Inventors of Photography

April 30, 2017

How was the art of photography created? How long ago did the photographers figure out the special chemicals that while being exposed to the sunlight would change the color and create a sharp stable picture on the plate? Our history has known many innovative individuals who had put their efforts towards developing a groundbreaking techniques that would change the way we utilize photography today. Ironically, the majority of those individuals were not artists – they were scientists! Let us highlight three major figures, the founding fathers of photography who stood behind the very concept of capturing the light on a print.

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce was a French inventor, born in 1765 who is now credited as the inventor of photography has developed a technique called heliography. Niépce’s first experiments were based on the use of silver salts. He then tried a succession of different chemicals, hoping to find a substance that would produce a picture that would give him a sharp, bright and stable image. Each of the substances he would use had to be light-sensitive. Niépce discovered that bitumen of Judea, a material used by etchers, was a light-sensitive material that would bleach when exposed to light. In 1826-27 he used the Camera Obscura to create the first and the oldest known to the world surviving photograph “View From The Window At Le Gras.”

View from the Window at Le Gras (manually enhanced)

For that Niépce used a pewter plate thinly coated with Bitumen of Judea, a naturally occurring asphalt which was dissolved in oil of lavender, placed it his camera obscura, and was able to make an exposure that lasted the entire day.

The original pewter plate used for the image above

Using this technique he made pictures on pewter and glass, and then developed another technique that could be used to reproduce traditional prints.

In 1825 Louis Daguerre, another founding father of photography whom Niépce did know at that time has reached out to the inventor in hopes to fuse forces together and develop the technique that would not take a whole day or few to get the photograph. Doubtful at first, Niépce thought he could achieve his goals without Daguerre, but was eventually convinced to collaborate.

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre was a French artist, born in 1787 and the inventor of daguerreotype, the special process of photography. He was the only professional artist of the three founding father of photography mentioned here, though he was, before this time, known mostly for this work in theatrical design.

Boulevard du Temple

Daguerre was an assistant to a man named Prévost who owned the French patent to the Diorama, where one could, by the use of changes in lighting shone on a series of large, transparent, painted screens, create a spectacle that could, for example, narrate a battle scene on a grand scale, a spectacle of both sight and sound. With the money he made from this venture, he decided to devote his time to photography and improve on Niépce’s work.

The technique that Niépce employed to create a picture could take up to ten hours to complete and was not the best quality. His technique was also not very practical for use in a camera, so it was necessary for Daguerre to find a substance that would be much more sensitive to light. Daguerre spent fifteen years experimenting on his own, working on a process in which a silver plate (that acted as the “film”) would be exposed to an iodine vapor. After an exposure of just a few minutes, the image would then become “fixed” with a chemical known as sodium hyposulfite. The invention of this silver-based emulsion, as well as the discovery of sodium hyposulfite as a fixative agent, can thus be attributed to Louis Daguerre. He announced this procedure to the world in 1839, and subsequently became well-known as the inventor of photography; the daguerreotype was born.

William Henry Fox Talbot

William Henry Fox Talbot, born in 1800, was an Englishman, who best known for his inventions of salted paper and calotype processes, precursors to photographic processes of the later 19th and 20th centuries. In 1840’s he worked on photomechanical reproduction which led to the creation of the photoglyphic engraving process. His inventions had affected the early development of British commercial photography.

Nelsons Column under Construction, Trafalgar Square

Mr. Talbot was quite displeased when he heard of Daguerre’s invention. He had also invented his own method of photography but had put it aside to attend to other, more important matters. Little did he realize that someone else could also be inventing photography at the same time.

On hearing of Daguerre’s success, he reinitiated his own research in haste to try to perfect his own methods, hoping that he could at least make his own contribution in some way to the field of photography and claim certain rights of priority.

The Open Door

Talbot’s original contributions included the concept of a negative from which many positive prints can be made. He became known as the inventor of the negative/positive photographic process, the precursor to most photographic processes of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He was also known to use gallic acid and silver nitrate to help develop the latent image. In 1841 Talbot applied for a patent for his calotype.

William Fox Talbot (on the right)

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Inventors of Photography

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce

Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre

William Henry Fox Talbot

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