Transcript
Photography:
An Illustrated History
Martin W. Sandler
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS
Photography
AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY
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Photography
An Illustrated History
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Martin W. Sandler
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Oxford New York
Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogotá Buenos Aires Cape Town
Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi
Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi
Paris São Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Warsaw
and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan
Copyright © 2002 by Martin W. Sandler
Published by Oxford University Press, Inc.
198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016
www.oup.com
Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press
All rights reserved. No part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted,
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior
permission of Oxford University Press.
Design: Sandy Kaufman
Layout: Loraine Machlin
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available
ISBN 0-19-512608-4
135798642
Printed in Hong Kong
on acid-free paper
On the cover: William Henry Jackson photographing
Yosemite Falls, around 1880.
Frontispiece: The first commercial photographic printing
establishment, operated by William Henry Fox Talbot in
Reading, England, in 1846.
Title page: Russell Lee. A crowd in front of a traveling
photographer’s tent, 1938.
Contents page: Dr. Harold Edgerton. Flying bullet, 1964.
Contents
Chapter One / Beginnings
Chapter Two / Portraiture
Chapter Three / The World Around Us
Chapter Four / Photography as Art
Chapter Five / Documentary Photography
Chapter Six / Photographs in Print
Chapter Seven / War Photography
Chapter Eight / Photographs in Color
Chapter Nine / Modern Photography
Chronology
Photography Museums and Websites
Further Reading
152 Index
7
23
39
57
73
91
105
117
131
144
146
150
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Chapter
. . . . . . . . One
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Beginnings
A
Frederick Fargo Church. George
Eastman with a Kodak Camera on
Board the S. S. Gallia, 1890.
In 1888, George Eastman invented a
small, easy-to-use camera that made it
possible for almost everyone to take pictures. Here, Eastman demonstrates his
invention aboard an ocean liner.
photograph is a kind of miracle.
There is a picture of our mother
exactly as she looked as a child.
There, in another picture, is a scene
of an event that helped shape the history of
a nation, taken at the moment it happened.
There, in yet another image, is a photograph
created so artistically that it is a profound
delight to see.
When photography burst upon the
scene in the first half of the 19th century,
people were amazed by the fact that they
were suddenly able to view or even possess
an exact likeness of themselves, their relatives, their friends, and the celebrities of
their day. Looking back at that time, what is
equally amazing is how rapidly the medium
of photography advanced.Within only 50
years of its introduction, photographers not
only had the ability to capture likenesses but
were recording places and events around the
world.They also had the means and the skill
to produce photographs that were regarded
as works of art.
The first official forms of photography
were the daguerreotype and the calotype, or
talbotype, as it was also called. They
appeared in 1839 and 1841, but there had
been an earlier achievement in recording a
permanent image in a camera. In 1827, a
French engineer and experimenter, Joseph
Nicephore Niépce, had produced a small,
crude but permanent positive image on a
metal plate. However, his method did not
use light-sensitive silver compounds, which
are the basis of photography, and required an
eight-hour exposure. It was far from being a
practical process.
The daguerreotype was named after its
inventor, the Frenchman Louis Jacques
Mandé Daguerre. His achievement was
announced in January 1839 but was shown
only to small invited audiences until August
of that year, when Daguerre gave a public
demonstration of the procedures.The calotype was invented by an Englishman,
William Henry Fox Talbot, who showed
some images and described a preliminary
version of his process just three weeks
after Daguerre made his accomplishment
known, but he did not perfect it and release
the details for another year and a half.
The calotype had much more importance for the future development of photography, but the daguerreotype produced
far more beautiful, and technically perfect,
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BEGINNINGS • 7
Nicephore Niépce. View from his
Window at Le Gras, about 1827.
Although Niépce’s process was much
too lengthy and complicated to be
repeated, this picture, taken from the
window of his home, is widely regarded as the world’s first photograph.
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images and was the dominant method for
the first 15 years of the medium.Thus, for
his invention of the first practical method
of recording images in a camera, Daguerre
is recognized as the father of photography.
