The Evolution of Photography

In 1886 more than usual interest was exhibited by photographers in what was misnamed as the isochromatic, or orthochromatic process, and this interest was probably created by the papers read and discussions that followed at the meetings of the Photographic Society in the previous year. Messrs. Dixon and Gray—the latter a young man in the employ of Messrs. Dixon and Son—commenced a series of experiments with certain dyes with the hope of obtaining a truer translation of colour when copying oil paintings or water-colour drawings, a class of work in which they were largely interested, and had obtained a considerable reputation for such reproductions as photography was then capable of rendering, and one of the results of these experiments was exhibited, and obtained a medal, at the exhibition of the Photographic Society in October. Messrs. Dixon and Sons’ exhibit was a very surprising one, and created quite a sensation, as nothing equal to it had ever been shown before. The subject was a drawing of a yellow flower and green leaves against a blue ground—the yellow the most luminous, the green next, and the blue the darkest. In ordinary wet or dry plate photography these effects would have been reversed, but by Dixon and Gray’s process the relative luminosities of these three colours were almost perfectly translated. Messrs. Dixon and Gray did not publish their process, but prepared existing gelatine dry plates by their method, and sold them at an enhanced price. They were not, however, permitted to supply anyone long, for B. J. Edwards, who had obtained a monopoly of Tailfer and Clayton’s patent rights in England, served them with an injunction, or threatened them with legal proceedings, so they discontinued preparing their orthochromatic plates for sale. By some special arrangement they were allowed to prepare plates for their own use, provided they used Edwards’ XL dry plates.

It so happened, however, that this proviso was not a hardship, for Mr. Dixon told me himself that he had found Edwards’ plates the most suitable for their process. The hardship lay in not being able to apply their own discovery or preparation to any dry plates for sale for the public use and benefit. This prohibition was the more to be regretted because no other commercial isochromatic or orthochromatic plates had or have appeared to possess the same qualities of translation. The suppression of the Dixon and Gray preparation of plates is the more surprising when I find eosine is mentioned in the Clayton and Tailfer claim, whereas Mr. Dixon assured me that eosine was not employed by them. Mr. Edwards only acquired his monopoly and right to interfere with the commercial application of an independent discovery on Nov. 18th, 1886, and there is little to be gained in England by the publication of the experiments of such men as Vogel, Eder, Ives, and Abney, if one man can prevent all others making use of them.

This year death removed from our midst one, and perhaps the greatest, of the martyrs of photography—Sylvester Laroche. This was the man that fought the battle for freedom from the shackles of monopoly. He won the fight, but lost his money, and the photographers of the day failed to make him a suitable recompense. There was one honourable exception, and Mr. Sylvester told me himself that Mr. J. E. Mayall gave him £100 towards his legal expenses. Laroche’s surname was Sylvester, but as there was a whole family of that name photographers, he added Laroche to distinguish himself from his brothers. Sylvester Laroche was an artist, and worked very cleverly in pastel, but somehow or other he never appeared to prosper.

Nothing particular marked the photographic record of 1887, but death was busy in removing men who had made their mark both in the early and later days of photography. First, on March 19th, Robert Hunt, the most copious writer on photography in its earlier period. As early as 1844 he published the first edition of his “Researches on Light,” in which he was considerably assisted by Sir John Herschel, and it is astonishing to find what a mine of photographic information that early work contains.

The next was Colonel Russell, better known, photographically, as Major Russell. He was born in 1820, and died on May 16th, 1887. He was best known for his tannin process and alkaline developer, with a bromide solution as a restrainer. For a long time his tannin process was very popular among collodion dry plate workers, and very beautiful pictures were taken on Russell’s Tannin Plates, but it is many years since they were ruthlessly brushed aside, like all other collodion dry plates, by the now universally employed gelatino-bromide plates or films.

