 The history of photography is fascinating and if you're watching this episode it's probably fair to say that you at least have a passing interest in its history. I always felt the biggest problem with history is when it simply becomes a list of facts and figures. It becomes dull, boring and uninspiring. We are all familiar with the faces of those who have stood, statue-like while posing for their portraits. Those places that have reached out to us across the centuries since photography has first discovered. Those sometimes blurry and indistinct shadows of places and people long since lost. In those proud faces captured so long ago via this almost alchemic process we can recognize ourselves, if not through their clothing but through their faces. Each one sharing a faint echo of their story for us across the years. But what are the stories of the people who created those images? Who were they and what fingerprints did they leave on the film strip of photography? This series of videos aims to introduce you to the history of photography not through the processes but by the people who created those images. It's just a short brief introduction and by no means comprehensive but I hope it will give you a flavour of the times in which these photographers lived. How's it? The history of photography usually gets told through the history of the processes. The garotypes, calyotypes, clothing, wet plate and so forth. The early days of photography were dominated by what were called gentleman scientists and photography was considered by many to be a mechanical process rather than an artistic one with with technical perfection trumping all. This is probably why so often this history is broken down into focusing on the technical development of photography rather than the people behind the lens. Photography isn't still with us after almost 200 years because we marvel at its ability to transform light into something physical but because it moves us emotionally. The images from the early years of photography to modern eyes aren't necessarily technical masterpieces but they do tell us about the people who created them and how they saw the world as it was to them long ago. A little caveat before we begin my French is not particularly great so I would please do apologize if I mispronounce some of the names in here. Almost from the word go, Neepshawn Neeps, his name was lost from photography. Despite being credited with the first earliest surviving photograph made using a camera obscura he passed away in 1833 while working with Louis de Gaer on improving the process by which they were trying to fix images. This means he wasn't around when the daguerreotype process was revealed to the public officially on Monday 19 August 1839. Francois Aragot glossed over the contributions made by Neepshawn in his presentation and instead lavished praise on the daguerreotype process. It was only the efforts subsequently made by Neepshawn's son that ensured his father's name is still associated with photography today. This seems to quite neatly set the stage for the subsequent spikiness that seems to inhabit every corner of the world of photography. Of course we're forever indebted to these two figures amongst the others who kickstarted this mania for photography and quite rightly they are the focus of a great deal of writing when it comes to talking about the early days of photography. They are the pillars on which the story is hung though it's through the characters on the fringes and I feel it comes to life and that's what I want to share with you today it's these sometimes fringe characters. Many of the early daguerreotypes were painters originally and they've been lured into this process as a way of making more money quicker and easier than painting portraits. You can already see apparently from even this early stage photography has already developed a reputation as something that can make you a quick buck. Karl Ferdinand Stelsner was one such artist and he heard about the daguerreotype process who hot-footed it off to Paris to go and learn its secrets. He already had a reputation for creating miniatures which had earned him a clientele base which included European royalty amongst its number and for a long time Stelsner was credited with two firsts in photography. Soon after he returned to Hamburg from Paris there was a great fire which he photographed. The story goes that him and his partner lugging their cumbersome equipment moved around the city getting plates of the gutted landscape before them. Now allegedly and that's of course the great get out of jail free card term that we can use when talking about history these photographs were the first on the spot news images ever made. However alas the photos the newspapers of the day didn't have that technology required to reproduce them and the Hamburg Historical Society kind of felt you know why do we need pictures of a destroyed city scape for so they weren't interested in buying them either but that's not the twist in this tale it turns out that however it wasn't Stelsner at all who created these daguerratives but his studio assistant a one Herman Biao once more this illustrates photography's unlimited capacity for misdirection and myth the other first attributed to Stelsner was the world's first outdoor group portrait this was at the Hamburg Art Owners Club and it was created in less than ideal circumstances 5 p.m on a May evening you can imagine how difficult that would be especially with a daguerreotype in this image you can see the painter in Stelsner coming out as the composition feels unstudied feels quite lively especially when you compare it to other early group photographs like a great number whose contemporaries Stelsner eventually went blind from the quite toxic nature of the photographic processes they needed to use in those days Herman Biao also suffered a similar fate when he died from liver disease which is apparently brought on by the improper handling of the chemistry during the autumn of 1833 a young English gentleman was honeymooning on the shores of Lake Como in Italy he was using a camera lucinda which is a device created to help one trace a scene from life as he tried to sketch the Italian landscape that lay there before him there projected onto the paper with the village buildings the lake and in the distance some mountains as if by an enormous magical process it should be a simple thing to be able to recreate this magnificent views simply by tracing over them with a pencil alas it wasn't as simple and as Henry Fox Talbot later recalled for when the eye was removed from the prison in which all look beautiful i found that the faithless pencil had only left traces on the paper melancholy to behold this kick started within Henry Fox Talbot a desire to try and fix what he saw on paper in the early days of photography it seemed as if every new day brought forth a breakthrough much like buses you know you wait ages for one and then two come along at once William Henry Fox Talbot is credited with inventing the technique that photography would be based on until the digital age this negative positive process the calotype the term comes from the greek word chaos which means beautiful and we are extremely lucky that so many of the early pioneers of photography were gentleman scientists