In order for photography (the word
means “writing with light”) to be invented,
two elements were necessary. One was an
optical and mechanical device for forming
an image.The other was a chemical procedure for making a permanent record of the
image.The optical principles of forming a
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The Camera Obscura
The portable camera obscura provided the optical element necessary for photography. It was constructed with a lens at one end of a long wooden box.A mirror placed inside the box at a 45-degree angle reflected the image from the lens
upward to a sheet of glass placed flush with the top of the box.A lens forms
an image that is upside down and reversed left for right.The mirror reflection
turned the image right side up but did not correct the left-right reversal.To use
the camera obscura, an artist would place a thin piece of paper on the glass to
view or trace the image. Cloth baffles (not shown) on each side of the lid over
the glass blocked stray light that would wash out the projected image.
visual image had been known for thousands of years. By the mid 16th century,
astronomers and artists were using a device
based on those principles, called a camera
obscura (“dark chamber”) to view eclipses
and other sun phenomena and to make
drawings.The first camera obscuras were
literally dark rooms.They operated on the
principle that if a small hole is made in a
wall of a darkened room, an upside down
and left-right reversed image of the outside
view in front of the hole will appear inside,
on the opposite wall. A person inside the
room could then trace the image on paper.
By the late 17th century, a portable boxshaped camera obscura with an imageforming lens in place of a hole had been
perfected and was commonly used by
artists for tracing images of real scenes and
objects.Thus, the camera was in existence
at least 250 years before a chemical procedure for recording its images permanently
on some kind of surface was invented.
Daguerre and Talbot both solved the
image-recording problem by experimenting with light-sensitive silver compounds,
but their results were very different.
To make a photograph, Daguerre used a
highly polished, silver-plated sheet of copper. He treated the silver surface with
fumes from heated crystals of iodine to
make it light sensitive and exposed it to the
focused image in a camera obscura.This
formed an invisible latent image on the
plate.To make the latent image visible–
develop it–he treated the silver plate with
fumes from heated mercury. Development
brought out the very light and middle-tone
areas of the image in proportion to their
brightness in the scene. In this way, a direct
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 8
positive image, not a negative, appeared.To
make the picture permanent, or fix it, he
bathed the plate in a solution of hyposulfite
of soda, which made the unexposed, undeveloped parts of the plate no longer light
sensitive. (The same fixing chemical is used
with both black-and-white and color films
and prints today. It is now named sodium
thiosulfate, but still called “hypo” by many
photographers.) Finally, he washed the plate
in water.
Most daguerreotypes were 3 1/4 by 4 1/4
inches in size (larger sizes were made, but
silver plates were quite expensive). The
image was “as delicate as the pattern on a
butterfly’s wing,” one early observer noted.
To protect it, a brass mat with a cutout to
reveal the image was placed over the plate
and then a glass cover was added.These
were held together with a thin brass frame
around the edges, and the packet was fitted
into a small booklike case with velvet or
silk padding in the hinged cover.
Because of its mirrorlike silver surface, a
daguerreotype had to be held at an angle
away from direct light, reflecting something
dark.Then its lustrous silvery and white
tones shone as if they were light themselves, revealing the most delicate changes
in brightness and shade. People marveled at
the reality and clarity of the images, which
had none of the sand-particle pattern,
called graininess, sometimes seen in prints
enlarged from small negatives today.They
were even more amazed when they looked
at them through a magnifying glass, which
revealed more and more, increasingly finer
detail.The leaves on individual distant trees,
the tiles on a roof several blocks away were
clear and sharp.
C. D. Cahoon. Early
daguerreotypist with
camera, about 1845.
An early photographer
retouches one of his
daguerreotypes.Among
those who were astounded by the earliest form of
photography was the
English poet Elizabeth
Barrett Browning.“I
would rather have [a
daguerreotype] of one I
dearly loved,” she wrote,
“than the noblest artist’s
work ever produced.”
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Never one for modesty, Daguerre gave
the name daguerreotype to the photographs
his process produced.The French government gave Daguerre several thousand
francs and a lifetime pension for the rights
to his invention, in order to present the
process free to the world as a philanthropic
demonstration of France’s superiority in
science. In August 1839, Daguerre himself
gave the demonstration that made the
process public.The event was attended by
the entire French legislature, scientists and
dignitaries of all kinds, hundreds of ordinary citizens, and newspaper reporters from
every major city in the world. At the same
time he published a manual of the process,
the first book on photographic technique
ever written.
Daguerre also patented an improved
box-size camera obscura for taking daguerreotypes.The lens was covered by a thin metal
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BEGINNINGS • 9
William Henry Fox Talbot.
Lacock Abbey, about 1843.
Talbot took this early calotype in
front of his country home, called
Lacock Abbey, near Bath, England.
