is deserving of attention and respect
equal to that accorded painting, literature, music and
architecture."
All photographs in this chapter courtesy
Ansel Adams, San Francisco, unless otherwise noted.
AKSEL ADAMS, Mount Williamsou,

from Manzanar, California. 1943.
366
367
ADAMS, above: From Hurricane Ridge, Olympic National Park, Wasliington. 1948.
right: Church at Bodega, California. 1953. Courtesy American Trust Company, San Francisco.
368
r-'
ADAMS, below: Roots. Foster Gardens, Honolulu, Hawaii, 19-/S.
right: Autumn. Great Srnoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee, 1948.

a:-^
:«^fc'
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Vl^
iS^
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"'/h.:
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'i*f ?-"^
mm
..^m.
4^;.>"'*
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Ifis^ '
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ADAMS, Moonrise.
Hernandez, New Mexico.
1 941.
y^jir^-*i^-"^-j>^ -*•
-^?^r^.-^>*^"''-v*^ -"^
373
,«(*"
i^. 4>, "».
Ab
ADAMS, above: Rain. Coast Range Hills, California, 1950. Courtesy Mr. Jack Stiball.
left: The Face of Half Dome. Yosemite Valley, 1927.
375
Doisneau:
Humorist with
a Camera
Robert Doisneau has the true Parisian's habit of stroll-

ing—but never aimlessly. He is always alert, his camera
always set for the light and the site, ready for use. He
walks seeking the incongruous, the ludicrous, the humor-
ous, the ironic, and the satirical to be found in life. He is
a rarity among cameramen, a photographer with a

puckish sense of humor; what he secures in his seeing
is often really funny, really witty, with nothing forced
or faked. Amusing situations come into focus; his reac-
tion is automatic— he laughs and shoots the picture at
the same time. There is a range to his human comedy:
a goose farmer who resembles his force-fed geese; a statue
of a nude secmingl)' shivering in the snow; American
soldiers on leave, one snapping a photograph of a second
who beams as he sits in the lap of a Maillol sculpture of
a nude; Saul Steinberg, the American artist, posed in a

curio shop that recalls his celebrated drawings.
In London's Hotel Claridgc the droll French photog-
rapher tried to capture the way men looked at \\-omen,
but was utterly defeated by the discretion of the British.
He was more successful at the Crillon in Paris; the appre-
ciative reactions of the boulevardiers made the series a
successful stor}- for the illustrated weeklies.
Doisneau's wit is never sardonic, never caustic. Col-
lectors fascinate him but not those who attend art auc-
tions to bu\- prestige names or hedges against inflation.
Tliose whom he pliotographs are original eccentrics; one Romi's gallery on the Left Bank he photographed expres-
collects useless objects such as electric sockets and old sions of people who suddenly discovered a female figure,
bottle caps,which he methodically arranges and displays nude but for stockings, painted from the rear as she peers
with pride as he wears a wig made of corks; another, a through a window drapery. Doisncau caught a series of
doorman in a Montparnasse night club, prides himself comical expressions which were published in the world's
on his artistic taste, dressing up with monocle and astrak- press. He received letters from all over addressed simply,
han fur headpiece as he poses in front of his littered "Romi, Paris," all asking to buy the painting.
collection of questionable canvases. His pictures are in a really universal language, the
Doisneau's Paris is not the tourists' paradise, though situations appeal to people everywhere. Postmen and
he follows the sight-seeing buses and joins the interna- porters wait for a pedicure shop to open; a sentinel in
tional groups to seek entertaining situations that usually front of the President's palace holds bayonet poised as
go unobserved and unrecorded. In a night club near the he intently ponders a bunch of balloons; in a three-sided
Bastille, Doisncau trained his Leica on a blonde apache wrestling match even the referee joins the grimacing
dancer who, when flung across the floor, rested her weary mock battle.
elbow on the knee of a delighted elderly tourist while Doisncau writes of his work, "Tlie marvels of daily life
his wife glowered at "such goings on." are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unex-
These whimsical tableaux he often anticipates. In pected that you find in the street." The concrete streets
ROBERT DOisNE.\u, Portcrs and Postmen

Waiting for Pedicure Shop to Open. 1953.
377
of the workingnicn's suburbs know him as well as the the Middle Ages and writes, "Every artist who pays at-
paving stones of Pans. Blaise Cendrars, one-armed poet tention to the small people of tiic street goes back to the
and writer of piquant prose, writes in the preface to tradition, and for a Frenchman the tradition is always
Doisneau's book Banlieue de Paris {The Suburbs of the Middle Ages of the small craftsman. They are the
Paris), "He is an astonishing little guy. I imagine him as same people, the people in today's suburbs and the peo-
an artisan worker joining the other artisans, sculptors ple who built Chartres." He concludes that Doisneau is
and stained-glass-window makers, as they build Chartres too humble to make any comparison of his work with
Cathedral." The association is quite valid, for Doisneau those of the artisans, but, writes Cendrars, "as a sculptor
was born in the spiritually inspiring cathedral city of the \\ ith a camera he builds up character and atmosphere . .
Beauce in 1912 and was raised in the shadow of its jew- he fills himself with irony and laughter so your heart is
eled windows. Cendrars considers Doisneau a man of captured. Spring is blossoming in all the gardens and the
378
Rdpho-Guillumette Pictures, Paris and New York.
DOiSNEAU, below: Side Glance. 1953.

left: Winter. 1
947.
flower pots of the concierge are gay ... it is a clay when
there's kissing in the streets."
Doisneau took a thousand pictures of people kissing—

while walking in the streets, riding in tricycle or automo-
bile, in amusement parks, subway trains, boats along the
Seine: a spectacle of love in which uninhibited French-
men indulge everywhere. Another series of photographs
was of the bread carriers; Doisneau caught bread in
Frenchmen's hands carried as a cane, as a pointer, under

the arm, on the head, on the back of a bicycle, broken in
two, nibbled on while strolling— hardly ever covered by
wrapping paper or a bag.
His gifted off-beat seeing is also evident in his journal-
istic assignments. For international picture magazines

he has taken such diverse stories as the most costly, social
costumed party seen in Venice in a generation and the

economic life of small manufacturers in France. Indus-
trial photography was his first experience with the camera
when he worked for the Renault automobile company
in 1935. Three years later he left the inflexible routine
of photographing machine parts as he had earlier left the
minute art of engraving, in which he was also an expert.

Assignments of all kinds for the next several years taught
him complete master}- of a wide \'ariet\' of cameras, but
by the time the war started his favorites were the Leica
and the Rolleiflex. He carried a camera while a foot
soldier, but in the Resistance his photographs of the oc-

cupation and the liberation served as a springboard for
his reputation in the front ranks of photography in
France.
Doisneau is a seasoned professional who always gives
their money's worth to editor and patron on any of his
assignments. His two real loves, however, which keep

liim from traveling much, arc Paris and its people. With
fast film and lenses he takes them as they are. Many of
these pictures go into books; five books have been pub-
lished to date, although not as yet translated into English.
These are not the romantic, picturesque, and enchanting
picture books of Paris brought back by tourists as sou-
venirs. Doisneau's explorations with his camera show his

city exciting, honest, gay, alive, and direct with a sensi-
tivity and breadth of humor distinctly his.
380
DOisNEAU, Tourists and Apache Dance. 1952.
^%^-*-* '
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DOiSNEAU, below. The Blind Accordionist. 1953.
rigJit: Saul Steinberg. 1953.
382
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384
DoiSNEAU, below: Superior Animals. 1955.
left: Cat Show, London. 1954.
385
DOiSNEAU, above: Catch-as-Catch-Can. 1952.
right: Sentry in Front of President's Palace. 1 951
386
387
Dayitl Duncan:
Lensman of
the Marines
David Douglas Duncan, an ex-marinc whose reckless

exploits with carbine and camera had earned him the
title "The Lcgendar\- Lensman" in World War II, car-
ried only a camera (for Life magazine) in the Korean

War. He marched with the marines of the encircled
First Di\'ision, his old outfit, in their bitter withdrawal
from the border of Communist China to the Korean Sea.
Icy winds of below-zero temperatures froze his gloved
fingers and his camera shutters, and he thawed both out
against his body. When he could feci that the shutter
was working again he would quickly take a picture or
two. He had to protect each roll of exposed film until
he could put it aboard a plane for New York to be proc-
essed in Life's darkroom.

Communist snipers picked off the soldiers' bent bodies
as they marched across icy mountain trails and the snow-
packed valleys of the ravaged peninsula into the cold
wind mile after mile from the Changjin Reservoir at the
Yalu River. Along a road he took a picture of dead feet
frozen solid and sticking out of a jeep.

The intimacy of the soldiers' struggle was his. Often
he was in front of them, photographing their unforget-
table faces as they came into range. During vivid scenes
of fighting in small pitched battles he waited beside
them, catching their expressions as a trigger was squeezed
or a hand grenade thrown. They kept marching back
toward the sea and freedom. Commanding officer Gen- incredible adventures in World War II with Fijian
eral Oliver Smith said, "Retreat! Hell, we're just fighting guerrillas who marched across the island of Bougainville
in another direction," and the fighting men cheered, to set up a base and harass the Japanese troops behind
held, and went on doggedly. the lines. In this sixty-day campaign he fought alongside
Duncan took men com-
close-up shots of the eyes of the fierce, bush\-haired Fiji Islanders.
l^letely oblivious to He came up close to take a
him. After more than a year in the South Seas he was sent
picture of a man cr\ing, of men with empty, staring eyes, to Washington, where he wangled orders for travel any-
as mentally beat as they were physically exhausted. He where in the Pacific theater with his cameras. This was
took memorable pictures of men in hand-to-hand com- now his kind of war. He flew twcnt)-eight missions over
bat, the killing at point-blank despite the misery inflicted Okinawa, three of them in a stifling, plexiglass belly tank
by the elements. Duncan photographed the inexhausti- which he attached under the wing of a P38. He secured
ble courage of the marines with a sympathy and honesty a spectacular shot of a Corsair firing all of its eight 5-inch
that make his photographs some of the best taken in rockets over Japanese positions on Okinawa. This earned
any war. him a D.F.C. One of his best known photographs taken
Outnumbered 5 to i, in the ten terrible days of with- at this time was of a defecting Japanese lieutenant in an
drawal, the First Marine Division lost more than two American plane, talking into a microphone as he guides
thousand men. Duncan and his camera became to those an American attack on his own former base.
marines what Ernie Pyle and his typewriter had been to Those roving papers allowed 2d Lt. David Duncan to
the G.I.'s of World War II. A historian with a camera, range all over the Pacific. He was the only marine pho-
Duncan secured an epic picture of American military tographer aboard the U.S.S. Missouri during the signing
heroism. His imposing photographs of the retreat were of the historic surrender in Tokyo Bay. He returned to
published in a book. This is War, along with his earlier the States in 1946 covered with ribbons: another D.F.C.,
photographs of the troops' first attack on the hill of the three air medals, six battle stars, and a Purple Heart for
Pusan Perimeter and of the landing of the transports at a flak wound rceei\ed in a flight in which the pilot o\'er
Inchon. These are pictures of the troops in full strength, whose shoulder he was snapping his shutter was killed by
fighting their way to liberate the heavily fortified city of a bursting shell.
Seoul before the debacle at the Chinese border. Duncan Early in 1946, still in uniform and on terminal leave,
was the last man off the beach at Hungnam when the Duncan joined Life magazine's staff, and three da\s later
retreat ended. he was bound for Iran to co\'cr the Azerbaijan incident.
Duncan instinctively takes truthful, telling pictures. From Persia he went to Palestine to photograph the
The factual, the emotional, and the spiritual are fused growing Zionist-Arab tension, then to Bulgaria for a view
into stark symbols of war, as graphically intense as behind the Iron Curtain. By the end of 1947 he had
Gardner's Dead Rebel of the Civil War. photographed the partition of India and Pakistan and
His photographs are uncaptioncd, but the pungent the Hindu-Moslem riots, and was back in the States with
prose of his essays matches the graphic power of his see- a wife whom he had married in Cairo. During the fol-
ing. He writes in the preface, "This book is an effort to lowing eight years with Life, he was on assignments in
completely divorce the word 'war' as flung dramatically practically ever\^ country of the Middle and Far East,
down off the highest benches of every land, from the taking pictures of small and big wars, incidents, happen-
look in a man's eyes who is taking his last puff on perhaps ings, and revolutions. His stories regularly appeared in
his last cigarette, perhaps forever, before he grabs his Life, and dealt with the Greek War, the Gaza Strip,
Civil
rifle, his guts and his dreams, and attacks an enemy posi- the Egyptian Re\olt, the \'ietnn'nh affair, Hindu jîl-
tion above him." He includes four hard-hitting, terse grims, Japanese sculpture, Egyptian archaeology, and the
reports describing General Douglas MacArthur's first Islamic religion.
visit to the Korean front and questioning his gamble in How did this intrepid peripatetic photographer-writer
military strategy that accounted for the dc\astating re- become what he is? Born in Kansas City, Missouri, in
treat. Duncan describes his flight in an Air Force jet- 1916, he was an ardent collector of snakes by the time
attack mission (the first ever made by a \\ar correspon- he had finished high school and he had rambled in a
dent), a snafu attack by R.O.K. troops, and the marines' jalopy all over the United States and parts of Canada.
first action in Korea. In 1933 he entered the Unixersity of Arizona to study
Duncan's exploit in Korea was a continuation of his archaeology, with visions of following field expeditions
389
all over the world. A Kodak folding camera gi\ en him as seum of Natural History, catching giant squid and sword-
a present he used for the first time on a fire whieh fish, whale-sharks and marlin, and for a hunting trip to
destroyed the hotel in 'Tucson. He photographed an British Columbia also sponsored by Lerner.
unknown man in the crowd; it turned out to be the In late 1942 he was sent by Nelson Rockefeller's Office
notorious criminal, John Dillinger. I'his was the begin- of Inter-American Affairs to make photographs in the
ning of his being in the right place at the right time with interest of hemisphere solidarity. Mexico permitted him
his camera ready. A year of drj-bones search and he was to take photographs for the first time of defense installa-
on his way to study marine zoology and deep-sea di\ing tions. He continued on through Central America, sur-
at the University of Miami. He was the first man to vived a plane crash in the jungle, but was hospitalized for
broadcast over a radio from the bottom of the sea while an emergency operation when he arrived in Panama.
wearing an open diving helmet. His undersea pictures While the doctors were sewing up his left side under
sold, bringing him the first money he realized as a pho- local anaesthesia he asked that they take out his appen-
tographer. Until then he had gladly given his photo- dix as well. Though it didn't hurt him, it might some
graphs away just to sec them published. da\, and he wanted no more of hospitals.
In 1936 the lean and wir)- six-foot Duncan boxed more In 1956 he quit Life to join Collier's and go with John
than forty bouts as middle and weltenveight, \vinning Gunther to Russia. When Collier's closed, he sold to
most of them on decision. The same )ear his photograph Life the color pictures he had taken of Russian art
of a fishing scene was awarded second prize in a national treasures, to the Saturday Evening, Post the brazen por-
snapshot contest. After graduating from college with an traits he had taken close-up with flash of the Kremlin
A.B., he was off immediately on a friend's two-masted hierarchy, and to Look magazine another photograph for
schooner headed for deep-sea fishing in the Caribbean. a cover— all from this one trip.
Wliile he was climbing a limestone cliff on Swan Island For many months, in 1957, Duncan li\ed in Picasso's
south of Cuba, hunting iguanas, the rock gave way, cut- chateau in Cannes, producing a unique picture profile
ting his right upper arm and wrist. With a barblcss fish- of the great Spanish artist recently published in the
hook and rough sail thread he sewed up tlie nasty gash. United States.
Doctors later praised the stitching. A signed article and "Luck\" Duncan, chronicler with a camera of man-to-
set of pictures about turtles in the Caribbean were sold man-combat wars, will perhaps, in the coming age of
to National Geographic. He had found his profession. push-button warfare, photograph only art and artists, his
During the next few years he roamed all over the second loves. But when American marines take to the
western hemisphere, from Nova Scotia to Argentina, al- field again anywhere in the world, David Douglas Dun-
wa}S with his cameras ready. By now these were Leieas can (how editors love that alliterative name!) will be
equipped with the fastest lenses available. He photo- among them, patiently securing with his cameras a sym-
graphed the Majan ruins of Yucatan for Pan American pathetic, understanding, and distinguished pictorial rec-
Airways. He was official cameraman for the Michael ord, telling the world what these determined men endure
Lerner, Chile-Peru Expeditions of the American Mu- for freedom.
The uncaptioned pictures wJiich follow were taken by
David Douglas Duncan in the Korean War during 1 950.

All, courtesy Life Magazine, copyright Time Inc.
390
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403
Biassai's
Probing
Vision
Gyula IIalasz he was christened. The }ear 1S99; the

place Brasso, Transylvania. To the world of photography
he is Brassai, a Frenchman. That is as he would have it,
though he has taken the town in which he was born for

his name. French literature, painting, theater, and the
city of Paris he loves as did his father, who had studied
at the Sorbonne and had become professor of French
literature at the Universit}- of Brasso. He brought the
future photographer to Paris at the age of four. They
lived there a vear and the bov, too, fell under the spell
of the city. He was taken to the popular theatre, to the
Champs-Elysees, the Grand Boulevard, and the Bois; he

saw the horses and carriages, the people parading in the
Luxembourg Gardens and eating in the markets and
restaurants where he sat with his father. This was the
year that formed his future.
Twenty years later lie came back, after two years' study
at the Eeole des Beaux-Arts in Budapest and an addi-

tional two years' study at the Art Academy in Berlin.
Strangely, for the next eight 3'ears, he left art for jour-
nalism. To pin down certain aspects of Paris after dark

he borrowed a camera from a fellow Hungarian, Andre
Kcrtesz, a well-known photographer in Paris.
"Why didn't you sketch what you wanted as illustra-
tions?" I recentl}' asked Brassai. 'A\niy did you turn to

photography?"
He answered, "How I became interested in photogra- it in my list of books." Nevertheless, it contains an inval-
pliy reminds me of a story Isadora Duncan once told uable collection of his essential pictures probing the night
me. She was in love with an extremely wealthy man she life of Paris, curiously unsalacious despite the subjects.
called Lohengrin. He hired for her an accomplished Here is a photographer with daring vision, profound in
pianist who played perfectly as an accompanist to her his understanding of people and their environment, of
dances but whom she detested. His face drove her to the prosaic, the incongruous, the ridiculous. His unfail-
such distraction that she had a screen placed between ing eye discovers his kind of a picture. He shows us
them when she practiced. Her disaffection grew steadily glimpses down the side streets and alleys he knows inti-
worse. One day they found themselves in a carriage sit- mately; he has been called "the eye of Paris." It is a
ting opposite each other, face to face; there was no revelation of every stratum. "The creative moment,"
avoiding him. It was a rough, curving road. The carriage Brassai has said, "lies in the selection of the subject."
came to an abrupt stop and she was catapulted into his The day that the Nazis entered Paris, June 13, 1940,
arms. She said to me, 'I stayed there; I understood it was Brassai left the city by subway. He took cover in the
to be the greatest love of my life. In fact for years he had fields from the low-flying planes that were machine-
"
rooms in another part of Lohengrin's castle.' gunning the roads as he walked and hitchhiked his way
Brassai ended the story, "So too with mc and the cam- to Cannes 400 miles away. He would perhaps have sat
era. I once detested her." out the occupation on the Riviera had he not happened
He haunted the streets entranced with what he saw to fall into conversation with a fellow tenant of the
through his camera. What he saw was too much for his apartment building they shared in Paris. He learned that
pencil or brush; only the camera, he knew, could capture the basement where he had hidden his negatives was
the whole fantastic world of Montparnasse. It was there not waterproof. The security of a decade's work became
he went night after night for months, for years. The pav- more important than his own safety. He returned to
ing stones, the bridges, the tourists, and the people wiio Parisand rescued his negatives.
lived in the district he met in his wanderings, all took on During the occupation his kind of photography was
a special meaning for him and his lens. He was searching curtailed, and he resumed sketching. He drew Amazon-
for truthful photography. In 1921, from among the proportioned figures, emphasizing continued rounds and
thousands of pictures he had taken, a publisher put to- curvaceous forms of the nude. He showed these drawings
gether a book, Paris dc Nuit, which rapidly sold out. A to Picasso, who said, "Why did you give up drawing for
reviewer wrote, "Among the thousands of photographs the camera, Brassai? You have a gold mine and instead
that could be taken from the same point of view, there is you exploit a silver mine." An exhibition of his drawings
one, signed Brassai, that gives the impression of fresh- was held Renou
in 1945 at et Colle Gallery; the artist
ness, of something new born through its style." Scgonzac bought one. The fish-eye view of the camera
Publishers, impressed with the success of this book can be detected as an influence in his sketches of the
wanted Brassai to do London, Berlin, Rome at night. nude figure, a heightened triangular composition with
Brassai said he didn't want to become a specialist in any limbs and thighs exaggerated as in some ancient fertility
one kind of photograph}', that he had exhausted the sculpture. An edition of his drawings with a poem by
theme of city streets at night. He started to photograph Jacques Prevert was published. Later he executed im-
people indoors, what they did, how they lived, people mense straight photographic backdrops for Prevert's
dancing, people kissing, unaware of him and his camera. ballet, "Le Rendezvous," which were considerably
"I make no comments with my camera," he says. "My praised in Paris and London where the ballet was seen
camera sees all the different kinds of people and with for several years.
impartiality transfixes them on the negative. Here they During the occupation he turned also to sculpture,
are, the apaches, the male and female homosexuals, the experimenting in three-dimensional stone carvings of the
eccentrics. Whatever I see and I feel about people the nude figure. The bulky flowing forms and solidity of
camera sees— this is the result." sculpture taught him to see figures in space and to
became his second book. It was supposed to ha\'e