A revival of interest in pinhole photography was awakened this year, and several modes of constructing a pinhole camera were published; but I remember seeing a wonderful picture by a keyhole camera long before I became a photographer. I had called to see an old lady who lived opposite a mill and farm. It was a bright, sunny afternoon, and, when I was leaving, I was astonished to see a beautiful picture of the mill and farm on the wall of the hall. “Ah!” said the old lady; “that’s my camera-obscura. When the sun shines on the mill at this time of day, I am sure to have a picture of the mill brought through the keyhole.” It was something like this that suggested the camera-obscura to Roger Bacon and Baptista Porta. So it is not necessary to have such a small hole to obtain a picture, but it is necessary to have the smallest hole possible to obtain the sharpest picture.

Pizzighelli’s visible platinotype printing paper was introduced this year, and I welcomed it as a boon, for the double reasons of its simplicity and permanency. I had been longing for years for such a process, for I, like Roger Fenton, had come to the conclusion that there was no future for photography, in consequence of the instability of silver prints. They would be much more durable than they are if they were only washed in several changes of warm water, but few people will be at the trouble to do that, some because they don’t know the efficacy of warm water, and others because it lowers the tone. An eminent photographer once asked me how to render silver prints permanent; but when I told him there was nothing equal to warm water washing, he exclaimed, “Oh! but that spoils the tone.” When a photographer sacrifices durability to tone, he is scarcely acting honestly towards his customers. Admitted that there is nothing so beautiful in photography as a good silver print when it has its first bloom on it, neither is there anything so grievously disappointing as a silver print in its last stage of decay. It is quite time that the durability of a photograph should be the first consideration of every photographer, as well as the amateur. Years ago I proposed and published a plan of raising a fund to induce chemists and scientists to consider the subject, but not a single photographer responded by subscribing his guinea.

A very simple and interesting means of making photographs at night was introduced this year by Dr. Piffard, an amateur photographer of New York, and the extreme simplicity and efficacy of his method was surprising. For good portraiture it is not equal to the electric light, but for family groups, at home occupations or amusements, it is superior, and I have taken such groups with Piffard’s magnesium flash-light, which no other means of lighting would have enabled me to produce. I have taken groups of people playing at cards, billiards, and other games in their own homes with the simplest of apparatus, the ordinary lens and camera, plus an old tea tray—but to obtain the best results, the quickest lens and the quickest dry plates should be employed, and I have always found the best position for the light to be on the top of the camera.

1888 is chiefly remarkable for the attempted revival of the stereoscope, and Mr. W. F. Donkin read an interesting and instructive paper on the subject, in which he endeavoured to account for its disappearance, explain its principles, and give an historical account of its early construction, and modern or subsequent improvements. As to its immense popularity thirty to thirty-five years ago, that was due to its novelty, and the marvellous effect of solidity the pictures assumed when viewed in the stereoscope; but it soon ceased to be popular when the views became stale, and people grew tired of looking at them; to keep up the interest they had to be continually buying fresh ones, and of this they soon got tired also; and when hosts saw that their guests were bored with sights so often seen, they put them out of sight altogether, and I fear that nothing will, for the same reasons, bring about a revival of the revolving or any other form of stereoscopes, for views. It is becoming much the same now with lantern slides—possessors and their friends grow weary of the subjects seen so frequently, and hiring instead of buying slides is becoming the practice of those who own an optical lantern.

With stereoscopic portraits it was not so, for there was always a personal and family interest attached to them, and I made a great many stereoscopic portraits by the Daguerreotype process; but even they were somewhat ruthlessly and precipitately displaced when the carte-de-visite mania took possession of the public mind. However, I see no reason why stereoscopic portraiture should not be revived if good pictures were produced on ivoryine, and it appears to me that substance is most suitable for the purpose, as the pictures can be examined either by reflected or transmitted light. Everyone interested in stereoscopic photography should “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest,” the late Mr. Donkin’s able and instructive paper on “Stereoscopes and Binocular Vision,” published in the journal of the Photographic Society, January 27th, 1888. This was unhappily the last paper that Mr. Donkin read at the Photographic Society, for he was unfortunately lost in the Caucasus the following autumn. W. F. Donkin, M.A., F.C.S., F.I.C., was for several years Honorary Secretary of the Photographic Society and of the Alpine Club, and, at the November meeting of the Photographic Society, the President, James Glaisher, F.R.S., made the following remarks on the melancholy event:—“There is, I am sure, but one feeling in regard to the fact that the gentleman who usually sits on my right is not here to-night. Our Secretary, W. F. Donkin, is, I fear, irretrievably lost in the Caucasus. The feeling of every member of this Society is one of respect and esteem towards him. During the time he held the post of Secretary, his uniform courtesy won him the respect of all. I fear we shall see him no more.” This fear was afterwards confirmed by the search party, which was headed by Mr. C. T. Dent, President of the Alpine Club. The late Mr. Donkin was both an expert Alpine climber and photographer, and many of his photographs of Alpine scenery have been published and admired.