Talbot referred to photography as the
“pencil of nature.”
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William Henry Fox Talbot.
Leaves of Orchidea, 1839.
Before producing photographs through
his calotype process,Talbot created
photogenic drawings by placing objects
like these orchid leaves on a sheet of
paper soaked in silver nitrate or chloride.The image appeared after the
paper was placed in the sunlight for
10 to 30 minutes.
plate that pivoted out of the way to let light
pass through.This shutter (a literal name—
it opened and shut the lens) was operated
by hand. No mechanism was needed,
because exposure times ranged from 20 to
45 minutes or longer, depending on the
time of day and season of the year. By
1841, a variety of daguerreotype cameras
were being produced in France, Germany,
Austria, and the United States. Because the
daguerreotype was a direct positive process,
a photographer had to expose a separate
plate for each copy of a picture he wanted.
William Henry Fox Talbot’s photographic process, the calotype, allowed duplicate copies—prints—to be made.When all
previous experimenters had obtained an
image in which the light and dark areas
were the reverse of their brightness in
the actual subject—a negative image—they
thought it was a mistake and a failure.Talbot’s great insight was to recognize that the
negative was just an intermediate step, and
that by exposing another piece of sensitized
material to this “mistake” the lights and
darks would be reversed again to their normal appearance.This was a negative–positive
process, the foundation for every improved
photographic method to come.
Talbot used high-quality writing paper
rather than a metal plate. Because it was 100
percent cotton fiber (“rag”) paper, it did not
wrinkle or disintegrate when dampened, as
later wood-pulp papers do. He treated the
paper with solutions of silver nitrate, potassium iodide, and gallic acid to make it light
sensitive, and exposed it while still damp in a
camera obscura. He developed the latent
image with a silver nitrate and gallic acid
solution, and. made the visible image permanent with a solution of hyposulfite of
soda, followed by washing.
The developed image was a negative.To
make a positive print, Talbot placed the
negative against a piece of similarly sensitized paper and exposed this sandwich,
clamped in a kind of picture frame, to sunlight.When he judged the strength of the
tones to be right,Talbot fixed the paper in a
hypo solution so that light would no longer
affect it, and washed it in water. Finally, for
support, the thin paper was mounted on a
card or thicker paper.
The final image, the positive print, was
quite different from a daguerreotype. Its
tones were brown, not shades of gray and
black as in modern prints.The details of the
print were not razor sharp, partly because
the image was formed in the fibers of the
paper, not in a smooth coating on top of
the surface, and partly because the fibers of
the paper negative interfered with the
exposing light.This lack of sharpness in
detail gave the finished calotype an overall
appearance similar to that of a fine engraving or etching, a quality that many early
photographers found appealing.
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 10
The Camera
F
rom the beginnings
of photography, there
have been thousands of
different types of cameras.
But whether old or new,
large or small, almost all
cameras have the same
fundamental features.
These features include:
(A) A lightproof chamber,
which allows only the light
from the lens to reach the
glass plate or film on which
the image is recorded. (B)
A lens, a combination of
shaped pieces of optical
glass or plastic that focuses
light from the subject or
scene in front of the
camera onto the plate or
film inside. (C) An iris
diaphragm, a set of curved
blades in the lens that form
an adjustable-size hole
called an aperture. Changing the size of the aperture
changes the amount of
light passing through the
lens and therefore is one of
the two ways of controlling
the amount of exposure
the film receives. Settings
for various aperture sizes
are marked on the lens by a
series of f-numbers or “fstops.” Each larger aperture
setting doubles the amount
of light transmitted; each
smaller aperture cuts it in
half. (D) A shutter that
opens and closes to control
the length of time the
image from the lens exposes the film. It is either a set
of spring-driven blades, like
an iris diaphragm, built into
the lens, or is a curtain or
set of blades located just in
front of the film.The speed
at which the shutter opens
and closes—usually a fraction of a second—is controlled by a setting ring on
the lens or a dial on the
camera body, or by internal
circuitry in cameras with
automatic exposure control.The combination of
shutter speed and aperture
size determines the amount
Talbot’s first cameras were quite small
wooden boxes—his wife called them
“mousetraps”—and the images were about
the size of a large postage stamp. Each
“mousetrap” had a hole in the back with a
pivoted brass cover so the photographer
could view the image when he set up the
camera. By the time Talbot perfected his
process he was using cameras sized for larger images, with lenses that had pivoted
shutter covers, like daguerreotype lenses.