It achieve a similar rounded effect in his two-dimensional
been a big book with text by M. MacOrlan, but a mer- photographs.
cenary publisher issued hastily an inadequate, plastic- Brassai, like the well-rounded man of the Renaissance,
bound, popular-priced booklet, Voluptes de Paris. Said has been able to create in all the arts. A poem entitled
Brassai, "I am so ashamed of this volume I never mention llistoire de Marie is a Surrealist-Existentialist work in
405
wliich he attempts to produce the mood of night Hfe in In Spain several years ago he and his camera secured
Paris "by ear, not by eye." I prefer the eye of Brassai. an absorbing chronicle, a vast photographic panorama
Henry Miller writes, in his preface to Marie, "I'here's of Spanish life published in France as Seville en fete.
not a subject of which he has not some knowledge ... A In the summer of 1957 he was in the United States
wall covered with scribbled drawings can absorb his at- for the first time. He said, "I have always opposed color
tention as much Venus dc Milo."
as the in photograph}-, but at the same time I discovered
New York's Museum of Modern Art, during 1956 America I discovered color. I've done something differ-
exhibited a series of Brassai's graffiti, photographs of ent, something distinctive with it, 1 hope. A new book
the scrawls and carvings he found on the walls of Paris. may result. It is a good way to record life in the places
Symbols of what the )oung in the streets think, the I visit, a living series of pictures of what moves me."
graffiti show animals, birds, faces, gallows, hearts and In a lecture Brassai gave before the Societe frangaise
arrows, and two black hollows that inevitably become dc photographic, he said, "To keep from going stale you
empty sockets of starnig death heads. Ever the con- must forget your professional outlook and rediscover the
summate craftsman, Brassai waited for the cross lighting virginal eye of the amateur. Do not lose that eye; do not
of the late afternoon sun to secure detail and deep, dra- lose your own self. The great Japanese artists changed
matic shadows on the wall. their names and their status ten or even twenty times in
Still another graphic art Brassai attempted was the their ceaseless efforts to renew themselves ... it is not
motion picture; he made a twelve-minute film in the right that the originality of that first vision should be-
Paris zoo, which is now being circulated in American come a trick of the trade, a formula a thousand times
movie theatres. It concerns itself with the movement of repeated."

animals; there is a ballet sequence of the intricate, grace-
ful movements of giraffes' necks and of chimpanzees
swinging from limb to limb, going in and out of focus,

and creating weird patterns of flight. In discussing still
photography and the cinema, Brassai said, "I'he true

cinema is movement. The photograph is the contrary
of movement; it is always the stopping of movement.
The screen is always an image in transition, and we
demand that it transform itself unceasingly. I'he fixed
image and the arrested image of a single movie frame, is
the rectangle of the plastic art where always has been
inscribed the artist's drawing, painting and engraving
and now photography. Each lives in the shape of the
rectangle and adapts itself to it."
Brassai conceives flawless compositions within the

rectangle of his Leica and Voigtlander cameras as well
as on the square film used by his Rolleiflex. In all his
photographs there is a sensitivity to patterns, color
values, tensions created between objects in space and an

accent of rhythms controlling the entire image. He
selects and carefully arranges the visual stimulation
which he considers as the isolated image, ever related to
the outward dimensions of the picture.
Brassai works differently from the usual documentary
photographer. His work is more static; into the instan-
taneous he injects his unique element of meditation,
of revery. He seems not so much interested in the flux
and action of a given picture as in holding the image-

as in Crosswalk on the Rue de Rivoli or The White
Unibrella.
406
Rapho-Guillumette Pictures, Paris and New York.
BRASSAi, A Drawing and 'l\vo Sculptures, ici^yicjj^j.
407
BRASSAI
below. Backdrop for Ballet "Le Rendez-\-ous," ig^-
Made from photographs by Brassai.
right: Two Apaches, Paris. iQ^-j-
BAL
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BRASSAI, below: Picasso. 1939.
left: Le Pont des Arts in Fog and Mist, Paris, 1 c)^6.

I
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BRASSAI, below. Exotic Garden in Monaco, 1946.
left: "Bijoux" in Place Pigalle Bar, 1952.

BRASSAi, bc'/oir; Crosswalk on the Rue de Rivoli, Paris, 1935.
right: W'liite Umbrella on the Ri\-iera, 194S.

BRASSAi, Streetwalker. 'Two views, jg^^.
416
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The niscerniiig
Lens of
Eisenstaedt
The test of time is as essential iii deciding what is a
work of art in photography as in lithography or etching.
Repeated viewing of most prints quickly makes them

seem dull and trite. Too often a picture with all its details
is immediately and completely remembered; there are no

new relationships of content or composition to be dis-
covered. Such a picture obviously serves its purpose as
an illustration or technical experiment and is quickly

to be forgotten.
Many photographs by Alfred Eisenstaedt on the con-
trary become increasingly provocative with each view-
ing. His best works stir the senses and emotions as do
the best of prints in all the graphic arts; they haunt
the memory and draw one to view them again and again
in order to find fresh associations, new interpretations.
Their strength lies in their simplicity of design. Eisen-
staedt's portraits clearly reveal the spirit and character of
his subjects whether celebrated or unrenowned. His

scenes likewise, in their intimacy, make the viewer a par-
ticipant, giving him a feeling of being actually present
beside the photographer in a picture of 1932 showing

a lovely dark-haired girl seated in an adjoining box of
the beautiful fi\c-ticrcd La Scala opera house in Milan.
It is a suspended moment, just before the conductor lifts
his baton and the lights are lowered on a most appealing,

festive social scene.
There are authenticity, reahty, and honesty in Eisen- candid portraits and suggested he try to emulate the style
stacdt's photographs. He docs not pose people; he takes of Dr. Erich Salomon, an eariy exponent of the minia-
them wherever they are, in whatever hght exists, at what- ture camera.
ever they are doing. They forget that he is tliere. Perhaps Eisenstaedt bought a small camera, forerunner of the
his small size— he is 5 feet 4 inches— and his small Leica. It had
a fast lens but required focusing with a
cameras- he uses Leicas exclusively— help make him un- magnifying glass on the ground glass. He took \arious
obtrusive; but it is his psychological approach that serves assignments, often wearing white tic and tails which he
him best. People are ready to like him because he is ready had fitted up with pockets to hide the small plate holders
to like them. He discerns their character quickly and the camera demanded. It was during one of these assign-
reacts accordingly. He puts them at ease by the way he ments that he took the memorable picture of Mariene
works. He knows his ecjuipmcnt thoroughly: he evalu- Dietrich attired in male top hat and tails.
ates the light subconsciously, rarely consulting his light On December 3, 1929, Eisenstaedt quit buttons and
meter, instinctively works fast, and covers his camera belts for good to become a professional photographer. A
with his body until he is ready to shoot. He talks softly, week later he was in Stockholm to co\er the Nobel Prize
he is relaxed; the subject forgets him. When the precise ceremonies, securing an intimate informal picture of
instant is at hand Eisenstaedt becomes acutely sensitive Thomas Mann standing slender and assured at a podium;
to all the factors that he weighs. It is hismoment of a magnificent moment in the great novelist's life before
artistry and his decisive finger secures a photograph now he was forced to flee the Nazi terror to preserve his in-
indelibly marked with his unique style. tellectual integrity. Eisenstaedt became Europe's best
'I'hat brilliant, precise style of Eisenstaedt's grew out known press photographer during the next several years,
of his pioneering efforts with small cameras after he had accepting all sorts of assignments, including a flight of
mastered pictorial photography. There is still something the Graf Zeppelin to Brazil, and then he too escaped
of his early, soft, painterly feeling for dense shadows and from the Nazis.
soft whites to be found m his frank, realistic pictures For the Associated Press in 1935 he covered the Ethio-
of today. The blending of the pictorial and the candid pian preparations for the Mussolini-manufactured war
makes him the towering photojournalist consciously with Italy. Eisenstaedt took more than 3,500 negatives
working for the vertical page of Life magazine, and

35, 50, and 90 mm.
tell- using three Leica cameras fitted with
ing his story to its weekly readership of more than twenty lenses. His pictures of the Queen of Sheba's descendants
million people. enhanced his reputation internationally, particulariy a
Eisenstaedt, like most great photographers, entered close-up picture of the calloused, mud-eaked feet of a
the field as a mature man. The year was 1926— he was prone Ethiopian soldier.
twenty-eight years old. F'ifteen years before, while attend- In December, 1935, he arrived in the United States
ing school, he had been given a Kodak which he there- pleased but surprised to learn he was deeply respected
after used intermittently without any purpose other than for his pioneer efforts in candid press photography.
to take snapshots. In 1916 he was drafted into the In November, 1935, Time Inc., after considering call-
German army. Badly wounded during the offensive in ing their proposed new publication Show Book, named
Flanders, he was invalided out of the service, not to it Life magazine and hired Alfred Eisenstaedt as one of
regain use of his legs for more than a year. The well-to-do its first photographers. On the more than 1,300 assign-
Eisenstaedt family was ruined during the postwar infla- ments since then he has covered e\er)' conceivable kind
tion, and the recently hospitalized veteran took a job of a story both large and small in every corner of the
selling buttons and belts to the wholesale trade. For globe. More than fifty of his photographs have made
several years he carried his sample case, attended concert Life covers.
hall and opera house, for he loved music, and talked People on a circular or square staircase have always
about philosophy and art at the cafes where, one evening, appealed to him. He repeatedly finds this composition or
a friend introduced him to pictorial photography. He variations of it, nurses, midshipmen, hotel employees.
learned soft focus, bromoil, and all the darkroom tricks Perfect spacing and proportion invariably result in a
to make photography resemble a painting or a charcoal series of diminishing concentric circles or squares-
drawing. He sold his buttons only for income with which compositions which dramatically presents his diverse
to buy more equipment. He sold an "arty" print to an subjects.
editor of the Berliner Taseblatt who showed him several Eisenstaedt has iimatcl\ the photojournalist's most
419
important requisite; he is there when something is
happening. lie takes the overall picture as well as the

salient detail; together they make the picture story. The
movers and shakers he takes, the personalities and the
place. Consciously he brings the viewer along with him
to be an eyewitness; his purpose is to make Life's readers
feel like participants. This ability to make people iden-
tify with a picture is the high standard of professional
photojournalism reserved for a rare few who have de-
veloped personal styles.
Al\\a}s the perfectionist, Eisenstaedt goes to any

lengths to get his picture. He had himself tied for six
hours to the bridge of the Queen Mary to photograph

the height of a storm's fury. Once he was led blindfold
to a gambler's hideout in Tokyo. Another tunc his life
was endangered as he photographed the Mau Man
Terror in Kenya. He endured the enervating rain forest
of Dutch Guiana, which he explored for weeks with his
camera. Tenacious and fearless when pursuing a story,
he exhausts every angle with infinite patience to achieve
his kind of picture.
In general co\crage of news stories as in his portraits,
he is the complete master of his medium. His file is a
veritable Who's Who of the world in practically every
field of endeavor. Eisenstaedt once wrote about taking
portraits, "If I photograph a king and he is a king in his
own right, I am equally a photographer in my own right.
You will only be able to photograph people if you truly
like them and they respect you."
courtesy Life Magazine, copyright Time, Inc.
420
ALFRED EisENSTAEDT, Ethiopian Judge. 1935.
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422
EiSENSTAEDT, bclow. Feet of Ethiopian Soldier. 2935.
left: Spectators at Trial in Ethiopia. 1935.
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EISENSTAEDT
above: Jan Masank and Eduard Benes. ig-jj-
right: Augustus John. 1951.
424
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EiSENSTAEDT, abovc: La Scala Opera tlouse. Milan, 1932.
left: Nurses Attending Lecture,
Roosevelt Hospital 1957.
427
wm
EISENSTAEDT
Mussolini.
^954-
428
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EiSENSTAEDT, above: Joyce Gary. 1951.
left: Gondolier, Venice. 1947.
431
Callcihcin and
Magic of the
Coiiinioiiplace
HARRY CALLAHAN
Harry Callahan, \\hom one critic termed "photog-
rapher of the obscure and tlic insignificant," grows out
of two traditions of pliotograph)', the interpretive and
the constructive. The first influence is the tradition of
Edward Weston, Paul Strand, and Walker Evans, inter-
preters of the commonplace, who transform into aesthe-
tic visions anaesthetic objects found in nature— vege-
tables, eroded rocks, etc.— and in the man-made scene-
fences, signs, dilapidated houses, and dirty city streets.
The second influence is the tradition of jMoholy-Nagy

and Man Ray, creators of photograms, nonobjective
images created in the darkroom by combining and
arranging shapes on a piece of sensitized paper and using
a flashlight to expose.
In Callahan's pictures there is the fusion of these two

traditions, the documentar)- and the abstract. He di-
gested and integrated these influences into a personal

vision, seeing things adventurously and saying them suc-
cinctlv with his camera.

Callahan opens our e>es to the familiar and the com-
monplace: sights of no beauty in themselves he makes
beautiful. An upturned waste basket silhouetted in the
dust; a desolate park bench in winter; a water fountain
and a concrete step in the snow; a lowly weed consisting

of three delicate, tapering lines subtle as any seen in a The photographer must take advantage of the accident;
master drawing; all taken with straight photography. often an alert photographer will make the artistic acci-
With his camera he captures an intimate portrait of dent repeat itself.
the inanimate, which he makes emotionally effective. Callahan has a profound feeling for the facades of
His pictures do not show us more and more of nature, buildings, of which he makes original graphic statements.
like those of many cameramen. Callahan deliberately The shown with people; they are
buildings are rarely
shows us less; he makes photographic discoveries by re- who do not show their faces
peopled with inhabitants
duction, by simplification, and by isolation. The insig- but who make themselves felt— through a window re-
nificant image becomes important. He has conquered flection, a fluttering piece of lace curtain, a still life of
the technical problems of his medium. He experiments edibles on a window sill. The building commands us to
with multiple exposures or moves his camera to super- see what the photographer saw, the proportions, the play
impose images, thereby achieving repeated patterns of of planes, the gradations of tones. The awesome, the
varying tones and interplay of lines and movements in fearsome, and the tawdry behind the facade arc sensed
the resultant textures. only upon deeper penetration of the photograph. The
In all his experiments Callahan retains contact with emotional intensities in Callahan's photographs come
The exact image cannot be foreseen when a
reality. through with a still kind of reticence.
camera is moved or a plate exposed several times, but Callahan is not slavishly devoted to nature, with hori-
the accidental effects can be anticipated and controlled. zon line in place and perspectives respected. The finished
H.\RRY CALLAHAN
A Weed. 1951.
433
photograph is the criterion. This is neither a picture of
a trivial natural form nor a record of a dramatic slum
dwelling. Unlike Walker Evans's photographs of social
criticism, Callahan's pictures carry no social message.
His pictures supersede the source of his inspiration: the

overstressed and the overdramatic are filtered out; the
essence of the subject remains. He stresses single aspects
of nature to reveal his artistic purpose: lines simple,

straight, and of varying breadth, skeins of lines or mul-
tiple superimposed lines in various tones, whites per-
mitted to peep through various shades of black and gray.

Callahan is concerned to control patterns, textures,
rhythms, contrasts, and composition, but, bejond tech-
nique, he is involved with an intuitive and sensitive in-
terpretation of his subject.