Every year compels me to record the death of some old and experienced photographer, or some artist associated with photography from its earliest introduction. Among the latter was Norman Macbeth, R.S.A., an eminent portrait painter, who was quick to see and ready to avail himself of the invaluable services of a new art, or means of improving art, both in drawing and detail, and make the newly-discovered power a help in his own labours, and an economiser of the time of his sitters. The first time I had the pleasure of meeting him was in Glasgow in 1855, when he brought one of his sitters to me to be Daguerreotyped, and he preferred a Daguerreotype as long as he could get one, on account of its extreme delicacy and details in the shadows; but he could not obtain any more Daguerreotypes after 1857, for at that time I abandoned the Daguerreotype for ever, and was the last to practise the process in Glasgow, and probably throughout Great Britain.

From the time that Mr. Macbeth commenced taking photographs himself, he took a keen interest in photography to the last, and only about a month before he died, he read an able, instructive, and interesting paper on the “Construction and Requirements of Portrait Art” before the members of the London and Provincial Photographic Association; and that paper should be in the possession, and frequent perusal, of every student of photographic portraiture. Although an artist in feeling and by profession, Mr. Macbeth was no niggard in his praises of artistic photography, and I have frequently heard him expatiate lovingly on the artistic productions of Rejlander, Robinson, and Hubbard; but, like all artists, he abominated retouching, and denounced it in the strongest terms, and regretted its prevalence and practice as destructive of truth, and “truth in photography,” he used to say, “was its greatest recommendation.”

The annals of 1889—the jubilee year of published and commercial photography—commence with the record of death. On the 21st of January, Mr. John Robert Sawyer died at Naples in the 61st year of his age. Mr. Sawyer had been for many years a member of the Autotype Company, and his foresight and indefatigability were largely instrumental in making that Company a commercial success. It was anything but a success from the time that it was commenced by the late Mr. Winsor and Mr. J. R. Johnson, but from the moment that Mr. J. R. Sawyer became “director of works,” the company rapidly became a flourishing concern, and possesses now a world-wide reputation. Mr. Sawyer was one of the early workers in photography, and for several years conducted a photographic business in the city of Norwich. It was there that circumstances induced him to give his attention to some form of permanent photography with the view of employing it to illustrate a work on the carving and sculpture in Norwich Cathedral, particularly the fine work in the roof of the nave. Mr. Sawyer naturally turned his attention, in the first place, to the autotype process, but it was then in its infancy, and the price prohibitory. The collotype process then became his hope and refuge, but that also was in its infancy, and not practised in England. Mr. Sawyer therefore started for Berlin early in 1869, and there met a certain Herr Ghémoser, a clever expert in the collotype process, from whom he obtained valuable information and working instructions. On his return home, Mr. Sawyer laboured at the collotype process until he overcame most of its difficulties, and on January 1st, 1871, he entered into partnership with Mr. Walter Bird, and removed to London with the intention of making the collotype process a feature in the business. Messrs. Sawyer and Bird commenced their London experiences in Regent Street, but on January 1st, 1872, they entered into an agreement with the Autotype Fine Art Company to work the collotype process as a branch of their business. Meanwhile, another partner, Mr. John Spencer, had joined the firm, and at the end of that year Messrs. Spencer, Sawyer, Bird and Co. purchased the Autotype patents, plant, and stock at Ealing Dene, and all its interest in the wholesale trade; and, in 1874, they bought up the whole of the Fine Art business, including the stock in Rathbone Place, and became the Autotype Company.

