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HELIOGRAPH TO DAGUERREOTYPE
The course of
human conflict has spurred the development of many inventions, including
photography. In fact, if one young Frenchman had not joined Napoleon's
fateful march to Waterloo, the birth of photography might have been years
delayed.
Joseph Nicephore
Niepce, a Frenchman from Chalons-sur-Saone, was an avid enthusiast of the
new art of lithography. Studying the work of the pioneering lithographer
Alois Senefelder, he tried to improve the process by using tin plates.
But Niepce lacked a critical skill: he couldn't draw. So he relied on his
talented son to render images for the lithographs. When the army drafted
the young man in 1814, Niepce was left without an illustrator.
Hearing of the
work done with photochemical drawing, he turned his attention to silver
salts. For the next decade Niepce struggled to perfect a primitive form
of photo lithography. Research advanced slowly and drained the funds of
his considerable trust. Still, he enjoyed just enough success to forge
on. Significantly, he found a way to fix images using acid baths.
Niepce's big
breakthrough came in 1822 when he made a permanent image using a camera
obscura. After exposing coated pewter plates to a camera image, he used
the vapors from heated iodine crystals to darken the silver and heighten
contrast. The method would inspire Louis Daguerre's highly successful mercury
vapor development process. In fact, within a few years, the two inventors
would be partners.
Louis-Jacques-Mandee
Daguerre is often credited as the inventor of modern photography. This
is not precisely true. Daguerre combined existing technologies and processes
and made them work.
Before turning
to photography, Daguerre was a theater set painter renowned for the incredible
hyper realism of his mammoth canvases. In fact, he made a successful career
of showcasing his paintings in popular spectacles called Dioramas. Daguerre's
artistic obsession for capturing the real world in all its minute detail
led to a fascination with the camera obscura and later, the work of Niepce.
Forming a partnership
with Niepce in 1829, Daguerre set out to improve his methods and create
a practical photographic process. The elder Niepce was in failing health
and contributed nothing new beyond his original body of research. He died
penniless in 1833.
By 1837, after
nearly a decade of trials, Daguerre devised a revolutionary type of image.
He called it the Daguerreotype. Adhering a thin sheet of polished silver
to a copper plate, he made it light sensitive by exposing it to the vapors
from heated iodine crystals. Camera exposures of 15-30 minutes were needed
to make an impression. The latent image was fully developed by treating
it with mercury vapor. Fixed in a solution of salt and hot water, the positive
image became permanent.
Daguerre officially
unveiled his invention in 1839. The Daguerreotype could only be seen in
certain lights and from particular angles. And it could not be mass produced.
Each image was singular and unique.
Despite the drawbacks,
Daguerreotypes offered images of extraordinary clarity and beauty. There
was no comparison between Daguerre's pictures and the crude, grainy photos
produced by Talbot.
A consummate
showman and entrepreneur, Daguerre turned his energies to marketing and
licensing his new invention. In a partnership with his brother-in-law,
Daguerre began manufacturing the Giroux camera. The instrument, packaged
with Daguerre's 79-page instruction manual, was immediately in high demand.
Giroux cameras were soon shipped around the globe.
Enthusiasts and
entrepreneurs improved Daguerre's basic methods. The introduction of fast
achromatic lenses, large apertures, and an improved development process
utilizing mercury and bromide chlorine vapors, brought exposure time down
to two minutes. Innovations continued over the next decade as the Daguerreotype
became firmly established. Yet by 1851 this novel and celebrated new art
form would be all but forgotten.