In Callahan's multiple-exposure pictures of buildings,
much as in Cubist paintings, the background and the
foreground no longer suggest perspective or depth. The
subject is deliberately changed by superimposing several
images on the negative so that a repetition of forms

appears, multiplied and dislocated but making for dy-
namic movement in the space of the picture plane.
The image, no matter how hackneyed, commands the

camera view, and there is no altering after exposure.
Callahan's work repudiates the pictorial, but his photo-

graphs are never total abstractions. He stops short of
eliminating subject matter entirely. Through his intrinsic
artistry and unique vision he has advanced the tradition
of photography.
All of his subjects to date have been taken in the
United States, mostly in Chicago where he is head of
the photography department of the Institute of De-
sign of the Illinois Institute of Technology. In 1957,
Callahan received a $10,000 grant from the Graham
Fellowship, the largest sum ever awarded a photographer
for experimental study.
All photographs in this section
courtesy Harry Callahan, Chicago.
CALLAHAN, Dcarbom Street, Chicago. About 1955.
434
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CALLAHAN, below. A Plant. About 1951.
right: Chicago Loop. Multiple exposure, 1952.
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CALLAHAN, La Salk Street, Chicago. About 195^.
438
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440
CALLAHAN, bcloM': W^ccds in Snow. About 1951.
left: Tree in Winter. Multiple exposure, 1956.
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442
CALLAHAN, Airplane Hangar. About 1955.
443
All photographs m this section courtesy Aaron Siskind, Chicago.
AARON SISKIND, Degraded Sign. iVcii' York City, 1951.
AARON SISKIND through their paintings suggest ideas to the photog"

rapher. Siskind w ith his camera, however, does not com-
Aaron Siskind, just turned fifty years old, was born in pete with the brush nor does he attempt to emulate or
New York City. For the past several years he has been imitate painting. His work is an idiomatic photographic
teaching at the Institute of Design (founded by Moholy- expression of the avant-garde conceptions of modern art.
Nagy as theChieago Bauhaus, now part of the Illinois One great difference between photographer and
Institute of Technology), where he has been one of the painter is that Siskind does not make his image in a dark-
powerful influences on the students who are today's avid room; no matter how abstract there is a foothold in
proponents of modern art and design. reality. One of his motifs, to which he often returns, is
Siskind has not always photographed in his current the wall. To him it is never just a wall; the various forms
abstract idiom. He originally won recognition as a docu- seen in the wall come ali\c. Defaced and marked, the
mentary photographer, especially for his series depicting wall asserts itself far more than a blatant neon sign. It
New York's Harlem, Martha's Vineyard, and Bucks commands, like the marked walls of the public gardens
County, Pennsylvania. He now says about this long in ancient Creece, where ever}one was interested in the
apprenticeship in craftsmanship and realism, "I found I message, or like a school }ard wall covered with messages
wasn't saying anything. Special meaning was not in the that have meaning to children. Siskind with his camera
pictures but in the subject. I began to feel reality was seeks to capture meanings, not so much the message as
something that existed only in our minds and feelings." the originality young artists displa}' in making drawings
He turned for this "new reality" to abstract images on roughly textured walls with pudoined chalk, com-
that he found in lowly objects ordinarily ignored. bined with meaningful words or letters resembling some
Siskind's work now bears striking similarity to Abstract primitive writing. Wall images have their own reality,
Expressionist paintings of our day, particularly to those which Siskind wills into becoming a photograph. He sees
canvases that emphasize big unrelated forms, nongeo- the human clement in these images and instills it in his
metric abstractions, or strong textures and patterns in pictures. He responds to the shape, form, and mood of a
colors subdued almost to black and white. It is contem- wall and to the feel and sight of weathered wood, jagged
porary aesthetics with a camera. The photographer glass, peeled paint, rusted metal, sand and seaweed, and
suggests plastic ideas to the painters, just as modern to the effect of time and the elements on concrete, paint,
artists such as Willem de Kooning, Robert Mothcnvcll, paper, plaster, and brick.
Franz Kline, James Brooks, and the late Jackson Pollock Here is invention through selection of nontraditional
444
visual stimuli. Siskind searches for photographic inspira-
tions in the useless dregs of the city, rejecting the usual
formal and accepted motifs. He discloses the excitement
to be found in the relationship of irregular blobs and

whoris, accidental lines, roughly hewn textures, and
broken patterns. The inconsequential comes ah\e
through His photographs are personal experi-
his artistry.
ences developed between him and the subject, but the

photograph lives as an object apart from the subject.
The photograph is a created graphic print. The composi-
tion he selects has to have complete unity, the required

light and no more, for there is no elimination or retouch-
ing once the exposure is made. Siskind photographs what

he finds as it lies, without rearranging it. Though the
photograph may be nonrepresentational there are move-

ment, repetitious and complementary forms, textures
varying from delicate and soft to harsh and violent,
gradations of light and shadow, and an over-all design
to control the finished result as a work of art.
This is true of all of Siskind's photographs, whether

the subject is an oily paper bag, lichens on rocks,
weathered billboards, or rusty metals. They are works of
art wrested from a surrounding world of junk and chaos.
His work transcends the subject, but recognition of the

subject heightens the emotional response to his artistic
interpretation.
Though Siskind's cryptic ideas may be communicable
to comparatively few, the image, with its sensuous sur-
faces and its structural unity, may readily be enjoyed by

many. He recently said of his work, "I regard the photo-
graph as a new object to be contemplated for its own

meaning and its own beauty."
Siskind has the rare gift of converting and transform-
ing a subject into a stimulating expression of his own
vision, a picture born in the imagination as he discovers
it in the abandoned rubbish heaps of the city or in the
unimpressive manifestations of nature.
SISKIND, Paint on Brick Wall. Chicago, 1948.
4^.6
447
siSKiND, above: Oil Stains on Paper. New York City, 2950.
right: Stone Fence. Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, 1954.
448
siSKiND, Billboard.
Mexico City, 1955.

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siSKiND, above: Scrambled Fence. Harlan, Kentucky, 1951.
left: Peeling Paint on Wall. Jerome, Arizona, 1949.
453
siSKiND. below. Side of Old Barn. Gay Head, Massachusetts, ic)47-
right: Rock by Ocean. Gloucester, Massachusetts, ig-l-^-
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Recorder
Margaret BouRKEA\'mTE discovers the objecti\e reality

of any given story, isolates it, and then relates each photo-
graph to the totality of tlie story she cn\'isions. She
creates a dynamic journalistic photo-essay, a complete
story communicating visual insights not only about how
the subject looks but about what it says to her.
She seeks to picture the enNironment and the social
Ixickground of her subjects, the work they do, the li\cs
the\ li\e. She is aware of their appearance as she is aware

of their personalities; the fraction of a second when the
picture is taken is alive with meaning. Her purpose
is visual communication for the great body of Life's
readers; inmiediate recognition for those who see super-
ficially and deeper meanings for the more sagacious. Her
way of capturing the image calls forth varying levels of
emotional response; her essays are of complex dimen-
sions, new experiences in journalistic photography. Her
work is a sort of candid eavesdropping, consciously con-
trolled by the shape of the 35mm film she uses. Both she
and Life's readers complete the picture; each feels a par-
ticipant. Recently she wrote, "In some cases you feel )0U
have stepped right into the li\cs of the people }ou are
photographing."
It has been so since her first picture stor}- for Life
magazine. The original cover on November 23, 1956, was
her photograph of the overpowering, repeated concrete
forms of Fort Peck Dam; in the lead story of nine pages from which she was photographing the bombed city of
she depicted intimately the workers' lives in the boom- Cologne. She shocked the world into awareness of Nazi
town atmosphere of the Montana construction project. maniacal destruetiveness with her pictures of human
This dynamic treatment was an important factor in starvation in the concentration camps and of the dead in
setting Life's style of photographic essay. It was a new the grisly gas chambers.
style for her as well. Her reputation had been gained as Margaret Bourke- White writes crisply and brilliantly,
an industrial photographer, taking unusual perspectives perfectly complementing her photographs. She tells a
of skyscrapers and grain elevators, steel mills and smoke- story succinctly without editorializing. In Dear Father-
stacks, machine gears and dynamos. "She transformed land, Rest Quietly the pictures give graphic dimensions
the American factory into a Gothic cathedral and glori- to the verbal descriptions of her feelings. Two other
fied the gears," wrote one critic. books of her war experiences illustrated with her pictures
A graduate of Cornell University, where she had were published during the conflict. Shooting the Russian
studied biology and philosophy, she found her life's in- War and Purple Heart Valley; then in 1949 there was
terest in the camera, first as a commercial photographer Halfway to Freedom.
for bankers, architects, and industrialists, making limited The war over, she again began her travels; one of the
progress, and then as a photojournalist for magazine pub- first assignments she accepted was to photograph Gandhi
lishers, developing photojournalism to a high personal in India. Gandhi's secretary made her learn patiently
level. Henry R. Luce hired her as a photographer for to spin before he permitted her to photograph the
Fortune eight months before the first issue appeared in Mahatma at his wheel. She later wrote of this experience,
1930. The following year she was sent to Germany to "If you want to photograph a man spinning, give some
photograph the Krupp Iron Works and then, on her thought to why he spins. Understanding for a photog-
own, she went to Russia to take pictures of the Soviet's rapher is as important as the equipment he uses. ... In
Five Year Plan. Without escort or assistance she photo- the case of Gandhi, the spinning wheel was laden with
graphed factories far from the cities, securing a percep- meaning; for millions of Indians it was the symbol of
tive record of the ruthless initial industrialization plan the fight for independence which Gandhi successfully
attempted by the Bolshevik government. led."
Fortune and Life magazines have sent her everywhere She was on hand with her camera during the hectic,
on the globe, a million miles, she estimates, producing a frenzied days of the "Great Migration," the exchange of
quarter of a million negatives. A chic, soft-spoken, attrac- the Hindu-Moslem population, and the birth of Paki-
tive woman, danger stimulates her; she controls her fears stan. Stark, contrasting pictures of the dead put out in
through immersing herself in the sensitive seeing of the streets of Calcutta to be devoured by vultures; a rich
photography. A camera steadies her hands and purpose moneylender's ostentatious house decorated with erjstal
as a scalpel does a surgeon's. chandeliers, gilt mirrors, and family portraits, and a
Moscow, which the Nazis bombed at first by the
In lovely sensitive portrait of a girl wearing necklaces of
parachuted magnesium flares, Margaret Bourkc-
light of beads and British coins.
White, the only American photographer in Russia, set For Margaret Bourke- White a return home to Life's
up her cameras on the roof of the hotel opposite the office is but to ready herself for another assignment.
Kremlin to take her pictures by this suspended eerie light. Racial tensions and conflict about "apartheid" brought
In World War II she was the first woman photog- her to South Africa in 1950. In Johannesburg she went
rapher accredited to the United States Armed Forces and almost two miles into the earth to photograph sweating
immediately felt the taste of war when the troopship she Negro miners in temperatures that registered 100 degrees
was aboard was torpedoed and sunk en route to North despite air conditioning.
Africa. This was not the only time she was to lose her The following year over Kansas she flew 42,000 feet
cameras; five fell into the sea when a helicopter from high in a jet plane to photograph another jet attempting
which she was doing a story on U.S. Navy rescue tech- to break the sound barrier, and took an exquisite abstract
niques crashed into Chesapeake Bay. picture of white vapor trails in an illimitable black sky.
She covered the American infantry men's two-year Pursuing the Air Force stor\-, she was the only woman
war in Italy, risking her life to get pictures, as they fought accredited to fly on a mission in a B-47, the fastest
their way up the boot Germany. She barely escaped

into bomber at that time.
when Nazi flyers attacked an unarmed observation plane Undeterred b\- the price that the Communists put on
457
her head to keep her from entering Korea, she went deep Their Faces, two years later North of tlic Danube, and
into the mountains held by the Red guerihas, photo- in 1941 Say Is This the U.S.A..^
graphing the bitter struggle in a series of deeisively dra- In her thirty \ears with a camera Margaret Bourke-
matic pictures. Wliite has produced a tremendous variety of photo-
Lectures, writing,and Life magazine assignments now graphs, including industrial, war, and foreign reporting,
make up her existence. Nothing daunts her zeal for the and photographic essays of world-famous leaders, among
camera. She has taken pictures from e\er\ kind of a con- them Roosevelt, Churchill, Madame Chiang Kai-shek,
veyance; on a recent assignment she went from Maine Nehru, and Pope Pius XII. She has created a chronicle
to Central America by canoe, plane, and muleback, to of our time, a personal interpretation through photog-
secure a photographic essay on American Jesuits, which raphy of vital days in contemporary history. Consciously
was later published with a special text in collaboration an artist with the camera, Margaret Bourkc-White
with Father John La Farge, S.J. In former years she had explains her viewpoint, "Everything in the picture should
collaborated with Erskine Caldwell (to whom she was contribute to the statement . . . good photography is a
once married); in 1937 they published You Have Seen pruning process, a matter of fastidious selection."
All photographs in tliis
chapter courtesy Life Magazine,
copyright Time, Inc.
ry
tr*^"^ Gold 1
MARGARET BOURKE-wHiTE, (jbove: Sharecroppcr's Home. 1937.
/c/t: South African Gold Miners. Johannesburg, 1950.
459
MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE
above: The Plantation. 1937.
right: Indian Girl. 1948.
460
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above: Moneylender's Home. India, 1947
right: X'ultures. Calcutta, 1948.
^~'.-^/ •-•' . .^ .* 7,-- i; V
4b2
463
MARGARET BOITRKE-WHITE
Mahatma Gandhi at a Spinning
Wliecl. Poona, India, 1946.
464
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above: 42,000 Feet o\-er Kansas. 1 951
right: The Face of Liberty. 1 95^.
466
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Buchenwald Victims. 1945.
469
If
Van (ler Elskeii:
Storyteller in
Photo<>iat)hs
Chicago's Near North Side or Greenwich Village in

New York, try as they will, can never equal in character
or atmosphere the Left Bank of Paris and, in particular,
the district of Saint-Gcrniain-dcs-Prcs. No place on earth

means what the Left Bank has meant to the artist, the
student, the expatriate, the "would-be," and the "flawed"

as a mode of life.
I'he romantic mood of a Trilby or Tricotrin seated in

Leonard Merrick's Chair on the Boulevard is now a part
of the dead past. Romance is still there, but it is now
spelled in lower case. No longer is it a style of literature,
a release from Zola's realism.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's lost generation has gone; rich
Canadians and Argentinians have replaced the sons and
daughters of Americas industrialists who once gloried in
the reckless life that was "Parisienne" in those roaring
twenties.
And though the district still supports the studio of
Moreau and the Atelier Suisse, the ateliers of Leger and
Zadkine are now close by to refute the rebels of yesterday,
and in the Beaux Arts more ex-G.L's and foreigners are
enrolled than French students.
The district, despite all these changes and despite in-
flation of the franc, still has its seventh-floor single rooms
at $2 a week with water and toilet three floors down; but
there is a difference. Instead of a Mimi or Iludolph
dwelling in the garrets tlicre is a photographer, who hauls starving. Night after night he sat in the cafes, observing,
his water up three perilous flights of stairs to develop his taking his few precious pictures. Then one morning he
negatives. went to work. He had tried to write, but words were not
Ed van der Elsken was a photographer who in 1950 sharp enough for his tastes. A 1.5 lens was, and he needed
did not have $2 for one of these rooms. When he arrived film. He found work in a photographer's darkroom where
in lâris he was less than twenty-fave years old. In his he did every conceivable kind of job. It was all to the
native Amsterdam he had been an art student, had good; he learned many subtleties in technique that he
fought the Nazi occupation, and, at the end of the war, applied to his own work.
had turned to the camera. A year of darkroom work, and He found a seventh-floor room; took a job as a photog-
he was a ready-made free-lancer with no jobs. rapher—correspondent for a Dutch paper, taking pictures
In Paris he slept first under the bridges amidst the offal he disliked— but it released him from being what he
and filth of the derelicts, the "clochards" of the Seine. termed a "darkroom slave." He now had time to take
He learned quickly to rest during the long night sitting photographs day and night. He started to assemble a
in a cafe chair. He listened to the )Ouths of the district direct, unposed, total picture of youth in Saint-Germain-
speaking their own peculiar brand of French, and once des-Pres. The districtby now had forgotten he had a
in a while he took a picture, unobserved. He had only camera in his hands. He took thousands of pictures, filing
two rolls of 35mm film when he arrived. He made each each negative carefully. Editors who saw these prints
shot count and he held on to his Lcica even when he was were not interested. The papers back home wanted pie-
tures of visitors in front of the Eiffel 'Iowct or tlic Opera. She tried a song-and-danee act teamed with another
These hack sales kept him going. girl. Paris cafes pay little, but the experience was new,
A pieture story began in his mind one niglit wlicn he something different. The shocking became hilarious and
met an attracti\e \oung girl from Canada \\ho had come the Existentialist eaves welcomed the di\ersion. Painters
to Paris with ambitions to become a singer. Here was a found her a fascinating model.
girl who seemed to symbolize all the rebellious young She planned but one day in 1955 she
to stay in Paris,
talent annually drawn to the fabled Latin Quarter. He left the Left Bank— fortunately not before Van der
took pictures of her with the man\- men she attracted, Elsken had caught his final picture of her. "Pregnancy
art students, American sailors, Senegalese musicians, and and Saint-Gcrmain-des-Pres wouldn't work," she told
the man who convinced her to shout a song in a cafe him. She went home.
rather than sing it on a stage. He stayed on, photographing what he \owed would
Van der Elsken followed her for two years with his be a complete pieture of the district. And then he, too,
camera. He took pictures of her smoking marijuana, of suddenly was gone. He was home in Holland. He had his
her drunk and of her sober.He caught her m all her stor\ , but no editor wanted it. "Too immoral, too stark,"
moods, and the camera worshipped her beaut\'. In his they said. The story told itself in pictures. It needed only
hand it lied; he made it tell what the lens saw,
ne\cr a few words. He would write them himself and perhaps
honestly. She had become so accustomed to his being it would make a book, he reasoned. Book publishers
there that she was unaware of his camera. It pictured her thought so too. A Love Story in Saint-Germain-des-Pres
wearing a turtle-neck sweater that emphasized her bizarre appeared in Dutch in ig,6, a no\cl in pictures of people's
beauty; it captured an unexpected picture of narcissism lives graphicalh' portrayed and told without moralizing
as she contemplated her soft-checked reflection in a or sensationalism.
frighteningly pitted mirror and as she kissed her intoxi- An autobiographical no\'el in pictures gleaned from
cated. Medusa-haired likeness in a rain-stcamcd window. the tremendous number of \'an der Elsken's negatives is
P?S^P^
VAN DER ELSKEN

right:Singing with the Senegalese. 1953.
opposite page: Students in the Cafe. 1952.
472
to be published as We Wait Till This Door Opens. It picture st\le appeals long after the story is fully under-
will be preeeded by another pieture book to be titled stood, for he does not pose or direct the subjects; there
Bagara gleaned from recent months spent with a tribe is nothing faked in his story. The camera discloses the
in central Africa. many-faceted character of each individual. The writing
The complete picture book, a story to be read in pic- does not influence the pictures; the text exposes related
tures with a few words merely to indicate direction, is a facts while the pictures disclose the meaning and feeling
comparatively new art form in photography. Van der and are entities in themselves. The result is a book of
Elsken uses this demanding medium like a novelist, de- pictures with some few w'ords of text that function like
scribing a cast of characters, a place, a mood, time, plot, illustrations in a novel; the pictures carrj^ the ston,- and
and dramatic development. Van der Elsken's unique have a life of their own.
473
VAN DER ELSKEN, beZoii': A Young Mexican in Love with Her. 1953.
right: Her Bizarre Beaut\' Appealed to Artists. 1952.
m
^ ".:-..js£»«f:
iM«a<f"'V
I m*m
9^^
>i; '^'
r
^^^K
VAN DER ELSKEN

A Pitted Mirror. 1953.
477
478
VAN DER ELSKEN
below: "Pregnancy and Saint-Germain-des-Pres
Won't Work," She Said, and Left Paris. 1953.
left: Narcissism. 1955.

Ccirtier-Bresson
and the
Human Comedy
Henri Cariier-Bresson is the perfect detective with a

camera: the man who never intrudes. He has the extra-
ordinary abihty to make himself part of a setting; he bc-
httlcs himself whenever a subject becomes conscious of
him and his camera by saying, "I'm just one of those
camera bugs; I won't bother."
It would never enter his head to ask a person to move
or pose or to change a setting b\- adding or eliminating a
prop. One time in Texas he and Eliot P^lisofon were
assigned by Life magazine to cover an annual meeting of
the American Federation of Arts. Elisofon had a large
bronze sculpture moved outdoors, placed in lower-right
foreground so that it focused on the ground glass two-
thirds of the way up the film. lie continued composing
by asking a lady wearing a round red hat to sit with back
to camera in lower left. Within that designed framework
Elisofon waited for a spontaneous action of people who
entered the scene, unaware of the camera, to group them-
sehes into a balanced composition, a harmonious color
arrangement, and a pla}' of forms that would express the
idea of a garden party for art. Cartier-Bresson, fascinated
by Elisofon's method, lauded it, but it \\'as contrar.- to
anything he would have done.