The great photographic feature of this year was the Convention held on August 19th in St. James’s Hall, Regent Street, London, in celebration of the jubilee of practical photography, which was inaugurated by the delivery of an address by the president, Mr. Andrew Pringle. The address was a fairly good résumé of all that had been done for the advancement of photography during the past fifty years.

The exhibition of photographs was somewhat of a failure; little was shown that possessed any historical interest, and that little was contributed by myself. There was a considerable display of apparatus of almost every description, but there was nothing that had not been seen, or could have been seen, in the shops of the exhibitors.

The papers that were read were of considerable interest, and imparted no small amount of information, especially Mr. Thos. R. Dallmeyer’s on “False Rendering of Photographic Images by the Misapplication of Lenses”; Mr. C. H. Bothamley’s on “Orthochromatic Photography with Gelatine Plates”; Mr. Thomas Bolas’s on “The Photo-mechanical Printing Methods as employed in the Jubilee Year of Photography”; but by far the most popular, wonderful, and instructive, was Professor E. Muybridge’s lecture, with illustrations, on “The Movements of Animals.” The sight of the formidable batteries of lenses was startling enough, but when the actions of the horse, and other animals, were shown in the “Zoopraxiscope,” the effect on the sense of sight was both astounding and convincing, and I began to marvel how artists could have lived and laboured in the wrong direction for so many years, especially when the lecturer showed that a prehistoric artist had scratched on a bone a rude but truthful representation of an animal in motion. Both the sight and intelligence of that prehistoric artist must have been keener than the senses of animal painters of the nineteenth century.

Taking it all in all, the Jubilee Convention was an immense success, and brought photographers and amateurs to London from the most distant parts of the country. Looking round the Hall on the opening night, and scanning the features of those present, I was coming to the conclusion that I was the oldest photographer present, when I espied Mr. Baynham Jones, a man of eighty-three winters, and certainly the oldest amateur photographer living; so I willingly ceded the honour of seniority to him, and as soon as he espied me he clambered over the rails to come and sit at my side and talk over the past, and quite unknown to many present, aspects and difficulties of photography. Mr. Baynham Jones was an enthusiastic photographer from the very first, for in 1839, as soon as Daguerre’s process was published, he made himself a camera out of a cigar-box and the lens of his opera-glass, and, being unable to obtain a Daguerreotype plate in the country, he cut up a silver salver and worked away on a solid silver plate until he succeeded in making a Daguerreotype picture. Mr. Baynham Jones was not the first photographer in this country, for the Rev. J. B. Reade preceded him by about two years; but I have not the slightest doubt of his being the first Daguerreotypist in England, and in that jubilee year of 1889 he was working with gelatine plates and films, and enthusiastic enough to come all the way from Cheltenham to London to attend the meetings of the Jubilee Convention of Photography.

With this brief allusion to the doings and attractions of the Jubilee Convention, I fear I must bring my reminiscences of photography to a close; but before doing so I feel it incumbent on me to call attention to the fact that two years after celebrating the jubilee of photography we should, paradoxical as it may appear, celebrate its centenary, for in 1791 the first photographic picture that ever was made, seen, or heard tell of, was produced by Thomas Wedgwood, and though he was unable to fix it and enable us to look upon that wonder to-day, the honour of being the first photographer, in its truest sense, is unquestionably due to an Englishman. Thomas Wedgwood made photographic pictures on paper, and there they remained until light or time obliterated them; whereas J. H. Schulze, a German physician, only obtained impressions of letters on a semi-liquid chloride of silver in a bottle, and at every shake of the hand the meagre impression was instantly destroyed. If we consider such men as Niépce, Reade, Daguerre, and Fox Talbot the fathers of photography, we cannot but look upon Thomas Wedgwood as the Grand Father, and the centenary of his first achievement should be celebrated with becoming honour as the English centenary of photography.

