Dec. 2002
President's
Message
Article - "Photographic History 101"
Photographic History 101
- Bob Coffey
My cousin recently sent me
the following question. „I have a copy of a photo I am trying to
date. How early were studio portraits available to the common people?
I know that around the 1860s many soldiers had their pictures taken in
uniform, so I would think that would mean sittings were affordable. Were
such things possible in the 1850s?‰ My research yielded an answer
that was earlier than I would have guessed.
Everyone has heard of the Daguerreotype images and Louis-Jacques-Mande
Daguerre is generally perceived as having made the first photographs in
France in the 1830s. However, he was preceded by Nicephore Niepce who
made the first photograph on pewter in 1826. Like many inventors, Niepce
did not live to realize the profits of his invention.
It was Daguerre who first commercialized cameras and began selling them in 1839. Apparently there was considerable pent up demand for affordable portraits as evidenced by this line from The Picture History of Photography by Peter Pollack, "Within a year after its announcement in 1839 his name and his process were known in all parts of the world." In the past, only the very wealthy could afford to have portraits painted by artists. The growth of the middle class in the 18th century had greatly increased the demand for portraiture. With the camera, portraits became more affordable to the masses, and it‚s use grew at a very rapid rate.
The earliest images required very long exposures, as much as 20 minutes. Early Daguerreotypes weren't conducive to portraits since the subject had to remain still for so long. The first photograph of a person was taken in 1839 and it was a rather blurred image of a man having his shoes buffed in a street scene in Paris. As technology improved, exposure times dropped. The world's first photographic portrait studio was opened by John Johnson in New York on March 4, 1840. One factor was the weather. Since photos could only be made during bright sunny weather, New York was better situated than London or Paris with their prevalent cloud cover.
The business of photography
grew rapidly according to the same book, "There were 2,000 cameras
and 500,000 plates sold in Paris alone in 1847, mostly for portraiture."
The prices charged ranged from $2 to $5 for the plates. While not cheap,
they were within the grasp of a broad class of willing customers. During
the 1850s photographic portraits became widely accepted and in the 1860s
photojournalism developed in the documentation of the Civil War, War Between
the States, or "Wah uf Nawthen Agresshun" (depending on one‚s
perspective) by Matthew Brady and others.
It is interesting to note that many excellent examples of these images
exist today, including the very first photograph ever taken, in a collection
at the University of Texas. So the archivability of those early images
is already at 175 years and still counting. Those of us who are involved
in rapidly evolving technology of digital photography are coping with
color images on paper printed via the computer that has only recently
reached a small fraction of that time.