Cartier-Bresson searches for the meaning, the essential
characteristic of the picture he instincti\"ely sees in front
of him. To make sure he sees it as a complete composi-

tion and not as some superficial charming expression or photographed the coronation of George VI, he turned
gesture, he peers through a reversing prism set on top of his camera away from the picturesque procession of
the ever-present Leica that he uses exclusively. I'he image England's pageantry to search the multitude's anonym-
is upside down; the bold forms stand out; when these ous face for human, touching incidents.
flow into an acceptable composition he presses the He explains that it is a journalist's duty to recognize
shutter. It is by now a reflex action. I'he entire frame is what is important though he docs not know in advance
filled with the picture (he never crops) lie sees through .
what that will be. Cartier-Brcsson's camera is ready to
the lens as a sniper sees througii the telescopic sight on take that picture the instant it takes shape. As the move-
his rifle. Cartier-Bresson has repeatedly said that his right ment unfolds he perceives when all the transitory ele-
eye looks out onto the exterior world while his left eye ments most forcefully form his kind of a photograph.
looks inside to his personal world. The two obviously He concentrates on securing a series of dramatic photo-
fuse into the one eye of the lens. He once wrote about graphs which, coupled with his notes, become a precise
this, "To me photography is the simultaneous recogni- account of what took place. He clearly articulates this
tion in a fraction of a second of the significance of an intention by saying, 'Thotography implies the recogni-
event, as well as the precise organization of forms that tion of a rhythm in the world of real things. What the
give that event its proper expression." eye does is find and focus on the particular subject within
His is a poignant picture: the camera searches out the the mass of reality, what the camera does is simply to
jo)s and sorrows of people everjwhcre. The immediacy register on film the decision made by the eye."
of his seeing makes it possible for him to grasp and record He finds his pictures at eye level; fish-eye and bird's-
permanently evanescent sights and fleetmg emotions as eye perspectives he considers odd, tricky angles. The only
a measure of personal expression. Vision and conception valid angles, he claims, "are the angles of the geometry
are one; technique never gets in his way. It is by now of composition," not realizing that valid geometric com-
automatic; he explains that he is no more conscious of positions can be photographed from any angle and that
changing shutter speeds or f-stops than he is of shifting any creative photographer has the freedom to make his
gears while driving a car. He never uses flash bulbs, for own kind of picture. But his rules, he has persistently
he never can be sure he will get the picture he seen. Flash said, apply only to himself, not to others.
takes its own picture: it flattens space; it disembodies Cartier-Bresson has circled the earth many times; he
the vision; and the resultant picture is a distortion of the and his wife, a Javanese dancer named Ratna Mohini,
emotions as well as of the photographer's vision. In por- whom he married in 1937, seem at home anywhere. He
traits Cartier-Bresson uses the same silent, unobtrusive has discovered great photographs in all parts of the world.
method. He waits patiently until the subject stands re- The Far East and Europe, however, yield more penetrat-
vealed in the existing light, then he presses the shutter. ing pictures for his camera than the United States. He
Cartier-Bresson is universally respected for his mag- seems more attuned to ancient civilizations, to the in-
nificent photoreporting. In 1933 he took his first unfor- congruities inherent in the extremes of society, and to
gettable picture: hilarious children chasing a wildly buildings and streets that have withstood millcnia of
laughing, crippled child on crutches playing in the ruins treading feet. His book The Europeans attests to this
of a stucco building in Seville. The poignancy of this keen rapport with his people, as does, in a lesser way, his
scene became a characteristic of his clear, unique style; book, Tlie Russians. In his earlier volume. The Decisive
concrete pictures which in their visual poetry command Moment, the panorama he captured of China, Java,
attention and continue to evoke emotional responses India, and North Africa, is more penetrating and more
even after many viewings. This quality made him one of convincing than his pictures of the States. Some of his
the world's best known and highest paid photojour- finest photographs appear in these volumes and in his
nalists. Reporter of the human comedy, he is concerned From One China to Anotlier, in \\'hich he traces pictori-
with the typical rather than the unusual, fascinated by ally the last changing days of the old regime and the
people and their natural actions. Dull, unimpressive beginnings of Communist China. In the tradition of
scenes he conceives as striking pictures. He is not con- Ihncrson, Stieglitz, and Adams, but without their vehe-
cerned with recording the historical event itself, as most ment demands for fine reproduction, Cartier-Bresson be-
newspaper photographers must be— necessarily they stop lic\cs in publishing his photographs in book form to
the very center of an action to make it ser\'e as an illus- attract the widest audience possible for his work.
tration for the day's news. In 1938, when Cartier-Bresson Through these books and through traveling exhibi-
481
tions of his photographs more people have seen his work next thirty-six months he was a prisoner of war, escaping
than that of ahnost any other photographer. A retrospec- succesfully onl)- after the third try. He reached Paris and,
tive exhibition, consisting of four hundred photographs for the balance of the war, sened in the Underground
encompassing the êars 1930 to 19^5, opened in the assisting ex-prisoners of war. He organized French press
Lou\Te in Paris (destroying a century of official prejudice photographers to cover the occupation and the retreat
lield against photography) and has since been circulating of the Nazis after liberation, hnmediately after \\'orld
in major museums on both hemispheres. War II ended in Europe, he resumed work as a camera-
Cartier-Bresson's original intention was to become a man for the United States Office of War Information,
painter. In 1928, at the age of twenty, he studied painting filming the return of war prisoners to France.
with Andre Lhote; the next year pursued it further in In 1946 he came again to New York, to attend the
Cambridge, England, where he added the study of litera- first comprehensive exhibition of his work held at the
ture. The 3ear 1930 he spent in the West African bush, Museum of Modern Art. He stayed here for the ensuing
where he contracted blackwater fe\'er and began his life- twelve months, traveling throughout the nation to
time interest in photograph}-. While recuperating in acquaint himself with the immense pictorial canvas of
Paris in 1932 he acquired a Leica, which became, he the country. On his return to Paris he and his two good
wrote, "the extension of my eye." He traveled with it to friends, Capa and Chim (both of whom were to die in
Poland, Germany, and Italy, testing what he could do ivar— Capa in Indo-China and Chim in Egypt— while
with the camera, making himself master of its very re- pursuing stories for Magnum) founded the independent
sponse. The results of this trip and his next year's travel photo agency Magnum Photos. Magnum is owned as
in Spain he showed in his first exhibition, held in Madrid a cooperative by its outstanding photographers, who
and later shown in New York. supply illustrated journals and magazines of all the w'orld
In 1934 he joined an expedition for a year's travel in with single photographs or complete picture essays.
Mexico where he held a joint exhibition with Mexico's Carticr-Bresson has had to take the position of president
Alvarez-Bravo in the Palace of Fine Arts. The succeed- of Magnum Photos since the death of Chim, who held
ing year he shared gallery space with Walker Evans in a that office when he was killed.
two-man exhibition which presented their personal styles For Magnum, Cartier-Bresson has taken all kinds of
as documentary photographers. Then followed his first picture stories, including specific assignments for Life,
sojourn in the States, the year he discovered Harlem, Picture Post, and Paris IMatcJi. The qualit\- of his w'ork
Brooklyn, and Coney Island. continues to develop as his vision and understanding of
He returned to France to make his
moving picture
first humanity deepen with the passing years. He sums up his
with Jean Renoir. In 1937 he took the documentary film. belief in photography by saying, "For me, content cannot
Return to Life, depicting medical aid to hospitals during be separated from form. B} form I mean a rigorous organ-
the Spanish Civil War. llie same }ear he photographed ization of the interplay of surfaces, lines, and \alues. It
France with Robert Capa and David

in the south of is in this organization alone that our conceptions and
Seymour (Chim) who were to become organizers of emotions become concrete and communicable. In pho-
Magnum Photos with him a decade later. tography, visual organization can stem from a developed
Carticr-Bresson entered the French Army in 1939, just instinct." Photography to the modest, unassuming
after completing another film with Jean Renoir. As a Cartier-Bresson is a way of life, a creative mode of ex-
corporal in the army's film and photo unit he was taken pression in which he can record the story of man with
prisoner by the Nazis at the collapse of France. For the uncanny awareness, sympathy, and poetic imagination.
All photographs in this chapter from The Decisive Moment, by

Henri Cartier-Bresson, published by Simon and Schuster, Inc.,
New York, courtesy the photographer and Magnum Photos, New York.
HENRI c.\RTiER-BRESsoN, Allcc du Prado, Marseille. J 932.
482
^1^^^-.: — :;.f -.,-YW-- --fiY '
--î-^^ga^î^^
484
CARTIER-BRESSON
below: Gestapo Informer Accused. Dessau, Germany, 19^5.
left: Place de I'Europc, Paris. 1932.
CARTIER-BRESSON, dbove: Day at the Races. Hong Kong, 1949.
right: Coronation of George VI. London, 1938.
486
488
CARTiF.R-BRESSON, Two Prostitutcs' Cribs.
Mexico City, 1934.
489
CARTiER-BRESSON, Tea Housc in Peking.
China, 1949.
490
i
f«-
,v
r
Ur ^M'
491
492
CARTIER-BRESSON
above: Moslem Women Pra}ing. Kashmir, 19^8.
left: Rats of the Grave. Luxor, Egypt, 1950.
493
494
CARTIER BRESSON
Sunday on the
Banks of the Marne.
1938.
iN
'V
N,
:^-;'-'?^*'.*^-^
^K>.-
iiîyiii
495
Yousiif Kai sh
Faces of
Destiny
YousuF Karsii, in his powerful portraits, transforms the

liuman face into legend. Future historians eo\ering the
period between World War II and Sputnik II will turn
for illumination to the perceptive, psychological portraits
Karsh has made of statesmen, scientists, and artists whose

faces ha\'c changed the face and tastes of the world.
A superb photographic craftsman, Karsh fills his por-
traits with multiple meanings that )ield their full import

only upon continued, concentrated observation. His terse
and intimate characterizations convey insight into the
subjects' will power, leadership, creative intensity, or
spiritual stature. Although the image remains faithful to
objective reality, through emphasizing features, hands,

or body Karsh achieves a \isual idealization as well as an
expressive interpretation of the subject's character.
Karsh composes each photograph carefully paying as
much attention to background as to modeling the struc-

ture of the face and figure with light. The portrait is
organized within the picture space. A dominant feature

becomes the focal point, drawing the spectator's eyes
through the composition and back to the objective
center. The lighting appears natural, but number and
sizes of light sources are carefully considered so that the
subject seems to sit in the diffused atmosphere of a court-
3'ard lit by beams of unblinding sunlight. Ivich part ot
the picture is harmonioush linked b} a balanced relation-
ship of forms and masses, of dark areas and areas of light. Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study. A verbatim
Karsh does not use deeorative s\\'ccps of drapery or record of Karsh's questions and Einstein's answers dem-
painted props for backgrounds. He creates the proper onstrates Karsh's technique of drawing the subject into
background with hght, and correlates it with the clothes realms of profound thought until he forgets the presence
worn by his sitter. In his photographs of Nehru, Sibelius, of the camera. Karsh asked, "Are you optimistic about
and Marian Anderson, the subject detaches itself to be- the future of mankind?" Einstein replied, "I cannot say
come a strongly framed light mass isolated by contrast that I am optimistic, but this I will say, that if there is
from the dark costume worn, and from the solid black not found in the near future a solution to the security
background. In his photographs of Shaw and Churchill, program, then there will be a disaster on a scale un-
Karsh achieves space and depth through highlighted imaginable to us."

areas made effective by the position of head and hands, "To what source should we look for the hope of the
clothes and accessories. future of the world?" asked Karsh. Einstein answered
Karsh seems to follow the precept of Goya, who wrote, simply and softly, "To ourselves."
"I see [in nature] only forms that advance, forms that Most people sit for Karsh either in his Ottawa or in
recede, masses in light and shadow." This play of forms his New York studio. Twenty-five years ago, in 1933, he
Karsh achieves purposefully through subtle modeling of arrived in the Canadian capital, debating with himself
the dominant characteristics he finds in the uneven whether to study surgery or to open a photographic
human face. studio. Karsh was born in the town of Mardin in the
There is no academic, repetitious formula to his work. Armenian part of Turkey. He was ten years old when the
In Faces of Destiny, published by Ziff-Davis at the close massacres of 1918 ravaged his home town. He escaped
of World War II, his versatility is evident. His photo- a year or two later to find a home with his uncle, a pho-
graphs clearly reveal the diverse attitudes and personali- tographer operating in Sherborne, Quebec, where Karsh
ties of the men who brought the Allies to victory; they learned the rudiments of his profession. Later he was
convey effectively strength of purpose, intellectual apprenticed for three years to John H. Garo in Boston,
breadth, and sense of power. a fellow Armenian whom Karsh remembers as "a stimu-
When asked about his method of capturing the great- lating and inspiring teacher as well as a photographer of
ness, the individuality of each sitter, Karsh declared, "I distinction." From Boston he moved to Ottawa, where
have tried for jears to define for myself the ingredients he established his home.
of successful portraiture, but it defies definition . . .
Ottawa grew rapidly and the studio of young Yousuf
Though perception of what is right must be instantane- Karsh grew with it. His skill as a portrait photographer
ous, continuous practice does not make portrait pho- was soon recognized by Lord Duncannon, son of the
tography a matter of near automatic perfection." governor general of Canada, Lord Bessborough. Karsh
Karsh's masterful technique can create but super- was introduced to members of the government, to visit-
ficially what does not exist in the subject's character. His ing dignitaries, and also to the Ottawa Little Theatre
portrait style applied to financial giants has resulted in Group \\here Karsh met his future wife, the talented
ovcrdramatized, brilliant photographs of apparent outer actress Solange Gauthicr.
strength without the concomitant inner force. Prime Minister W. L. Mackenzie King, a close friend
To secure a portrait Karsh will travel halfway across and patron of Karsh, in December, 1941, arranged to
the globe to spend sometimes only one hour in produc- have Winston Churchill pause to be photographed im-
ti\e work with his subject. mediately after his speech before the combined houses
When he flew to Finland to photograph the dis- of the Canadian Padiament. Karsh was given two
tinguished composer Sibelius, Karsh took with him his minutes to take one shot. Churchill entered and stood
8 X lo-inch camera and hundreds of pounds of equip- impatiently, smoking a freshly lit cigar. Karsh, who had
ment, only to find the electric current available was in- no intention of including the cigar in the portrait, walked
sufficient. Until permission from the authorities was up to him and said, "Sir, here is an ashtray." Getting no
secured to tap the main line, Sibelius regaled Karsh with result, he said, "Pardon me," simultaneously taking the
stories told with infectious gaiety. Karsh's lens probed to cigarfrom Churchill and snapping the shutter. Churchill
find the image, a divine mask with eyes closed that re- walked over, shook hands, and remarked, "Well, you
flected the spirit and genius of the venerable composer. can certainly make a roaring lion stand still to be
Karsh photographed Einstein in his little study at photographed." Eleanor Roosevelt, when she heard of
497
the incident, commented, "It must have been Churchiirs humming her fa\oritc spiritual "The Crucifixion." The
first major defeat." audacious George Bernard Shaw said to Karsh, "Arme-
This was the picture that made Karsh famous. Pub- nian? Good. I have many friends among the Armenians.
lished again and again, became a symbol of England's
it To keep strong and healthy the}- should be exterminated
will to fight. The strength and power of Churchill's face every little while." Frank Lloyd Wright, another magni-
stiffened the resolution of the English people, who were ficent egocentric, disappro\ed violently of everjthing
then bearing the full weight of Nazi bombings. The Karsh was doing, but inxited him to Taliesen to take his
people loved the photograph; it was easy to imagine picture in his Wisconsin home.
Churchill's stirring speeches issuing from this indomit- When Karsh photographed President Franklin D.
able face. Roosevelt, he clicked a gadget attached to his camera
At the request of the Canadian go\ernment, Karsh that made it appear that he had tripped the shutter.
went to England to take a series of photographs that in- RooscNclt relaxed; then Karsh really took the picture. He
cluded King George VI and Lord Beaverbrook, who said, used the same procedure with Lord Tweedsmuir and
"Karsh, you have immortalized me." Life magazine as- occasionally with other famous personalities.
signed him to photograph American war leaders; one of Karsh writes of his profession, "If there is a driving
an unsmiling, determined General Eisenhower was as purpose to my work, it is to record the best in people and,
effecti\c for the pursuit of the war as the picture of in so doing, remain true to myself. ... It has been my
Churchill. good fortune to meet many of the world's great men and
Since the war's end, leaders of the mind and the spirit, women. People who will leave their mark on our time.
creative people in all fields, have claimed Karsh's interest. I have used my camera to portray them as they appeared
To his galler\- of statesmen, military men, and royalty he to me and as I felt they have impressed themselves on
has added artists, architects, scientists, humanitarians, their generation."
and musicians. Karsh, with his keen sense of judgment, Karsh's great photographs of them will impress future
seeks the intrinsic character of his subject. He caught the generations, who will know through his artistry the look
expression on Marian Anderson's face just as she finished of the celebrated persons of this period of history.
AH photographs in tliis chapter copyright Yoiisiif Karsh, Ottawa.
YOUSUF K.\RSH, Winston S. Churchill, ig^ji
498
m
;^-
KARSH, below: Frank Llo)d Wright. 1945.
left: Jan Sibelius. 1949.
\
"='*«C-':
lN^-"*
KARSii, Albert Einstein. 19-fS.
503
KARSH, Jawaharlal Nehru. 1949.
504
KARsii, Marian Anderson. 1948.
505
KARSH, above: Queen Elizabeth II. 1951.
right: George Bernard Shaw. 1943.
506
\
Color:
Another
Dimension
"I HAVE TRIED TO EXPRESS thc tciriblc passions of hu-
manity by means of red and green," wrote Van Gogh in
discussing his Niglit Cafe. "I'he room is blood red and

dark yellow. The color is not true from thc realist point
of view; it is a color suggesting some emotions of an
ardent temperament."
Such an attitude toward color is coming to the fore
among practitioners of the infant art of color photog-
raphy. This art came into being a few years after the end
of World War II when a new type of color film enabled
still photographers, for the first time, to process their

own color negatives and print their own color positives
as ciuickly and simply as, prc\iously, they had processed
black-and-white. From then on, creative photographers
could explore the possibilities of controlling images
through using color in novel, imaginative, and often,
lion-rcalistic ways.
For three-quarters of a century before the advent of

the new film, color processing was specialized and labori-
ous. Taking a color photograph required three separate

negatives, and making a color print on paper required
the conversion of three black-and-white negatives into
three la\ers of d>cd gelatine, \\hich were assembled in
register. The bewildering mass of chemicals and meth-
ods kept the great masters of black-and-white photogra-
phy from turning their talents toward color; the^ made
only a few color photographs. Color photographs, ac- Some of these unusual visions of science may have
cordingly, belonged almost entirely to the realm of provided inspiration to the creative photographer, to
technical and applied photography. Tliey were used in whom the chief value of color photography does not rest
scientific work, advertising, and color reproduction. And in the cjuality of literal accuracy but rather in the expres-
all color theory, practical color photography, and color sive qualities of the finished picture. This value is inde-
printing had as their most important aim the reproduc- pendent of the accurate reproduction of natural color
tion of natural color litcralh' and faithfully. although accurate reproduction may on occasion provide
All color photography is based upon the principle that new and exciting insights. The colorist with a camera
every hue can be rendered by a combination of only sees and feels a color combination as a play of tones
three "primary" colors. Practical use of this principle was and hues throughout the area encompassed. He relates
made in the eighteenth century, when inexpensive color the psychological and emotional forces of color to his
mezzotints, after well-known paintings, employed com- subject, no matter whether the colors are seen in sun-
binations of three basic colors. In 185^, James Clerk light; controlled by artificial light; achieved through
Maxwell anticipated color photography by pointing out multiple exposures creating overlapping colors; displaced
that primary colors in light could be combined in this from sharp focus with lenses that change the normal
manner; in 1861 he projected an image of a tartan ribbon color balance of the spectrum; fused and blurred by shut-
on a screen where three component color images were ter speeds that are slow when action is fast; made bright
superimposed. In 1868 Louis Ducos du Hauron in Paris and strong by underexposure or subdued and pale by
outlined a number of techniques for producing color overexposure.
photographs on paper. These formed the basis for color Most professionals reduce their "palette" and limit
photography until 1930, when Mannes and Godowsk\- themselves to dark tones accented by some few brilliant
developed for the movies the Kodachrome method of beams of colored light. The strong dyes of color photog-
producing a positive transparency on a single film. In raphy are more insistent than the tempered colors nuxcd
1938 Kodachrome film and the similar Agfacolor, in- by the painter. A jDainting serves its purpose as a picture
vented almost simultaneously in Germany, became on a wall, whereas a photograph is intended primarih'
available to still photography. It was then that the use for the pages of a picture magazine. Camera color and
of color film became widespread, although both Koda- the printed page are often, therefore, purposely more
chrome and Agfacolor had to be returned by the pho- compelling in their demands for immediate attention.
tographers to the film manufacturers for complicated Ever more \i\id color values arc sought b\ magazine and
processing, which involved development, re-exposure, advertising photographers, to catch the reader's eye.
dyeing, and bleaching of all three sensitive coatings on Confident control over end result, the following
the film. It was Mannes and Godowsky again who in- through of a final decision made at the snap of the
vented the reversal film, Ektachrome, which permitted shutter, has not been easy to attain. There was first the
photographers to do their own color-processing, becom- necessity to learn how to see color as film and lens see
ing generally available in 1950. it rather than as eyes see it. For example, when the
Color photography brought a new impact to adver- cameraman's purpose is to reproduce nature's colors ex-
tising and made reproduction of the world's art univer- actly, he introduces compensations in exposing daylight
sally available. In science, color extended the investiga- film under conditions of diffused morning or evening
tive range of photography: what in black-and-white light. He does this because such film is "balanced"— i.e.,
might be identical grays, in a color photograph might has been formulated chemically to produce the seen
resolve into a purple and a green, providing differentia- color combination after normal exposure and processing
tion be\ond the possibility of the more limited medium. —for bright middle-of-the-day sunlight. Otherwise he
Color photography in science has also produced effects may receive a surprise. Surprises, in color photography,
that are pictorially startling, for example in the recording often take such form as the appearance of blue-green
of the complicated color patterns created when cr\stals \\here red was expected —a far more startling result than
are subjected to polarized light. Color photograph\- with the unexpected shade of gra\- that may creep into a black-
infra-red filters transforms the familiar world into a and-\\ hite picture.
glowing pattern of reds, yellows, browns, and blacks, Conscious control of color accidents, deliberate dis-
revealing nature in unexpected ways, and especially use- obedience of the film manufacturer's traffic rules for the
ful in the detection of camoufla£e. purpose of achieving colors contrary to usual human ex-
511
periencc, has become part of the technique of a number
of creative photographers, such as Ernst Haas, Arthur
Sicgel, Yale Joel, Irving Penn, and Nina Leen. The
ovcrbright color range of the new fast color film is the
delight of the amateur seeking ever more realistic snap-
shots. The marvelous capabilities of the latest automatic