The cameras accepted removable paper
holders and had a small inspection hole in
the front that was plugged with a cork to
keep light out when not used.
Talbot’s name for his pictures, calotypes,
came from the Greek word kalos, “beautiful.”
Friends urged him to call them Talbotypes,
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of exposure the film
receives. If it is too little, the
film will be underexposed and
the picture will be too dark.
If the film receives too
much exposure—is overexposed—the picture will be
too light. (E) The film
advance, which on most
modern cameras is automatic, may also appear as a
manual knob or dial
advance. (F) A viewfinder
system, which permits the
camera’s user to see the
subject area and compose
the picture. It may be an
optical viewer on top that
shows the subject directly
or a screen in the rear or
top of the camera that
shows the actual image
the lens is projecting
toward the film.
just as Daguerre had named his process for
himself, and for a time both names were used.
Although the process was essentially complete
in 1839,Talbot did not publish a description of
it until early 1841, and did not demonstrate it
before the Royal Society, England’s premiere
scientific organization, of which he was a
member, until later that year, after he had
obtained a patent.
Although the negative-positive calotype
process was to become the basis for almost all
photography to follow, it was the beauty and
amazing reality of the daguerreotype that had
the greatest immediate impact, capturing the
attention of people everywhere. From the very
beginning, daguerreotypes were a sensation.
They became even more of a sensation
when, in 1843, it became truly practical to
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BEGINNINGS • 11
It was not uncommon for a daguerreotypist to include a family pet in a sitter’s portrait, as in this example from
about 1841. At first daguerreotypes
were housed within pressed cases made
to look like leather. Later, highly
ornate cases, made of an early form of
plastic, became popular.
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take portraits. The photographs people
wanted most, then as now, were pictures of
themselves, their friends, and the wellknown and newsworthy individuals of the
day. In every year since that time, hundreds
of thousands, even millions, more pictures
have been taken of people than of any
other subject.
The earliest attempts to make daguerreotype portraits required subjects to sit perfectly still for almost 20 minutes in the full sun
in order to expose a plate sufficiently.Their
eyes would blink and water, the glare was
almost unbearable, and to actually sit still that
long was virtually impossible. By early 1843,
improvements in the chemical mix used to
sensitize the plate, and more important, a
new kind of lens that transmitted over 16
times more light than the original
daguerreotype lenses, made exposures of 5
to 30 seconds possible in full sunlight.
Almost overnight, daguerreotype studios
sprang up all over the world.They became
most popular in the United States, where
the daguerreotype’s greatest champion was
the inventor of the telegraph, Samuel F. B.
Morse.When Daguerre’s accomplishment
was officially announced in 1839, Morse
was in Paris to license the French rights to
his invention. He demonstrated his telegraph to Daguerre, who in turn showed
Morse how daguerreotypes were produced. Morse, who was primarily a portrait
painter, was completely taken with the photographic discovery.When he returned to
America he experimented with taking
daguerreotypes, with the intention of getting reference images for use in his portrait
painting. He also offered to teach the process
to others. Among his pupils was Mathew B.
Brady, who eventually became one of the
most successful daguerreotypists of all.
In 1844, when he was only 21 years old,
Brady opened his first photographic studio
in New York, and between 1849 and 1860
he established three other photographic
studios and galleries, one in Washington,
D.C., and two more in New York. Each of
these studios attracted many of the leading
political figures and celebrities of the
day, all anxious to have their portraits captured by Brady. Among these famous subjects were Daniel Webster, John Quincy
Adams, Andrew Jackson, and a young
Abraham Lincoln. From the beginning
Brady daguerreotypes were widely
acclaimed and earned several of the earliest
photographic awards ever given. Although
Brady himself actually took some pictures in the early years, he soon was fully
involved in managing and promoting his
establishments.The studio work was done
by the several camera operators hired in
each location.The credit line “Photograph
by Brady” was a corporate credit, like
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 12
“Automobile by Ford”; it did not mean
that Mathew Brady himself had taken
the picture.
Taking a good-quality daguerreotype
was not an easily learned skill. Because of
the technicalities involved and the often
lengthy exposure time required, almost all
daguerreotypists concentrated on taking
portraits—that was what people wanted
to buy. There were some photographers,
however, who packed up their cumbersome gear and took daguerreotypes of
scenes away from their studios.