who were quite fond of using greek in their naming also thanks to them too for littering the history of photography with phrases like exciting fluid and how poor photography is today because we seem to have lost this kind of floral language to describe elements within it this plump english aristocrat was pipped to the honor of being credited with the invention of photography by just a few weeks with the announcement of the daguerreotype process though as is so often with history the actual story somewhat more convoluted and involves more overlap than is commonly recorded despite his gentlemanly background Talbot was keen to explore the commercial nature of his process which allowed for copies of the images to be made unlike the one-off nature of a daguerreotype in an 1844 pencil nature was released which was the world's first photographically illustrated book another benefit if you could call it such a thing about the calotype was the softness of the images which lent the photographs an almost impressionistic vibe to them in what seems like a lifetime ago i used to live in edinburgh and during my break from a bookstore on georgia fourth bridge in edinburgh's old town where i worked i used to wander down into gray fryer's church yard to have my coffee even in the modern world there is a stillness to the place despite it being in the heart of a bustling metropolis above the tops of the grass market tenements rises the bulk of edinburgh castle it's a place famous for ghost stories and loyal dogs for me though what marked this place as special was the way that it still looked exactly like the images that david octavius hill and robert adamson had created there in the 1840s after a meeting between the two in 1843 when hill had approached adamson about making some calotypes to insist in a giant painting project he had planned together they created nearly two and a half thousand photographs hill acting as a technical aspect and adamson creating the compositions and setting it up to use the available light now yet again photography raises its head to create controversy and just a few years have passed since the birth of photography and already there are signs of discord this is best illustrated by hill pointing out that the rough and unequal texture throughout the paper is the main cause of the calotypes failing in details before the daguerreotype and this is the very life of it they look like the imperfect work of man not the much diminished perfect work of god rather surprisingly for anybody who knows scotland and edinburgh in particular sitting as it does on the coast hill and adamson chose to work outside they had their studio near carlton hill and it had an outdoor area which was set up to look like an interior of course this is before flash and exposure times are still measured in minutes so the need for as much light as possible was supremely paramount this fruitful partnership was cut short by adamson's death in 1848 and by then they had already left their mark not only visually on the history of photography but also by implying quite possibly the first scottish female photographer and certainly one of the first woman photographers in the world jesse man jesse man is credited with creating a portrait of the king of saxony whilst being an assistant at hill and adamson's studio of course after photographing such an illustrious sitter it's only natural that she would go on to great things but she left the studio after adamson's death and went to become a housekeeper and muscle bro and it just goes to show how easily these early people of photography these these pioneers can slip through the cracks of history gustav le gray managed to avoid the fate of his contemporaries and of poisoning himself to death with chemicals by falling off a horse in kiro instead for those was just a casual interest in photography or at least the history of photography his name barely features despite being the official photographer to napoleon the third a teacher of photography whose students included nadar amongst others and a founder of the society heliographique which was the first photographic organization in the world gustav's name doesn't seem to have been fixed properly and has faded over time and despite the fact that his name has faded his legacy can still be felt in 1999 an album and print of his was sold at auction for 419 500 pounds now what exactly he would have made of these fantastical figures being exchanged for his photography is anyone's guess especially given that despite having what one contemporary called a lavishly furnished studio and being a well-recognized artistic success his business was an absolute object financial failure through mismanagement of his studio he created debt which eventually encouraged him to shut up shop abandon his wife and children and to flee the country in amongst the portraits of famous faces the grace real talent was for seascapes now what struck many viewers was how on earth gustav managed to both freeze a wave but also to get detail into the sky and of course in those days one needed to be sacrificed for the other because of the exposures required his trick was to create combination prints from sets of negatives one for the sea and of course one for the sky alas once more our old friend controversy comes calling recently some research was undertaken which seemed to point to the idea that some of these seascapes were in fact only published by le grey and he wasn't actually the photographer of course at this distance remove it's impossible to tell and all of this is based on one throwaway line in an article published in an 1864 edition of the british journal of photography it just goes to show how convoluted the story of photography can become and what seems like the natural thing one does when there's no money to pay a debt gustav set out on a tour of the Mediterranean with alexander duma a few years after he ran out of france he later managed to get caught up in many events of the day the bombardment of palermo being worded in syria and photographing the future king of england edward the seventh in chiro i seem to be a trait amongst all these photographers gustav also made technical along with aesthetic contributions to photography he managed to improve paper negatives so they retain more clarity he helped pioneer the concept of this combination printing and he wrote a paper although it was theoretical explaining the collodion process before its official unveiling these early years of photography were a hotbed of artistic discovery scientific advancement and debate it was still a highly experimental craft and anyone wanting to explore its possibilities had to be both simultaneously chemist optician artist and artisan soon however the pace of technical development would slow down a bit and the question would form like the image on a sheet of photographic paper being developed now we can create images just what are we supposed to do with them thanks for spending time with me today i appreciate you being here i've created a playlist for these history videos which i put up on the screen for you so you can bookmark them and enjoy later on if you'd like to discover more about the photographers whom i've mentioned in this video i've included some books and resources in the description box below