cameras and films have deceived many photographers,
both amateur and professional, into believing that literal
reproduction is the color camera's major sphere of art-

istr)'. The artist-photographer knows this to be untrue.
The national picture magazines have pro\'ided an ex-
cellent training ground for color photographers, making
available to them for experimentation a generous supply
of expensive color material. Experience with the new

negative-color film is gradually being built there; and it
is there that color photography is gradually developing

its own standards. The artistry and style of individual
photographers are transforming the objects they "see"

into a new t\pe of richer visual expression within its own
technical limitations and imitating no other medium.
Photographers like Eliot Elisofon, Dmitri Kesscl, Gor-
don Parks, and Gjon Mili are now beginning to attain
their due measure of importance and appreciation for
their color work along with the universal acclaim re-
ceived by them and similarh- talented photographers for
their prints in black-and-white.
right: Infrared black and white fdm penetrating haze

shows hundreds of square miles from 20,000 feet.
Black spot is a lake. Courtesy United States Air Force.
opposite page: Camouflage detection with color fdm and
infrared filter, in Korea, 1955. Living greenery appears red, dead
vegetation such as thatched roofs shows up dark.
Courtesy Life Magazine and United States Air Force.
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below: erwin blumenfeld. Third Avenue El. 1951 . From
The Art and Technique of Color Photography, edited by Alexander
Libenuan. Courtesy Conde Nasi Publications, Inc.
left: BRADLEY SMITH, Lubricaots Measured in Viseosity Tubes. 1957.
Courtesy The Lamp, Standard Oil Company of New Jersey.
lib
IK.-** Man New Guinea.
ELIOT ELisoFON, bclow. Decoratcd in 1957.
left: Ritual Yam Dance, Santa Cruz Island, South Pacific. 1957.
Both, courtesy Life Maadziuc, cnpYright Time, Inc.
'%\'
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above: cordon parks, Fashion in Times Square. 1956.
left: ELisoFON, Bather in Tahitian Rapids. 1955.
519
Both, courtesy Life Magazine, copyright Time, Inc.
below: parks, Golden Train, New York City. 1956.
Courtesy Life Magazine, copyright Time, Inc.
right: Herbert matter. The House Painters. 1951 . From The Art
and Technique of Color Photography, edited by Alexander Liberman.
Courtesy Coude Nast Publications, Inc.
L
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^^^^^^^^^^Ê^^^^^^^^^^^H
YALE JOEL, Flow of Muscular
Movement. 1958-
Courtesy Life Magazine,
copyright Time, Inc.
=22
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ERNST HAAS
foe/ow: New York in Late Afternoon Sun. 1955.
right: Broadway Sign Painter. 1953.
Botli, courtesy Life Magazine and Magnum Photos, Xevv York.
%T
525
HAAS, above: Geomctn,- in the U.N. Building.
1953.
left:Manhattan Spires from Brooklyn Junk\ard. 1953.
Both, courtesy Life Magazine and Magnum Photos, New
York.
527
below: haas, Window Reflections on Tliird Avenue in New York.
1953. Courtesy Life Magazine and Magnum Photos, New York,
right: WALTER BENSER, Unusual Perspective in the Mid-East.
1956. Courtesy Modern Photography.
GjON MiLi, Picasso Drawing With Light. 2951
From The Art and Technique of Color Photography, edited
bv Alexander Libcrman. Courtesy Conde Nast Publications, Inc.
530
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531
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MiLi, Carmen Jones, 1951 . From The Art and Technique of Color Photography,
edited by Alexander Liberman. Courtesy Conde Nast Publications, Inc.
NINA LEEN, Ghostly American Legend. 1957.
Courtesy Life Magazine,'Copynght Time, Inc.
ARTHUR SIEGEL
Four \'ariations of Reflections in Water.
1950. Courtesy Life Magazine.
534
WALLACE KIRKLAND, TrOUt SliapS Flv. 195::.
Courtesy Life Magazine, copyright Time, Inc.
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above: dmitri kessel, Battle of Hastings Landscape. 1956.

left: HOWARD sociiuREK, Twenty Minutes After Sundown at 40,000 Feet. 1956.

above: albert fenn, Two Icebound Tankers. 1957.
right: kessel, In theOld Temple, Bangkok. 1951
540
below: IRVING PENN, Bullfight in Barcelona. 1951.
right: cecilbeaton, Martita Hunt as the Madwoman of Chaillot. 1951.
Both, from The Art and Technique of Color Photography, edited by

Alexander Libermau. Both, courtesy Corjde Nast Publications, Inc.
542
543
Extend iiii» the
Kciiii>e of
Human Vision
Photography has not only given us powerful new

forms of art but has found many applications in science,
industPi', and commerce. There it has revolutionized
communications, deepened and broadened scientific re-
search, and created new institutions of society. This

process began early, for photography for practical use is
as old as photography itself. Blueprints reproducing the

dra\\'ings of engineers and architects were used by
builders and manufacturers more than a century ago. At
the same time, astronomers attached cameras to celestial
telescopes in order to photograph the heavens.
Todav, the extent of the photographic enterprise ex-
ceeds the wildest predictions of photographic pioneers.

Processes of photomechanical reproduction of pictures
sometimes rival the original photographs themsel\-es in
clarity, detail, and range of tone. Often, whole publica-
tions—text, pictures, everything— are printed by photo-
graphic means; and the printing types employed are set
photographically on film rather than mechanically in
metal. We photograph sounds, the paths of nuclear par-
ticles, the pattern in space traced out by dancers' feet.
With wide-angle "bug-eye" lenses— their taking angle is
fully i8o°— we can sweep our surroundings from horizon

to horizon. Using aerial cameras we make maps photo-
graphicalK- of cities and countriside, maps so accurate
in detail and contour that oil companies bu\- them by the
hundreds for use in laying gas and oil pipelines for dis- the camera at other angles and from other heights; and
tances of thousands of miles. We attach cameras not the images recorded were not wiped away. They were put
only to telescopes but to rockets soaring into interplane- down in enduring form; the observer could return to
tary space and to bathyscapcs plunging into the deepest them again and again. When he looked at the pictures
trenches of the ocean floor. made in this manner, he found that something strange
So advanced is the photographer's arsenal in our time had happened: the scale and aspect of the wodd had
that a magazine photographer slings around his neck a changed. The camera could see not only as men see, but
quantity of equipment — in terms of performance — that in other ways as well. And even though "swings" of lens
the great Brady, in the Civil War, could never have car- board and camera back were introduced into some cam-
ried in a whole train of wagons. Toda\'s photographer eras so that they could compensate as the eye does for
may have on his person three or four cameras equipped strange angles, the intellectual and creative possibility of
with color or regular film. To one may be attached a seeing the world differently, via the camera, remained.
batterj'-operated stroboscope light that provides brilliant The world, for example, could be seen as a child sees
illumination for intervals as small as a millionth of a it. Each of us, at one time, viewed things from a point
second. The cameras themselves have lenses of great close to the ground; the world was seen tall, with grown-
power— normal, wide-angle, and telescopic. A range- ups looming like giants. We have all forgotten this ex-
finder coupled to the lens brings the subject into sharp perience, for the images in our heads can be reclaimed
focus within a second or two. A light meter built into the only by our memories- notoriously unreliable and fading
camera frame can, automatically, pro\'ide the proper rapidly from the time impressions are first made. But put
aperture for the selected shutter speed. The flick of a a camera down low and, from the picture that results, we
finger can move an exposed frame onward and bring the can recapture the child's-eye view, not for an instant only
next unexposed frame into taking position— or, if this but for as long as we look at the picture and as often.
procedure is too slow to match the speed of the action In such simple ways as this it was discovered early that
being photographed, a spring motor can do the job auto- cameras and photosensitive emulsions could be used to
matically at the rate of thirty-six frames in a few seconds. extend human vision, both in photography the art and in
Such equipment, it may be noted, is neither rare nor photography the scientific aid. The tool, in its potentiali-
costly. Factory-made and popularly priced, it is sold every ties, was Icaxingmark upon the art. With refinement
its
day in twelve thousand shops in the United States alone. of photographic equipment there developed unprece-
Equipment of this kind is used by many thousands of dented power to explore our visual surroundings.
photographers— amateur and professional— engaged in Camera and photosensiti\'e emulsion can now see
observing the world and in enabling others to observe it, what the eye cannot: invisible radiation — X rays, cosmic
too. This has been going on for quite some time— as rays, ultraviolet rays, infra-red rays— revealing objects
readers of this book know, since 1859. Perhaps the great- cloaked in total darkness, bones beneath the skin, the
est contribution of photography has been its transforma- structure of the universe; things too fast for the unaided
tion of human beings. Photography has given all of us eve- a horse winning by a nose, a bullet speeding
new power to see. through the shock wave of a sound barrier, a golf ball
When the first photographs were made, men were ac- compressed by the head of a striking club; things too slow
customed only to the forms of our common perception —flowers and cities growing; things too big— the earth's
seen straight ahead from a spot four to six feet above the curvature; things too small— atoms, bacteria, metallic
ground. From time to time, of course, thev saw the \\ orld crystals; things too faraway— spiral nebulae and the outer
from other angles and other distances above or below stars; things that would blind us if wc looked at them—
ground lc\cl. However, the images received by the eye the sun's corona and the fireball of the nuclear bomb.
are fluid and temporar}"; the e\e tends to pivot and com- Cameras can go where men would surely die— out into
pensate for unusual angles of vision; and unfamiliar im- space, to the bottom of sea deeps as far below the surface
pressions are wiped away when men return to normal as the Himalayas are above. Thus, over the past centun,-,
positions of standing, sitting, walking, and riding. photography has extended human \ision and. in combi-
As one might expect, the camera was at first used to nation with scientific instruments, re\ealed thousands
produce familiar images, and was aimed straight ahead at upon thousands of unexpected aspects of nature on
the height of a man's eye. But it was easy— too easy, le\el after level; beauty and strangeness ne\'er before
amateur photographers still discover every day— to use imagined.
545
Not onl\- has this \\ork been socially and scientifically
useful, but these wonders of nature now made visible are
as fascinating to the observer as those that can be seen

bv the unaided eye. If we are interested in the world,
these pictures interest us. Even a book about the art of
photography would not be complete without some of

these pictures, for the photographic artist has studied
them and has extended his vision and technique through
his study.
The art of still photography has been enriched b)' in-
teraction with cinematic art and with applications of

photography. The movie, which grew out of still pho-
tography, has in turn shown the still photographers how
to master the craft of narrative, to make action sequences
dramatic in their variety of motion and shifts of scene
and scale. The employed for
familiar miniature camera
this purpose and others has been adapted from the movie
camera. It has the movie camera's key structural and
mechanical features: a big, fast, short-focal-length lens
for great depth of focus and the ability to take pictures
in dim hght; 35-millimeter fine-grain roll film advanced

one frame at a time by a sprocket drive— this allows doz-
ens of pictures to be taken in rapid succession without
a change of film; and a high-speed shutter that can stop
almost any action. Such a camera is so small, so portable,
and so versatile that it frees the photographer to go

almost anvwhere and take almost anything.
The telescopic lens— sometimes twenty times as long
as the picture that it high— provides
takes is the photog-
rapher with the opportunity to show stirring visions seen
from afar. In the distance, in the back of long views seen

bv the human eye, there has always been a geometric
realm an "infinite" distance away. There are forms and

shapes, but neither perspective nor depth in space. As
seen by the eve, however, the forms of this realm are
\-aguc and few, little more than hazy silhouettes. Pho-
tographers have brought this realm close and shown us
fullv detailed overlapping patches of windows, doors,
and buildings, all apparently at the same distance from
us. This is a view of the world contributed by photog-
raphy confirming that of the Cubist painters. However,
it also belongs to the photographer himself- by natural
right if by nothing else. In documenting Cubist realities,
and in providing us with images of high fantasy and bold

patterning— which painters consult for Surrealism and
abstraction— the photographer has enlarged our experi-
ence and made both his own art and the art of the
painter more moving. He has demonstrated once again
that our imaginative vision is rooted in physical and op-
tical realitv.
SaS
special nine-lens aerial photograph of Manhattan, by U. S. Coast
and Geodetic Survey. Courtesy Gyorgy Kepes, Cambridge, Mass. 547
right: Clouds of gas
i and dust, ^,000 light years

away. Photographed with
200 inch lens in red light.
Courtesy Mount Wilson

and Palomar Observatories,
left: Ocean floor seen from
tliree miles above M'ater. 19^8.
Photo by Aero Service Corporation.
From The New Landscape,
bv Gyorgy Kepes, Paul Theobald
and Co., Chicago. Courtesy Gyorgy
Kcpes, Cambridge, Alass.
below: Spiral nebula, taken
with 200-inch Hale telescope.
Courtesy Mount Wilson
Mismsm and Palomar Observatories.
548
k
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550
left: Curvature of the Earth.
Aerial photograph made from a V-2 rocket, 194.S.
Courtesy Clyde T. UoUiday, The JohnsUopkins University
below: Under-sea photograph taken with the

bentograph at 970 fathoms. 1951
Courtesy Allen Hancock Foundation for Scientific Research.
right: G. E. valley, Cloud-chamber plwtognipli.
Taken at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
From The New Landscape. Courtesy Gyorgy Kcpes.
below: II. p. ROTH, Uranium in polarized light.
Courtesy H. P. Roth, Nuclear Metals, Inc., Cambridge, Mass.

opposite page: Self-registered picture of dialcctric in process
of breaisdown. From The New Landseape. Courtesy Gyorgy Kepes.

553
û*
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A. WATANABE, Magnesiwu oxide magnified 6j,ooo times. Photo

taken in electron microscope laboratory of Keio University,
Tokyo. From The New Landscape. Courtesy Gyorgy Kepes.
left: HAROLD EDGKRTON. High-Speed
photograpli of falling milk drop.
Courtesy Harold Edgcrtou,
Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
below. Waterdrop. High-speed photograph.
Courtesy United States Navy.
555
i
Underwater Atomic Explosion.

Bikini,"Baker Day," 1946.
Photographer unknown. Courtesy
Atomic Energy Commission.
55,6
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below: f. vilbig. Modulation dixk. From Tlic New Landscape.
Courtesy Dr. F. Vilbig, Cambridge Research Center,
right: francis bitter. Magnetic field. Courtesy Professor
Francis Bitter, Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
opposite page: Radiograph of a snake. From The Ne\\' Landscape.
Courtesy Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester.
558
559
ra Ai uuiul the
World ill
fifty
Photographs
Photography in the MiD-TA\T,NTiETn century is the

closest thing to a uni\'crsal art tliat the world has ever
seen. It is not only an international art, but the great

photographers are an international fellowship. One of
their important organizations is Magnum Photos, a co-
operative which supplies photographs to leading picture
magazines throughout the world. Magnum's photogra-
phers as do those of Rapho-Guillumette and other in-
ternational photo agencies come from even,'where, go

everywhere, and see themselves in print wherever they
go. But the international character of photography
transcends such organizations as these. Photo clubs exist
everywhere, ignoring national boundaries to earn,- on a
lively interchange of ideas and wôrk; while photogra-

phers avidly study magazines and books of their opposite
numbers, quite indifferent to linguistic barriers.
T'hemen who took the fift\' pictures in this chapter
come from many lands: England, America, Switzerland,
Germany, Italy, Greece, New Zealand, and Japan.
Most of them no longer work in the country of their
origin. With few exceptions, notably the Japanese, it is
hard to find in their work more than slight traces of a
national style. Generally, the Swiss are highly proficient

in technique; the Americans— by adoption as well as by
birth— have a sense of humor and an eye for fast action;
the English sense human drama concealed within the
cominonplacc. The national differences, nevertheless, do fast-moving football game under difficult lighting condi-
not seem to be too important. What is significant in tions. He has learned to control action. He knows how
today's photography these men have in common. to wait for the significant motion, the revealing expres-
First of all, they have in common their integrity and sion, the world's aspect that only his eyes have hitherto
devotion. They are serious about their work. Their pic- been able to see but that he can now record with his
tures are true statements of the world as they sec it. And camera promptly communicating the meaning of his
no fewer than three of these men— Capa, Bischof, and picture to millions.
"Chim"— lost their lives in photographic action. There Why, given this high level of technical competence
who risk their
are others lives daily. and ability to observe, do we find in these fifty pictures
Second, they have in common a command of their so great a variety of photographic image? Because nature
medium, uncommon only twentv vears ago. Their photo- itself, as wc observe it, is so various. A single small patch
graphs are no finer than those of the great photographers of nature has an infinite number of aspects, depending
of the twenties and thirties— or, indeed, than those of upon our constitution and experience, upon whether we
the great photographers of the nineteenth century. How- look at it steadily or fleetingly, attentively or absent-
c\er, ways of seeing and communicating developed one niindcdh', according to its general shape or its specific
by one by a succession of photographic innovators have detail. C)bser\'ing nature, we organize our vision. ^Vith a
now become one universal body of photographic knowl- suitable camera and skill to match, we can record our
edge. Today's leading photographers have mastered and private vision and make it public. The shifts and move-
absorbed this bod\' of knowledge and made it their birth- ments of nature are likewise infinite. The trained eye
right. More than a century of development has now can follow the pattern of certain movements as they
equipped photographers to take from the world anything unfold; and, again, with suitable camera and suitable
they can find there with their eyes and their understand- photographic skill he can make public the pattern that
ing. Tliey can make serenely patterned landscapes, show only he could see before. In the hands of a sensiti\ê
tlie confusion and violence of war and social upheaval, photographer the camera shows what is there— yes— but
reveal the abstract forms of nature that nature ordinarily it shows much more than just that for it requires effort
conceals from us. And they have refined and developed to make the image reveal its many meanings.
further the previously known ways of recording the This kind of organization of nature's forms and move-
wodd's significant aspects. ments is the essence of photographic creativeness. The
When Dr. Salomon, a generation ago, made split- creative photographer does not invent forms, as the
second use of his miniature cameras to catch statesmen creative painter or sculptor does; he discovers them in
and celebrities with their guard down, the picture-view- nature or in man-made objects— for what the camera dis-
ing public was excited by the no\'elty of candid-camera closes is its own personal kind of reality depending on
work and delighted to sec with own eyes
its that the the vision of the photographer. The photograph is a true
great and powerful were only human beings after all. statement of the worid rather than about it. In this
Today, the noveltv of candid-camera pictures has worn respect photography is like science; the creative scientist,
off, and the public has come to expect more than just the too, discovers what is there. But photography is also like
excitement and immediacy of an unposed photograph. its fellow \'isual arts of painting and sculpture in its con-
Substantially as a result of such pioneering work as that trol, discipline, and organization of forms drawn from
of Salomon, Eisenstaedt, and Bourke- White, picture- nature. Indeed, photography gives us basic information
magazine readers by the millions have learned the lan- about the realities of all visual art. It shows us, for ex-
guage of the camera. Photographs are their greatest ample, that the created abstract, cubist, and expression-
source of information about the world— its lands and ist forms of modern artists arc rooted in seen reality and
peoples, habits, customs, ambitions, tribulations, and correspond to forms found in nature as discovered by the
achievements. When the picture releases its message, art of photography.
they do not fail to understand. Photography, uniting art and science as it does, is not
The photographer has not failed to respond to a public only the most popular but the most characteristic art of
so eager and informed. He understands and conveys as our modern scientific and technical world. It was a child
never before what Cartier-Bresson has called "the de- of the industrial revolution, and was the first art in his-
moment." It is not enough for him to show well-
cisive tor)' to depend upon a scientific instrument for its pro-
known people off their guard or to stop the action of a ductions. Its broadening and deepening as an art has
561
likewise had to follow upon developments in science and
technique, for the creati\-c photographer used everj- new
invention to make more meaningful images.
Photography has not displaced painting, as art critics
predicted a centur}- and a quarter ago, nor will it. lliere
is more need than ever for the visual discipline and imag-
inative vision that creative painters provide our visually
chaotic socict}-. But photograph)- is an artistic medium of
tremendous flexibilit}- and power. It is charged with
reality on many levels and its rapid development during
the brief period of its existence is a promise of still greater
things to come.
JAPAN
Japan, in little more than a decade, has become one

of the leading countries in the manufacture and export
of photographic films, papers, and equipment— especially
camera lenses. I'hc bubble-proof lenses, from extreme
wide angle to telcphoto, made for Japan's precision cam-
eras, have captured the world's markets.
Photography seems to satisfy a special Japanese aes-
thetic need. Traditionally based on close observation of
the moods and details of nature, Japanese art, combined
with a growing devotion to science, now new and
finds a
popular expression in the camera. After World War II,
millions of amateurs flocked to camera clubs. Subtle
pictorial representation was the important aesthetic prin-
ciple: fishermen carrying lighted torches, delicatch- bal-
anced against the flickering lights of small \illages; a
misty morning on the river, logs floating downstream
like dimly drawn boats in an ancient scroll; or a hallowed
gate of a temple silhouetted in starlight.
With the American occupation, new conceptions of
realism and humanism influenced the impressionable
young whose cameras concentrate on the vast changes in
the new generation. Photographs by several of these
contemporan,- Japanese poets and probers with the cam-
era are presented here. Photographs from Japan— Fernes-
land, courtesy Verlag Gerd Hatje, Stuttgart.
562
YuiCHi MiDORiKAWA, Islands in the Sea at Niglit. 195-
fiî.
^LSS^
TOSHiji MUKAi, above: Lake Shudoko in Rain. 1957.