Perhaps the most accomplished of all
these adventurous pioneer photographers
was John Plumbe Jr. who emigrated to the
United States from Wales in 1821. In 1840,
after several years in railroad construction,
he opened a daguerreotype studio in Washington, D.C., making him one of the first
professional daguerreotype photographers
in the United States. Shortly thereafter he
opened a second studio in Boston. By the
mid 1840s he had studios in other major
cities in the United States and in Paris,
France, and Liverpool, England. At the
height of his business operations, some 500
people worked for him.
Plumbe himself was an excellent portraitist.The New York Herald referred to one
of his daguerreotypes as “the most beautiful
and finished portrait of the kind that we
have ever looked upon.” But his importance to the story of photography lies in
the quality of the daguerreotypes that he
took outside his studio.
In the mid 1840s, when Plumbe was
operating in Washington, D.C., many of the
buildings destined to become national
landmarks had recently been built or were
just being erected.Washington itself was
rapidly becoming recognized as a city of
great importance. Plumbe’s daguerreotypes of such structures as the White
House, the Patent Building, and the United States Capitol building, still under construction, gave Americans and many
foreigners their first views of these symbols of a young nation on the rise. Today,
his Washington images rank among the
most prized of photographs, treasured not
only by those interested in photography
but of great value to architects and historians as well.
For the first 12 years of photography’s
existence, the daguerreotype and the calotype were the only significant forms of photography.Then, in 1851, an Englishman,
Frederick Scott Archer, introduced a great
improvement, the collodion process. Like the
John Plumbe Jr.’s 1846
daguerreotype of the Capitol of
the United States under construction would have been lost to
history had it not been discovered by a California photographic collector. In 1972 he found the
daguerreotype in a flea market.
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BEGINNINGS • 13
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Timothy O’Sullivan. Black Cañon of
the Colorado, 1871.
The early photographers of the American
West were among the first to take their
pictures with wet plates. One of the most
successful of these photographers,
O’Sullivan, captured this image at a
point on the Colorado River.The small
cloth-draped box in the boat was used as
a portable darkroom so that the photographer could develop his images before
the collodion on the wet plates dried.
calotype, it was a way of making negatives,
but instead of paper it used glass plates.
Collodion was a gluey liquid. With
potassium iodide crystals mixed in, it was
poured in an even coating on a glass plate
and made light sensitive in a silver nitrate
bath. Because the coated plate had to be
exposed and processed while still moist—
within about 20 minutes in most situations—this means of capturing an image
became commonly known as the wet plate
process. If the plate dried too soon, the
developer and other solutions could not
act, because the collodion was then completely waterproof. This presented a major
challenge to photographers. When they
wanted to photograph outside the studio,
they had to carry portable darkroom tents,
chemicals, and other equipment with them
so they could prepare and process their
plates on the spot. In spite of this, photographers everywhere turned to the new
process. For the next 30 years, the collodion-
covered glass plate would be the world’s
standard means of obtaining a photographic image.
The glass-plate negative produced the
clearest, most tonally rich and sharply
detailed prints yet made, especially when
used with a new print material, albumen
paper, introduced in 1850.This paper carried its image-forming crystals in a smooth
surface coating of diluted egg whites (albumen). Printing was done in the same way
as with the calotype but with a glass negative, which meant that no paper fibers
interfered with the quality of the image:
The negative plate was placed in contact
with the print paper in a glass frame and
exposed to sunlight until the image printed
out to the proper intensity. Then it was fixed
in hypo, washed, and mounted.
The collodion process not only made
glass negatives possible but also spawned
various other types of photography. One of
these, the ambrotype, almost immediately
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 14
The tintype was one of
the most popular forms
of early photography.
Many women wore
lockets with tiny tintype images of loved
ones inserted in them.
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drove the daguerreotype out of existence.
The negative image of a wet plate was
composed of various densities of light gray
particles, not black silver as in a modern
negative.When placed on a black background, the image looked positive. Seizing
on this phenomenon, portrait photographers began taking negatives on plates the
same size as daguerreotype plates and
painting the back side of the glass with
black lacquer to make the image appear
positive. Or they would simply place a
piece of black cloth or paper behind the
plate. Ambrotypes were matted and framed
in padded cases just like daguerreotypes—
but at a fraction of the cost.While only reasonably well-to-do customers could afford
a daguerreotype, the ambrotype made portraits affordable to a much wider public,
and studio business boomed.
