RAISED TO AN ART

ALAN M. FERN

Photography is certainly the most familiar graphic medium today. Everyone carries photographic identification. We see photographs daily in newspapers and magazines, and attend frequent exhibitions of photographic prints in museums and galleries. Today, there is little doubt about either the documentary role or the aesthetic power of the photograph, but 150 years ago, when photography was in its infancy, both its role in communication and its status as art were just being clarified.

The well-known 1862 lithograph by Honoré Daumier entitled “Nadar Elevating Photography to the Height of Art” is more than an amusing comment on the commercial success of a popular Parisian photographer (see page 63). It is at once a testimony to the remarkable spread of photography only 23 years after its introduction, and evidence that there was a lively debate about whether photography was merely a technical process, or was worthy of acceptance as a form of art. When photography first was revealed to the public in 1839, it was treated as a miracle. There were, in fact, two processes that became practical at the same time. One, invented by William Henry Fox Talbot in England, used paper coated with a light-sensitive emulsion of silver nitrate that could be developed and fixed after exposure, leaving a negative image of metallic silver on the paper. This paper could be waxed and made transparent, and used to print positive images. The other, based on research in France by Joseph Nicéphore Nièpce and perfected by Jacques-Louis Mandé Daguerre, used a sensitized, polished silver-coated plate as its base. The plate was exposed in a camera, then removed and developed over heated mercury vapor. After fixing, the image would be viewed by reflected light. The Talbotype, or Calotype, had a pleasing softness of image, resulting from the printing of the negative through the fibrous waxed paper. In contrast, the daguerreotype was capable of incredible sharpness and detail, recording the textures of fabric and hair with astonishing clarity.

Painters had long sought mechanical assistance in the faithful transcription of nature onto canvas. “Cameras”—darkened chambers with lenses (or even pinholes) that could project a landscape onto a paper— were used as far back as the Renaissance, and well into the 19th century portraitists used various mechanical devices to assist in the accurate rendition of the proportions and features of sitters. It was obvious that if the images projected by the camera lucida or camera oscura could be somehow fixed in place, the work of the artist would be enormously facilitated. Both Daguerre and Talbot used a “camera” (a dark box fitted with a lens) to project their images onto the light-sensitive material to make their photographs.

Talbot patented his process, while the French government purchased the rights to Daguerre’s invention and made the daguerreotype freely available to the public. Within a year, the daguerreotype was established as the leading technique, and photography spread around the world, becoming especially popular in France, America, and Germany.

Both of the principal innovators of photography were active in the visual arts, Daguerre as a trained professional, Fox Talbot as an amateur. Several recent scholars have discussed the relationship of the earliest photographs with the work of early 19th century painters, and demonstrated that both Daguerre and Talbot were in search of a tool to increase the veracity of their work. Daguerre designed and painted the “Panorama,” a major attraction in Paris. Scenes of Rome with startlingly life-like effects of light and atmosphere attracted crowds anxious to recreate the experience of traveling to the Eternal City, but the artist was aware of the artifice involved and yearned for a way to record nature with greater accuracy. His new process surpassed the naturalism of his own paintings, despite the absence of color and the reduced size of the daguerreotype image.

At first, the magic of the photographic image was sufficient to engage the public, but soon photographers became conscious of the gulf between the public perception of paintings and their own creations. By the early 1860s, photographers like Henry Peach Robinson began to combine and re-photograph images to create genre compositions like those that were the standard in the exhibitions of the Royal Academy in England or the Salon in France. Some photographers striving for artistic legitimacy manipulated their negatives or prints to give their finished works a texture and finish closely resembling chalk or charcoal drawings, while others imitated famous paintings in photography, basing their compositions on such works as David’s “Oath of the Horatii,” or Rembrandt’s “Anatomy Lesson of Doctor Tulp.”

During the last half of the 19th century, a number of painters, including Edgar Degas and Thomas Eakins, learned photography. Other artists utilized photographs of scenes or models as a substitute for drawing from nature. Photographic vision underlay the work of some of the more advanced visual artists of the time, guiding them to render light and shadow in ways that would have been unlikely half a century before, and giving rise to the informality of composition that is so characteristic of impressionist and post-impressionist painters.

A number of photographers were unconcerned with questions of art. Roger Fenton, who photographed the Crimean War, Mathew Brady and his colleagues in the Civil War, and a host of other early photojournalists were intent on recording events and the appearance of places their viewers could not visit. By the turn of the 20th century, the aesthetic qualities of the “straight” photograph had come to be appreciated. Under the leadership of such photographers as Alfred Stieglitz and Paul Strand, pride was taken in the refinements of printing, the recording of subtle effects of light, and other aspects inherent to the photographic process. At the same time, a number of photojournalists and documentary photographers began to produce startling images of everyday life, making powerful artistic as well as social statements.

"Nadar Elevating Photography to the Height of Art" by Honoré Daumier. First published in Le Boulevard May 25, 1862.

By World War II, photography was ubiquitous. Especially in America, the public was accustomed to seeing excellent photography in publications, and by the 1950s a few art museums and major libraries had established departments of photography. Post-war artists like Robert Rauschenberg began to incorporate photographic images in their paintings, collages, and lithographs. Andy Warhol based his painted and silk-screened portraits on photographs, which he greatly enlarged and modified. David Hockney (who has proposed interesting theories about the use of pre-photographic cameras by Renaissance and Baroque artists) combined many small photographs into large compositions that present a scene in an entirely new perspective system, owing to the slight changes in camera angle as various parts of the scene are recorded. Chuck Close has used straight photographic portraits as the basis for a series of remarkable paintings, cast-paper images, and prints. Most recently, Close has started to make daguerreotypes, using the earliest technique of photography to create images that live in the 21st century. These are manifestly works of contemporary art, despite their use of a venerable technique, taking the debate about art and photography full circle.

Having established its artistic credentials, photography— the technique of “writing with light”—is entering a new technical phase. The digital recording of images, using the computer in place of the darkroom, has opened countless new possibilities. Images can be combined, altered, and manipulated with unprecedented ease. Undoubtedly, new debates about the aesthetics, and even the ethics, of photography will continue to occupy us in the years to come, as this endlessly fascinating medium evolves and develops.

Alan M. Fern (CC ’72) is an art historian. He served for 18 years as director of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, prior to which he worked at the Library of Congress and the University of Chicago.

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