right: The \âlley Nagataro in May. 1957.
564
below: TAKENO TANUMA, Contrasts of a Summer Festival. J 956.
right: yasumasa katayama, Night View of Miyajima Temple. 1956.
567
ENGLAND
BILL BRANDT during World War II, documenting for the Home Office
the courage of Londoners during the blitz. Since the
One of the best-rounded and most effective camera- war he has devoted himself to interpreting scenes of lit-
men in Britain, an architectural and landscape photog- erary Britain— the architecture and landscape associated
rapher, social commentator, and satirist. After photo- with Britain's great writers from Chaucer to Shaw-
graphing the human misery and social incongruities of photographs which were published as Literary Britain.
depression-bound Britain, he turned to photojournalism Photographs courtesy Bill Brandt, London.
BILL BRANDT, dbove: "Wutheong Heights." 1945.
left: London Child. 1955.
569
BRANDT, Parlormaids. 1932.
570
ROGER MAYNE or lose themselves in their favorite haunts. He docs not
confront us with a sociological expose of delinquency
Trained as a chemist at Oxford, Mayne abandoned but gives us a truthful, s\mpathetic presentation of these
chemistry for photography upon graduation. lie has children of the streets. Mayne is preparing a book in
photographed an astonishing record of London's "Teddy which some ot these photographs are combined with
boys" and their girls, with their Edwardian clothing and poems and essays written by the children themselves.
haircuts, assertively handsome as they walk the streets PhotograpJis courtesy Roger Mayne, London.
ROGER MAYNE, Loudon Street. 1957.
571
MAYNE, above: Tears. 1956.
right: Tension. 1956.
572
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SWITZERLAND
WERNER BISCHOF
While photographing his fourth continent at the age
of thirt>-eight, Bischof's truck plunged off an Andean

mountainside in 1954. Few men in our era have matched
this young native of Switzerland and member of Mag-
num in technical mastery and breadth of range as a pho-
tographer. After an eady career devoted to meticulously
constructed pictures of shells, still lifes, and the pictorial
beauties of nature, he turned his camera on people. He

covered stories of harassed lives— took memorable news
pictures amid the political and social upheavals of Cen-
tral Europe and Asia. His photographs of humanity as
well as of magnificent landscapes on both hemispheres

attest to his acute responsiveness to the visual image.
Photographs courtesy Magnum Photos, New York.
WERNER BisciiOF, Shiuto Pricsts in Snow, japan, 1951
574
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576
BiscHOF, below: Famine in India. 195;
left: Pcru\ian Piper. 1954.
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577
•xV>r-\x.
ROBERT CAPA, D-Dav Noriuandy Bcaclilicad. iQ-f-/-
••;
;^V<w.'-^ . . •,
i
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UNITED STATES
ROBERT CAPA
With Cartier-Bresson, and David Seymour (Chim),
Capa founded Magnum Pliotos, an international, co-
operative agency of picture journalists ser\ing the world's
magazines. Born Andrei Friedmann, in Hungary, Capa
became the greatest combat photographer of his time.
He met death in Indo-China in 1954 characteris-
'^^'li*-''!'
ticallv, he drove ahead of a troop movement to photo-
graph the marching men and accidentally ran into a land

mine. To Capa all considerations of technique were
secondary to the immediate, effective telling of a story.
Two of his photographs, one of a stricken Spanisli Loy-
alist soldier, the other of the Normandy beachhead as-
sault, in their swift blur show us, as no richly detailed
and .sharply defined picture ever could, the incredible
violence of war. Dictographs courtesy Magnuni Photos,

New York.
579
ROBERT CAPA, cbove: Death of a Loyalist Soldier. 1936.
right: Women of Naples. 1943.
580
DAVID SEYMOL'R {CIUM) tures of children— the lost, the starved, the maimed, the
parcntlcss. During the last dozen of his forty-five years,
Warsaw-born, David Seymour ("Chim") was killed by bachelor Chim adopted orphans of the war, supported
machine-gun bullets in 1956 while covering the war in them, them and placed them in the homes of his
visited
Suez. When the Art Institute of Chicago held a memo- friends. To Chim, war was an enormous crime against
rial exhibition of work by this charter member of Mag- children and his photographs he considered a stark re-
num, his pictures of festivals, battles, and famous persons minder of this crime. Photographs courtesy Magnum
were withheld and the entire display given over to pic- Photos, New York.
DAVID SEYMOUR CHIM (

J
left: Europe's Children. 19^8.

rigJU: Barcelona Air Raid. 1936.
''^>:.-
j^0-^m^
'£f iîtv
5*
'^r
CORNELL CAPA war. Cornell came to the United States the following
year and, after serving in Army Photo-Intelligence in
Like his late brother Robert, Cornell Capa shows a World War II, became an .American citizen and piio-
feeling for news, an understanding of people, and a sense tographer for Life. After Robert Capa's death in Indo-
of humor. He was born Friedmann in Budapest, 1918, China, Cornell moved to Magnum Photos. He covers
and went to Paris in 1936 to begin his prcnicdical studies. the world on picture assignments tor many international
In Paris he paid his way by processing photographs sent illustrated magazines. Photographs courtesy Life Maga-
back by his brother who was in Spain covering the ci\i] zine and Maguuvi Photos, Ne\\' York.
5S4
CORNELL CAPA, bdow. Talmudic Scholars. Israel, 1955.
left: John Christie, Founder of Britain's
Glyndenbourne Opera Festival. 1951
GYORGY KEPES, below. Photodraw iiig. 1939.
right: Light Texture. 1950.
586
GYORGY KEPES tute of technology. At present Kepes is professor of
visual design at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Gyorgy Kepes, simultaneously with and independently A versatile and wide-ranging designer, artist, and writer,
of Man Ray and Moholy-Nagy, experimented with the Kepes is also one of the most influential teachers of his
photogram in the late 1920's shortly after his graduation generation in many areas of design. Both as artist and
from the Royal Aeademy of Art, Budapest. He worked teacher he has contributed greatly to understanding of
with Moholy in Berlin, went to London, and, in 1936, light and color as means of e\oking emotional response,
came to Ameriea. He was eo-founder, with Moholy, of despite the elimination of representational images. Pho-
the New Bauhaus, Chicago, now part of Illinois Insti- tographs courtesy Gyorgy Kepes, Cciinbridge, Mass.
587
,(*'* M*
4 « *
. 0'W • • • •
;jTnuuii:iu:
:im
I ' • : 1 : 1 1 iM :
, «•:
*•'
# •
I M : I : I .
KEPES, above: Photodrawing. 195S.
left: Photodrawing. 1958.
589
GERMANY
PETER KEETMAN
A PHOTOGRAPHER bcfore World War II, during which
he lost a leg. After the war, he reeducated himself in
photography and became a founder of the "Fotoform"
group. His chief interest is in creative experiment, as in
his bird's-eye \'icw of construction on a building site in
Munich, taken from the tower of the cit\- hall. Here a
wiry, linear pattern of abstract forms and a view of the
world seen from an unusual perspective are wedded to

unmistakable, palpable reality. It is as though he had
combined the two visions of Renger-Patzsch and
Moholy-Nagy— the realistic with the abstract. Photo-
graplis courtesy Peter Keetman, Munich.
PETER KEETMAN, Study of Icc Skatcrs. 1957
590
591
left: KEETMAN, Coostructioii in Munich. 1957.
below: max scheler, Political Poster in Rome. 1950.
H
SCHELER, above: Ben Shahn and Alexander Calder,

American Artists, in the Flea-Market. Rome, 1955.
right: Holy Sacrament. 1952.
MAX SCHELER years he made Cairo his headquarters, training his cam-
eras on the changing political and social scene of the
The young German Scheler forsook the classrooms of Mid-East for Magnum Photos. He now li\cs in Rome.
Munich and Paris Universities when he met the profes- But, he remains an itinerant cameraman, always mo\ing.
sional photographer, Herbert List, whom he followed on U.S.Camera Annual has commented, "Although Scheler
assignments to Spain, Italy, and Yugoslavia. By 1952, the abandoned philosophy for photography, as a photogra-
23 year-old Scheler was selling his own photographs to pher he has become a philosopher." Photographs cour-
German and American publications. The next several tesy Max Scheler, Munich.
594
595
HERBERT LIST of art and fashion. His portrait subjects have included
Picasso, Jean Coctcau, dc Chirico, and Chagall. His com-
Of the photographers now working in Germany, List mand of lighting he uses to produce unshadowed faces,
is probably the best known outside his own country. He boldly modeled features revealing the essential charac-
has traveled over America and worked in London, Paris, teristics of the subject's personality as would a lucid
Rome, and Greece, where he has taken splendid photo- writer, for the camera to Herbert List is but a substitute
graphs of scenes and country landscapes, as well as a for the powerful pen he would preferably wield. Photo-
striking series of portraits of personalities in the worlds graphs courtesy Magnwu Photos, Xew York.
596
HERBERT LIST, dbovc: Colette. Paris, about 1951
left: Ortega y Gasset. Madrid, about 1953.
597
TONi SCHNEIDERS, Pcrformcrs. 1957.
598
TONI SCHNEIDERS Once again, photographs are images of truth. Schneiders
explores the creative possibilities of miniature photog-
Like other members of Germany's post-World War II raphy, seeking an intense but controlled realism that re-
generation, Schneiders has rediscovered the German calls the similar work of his Italian contemporaries.
photographic tradition of Rengcr-Patzsch, Wolff, and He uses imaginative techniques for dramatic composi-
Salomon. The dozen years of Nazi rule in Germany had tions. Photograplis courtesy Toni Schneiders, Liiidau-
drowned this tradition in a sea of make-believe heroics. Schachen, Germany.
SCHNEIDERS
Reflections. 1956.
599
WILHELM RAUIl seen from above, we see a patterning of figures in broad,
snnple areas, slanting streaks of snow, and moving feet
A MECHANIC during the working day, Rauh is a serious- deliberately blurred by a purposely long exposure to con-
minded photographer and member of the Bayreuth, vey the impression of movement into the wind. Here the
Germany, Freelance Photo Group at other times. His photographer has caught a thick band of motion, rather
pictures taken with a miniature camera have been shown than stop it dead in its tracks. In contrast is the shuffling
in a number of exhibitions since 1954. In a picture of figure arrested in its diagonal composition. Pliotographs
umbrella-carrjing townsfolk caught in a blizzard and courtesy Wilhclm Rauh, Bayreuth, Germany.
/
'^
wiLHELM RAuii, abovc: Extra Spur. 1957-
left: Snowstorm. 1957-
601
GREECE
DIMITRIOS IIARISSIADIS
The recognized leader of a small but vigorous new
movement in Greek photography. He and his colleagues
are determined to show at last a living picture of their
country as it is rather than to repeat interminably the
sentimental theme of Greece's classic glories. A chemist
turned pliotographer, Harissiadis covered World War II
for the Greek General Staff. After photodocumenting
the occupation, he became a correspondent of the Euro-

pean press during the guerilla days that followed. His
technically proficient photographs are honest, brilliant
observations of the people, the cities and the countrj'side

of Greece. Photographs courtesy Dimitrios Harissiadis,
Athens, Greece.
602
DI MiTRios iiARissiADis, Roacl ill Grcccc. 1953.
603
6o4
HARissiADis, below: Greek Frieze. 1955.
left: The Aeropolis, Athens. 1954.
605
»,;# -» -t^-M*!,-.*
JSt
^ .\,'Xtf .4^-'
..v^'«-
ITALY
v*!*'
.'v-
TONl DEL TIN
The rising generation of Italian photographers, accord-
ing to del Tin, "feels an urge to lift photography to the
level of a modern art form . . . the stamp of this new style
is disciplined realism ... in form severe, in expression
natural." Del I'in is no more concerned with technique
than most trained photojournalists, but his work is not
ordinary photojournalism. An orphan child transfixed by
a tombstone, a cellist listening to his own music are
shown to us as masterly compositions in basic geometric
forms. Of these tense pictures he writes, "I am now
learning to understand how much a single image can
transmit." Photographs courtesy Toni del Tm, Venice,
Italy.
606
.>^. ,^v *^.
TONI DEL 1 IN, Sicilw 1 95^.
607
6oS
DEL TIN, below: Orplian. if
609
PAOLO MONTI ture and pattern. He is particularly gi\cn to bold forms
in space, and arrangements of solid black or gray tones
This Milanese photographer also belongs with the with contrasting accents of pure white. Monti abstains
Italians who have discovered the values of unsentimen- from the completely abstract and keeps the appearances
tal realism and have broken sharply with presenting of familiar reality while interpreting nature, distorting
grandiose pictures of an Italy that existed only in dreams. forms only when thereby he can intensify their poetry
Recognizing photographic beauty in asphalt street and and clarify tlicir meaning. Pliotogniplis courtesy Paolo
alpine landscape, he sacrifices detail to emphasize tex- Monti. Milan, Udlv.
PAOLO MONTI, below. Alpiuc Lake. 1954.

right: Gondola of Death. Venice, 1956.
610
[-.•^-j-^ff^^ .';j.-y ;^ y
, !>-«nV-,
lA^'r^l,
l^-il
J-'t.
%,^>-T^sr
»Vi
MONii, Asphalt. 1956.
612
FULV O ; ROI 7' E R Roiter, who has depicted this seared land and unique
people in his book, Andalousie. Here reproduced is the
The picturesque gondolas and tlic hallowed stones of land's exciting texture in a forceful composition of three
Venice do not reeeive the attention of Roiter, who plio- wedge-shaped bands of sheep separated by three young
tographs his native city in the rain, when sky and sea shepherds. In Brazil, Roiter found perfect motifs for the
merge in delicate shades of gray and umbrellas, build- honest, sharp, and controlled "disciplined realism" so
ings, and people supply rich black accents to complete characteristic of contemporary Italian photographers.
his compositions. Spain exerts a tremendous hold over Photographs courtesy Fulviu Roiter, Venice.
^^§mt^^tsihkî «•.
FULVIO ROITER
Andalusia, Spain. J955.
613
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ROiTER, aho\c: Unibria. 1955.

/eft: Umbrian Landscape. 1955.
615
BRIAN BRAKE
left: Sotheby's Auction
Rooms. London, 1955.
riglit: Nigerian Royal
Tour. 1956.
NEW ZEALANIl
BRIAN BRAKE sensing of that moment is to Brake, as to Cartier-Bresson,
the photographer's most important task. With observers

A YOUTHFUL New Zealander and a member of Mag- like these, candid photography loses its chance quality
num Photos who has worked in central Africa, Eg\pt, and reveals the life around us with subtlet\ and re-
England, Russia, India, and China. His pictures are finement, nonetheless retaining a sharp, satirical wit,
remarkable for the insight they give us into the thoughts often incongruous and humorous. Photographs courtesy
and feelings of people at an all-important moment. The Magnum Fliotos, New York.
616
t"
..l.J«_.>A. Ik.-
Eder, Josef Maria. History of Photography. Translated
by Edward Epstean. New York, 1945.
Elsken, Ed van dcr. Love on the Left Bank. London,
1956.
Emerson, Peter Henr\-. Naturalistic Photography. 3d ed.,
London, 1889.
Fcininger, Andreas. The Face of New York. New York,
1934.
. Successful Photography. New York, 1954.
. New York, 1955.
Changvig America.
The Creative Photographer. New York, 1955.
.
The Anatomy of Nature. New York, 1936.

Bibliogmpliy
.
Focal Encyclopedia of Photography. London, New York,

1956.
Genthe, Arnold. As I Remember. New York, 1936.

BOOKS Gernshcim, Helmut. New Photo Vision. London, 1942.
. The Man Behind the Camera. London, 1948.
Ackcrman, Carl W. George Eastman. New York, 1930.
. Julia Alargaret Cameron. London, 1948.
America and Alfred Stieglitz. New York, 1934.
. Len'i's Carroll, Photographer. London, 1949.
Angers, George W. Balloon Posts in the Siege of Paris,
iS-0-18-1. Springfield, Mass., 1952. . Masterpieces of Victorian Photography. London,
1931.
. Carrier Pigeons during the Siege of Paris. Spring-
field, Mass., 19t2. Gernshcim, Helmut, and Alison Gernsheim. Roger Fen-
ton, Photographer of the Crimean War. London, 1934.
Archer, Frederick Scott. A Manual of the Collodion
Process. London, 1852. . The History of Photography from the Earliest
Armitage, Merle, ed. The Art of Edward Weston. New Use of the Camera Obscura in the Eleventh Century
York, 1940. up to igi-^. London, 1955.
Blanquart-Evrard, L. D. Traitc de photographic sin -. L. J. M. Daguerrc: The History' of the Diorama

papier. Paris, 1851. and the Daguerreotype. London, 1955.
Brassai. Paris de nuit. Paris, 1933. Goodrich, Lloyd. Thomas Eakins, His Life and Work.
. Volupte de Paris. Paris, 1935. New York, 1933.
. Trente dessins. Paris, 1946. With a poem by Hammer, Mina Fisher. History of the Kodak and its
Jacques Prevert. Continuations. New York, 1940.