The principle of a black background
making a collodion negative look positive
was exploited in another process, one that
was so cheap to produce that even working-class families could afford to have pictures made. The process was officially
named the ferrotype (“ferro” is a prefix
meaning iron), for the pieces of thin sheet
iron used in place of glass. However, the
name almost everyone used was tintype,
because the same kind of metal was coated
with tin in making tin cans. Photographers
purchased plates that were already lacquered black. They coated one side with
collodion, sensitized, exposed, and processed
it, and in no more than five minutes had a
direct positive image.
Most tintypes were 2 1/2 by 4 inches, a
size that could easily be sent through the
mail, carried in the pocket, or kept in an
album.To get more than just one image, a
larger metal plate was used in a camera that
had 4, 8, 12, or even 24 small lenses, each
projecting a separate image on a section of
the plate. A sliding shutter-panel opened or
covered all the lenses at the same time, so
every picture was the same. After processing, the images were cut apart with tin
snips and the smallest were usually mounted on cards.
Because they were so inexpensive, tintypes were purchased in huge numbers
and used for a wide variety of purposes.
Traveling tintype “professors” set up their
cameras at fairs, beaches, carnivals, and
boardwalks. Miniature tintypes were used
in cuff links, tie pins, and rings.Tintypes
were cheap, quick to get, durable—and
immensely popular.
Frances Benjamin Johnston, one of the
first documentary photographers, sells
tintypes at a country fair in 1903.
The collodion process that made the
tintype, the stereograph, and the wet
plate possible revolutionized photography.“Photography,” stated one British
newspaper,“is everywhere now. Our
truest friends, our most intimate enemies, stare us in the face from collodionized surfaces.”
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BEGINNINGS • 15
Alexander Gardner. Cartede-visite of Walt Whitman, 1864.
“By giving infinitely more for
infinitely less [Adolphe Disdéri]
definitively popularized photography,” wrote the photographer who
went by the name Nadar.The subject
of this carte-de-visite, American poet
Walt Whitman, has autographed it,
possibly as a gift.
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The author Oliver Wendell Holmes was
so taken with the stereograph’s ability to
record exotic lands and peoples that he
recommended the establishment of
national and local stereographic libraries.
This stereoscope, invented by Holmes,
was lighter and easier to use than any of
the other devices on the market and
became the most popular model.
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The collodion process was also responsible for another form of picture that was
introduced even earlier than the tintype.
This type of photograph was produced
in greater quantities and used for even
more purposes. In 1854, a French portrait
photographer, Adolphe Eugène Disdéri,
patented the carte-de-visite, a name he gave
both to the camera he invented and the
pictures he took.The camera had four lenses and a sliding back that held a full-size
plate (6 1/2 by 8 1/2 inches). Four pictures
were exposed on one half of the plate by
uncovering the lenses all together, or singly,
or in pairs; then the plate was moved and
four more exposures were made on the
second half. After the processed negative
was printed onto a single sheet of paper, the
images were cut apart and mounted on
individual cards.
In French,“carte de visite” means “visiting card.” Disdéri used the same size card,
2 1/2 by 4 1/2 inches, to mount the pictures,
and so gave them that name. But they were
seldom used as visiting cards. Clothing and
specialty stores used them in counter catalogs to show the range of goods they offered
beyond what might be on display. Cartes
were sold in the hundreds of thousands as
souvenirs at popular tourist attractions and as
novelties showing funny, strange, or foreign
people, places, and things. Politicians distributed cartes during their campaigns, and
celebrities used them for publicity. But far
and away their major use for more than 50
years was for portraits.
Cartes cost only a few pennies each, and
portrait customers would order multiple
copies of poses they liked to give to family
and friends.While we see primarily the rich
and the upper middle class in daguerreo-
types and studio wet plate portraits, it is the
tintype and the carte-de-visite, both produced in the millions, that show us ordinary
middle-class families, workers of all sorts,
athletes, soldiers—an ever-widening range
of individuals.Then, as now, those images
increased our knowledge and understanding
of the people of the world.
Another outgrowth of the collodion
process, the stereograph, had a profound
effect in showing viewers the wonders and
diversity of the physical world. For the
public, the stereograph became the television of its day. It provided three-dimensional images of whatever the camera saw,
because it effectively duplicated the way we
actually look at an object. Each of our eyes
sees an object from a slightly different
angle.When those two images are relayed
to our brain, a sense of depth or perspective
is created.This phenomenon was understood well before photography was invented. Some artists drew pictures in pairs to
achieve this stereo or three-dimensional
effect. Some stereo daguerreotypes were
even made. But it was the collodion process
and a special camera that made it easy to
obtain such images.