CHRONOLOGICAL RECORD OF

INVENTIONS, DISCOVERIES, PUBLICATIONS, AND APPLIANCES, FORMING FACTORS IN THE INCEPTION, DISCOVERY, AND DEVELOPMENT OF PHOTOGRAPHY

1432 B.C. Iron said to have been first discovered.

424 B.C. Lenses made and used by the Greeks. And a lens has been found in the ruins of Nineveh.

79 A.D. Glass known and used by the Romans.

697. Glass brought to England.

1100. Alcohol first obtained by the alchemist, Abucasis.

1287. Nitric acid first obtained by Raymond Lully. Present properties made known by Dr. Priestley, 1785.

1297. Camera-obscura constructed by Roger Bacon.

1400. Chloride of gold solution known to Basil Valentine.

1500. Camera-obscura improved by Baptista Porta.

1555. Chloride of silver blackening by the action of light. Doubtless it was the knowledge of this that induced Thomas Wedgwood and Sir Humphry Davy to make their experiments.

1590. Paper first made in England, at Dartford, Kent, by Sir John Speilman. It is said that the Chinese made paper 170 years B.C.

1646. Magic lantern invented by Athanasius Kircher.

1666. Sir Isaac Newton divided a sunbeam into its seven component parts, and re-constructed the camera-obscura.

1670. Salt mines of Staffordshire discovered.

1727. J. H. Schulze, a German physician, observed that light blackened chalk impregnated with nitrate of silver solution and gold chloride.

1737. Solution of nitrate of silver applied to paper, by Hellot.

1739. Chloride of mercury made by K. Neumann.

1741. Platinum first known in Europe: M. H. St. Claire Deville’s new method of obtaining it from the ore, 1859.

1750. J. Dolland, London, first made double achromatic compound lenses.

1757. Chloride of silver made by J. B. Beccarius.

1774. Dr. Priestly discovered ammonia to be composed of nitrogen and hydrogen; but ammonia is as old as the first decomposition of organic matter.

1777. Charles William Scheele observed that the violet end of the spectrum blackened chloride of silver more rapidly than the red end. Chlorine discovered.

1779. Oxalate of silver made by Bergmann.

1789. Uranium obtained from pitch-blende by Klaproth.

1791. Thomas Wedgwood commenced experiments with a solution of nitrate of silver spread upon paper and white leather, and obtained impressions of semi-transparent objects and cast shadows. Sir Humphry Davy joined him later.

1797. Nitrate of silver on silk by Fulhame.

1799. Hyposulphite of soda discovered by M. Chaussier.

1800. John William Ritter, of Samitz, in Silesia, observed that chloride of silver blackened beyond the violet end of the spectrum, thus discovering the action of the ultra violet ray.

1801. Potassium discovered by Sir Humphry Davy.

1802. Examples of Heliotypes, by Wedgwood and Davy, exhibited at the Royal Institution, and process published.

1803. Palladium discovered in platinum by Dr. Wollaston.

1808. Strontium obtained from carbonate of strontia by Sir Humphry Davy.

1812. Iodine discovered by M. D. Curtois, of Paris.

– Nitrate of silver and albumen employed by D. Fischer.

1813. Ditto investigated by M. Clement.

1814. Joseph Nicéphore de Niépce commenced experiments with the hope of securing the pictures as seen in the camera-obscura.

– Iodide of silver made by Sir H. Davy.

1819. Sir John Herschel published the fact that hyposulphite of soda dissolved chloride and other salts of silver.

1824. Niépce obtained pictures in the camera-obscura upon metal plates coated with asphaltum, or bitumen of Judea.

– L. G. M. Daguerre commenced his researches.

– Permanganate of potash. Fromenkerz.

1826. Bromine discovered in sea-water by M. Balard.

– Bromine of silver made.

1827. Niépce exhibited his pictures in England, and left one or more, now in the British Museum.

1829. Niépce and Daguerre entered into an alliance to pursue their researches mutually.

1832. Evidence of Daguerre employing iodine.

1837. Rev. J. B. Reade, of Clapham, London, obtained a photograph in the solar microscope, and employed tannin as an accelerator and hyposulphite of soda as a fixer for the first time in photography.

1838. Reflecting stereoscope exhibited by Charles Wheatstone.

– Mungo Ponton observed that light altered and hardened bichromate of potash, and produced yellow photographs with that material. This discovery led to the invention of the Autotype, Woodburytype, Collotype, and other methods of photo-mechanical printing.

1839. Daguerre’s success communicated to the Academy of Science, Paris, by M. Arago, January 7th.