. Camera in Paris. London, 1949. Horan, James D. Mathew Brady, Historian M'ith a Cam-
. Histoire de Aiarie. Introduction de Henry Miller. era. New York, 1955.
Paris, 1949.
Hunt, Robert. A Manual of Photography. 3d ed., Lon-
. Seville en fete. Paris, 1954. don, 1853.
Brown, Mark Herbert, and W. R. Felton. The Frontier Karsh, Yousuf. Faces of Destiny. New York, 1946.
Years: L. A. Huffman, Photographer of the Plains.
Lccuyer, Raymond. Histoire de la photographie. Paris,
New York, 19^5.
1945.
Before Barbed Wire: L. A. Huffman, Photogra-
.
pher on Horseback. New York, 1955. Liberman, Alexander, editor. The Art and Technique
of Color Photography: a Treasury of Color Photo-
Chapman, Ronald. The Laurel and the Thorn: a Study
graphs by the Staff Photographers of Vogue, House
of G. F. Watts. London, 1947.
Chesterton, Gilbert Keith. G. F. Waffs. London, 1904.
(5 Garden, and Glamour. New York, 1951.
Clere, L. P. Photography: Theory and Practice. -3,6. ed.. Litchfield, R. Tom Wedgwood, the First Photographer.
New York, 1954. London, 1903.
Duncan, David. The Private World of Pablo Picasso. Lossing, Benson J.
The History of the Civil War. New
New York, 1958. York, 1912.
618
Mack, J. E., and M. J.
Martin. The Photograpliic Process. Wolff, Paul. My First Ten Years with the Leica. New
New York, 1939. York, 1935.
Meredith, Roy. Mr. Lincoln's Camera Man, Mathew B. Woolf, Virginia, and Roger Fry. Victorian Photographs
Brady. New York, 1946.
Famous Men
of ($ Fair Women. London, 1926.
Museum of tlie City of New York. Battle with the Slum:
Fifty Photographic Prints: Exhibition. New York,
A R 1 I c L E s
1947.
Mu\bridgc, Eadweard. Animal Locomotion. 11 vols.
Abbott, Berenice. "Eugene Atget," Creative Art, Sep-
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, 1S87.
cmber, 1929.
Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography from
Adams, Ansel. "Edward Weston," Creative Art, May,
1839 to the Present Day. New York, 1949.
1933-
. On Photography. New York, 1956.
Ivins, W. M. "Photographs of Stieglitz," Metropolitan
Newhall, Nancy. Photographs, 1915-1945.- Paul Strand.
Museum of Art Bulletin, February, 1929.
New York, 1945.
Mayor, Hyatt. "Daguerreotypes and Photographs,"
. The Photographs of Edward Weston. New
Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin, November,
York, 1946.
1939.
Parks, Gordon. Flash Photography. New York, 1947. . "Photographs by Eakins and Degas," Metropoli-
Potonice, Georges. The
History of the Discovery of Pho- tan Museum of Art Bulletin, July, 1944.
tography. Translated by Edward Epstean. New York,
. "The Photographic Eye," Metropolitan Museum
1936.
of Art Bulletin, July, 1946.
Robinson, I lenry Peach. Pictorial Effect in Photography. "The Worid
. of Atget: Photographs from the
London, 1869.
eolleetion of Berenice Abbott," Metropolitan Museum
Roll, Franz, Editor. 60 Fotos von L. Moholy-Nagy. of Art Bulletin, February, 1952.
Berlin, 1930. "Modern Photograph}," Studio Magazine, special issue,
Sandburg, Carl. Steichen, the Photographer. New York, autumn, 1936.
1929. Newhall, Beaumont. "The Photographs of Moholy-
Schwarz, Heinrich. David Octavius Hill, Aiaster of Pho- Nagy," Kc77yo7i Review, summer, 1941.
tography. New York, 1932. "The Photographic Inventions George East-
.
of
Soby, James Thrall. "Four Photographers," Modern Art man," Journal of Photographic Science, vol. 3, 1955.
and the NeM' Past, Chapter 11. Norman, Okla., 1957. — "Photography as Art in America," Perspectives
.
Articles on Stieglitz, Cartier-Bresson, Evans, and USA, no. 1;, 1936.

Strand, reprinted from The Saturday Review.
. "Photograph}-, the Reality of the Abstract," New
Stenger, Erich. The History of Photography: Its Relation Directions, no. 1 5, 1955.
to Civilization and Practice. Translated by Edward
. "Tlie Search for Color," Color Photography An-
Epstean. Easton, Pa., 1939.
nual. 1936.
Taft, Robert. Photography and the American Scene: A Rivera, Diego."Edward Weston and Tina Modotti,"
Social History, 1839-1899. New York, 1938.
Mexican Folkways, April, 1926.
Tissandicr, Gaston. A History and Handbook of Photog- Schwarz, Heinrich. "Art and Photography," Adagazine
raphy. 2d ed., London, 1878.
of Art. December, 1949.
Tugwell, Rexford Guy, Munro Thomas, and R. E. Stry- Siegel, Arthur. "Fifty Years of Docunicntar} ."
American
ker. American Economic Life. New York, 1923.
Photography Magazine, Januan-, igî.
Weimar, Wilhelm. Die Daguerreotype in Hamburg, Weston, Edward. "From M} Da}- Book," Creative Art,
i8-i()-i86o:Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte dcr Photo-
August, 192S.
graphic. Hamburg, 191 3.
. "My Photographs of California," Alagazine of
(Ilamburgische wissenschaftliche Anstaltcn. Beiheft
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zum Jahrbuch. Jahrg. 321
Weston, Charis \Yilson, and Edward Weston. Cali-
fornia and the West. New York, 1940.
Whiting, John R. Photography is a Language. Chicago,

1946.
619
Anderson, Marian, 497, 498, 505 Bouton, Charles, 50
Animals in Motion, 38, 224-25, 226- Brady, Mathew B., 63-64, 188-89,
190-96, 203, 205, 238, 285, 290
2J, 228
Annan, J.
Craig, 95 Brady-Handy collection, 194
Anseo, 251 Brady's Galleries, 189-91, 192, 193,
Anthony, Edward, 63, 66-6y, 1^2, 140 194-95
Anthony Company, E. & H. T., New Brake, Brian, 616-iy
York,' 131, 134-35. 19I' 195-94. -50- Brancusi, Constantin, 262
51 Brandt, Bill, 568-70
Aquatints, 50, 54 Braque, Georges, 262, 290
Arago, D. Francois, 29, 35-36, 44-45, Brassai, 404-5, 406-17
78, 106 Brewster, Sir Da\id, 130-31, 132, 137

Archer, F. Scott, 81, 103, 106 British Journal of Photography, 250
Arizona J/ighways magazine, 366 British Museum, 17
Armory Show of 1913, New York, 262 Bromine vapors, 38
Art Academy, Berlin, 404 Bro\\ning, Robert, 166
Art Institute of Chicago, 280, 322, 582 Bullock, John G., 261
Index Art photography, 125, 175, 186, 260-
61, 288, 312-13
Butler, Benjamin F., 194
Art Treasures exhibition, Manchester,

175 Cabinet portraits, 238, 244-45
Asphaltum, 25 Calamity Jane, 212
Associated Press, 419 Caldwell, Erskine, 458
Page numbers in roiiian type refer
Atget, Eugene, 2S8, 289, 290, 291-95 California School of Fine Arts, 366
to text. Page iiumbers in italic type Atlantic Monthly. 131, 192 Callahan, Harry, 432, 433-43
refer to the iiJustrations. Abbott, Berenice, 290, 335 Campbell, Sir John, 107
Calotype, 79, 81, 82, 84, 86-87, S9. 91-
93, 94, g6-q8, 100, 102, 103, 111,
Abstract photography, 334, 335, 452, Baca-l''lor, Carlos, 287 130, 174, 251
Background, 52, 239, 496-97 Camera, binocular, 131; box, 251-52,
444' 590
Academy of Fine Arts, Pans, Barbaro, Daniello, 14 280; carte-de-visite, 155, 159; da-
3 5
Academy in Rome, 174 Barnack, Oscar, 335 guerreotype, 36, 47-49, 50, 52, 53,
Academy of Sciences, Paris, 35, 44-45, Barnard, C. N., 191 63; detective, 251, 256-57; Giroux,
51 Barnard, George M., 192 36, 50, 52, 53, 63; Kodak, g, 252,
78, 103, 1
Adam-Salomon, 154-55 Bates, Joseph L., 137 ^53-5^' 315. 39O' 419; Leica, 335,
Adams, Ansel, îS, 324, 564-65, 366- Baudelaire. Charles, 142, 143, 157 336, 377, 380, 390, 406, 419, 481,
Bauhaus. Germany, 334 482; miniature, 335-36, 419; Minox,
75' 481
Adams, John Onincy, 64, 74 Bayard, Ilippolyte. 12 281; mirror, 51, 63; Rolleiflex, 380,
Adamson, Jolm, 130 Bayer, Herbert, 336 406: stereoscope, 131-32, 205, 206;
Adamson, Robert, 94-95, 96-101 Beard, Richard, 51-53, 81 Voigtlander, 53, 406
Aerial photography, 143, 150-51, 282, Beato, F., 107, 121 Camera Club, The, 261, 264
535. 544. 54H7'5So-S^ Beaton, Cecil, 543 Camera lucida, 16, 22-23, 79, 81
Agfacolor film, 511 Bcavcrbrook, Lord \\'i]liam. 498 Camera Notes, 261
Albert, Prince Consort, 55, 131, 155, Bemis, Samuel, 63, 64 Camera obscura, 13, 14-16, 17, iS-20,
163,175,187 Benser, Walter, 529 24,25,27,35,36,79

Alberti, Leon Battista, 13-14 Benton, Thomas Hart, 63, 64, 66 Camera Work, 261, 262, 264, 265,
Albright Art Gallery, BuflFalo, 264 Berhner TagebJatt, 419 281, 304
Albumen process, 102-3, -'°4'5' Berlioz, Louis, 143 Cameron, Henry, 168
M-'
148-49, 234 Bernhardt, Sarah, 143, 1^^, 239, 240, Cameron, Julia M., 166-68, 169-73
Alcohol, 103 246, 312 Candid photographs, 251, 257, 312,
Alhazen of Basra, 13 Bianchi, Barthclmy-Urbain, ^8 419, 561, 616
Allan, Sidney, sec Sadakichi Hartmann Binocular vision, 130 Capa, Cornell, SS4-8S
Al\-arez-Bravo, 482 Biow, Herman, 53 Capa, Robert, 482, 561, S7^-^^> 5^4
Ambrotype, 103-4, '°^> -'"-'' ^-'^' '^g. Bischof, Werner, 561, 574-77 Cardano, Girolamo, 14
240 Bisson, Auguste R., 104, 105-6, 116-ij Carjat, Etienne, 154-55, 157
American Amateur Photographer, The, Bisson, Louis A., 104, 105-6, 116-iy Carlyle, Thomas, 166, 167, 168, 169
261 Bitumen of Judaea, 24, 25 Carroll, Lewis, 175, 182-8^
American Federation of Arts, 480 Blanquart-E\Tard, L. D., 103, 111 Carte-de-visite, 132, 155, 158-65, 189.
American Institute, New York, 125, Blueprint, 82, 544 igi, 258, 241-42
189 Blumenfeld, Erwin, 515 Carter, A. C.R., 281
American Museum of Natural History, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 266 Cartier-Brcsson, Henri, 480-82, 4S3-95,
390 BonJe\'ard, Le, 1