A stereographic camera had two lenses
placed side by side, two and a half inches
apart—the average distance between
human eyes. Both lenses were opened at
the same time and two images, identical
except for the slight difference in angle of
view, were recorded on the glass negative.
Prints of these images were mounted on a
horizontal card.When the card was placed
in a hand-held device called a stereoscope,
viewers could see the picture in three
dimensions. Produced in enormous quantities, stereographs were sold through the
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 16
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mail and from door to door as well in
bookstores, stationers, and other outlets.
Large companies devoted exclusively to the
production of stereographs were formed
and became highly successful.
For photographers, the stereograph
opened up a whole new world of opportunity. Aware that their pictures could be
widely sold, they traveled to even the most
remote places to capture scenes they knew
would appeal to a waiting public. For the
public, the stereograph opened up whole
new worlds as well.Through their stereoscopes, families viewed places they would
be most unlikely ever to encounter in person—mountains, deserts, tropical jungles,
ancient ruins, monuments such as the
Sphinx, castles, cathedrals, foreign cities.
They also saw people they would never
meet—Indians on the American plains,
newly arrived pioneers plowing up the virgin western soil, gold miners digging for
riches in California and Alaska, railroad
construction crews laying tracks through
the wilderness. Printed text on the backs of
the cards gave additional information about
what was shown in the picture.The public
was fascinated with this new medium of
knowledge and bought sets of cards devoted
to various topics, as well as individual cards.
Viewers also liked humorous scenes and
pictures that illustrated well-known stories
In the 1850s and
1860s stereoscopes and
albums containing cards
could be found in parlors
of homes throughout the
world. In an age before
television and movies,
humorous stereographs
and charming stereos,
such as this one of a
lovesick couple, were
extremely popular and
sold by the thousands.
and poems. Stereograph producers staged
and photographed such events in their studios. Series of pictures such as those depicting nervous bridegrooms attempting to
flee from the church, farmers being chased
by a bull, children playing pranks on each
other, scenes from tales like “Little Red
Riding Hood,” and poems like “The Village Blacksmith” became a chief source of
entertainment for millions of men, women,
and children.
The major drawback of the collodion
“wet plate” process was having to carry
everything needed to prepare and process
the plate on the spot. Photographers
longed for a dry coating for their plates, and
in 1871 they got it. A British physician,
Richard Leach Maddox, demonstrated a
new type of photographic plate.
Instead of collodion, Maddox used a
layer of gelatin that contained light-sensitive crystals.This was the first true photographic emulsion. Once the gelatin dried,
the plates could be taken anywhere for
use and then brought back to the darkroom to be developed anytime the photographer desired. Not only were the dry
plates far easier to handle than their sticky
wet predecessors, they required less exposure time. Before long they could be purchased fully ready for use, usually
in boxes of six or a dozen.These factors
........................................................................
BEGINNINGS • 17
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Eadweard Muybridge.
The Horse in Motion, 1878.
Muybridge’s obsession with motion
led him to produce thousands of
sequences like this one—and to
invent an early form of motion pictures.The American artist Thomas
Eakins also carried out important
photographic locomotion studies.
dramatically altered the way photographers
went about their work, especially because
now all they had to carry was a camera and
plates.There were even dry-emulsion tintype plates.
The birth of the dry plate led to the
development of gigantic new photographic
industries. Businesses like the Stanley Dry
Plate Company and the Standard Dry Plate
Company were established to manufacture
photographic plates. Other companies
arose to develop the plates, and to make
prints as well, if the photographer desired;
they were the beginning of the photofinishing industry.
Dry plate technology brought photograhpers one step closer to capturing
motion. For the first 50 years of photography’s existence, people inside and outside
the medium awaited the day when cameras
could capture unblurred images of people and things in motion. This feat was
finally accomplished by the photographer
Eadweard Muybridge. Born in England,
Muybridge came to the United States in
1850, where he became known for magnificent large prints and stereographic
views of the Pacific coast, particularly in
California’s Yosemite region.
