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The Magic Eye…. PHOTOGRAPHY

The Magic Eye…. PHOTOGRAPHY. Camera Obscura = Latin for Dark Room.

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The Magic Eye…. PHOTOGRAPHY

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  1. The Magic Eye…. PHOTOGRAPHY

  2. Camera Obscura = Latin forDark Room The idea that a dark box could recreate an image was first mentioned in 500 BCE, when people observed the mysteries of solar eclipses through this process. Hundreds of years later, lenses were added to these small, dark boxes to sharpen the image. Leonardo tinkered with the camera obscura, along with his many scientific and artistic explorations. Vermeer’s fascination with optics in the 1600s took this scientific curiosity into the artist’s studio, inspired by the inventions ( in particular, the miscroscope) of his side-kick, van Leeuwenhoek. Magicians and fortune-tellers also took advantage of the dark box image-maker to trick their audiences. In a camera obscura, light enters through a small hole drilled into the side of the box. When rays of light pass through the hole and fall on the opposite wall, an image---in color--- of the scene directly outside is created. But because of the nature of optics and light rays, the image inside the box is upside down and backwards. Mirrors angled to catch the image turn it right side up.

  3. First photograph---1826, Joseph Niepce*, French What do you think you are looking at?? *Pronounced “knee-yips” Heliography---Camera obscura holding a pewter plate coated with bitumen of Judea (a chemical derivative of petroleum). The bitumen hardens in the sunlight…unexposed parts are washed off to create the image. Took at least 8 hours to fix.

  4. The race was on to make photography viable... William Talbot… British Victorian humanist and scientist, too preoccupied to patent his discoveries of 1836-41. Lost the race with Daguerre. Finally patented his process in 1841. Tomb of Sir Walter Scott, 1844 Talbot’s first camera, c. 1836 Calotype, 1840=silver nitrate sensitized paper in a camera obscura, objects exposed to the light to create an image. Image “fixed” by sodium theosulfite. Negatives created could produce multiple images. With this combination of chemicals, processing time was reduced from several hours to several minutes. William Henry Fox Talbot in 1864

  5. The first photo of a person, a French boulevard by Daguerre in 1839 No signs of carriages or horses because, as moving objects, vehicles were not captured. The image had over 10 minute exposure time. To make the image appear in the way that we would see it, Daguerre’s double process involved taking a picture of a picture. Daguerreotype, 1839 Silver-coated copper plates exposed to iodine, then to sunlight. Mercury vapor develops the image and salt water fixes it. Image is reversed; plate must be enclosed in glass box to protect. Image is very detailed, but not reproducible. Fewer than 25 photos made by Daguerre survive as his studio burned to the ground in 1839, destroying all of his earliest works and journals. • Louis Jacques Daguerre • 1787-1851, French • theatre architect specializing in lighting and illusion • used the camera obscura to perfect perspective in his set designs • wanted to “fix” the temporary image in the back of the black box • knew that a plate covered with silver nitrate was very sensitive to light • discovered by accident when a thermometer broke • that the plate treated with mercury vapor processed • the image to make it permanent

  6. The Daguerreotype not a lot of smiling going on… subjects would have to sit motionless from 2 to 45 minutes Father and son---1850s Sometimes pictures were hand-tinted Boy with Purse--mid 1800s Happy piano player--1840s Sisters holding their brother’s hand--1840s

  7. Comments by John Haber, contemporary art critic, on daguerreotypes: “The daguerreotype's precision is simply astounding. Even in vistas of Paris, a magnifying glass can pick out ceramic tiles, long since replaced by slate and metal. One can count the buttons on a military uniform from across the Seine. Still, no one would call this work photorealism. It looks way too spooky. The silvery, metallic surface helps create an other worldly sheen. So does the perfection with which it captures textures and reflections. So does the slight coloration, almost like flesh in lighter passages but bluer with overexposure. So, too, does the nature of a positive, which unlike a print from an intermediate reverses left and right. Parisians, no doubt accustomed to social divisions between Left and Right Bank, marveled at finding buildings in the wrong place. So do nearly empty landscapes, as if out of a horror movie. The medium required exposures of several seconds, even in bright sunlight. By that time, passing people turn to blurs or vanish from sight. So who would sit still for a portrait, other than the almost lifelike skulls and skeletons in the exhibit's final room? The medium lacked the class for paying, upper-class portraiture, but it attracted writers and artists, including Eugène Delacroix, excited by the novelty. It drew on common laborers and the dispossessed, who slouch or stare or nowhere in particular. Remarkably, the medium offers the only photographic record of the 1848 worker's rebellion, with barricades that fittingly dissolve into yet another blur.”

  8. Matthew Brady • 1823(?)-96, American • opens his first daguerreotype studio in 1844 • great Civil War photographer • creates “photography on canvas,” • large paintings tinted with oils Freaks were a favorite subject of Brady’s as was war….

  9. Brady’s Civil War

  10. Julia Margaret Cameron 1815-79, British Pioneer photographer at age 48, given a camera by her daughter Photography soon became an accepted art form for women, as it was portable ---a bridge between naturalism and sentimentality, science and art. Pre-Raph artist Millais Known for her portraits of famous friends ...and strangers Longfellow

  11. Pictorialism was a 19th century movement where photographers were more concerned with the aesthetics than with the subject of a photograph. Seascape at Night, 1870 Fading away, 1858 Head of St. John, 1858

  12. Fun with Optics Stereopticons, circa 1875 …photos in stereo to trick the eye

  13. “You Press the Button, We Do The Rest” George Eastman 1854-1932, American Invented a way to make photography practical for all amateurs. Instead of cumbersome glass plates, Eastman created film rolls, made out of celluloid. The first“Kodak” (an invented word, easy to pronounce in many languages, he said) camera came on the market in 1888, selling for $25. The film roll was set up for 100 negatives, which could be sent back to Eastman’s New York lab for processing. By 1900, the Brownie camera was selling for $1

  14. So, is photography art ...or science? Creative expression …or technology?

  15. Eggs, 1890s Rock, 1870s Hand, 1890s Hat, 1870s

  16. Ear, 1885 Jump, 1908 Portrait, 1917 Model, 1926 Flower, 1925 Toilet, 1925

  17. You decide. Lewis Carroll’s Alice

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