34 561, 579, 616
American Place, An, 269 Bourkc-White, Margaret, 456-57, ^^8- Gary, Elizabeth, 264
Ammonia, 16 69, 561 Cass, Lewis, 64, 66
Anderson Gallery, New York, 266 Bouton, 56 Casseres, Benjamin de, 265
620
Castor oil, 251 Daubigny, Charles, 143 Evans, Walker, 351, 356-57, 432, 434,
Cendrars, Blaise, 378 Daumicr, Ilonore, 143, 150 482
Cezanne, Paul, :6:, 323 D'Avignon, Francois, 189, 190 Exposure, 37-38, 51-52, 62-63, 94' ^°-'
Chagall, Marc, 596 Davy, Sir Humphry, 16, 25, 79 103, 106, 167, 211, 225, 433, 434,
Charities and the Coiiiiiions, 304 Debenham, W. F., 251
Charivari, 143 Degotti, L E. M., 36
Chase, William M., 240 Delacroix, Eugene, 143, 162
Chemist, The, 103 Delano, Jack, 351, 556 "F64," 324, 366
Chester, Samuel C, 191 Dclarochc, Paul, 142 Falk's Gallery, 238, 244
Chevalier, Charles, 36, 57 Delia Porta, Giovanni B., 14, 35 Faraday, Michael, 79
Chevrcul, Marie E., 144, 152-55 Del Tin, Toni, 606-9 Farden, George R., 205, 208-g
Chiang Kai-shek, Madame, 458 Demachy, Robert, 261, 265, 281 Farm Security Administration, 550-52
Chiaroscuro photographs, 155 Demeney, C, 225 Feininger, Lyonel, 336
Chicago Historical Society, 64 Demuth, Charles, 266 Fenn, Albert, ^ô
Chicago, Uni\ersity of, 304 Deutsche Werkbund, 535 Fcnton, Roger, 106, 118-21, 290
"Chini," 482, 561, 579, 5S2-83 De Young Museum, San Francisco, 324 Ferrier and Solier, 155
Chirico, Giorgio de, 596 Dietrich, Marlcnc, 419 Ferrotvpes, see tintypes
Chloride of gold, 38, 103 Diorama, London, 36; Paris, 25, 35, 36, Field, 11. B., 110
Chlorine vapors, 38 37- 3S-39
Fillmore, Millard, 64
Chretien, Gillcs- Louis, 16, 21 Dippel s animal oil, 25 Film und Foto exhibition, Germany,
Church, Fred, 253 Disderi, Adolphe E., 155, 158-62 535
Churchill, Sir Winston, 458, 497-98, Documentary photography, 2SS-90, Fitzgibbon, J. W., 204
298, 304-6, 351, 405-6, 432, 444, Fizeau, Ilippolyte, 38
499
Claudct, Antoine, 51, 52, So, 81 482, 602 Flash photography, 296
Chche verre, 142-43, 14S-49 Dodgson, Charles L., see Carroll, Lewis Flaubert, Gustave, 103
Coburn, A. L., 265, 2S0 Doisncau, Robert, 376, ^JJ-Sy Focus, 167, 261, 313, 323, 419, 511
Cocteau, Jean, 596 Dore, Paul, 143 Fontallard, Gerard, 41
Collcn, Henry, 81 Double exposure, 175, 335 Fortune magazine, 366, 457
CoJJicr's magazine, 390 Dove, Arthur, 262, 266 "Fotoform" group, 590
Collins, Marjorie, 351 Draper, John W., 62-63, 6^, 188 Fox Talbot, Henry, 12, 15, 25, 35, 52,
Collodion, sec wet-collodion process Duboscq, Jules, 1 3 78, 79, Ho-8^, 86-91, 94, 103, 130
Color photography, 132, 406, 510-12 Duboscq and Soleil stereoscope, 131, Frederick's Gallery, 238
Columbia University, 63 157 Friedmann, Andrei, see Robert Capa
Columbian Exposition, Chicago, 225 Du Camp, Maxinie, 103, 1 1 Friedmann, Cornell, see Cornell Capa
Composite photography, 175, 176-71S, Duchamp, Marcel, 228, 237, 290 Frith, Francis, 104, 112-1^
1S4-S7, 261 Du Ilauron, Louis D., 511 Fuguet, Dallett, 261-62
Conde Nast, 282 Dumas, Alexandre, 145, 147
Cook, George F., 191 Duncan, David Douglas, 388-90, 591-
Coombs, Fred, 6g 405 Gallic acid, 79
Coonley, J. F., 191 Duncan, Isadora, 312, 520 Gandhi, Mahatma, 457, 464-65
Copie de graiurc, 24-25 Diirer, Albrecht, 13, ly Garbo, Greta, 312, 321
Corot, Camillc, 142-43, 14S-49 Dusc, Eleanora, 312, 520 Gardner, Alexander, 190-93, 198-99,
Corsini, Harold, 3152, 361 Dyer, William B., 261 201-5, 205, 389
Creative photography, 285, 334, 511, Gardner, James, 191
1561-62 Garfield, James A., 194
Crowninshield, Frank, 282 Eakins, Thomas, 225-28, 252-57 Garo, John H., 497
Cunningham, Imogen, 324, 335 Eastman, George, 250-51, Gaudin, Marc A. G., 48
-5--55 Gautier, Theophilc, 51
Eastman House, 105, i8g, 204 Gelatin dry plates, 103, 250-51
Dagron, M., 144 Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Budapest, 404 Geinma-I''risius, Rainier, 1^
Daguerre, Louis J. M., 12, 24, 25, 27, Edison, Thomas A., 225 Genthe, Arnold, 312, 515-21
28-29, 34-36, 37-49, 50, 51, 52, 62, Edwards, J. M., 63 George VI, King of England, 408
65, 78, 79, 106 Einstein, Albert, 497, 502-5 Gernsheim, Alison and Helmut, 1 2, 25,
Daguerreotype, 40-45, 53, 56-61, 64, Eisenhower, Dwight D., 498 51, 280
66-75, 78. So, 95, 102, 103, 104, Eisenstaedt, Alfred, 336, 418-ig, 420- Girault de Prangy, Joseph, 51
105-6, 124, 125, 127-28, 130, 131, 51, 561 Giroux, Alphonse, 36, 41, 47, 53
133, 136-59, 142, 188, 189, 195, Ektachrome film,511 Glass, frosted, 14; photograph on, H^;
204; acceptance, 36-38, 50-65; an- Elisofon, Eliot, 480, 512, ^16-iS spectacle, 14
nouncement, 35-36; camera, 36, ^y- Elsken, Ed van der, 470, 471-79 Godowsky, Leopold, 511
49, 50, 52, 53, 63; color, 62; galleries, Emerson, P. H., 261, 265, 365, 481 Goodyear, A. Conger, 1 89
63-65, 6j, yo; plates, 25; portraits, Emulsions, 1^8-^g, 251, 545 Goro, Fritz, 336
37-38, 51-53, 62-65, 81, 189; process, Etchings, 17, 25, 50, 418 Goupil-Fesquet, Frederic, 50
34-35, 65; views, 50-51, 53, 63 Ether, 103, 104 Graham Fellowship. 434
Darkroom red light, 52 Eugene, Frank, 261 Great Exhibition, London, 65
Darwin, Charles, 166, 169, 175 Evans, Frederick II., 265 Grevedon, Henri, 57
621
Grcvin, A., 144 Jefferson, Joe, 239, 242 London Crystal Palace, 65, 137, 189
Gropius, Walter, 556 Joel, Yale, 512, 522-23 Lojidon Evening Mail, 264
Guggenheim I-'ellowship, 324, 566 Johnson, John, 63 London Photographic Exhibition, 265
Guni-lsiehromatc process, 261, 265, /ounial iJJustre, Le, 144 London Salon, 2S1, 325
2S2, 284-86 London Stereographic Company, 131
Guncottoii, 105 Longfellow, Henry W., 124, 125, 166,
Gunther, John, 390 Karsh, Yousuf, 496-98, 499-507 170
Gurncy, Benjamin, 64 Kasebicr, Gertrude, 261 Look magazine, 390
Gurney, Jeremiah, 64, 204, 238, 242 Katayama, Yasumasa, 567 Lopez, Narciso, 64
Gurney's Daguerrean Saloon, 64, 70 Kcetman, Peter, 590-92 Lumiere Brothers, 225
Guyot, 19 Keiley, Joseph T., 261-62
Kepes, Gyorgy, 5S6-S9
Kepler, Johannes, 14
Haas, Ernst, 512, 524-28 Kerfoot, J. B., 265 Mace, Jim, 239
I laid, Johann J., 20 Kertesz, Andre, 404 MacGlashon, A., loS
Halasz, Gyula, see Brassai Kessel, Dmitri, 512, 539, 541 Mathines pour dcssiner, 13
Hale, Luther H., 70 Kilburn, W.E., 133 MacLeish, Archibald, 351
Hall, Basil, 16,23 King expedition, 205 MacOrlan, M., 405
Halle, Uni\ersity of, Germany, 13 King, W. L. Mackenzie,'497 Maddox, Richard L., 250, 251
Halsman, Philippe, 336 Kircher, Athanasius, 15 Maeterlinck, Maurice, 265
Handy, Le\in C., 194 Kirkland, Wallace, 5^6-^j Magic lantern, 144, 225
Harissiadis, Dimitrios, 602-5 Knox, Da\id, igi Magnesium, 296
Hartley, Marsden, 262, 266 Kodachrome film, 511 Magnum Photos, 482, 560, 574, 579,
Ilartmann, Sadakiehi, 265, 281 Kossuth, Louis, 64, 6j 582, 584, 594, 596,616
Hartshorn, S. W., 72 Kurtz, William, 238-39 Manet, Edouard, 145, 145, 262
Hawes, Josiah J., 65 Mann, Thomas, 419
Hayden expedition, 206, 209-11 Mannes, Leopold, 511
Heliography, 15, 17, 24-27, 32 La Farge, Father John, 458 Marey, E.J., 225, 228
Hcrschel, Sir John, 12, 15, 35, 78, 79, Lamp, '/'he, 352 Martens, Friedrieh von, 51, 52-53
81, 82, 85, 102, i66, 171 Land\', Louis II., 191 Marin, John, 262, 266, 27S
Hesler, Alexander, 124, 125-29 Lange, Dorothea, 351, 352 Martin, Paul. 288
Hill, David O., 94, 95-101, loS, 143 Langenheim, Frederick and William, Mascher, J. F., 151, 133
Hinc, Lewis W., 304-11 49, 82, 90-91, 151 Massachusetts Institute of Teehnologx-,
Holmes, Oliver W., 64, 131-32, 136- La Roche. Tiphaigne dc, 1 587
37' 192
LaRoche, Sihester, 81 Matisse, Henri, 262-64
Horan, James D., 189 Lee, Robert E., 193, 197 Matter, Herbert, 521
Huffman, Laton A., 211-13, --O-^y Lee, Russell, 351, 354 Maurissct, A., 61
Hunt, Robert, 17 Le Gray, Gustave, 103, 107 Maxwell, James C., 511
Hyposulphite of soda, 12, 55, 79, 81 Leen, Nina, 512, 533 Mayall, John E., 53, 81, 131, 155, 163
Lemaitre, A. F., 25 Mayer, Grace, 298
Lenses, achromatic, 38; bubble-proof, Mayer and Pierson, 160-61
Image, inverted, 13, 15; latent, S4; 562; convex, 14; normal, 545; Petz- Mayne, Roger, S7^'73
over-all,324, 364; permanent, 24, val, 38, 49, 51, 53; short-focal-length, Meissonier, Ernest, 225
34-35, 103; reversed, 35, 38, ^S, 56, 546; telescopic, 545, 546, 562; wide- Melainotypes. see tintypes
63, 73, 75; silver, 64, 75 angle, 544, 545, 562; Zeiss, 315 Mellon, Andrew, 3 1
Infrared photography, 511, 513 Leonardo da Vinci, 14 Menken, Adah I., 239, 246
Ingres, A. D., 143, 162
J.
Lcrebours, N. P., 49, 50, ;i, 54 Mentiennc, M., ^1
Instantaneous photography, loy, 333, Lcrner, Michael, 390 Mercury, 34-35, 38, 64
251 Le Seeq, Henri, 92 Miami, University of, 390
Institute of Design, Chicago, 335, 434, Lester, C. E., 189 Midorikawa, Yuiehi, 562-63
444' 587 Lhotc, Andre, 482 Mies van der Rohe, Ludwig, 336
International Exhibition, Vienna, 239 Library of Congress, 316, 351 Mili, Gjon, 512, 530-32
Intimate Gallery, 266 Life magazine, 366, 389, 390, 419-20, Miller, Henry, 406
Iodide of iron, 103 456-58, 480, 482, 498, 584 Millet, Francois, 143
Iodine, 2:;, 27, 35 Lighting, 13, 15, 144, 154, 239, Miniature pliotography, 335-36, 419,
Irisdiaphragm, 24 12, 323, 335,496-97, 511, 545 546, 561, 599, 600
Irwin, Will, 315 Lincoln, Abraham, 125, 190, 19S Mirecourt, E. de, 143
Linked Ring, London, 262 Mitchell Kennerly's Gallery, 266
List, Herbert, 594, 596-97 Moholy-Nagy, Laszlo, 334-55, 54""-f5-
Jackson, Andrew, 189, 195 Lithography, 24, 37, 50, 60-61, 63, 82, 432,444, 5S7, 590
Jackson, Edward, 205 95, 143, iô, 16^-65, igo, 239-40, Monet, Claude, 143
Jackson, William H., 205-6, 209-11, 243,418 Monti, Paolo, 610-12
213, 215-19 Little Gallery, 262,
264 Mora, Jose Maria, 238, 239, 245
Japanese photography, 560, 562, 563- Holland House, London, 167
Little Moraine, R. dc, 164-65
67 London, Emmanuel, 136 Moran, Edward, 240
622
Morse, Samuel F. B., 37, 42, 63, 65, Parks, Gordon R., 351, 512, 519-20 Pure photography, 177, 226, 261
1S8, 189 Pa\lova, Anna, 312 Pvrogallic acid, 81
Motion picture photography, 9, 225- Pcale, Rembrandt, 21 Pywell, William R., 191
28, 406, 546 PenciJ of Nature, The (Fox Talbotj,
Muggcride, Edward J., see Eadwcard 79, 81, 86-87
Muybridge Penn, Irving, 512, 542 Rangcfinder, 545
Mukai, Toshiji, 564-65 Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Rapho-Guillumette agency, 560
Muhiier, Jules, 1 ^6 226 Rauh, Wilhelm, 600-601
Museum of Modern Art, New York, Pennsylvania, University of, 226 Ray, Man, 290, 335, 432, 587
281, 285, 351, 365, 406, 4S2 Perpignan Museum, France, 44-4^ Rayographs, 335
Museum of the City of New York, 298 Petit, Pierre, 155, 162 Reade, Joseph B., 79
Mu>bridge, Eadwcard, 224-25, 226-yi Petz\al, Josef M., 38, 49, 53 Realistic photography, 177, 282, 324,
Mydans, Carl, 351 Philadelphia Centennial, 211 334,355,366,433,590,613
Photochemistry, 81 Redfield, Robert S., 262
Photodrawing, ^86, 588-S9 Rejlander, Oscar G., 174-75, i?^-^-
Nadar, 143, 144-47, H9-53' ^S-iSS^ Photogenic drawing, 1 5, 79, S3-84 "Rembrandt photography," 239
252, 254, 285, 290 Photogram, 335, 340, 432, 587 Remington, Frederic, 225
Nadar, Paul, 144, 152-53 Photographic Society, London, 81 Renger-Patzsch, Albert, 334, 335-39,
Napoleon III, 105, 116, 143, 155, 160- Photographic de Deux-Mondes, 155 590, 599
61 Pliotogravure, 17, 261, 264 Renoir, Auguste, 262
Nast, Thomas, 239 Photojournalism, 53, ^8, 144, 192, 296- Renoir, Jean, 482
National Academy of Design, New 98, 336, 351, 388-90, 419-20, 456- Renou et Colic Gallery, Paris, 405
York, 37 58, 481, 568, 574, 602, 606 Rc'\'olution Surreaiiste, La, 290
National Daguerrean Gallery, New Photomontage, 175, 335 Riehebourg studio, Paris, 51
York, 64, 6y Photo Secession, 261-62, 264, 281, 304 Riis, Jacob A., 296, 297, 298-303, 304
National Gallery of Scotland, 95 Physionotrace, 16, 21 Riis, Roger W., 298
National Geographic magazine, 390 Picabia, Francis, 262 Ri\-era,Diego, 523
National Museum, Munich, 42 Picasso, Pablo, 262, 290, 390, 405, 530- Robinson, Ilenrv P., 175-77, 1H4-87
Negative-positive process, 25, 35, 78, 3J. 596 Robinson, Ralph W., 185
82 Pictorial photography, 261, 262, 264, Roche, T. C, 191, 193
Negatives, glass, 65, 103; paper, 12, 57, 322, 419 Rockefeller, John D., 312
78, 83-84, 90, 92, 95, 97-98, 103, Picture book, 473 Rockefeller, Nelson, 390
251; retouched, 175, 313; washing, Picture Post magazine, 482 Rodin, Auguste, 262, 281, 2 84
16, 79 Pierce, Franklin, 64 Roiter, Fulvio, 6iyi^
Nehru, Jawaharlal, 458, 497, 504 Pius XII, 458 RooscNclt, Franklin, 45S, 498
New Bauhaus, Chicago, see Institute of Plates, copper, 25, 27; cur\'ed, 51, 53; Roosevelt, Theodore, 212, 28 1, 297,
Design dry, 211, 250; glass, 17, 25, 27, 106, 312
Newhall, Beaumont, jo, 285, 365 250; metal, 17; oversize, 37, 53, 167; Root, M. A., 6^
Newhall, Nancy, 2S5, 366 pewter, 25; silvered, 25, 27, 35, 51 Roskin, Charles, 359
New York Ei-eniiig Sun, 282, 296-97, Plumbe, John, 63 Rosskam, Edwin, 351, 352, 360
Plumbe National Daguerrean Galleries, Rosskam, Louise, 352, 360
New York Times, The, 264 63 Rothstein, Arthur, 351, 353
New York Tribune, The, 297 Plumbeotype, 63 Rousseau, Henri, 143, 262, 290
New York Unixersity, 304 Poe, Edgar Allan, 72 Royal Academy, London, 81, 174
Nicpec, Claude, 17, 25 Point dc vue, 24-25 Royal Academy of Art, Budapest, 587
Niepce, Isidore, 24-37, 29, 34-35, ^6 Pollack, Peter, 281 Royal Photographic Society, London,
Niepce, Joseph Nicephorc, 12, 14, 15, Portraiture, 15,21, 37-38, 51-53,62-64, 12, 16, 17, 23, 79, 102, 167, 177,
17,24-25,26-35,35, 102 65, 81, 103, 174, 175, 189-90, 23S- 269
Nixon, Merman, 351 41, 282, 312-13, 316, 322, 324, 41S, Russell, Charles, 225
Notman, William, 107, 122-23 481, 496-98, 596
Positives, 35, 103
Potassium, bromide, 102; chlorate, 296; Sachse, Louis, 53
Orozco, Jose C, 323 iodide, 79, 102 St. Victor, Niepce de, 102, 305
O'Sullivan, Timothy H., 191, 193, 200, Potoniee, Georges, 25 Salomon, Erich, 336, 346-49, 419, 561,
203, 205, 210-12, 213, 214-15 Presbytery Hall, Edinburgh, 95 TO9
Prevert, Jacques, 405 Salt, 16, 34-35, 79,102
Prexost, Pierre, 36 Sand, George, 143, 146
Page, William, 188 Prinsep, Thoby, 167 San Francisco Art Association, 225
Palace of Fine Arts, Mexico, 4S2 Prints, carbon, 125; combination, 1-5, Sarony, Napoleon, 238, 239, 240-47
Pan-American Airways, 390 176-78, 184-87, 261: contact, 16, 79, Sarony, Oliver, 239
Paper, grainy, 78; mat, 313; siher 167, 324; gum, 282, 2S4-86; plat- Sartain, John, 6^
chloride, 79; waxing, 79 inum, 232-33, 261, 2S3 Satmdav E\cning Post magazine, 390
Paper photography, 125 Profileograph, 21 Scheclc^CarlW., i6
Paris Match magazine, 482 Projection, 144, 225, 228 Seheler, Max, 593-95
Paris Salon, 281 Props, 73, 164-65, 239, 240, 313 Sehnciders, Toni, 598-99
623
Stereoscopic cards, 132-33, 135, 192, Venturi, J. B., 14
Scliulzc, Johaiin Heinrich, 13, 19
211 Vernet, Horace, 50, 162
Schutzc, Eva W., 262
Sticglitz, Alfred, 260-61, 262-79, -ô, Victoria, Queen of England. 5
Scientific photography, 511, 544. ^4v
281, 286, 2S8, 365, 366, 481 137' 155' 163, 175
548-59, 561 \'oguc magazine, 282
Sticglitz, Georgia O'Keeffe, 262, 266,
Scott Archer, F., see Archer, I Scott
.
Voigtlander, F. F. \on, 49, 53

Scovill Manufacturing Co., 109, 251 269, 276-77
Sca\cy, L. W., 259 Stirling, Edmund, 262
Scgonzac, Andre, 405 Straight photography, see realistic pho-
Selfridge expedition, 205, 210 tography
Strand, Paul, 266,432 Wagner, Richard, 143
Scncfclder, Alois, 24
John 1''., 262 War photography, 57, 106-7, 118-21,
Seymour, David, see "Chim" Strauss,
Stroboscope light, 545 190-94, 198-203, 388-S9, 390, 391-
Shahn, Ben, 351, 355- 594
Stryker, Roy E., 350-55 403, 457-58, 568, 57S, 579, 580,
Shaw, George Bernard, 265, 2S0, 281,
Sumner, Charles, 1 582, 5S3, 584, 602
497' 498. 507 24
Watts, George F., 166, 167, 172
Shecler, Charles, 335
Waxed-paper process, 103, 107, 174
Shutter, S, 225, 252
Webb, Todd, 355,362-63
Sibelius, Jean, 497, ^00
Taft,William H., 281, 312 Weber, Max, 262
Siegcl, Arthur, 512, 534-35
Talbot, Henry Fox, see Fox Talbot \\'cdgwood, Thomas, 16, 23, 79
Silhouette, 16, 2
Talbotypes, see calotypes Weston, Brett, 523, 324, 326, 335
Silk, 163, 266
Tanuma, Takeno, 566 Weston, Charis Wilson, 324
Silver chloride,79; gallonitrate, 81; Tennyson, Alfred, 166-6S, 170 Weston, Cole, 326
iodide, 27, 103; iodine, 34-3";; ni-
Terry, Ellen, 167, 172, 312 Weston, Edward, 322-24, 325-33, 335,
trate, 16-17, 79' i°2' ^°3; ^''^^^^' '3'
Thompson, Warren, 151, 13 8-3 9 366, 432
16, 25, 27, 79, 102
Time magazine, 366 Wet-collodion process, 81, 103-5, 106-
Siquciros, Alfaro, 323
Tintypes, 191, 199, 240-41, 24S-49 9, 112-21, 125, 127, 143-44, 146-47'
Siskind, Aaron, 444, 445-55
Today magazine, 41 149-53, 156-57, 171, 174-75' 189'
Slides,297 Tournachon, Adrien, 143 198-99, 201-3, ^°4' 206-S, 209, 210-
Smith, Bradley, 514
Tournachon, Gaspard F., see Nadar 12, 215-19, 221, 224-25, 226-27,
Smith, F. Hopkinson, 240
Tournachon, Paul, 144 236-37, 239
Smith, Hamilton L., 241
Trollope, Anthony, 166 Wheatstonc, Sir Charles, 1 30
Sochurek, Howard, 53S
Tugwell, Rexford, 350 Wheeler expedition, 205, 212, 214-1 5
Soeicte franâise de photographic, 406
Tyler, John, 64 Whipple, John, 64
Society of Amateur Photographers, 261
Whistler, James A. M., 261
Soft focus, see focus
White, Clarence, 262, 280, 285
Southworth, Albert S., 65, iSg
Wilde, Oscar, 239, 247
Southworth and Ilawes Gallery, Bos- Underwater photography, 545, 548,
Wilson, Woodrow, 312
ton, 64-65, 71, 74-7S> ^36
55^556-57^,^ Wolcott, Alexander S., 51, 63, 81
Standard Oil of New Jersey, 351-52, Underwood and Underwood, , ,
141
Wolcott. Marion P., 351
^S5 If. S. Camera Aiiiuia], 594
Wolff, Paul, 336, 599
Stanford, Leland, 224-25, 227 Utrillo, Maurice, 290
Wollaston, William H., 16, 22, 79, Si
State Museum of Guadalajara, Mexico,
Woodbury, D. B., 191
323 Wright, Frank Lloyd, 498, 501
Steichen, Edward, 261, 262, 280, 281-
Vachon. John, 351, 352, 358 Wright, Richard, 351
87. 335
Stein, Gertrude, 265 Van Buren, Martin, 64, 67
Steinbeck, John, 351 Vance, Robert H., 204, 206-7
Steinberg, Saul, 576 Van der Acter, 1 60
VanDyke, Willard, 324 Zahn, Johann, 14, 16
Stelzner, Carl F., 53,58-59
Vanity Fair magazine, 282 Zone system of photography, 364
Stereograph, 125, 131-32, 139-41' 210
Vanloo, Charles, 20 Zoogyroscope, see zoopraxiscope
Stereoscope, 130-31, 132-33- ^36'39'
Vasari, Giorgio, 13
Zoopraxiscopc, 225, 228
141
Printed by UniversitiUsdruckerei H. Sturtz AG., Wurzburg
624

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ly-

THE PICTURE HISTORY

FROM THE EARLIEST REGINNINGS

HARRY N. ABRAMS, INC. Publishers, New York

Philip Grushkin, Book Designer

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER I 5S-II357

A!I tights resened

No part of this book may be reproduced except in the case of brief

Contents men paper / Scott Archer and the wet-collo-

INTRODUCTION 9. Hesler: Chicago Pioneer 12^

10. The Stereoscope: Pictures in Pairs 130

painting, 470 Scottish ministers

33. Callahan and Siskind

26. Germany and the Bauhaus— PHOTOGRAPHY TODAY

Photography in modern life / Applied pho-

pressive nuance INDEX 620

It is with photography as an art and with photog-

camera— that this book is largely concerned. It is a book

space has forced the exclusion of many photographers

twenty-five years, the body of distinguished photographic

art has grown to vast proportions. Nevertheless, the art

of photography is only a small part of the enormous

artists for their own purposes. These men were seeking

a lasting, literal record of their visual surroundings, and

lens, shutter, and flat surface coated with chemicals sen-

sitive to light produced, within a .short interval of time,

images more lasting, more convincing in their reality,

and more richly detailed than painters could produce

creative imagination. industry of strategic importance to the life and economy

found that the camera could clearly resolve action that

was only a blur to the human eye, pioneering still photog-

pictures. Thereafter, this great new form of art, enter-

It is a popular belief that one man was the inventor

practical solution at about the same time. Actually, the

dence that it was 1826). And, four years before Da-

paper before the Ro}al Society showing that august bod\-

had a thousand-year history before the fertile minds of

Heinrich Schulze ( 1687-1744) a physician and professor

mankind." Before the camera obscura was used in Europe, artists

obscura appears in the notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci darkened room.

phy ascribed to Giovanni Battista dclla Porta (1538- the lens.

First published illustration of a camera obscura, which is

Engraving of 1^2^ by Albrecht Diirer (1471-1528), German,

right: Sedan-chair camera obscura, 1711.

Courtesy George Eastman House.

Engraving of the German artist

Joachim Franze Beich, by Johann

for portraits was satisfied by the simple method of cutting

Silhouette. "Hand cut" of Charles Wage, age 2, and his mother.

Portrait of Gilles-Louis Chretien, 1792, French,

This model was made fom years later in London. It consists

A lithograph of Wollaston from a sketch

Eflfram I7MLII iMMi

It is gratifying to find Joseph Niccphore Niepce

it hadto be reinvented). Above all, Niepce was the first

to make the miage permanent.

The images produced by both processes were referred

made were coated with bitumen of Judaea, a substance

made of bitumen of Judaea dissolved in Dippcl's animal the varnish.

to an artist." Niepce also demonstrated his techniques to Daguerre,

-/-* i^ vffzi.r\ vV^fc -2.:/^^'-- « >'-^ t^^i A .C