Muybridge’s greatest photographic
achievement came as the result of a bet. In
1872, the wealthy owner of a string of race
horses—former governor of California and
university founder Leland Stanford—
wagered a friend that when a galloping
horse was moving at full speed it had all
four feet in the air at the same time. Since
this could not be detected by the naked
eye, it had always been assumed that a horse
had at least one foot on the ground during
full gallop.Artists had certainly painted it
that way.
Stanford hired Muybridge to take pictures that would enable him to win his bet.
In late 1872, Muybridge took a series of
photographs of one of the owner’s horses as
it raced around a track. The first results
were not conclusive, but they did give
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 18
Making and Using a Pinhole Camera
I
strong indication that, at various points, all
four of the horse’s feet were indeed off the
ground. Stanford asked Muybridge to try
again, but it was several years before he
could do so.Then, in June 1877 he set up
12 cameras side by side along the straightaway portion of Stanford’s track. He
installed a series of threads, one to each
camera, that the horse would strike breasthigh, breaking them and tripping the camera shutters one after another.The images
he captured proved beyond a shadow of a
doubt that the horse did, at various stages
of its gallop, have all four feet bunched
under its stomach, well off the turf.
Muybridge’s series of pictures, titled The
Horse in Motion, was widely published.
Painters, including the French military and
court painter Jean Meissonier and the two
most famous artists of the American West,
Frederic Remington and Charles Russell,
immediately changed the way they painted
horses in motion. Beginning in 1884,
Muybridge, photographing at the University of Pennsylvania, devoted himself to
taking sequence-picture studies of people
and animals on the move. Inspired by his
breakthrough, inventors began developing
more sophisticated equipment that would
soon make freezing motion in photographs
a common occurrence.
Not content with all that he had
achieved, Muybridge invented a kind of
giant slide projector, the zoopraxiscope, that
could show pictures in rapid succession. He
printed negatives of a sequence of pictures
showing a person or animal in motion
onto glass plates to get positive-image
slides.These were mounted on a large circular glass disk that revolved along with a
slotted metal shutter disk to bring each
n a high-tech age when
cameras are becoming
increasingly sophisticated, many people are
enjoying the experience
of making and taking pictures with a pinhole camera, whose principles go
back to the days before
photography.There are
even pinhole camera clubs
and regularly published
pinhole camera journals.
Here is how to make and
use a pinhole camera:
Find a can that has a
tight-fitting lid. A twopound coffee can or similar
can will work fine. If the
can has a plastic lid, paint
the lid black on both sides,
making sure that both sides
are completely blackened.
Paint the inside of the can
with dull black paint or
line it with black paper.
All this is to make sure that
no stray light enters or is
reflected inside your pinhole camera, which would
ruin your pictures.
Make a pinhole in the
center of the end of the
can opposite the removable
lid.You can make the hole
in the can itself or in a separate piece of thin metal,
such as a two-inch square
piece cut from an aluminum frozen food or
takeout food container.
To make the pinhole, use a
sewing needle, which you
should push through up to
about one-third of its
length, to get the full
diameter. If you make the
hole in the end of the can
itself, first push the needle
through a cork, which will
keep it from bending
when you tap on it with
a hammer to drive it
through the metal. Use an
emery board or sandpaper
to remove any rough edges
around the pinhole inside
the can. If you use a piece
of thin aluminum, place a
piece of corrugated cardboard under it and cover it
with a piece of cardboard
such as the back of a
notepaper pad before
pushing the needle
through (a thimble on
your finger will help).
Then make a hole about
the size of a dime in the
center of the end of the
can and mount the pinhole
piece over it, using black
masking or electrical tape.
Make a shutter for your
camera by cutting a flap of
thick black paper to go
over the pinhole.Tape it
along one edge to act as a
hinge and hold the opposite edge down with
a tape tab. Fold the end of
the tab over so you can lift
the shutter easily. Keep the
shutter closed over the
pinhole except when you
are taking a picture.
To load your camera,
buy 4-by-5-inch or 5-by7-inch photographic paper
from a photo dealer, if
available. Otherwise, buy a
10-sheet pack of 8-by-10inch paper. Be sure to get
single-weight fiber-base
paper, because you will be
making paper negatives to
print from. Double-weight
paper is too thick to print
through, and RC (resincoated) or plastic-base
papers will not transmit
any light. Do not open the
package in a lighted room, or
the paper will be ruined.
You must be in a totally
dark room illuminated
only by a red 7 1/2-watt
bulb, available at hardware
and photo stores. Cut a
piece of paper to fit inside
the removable lid of your
camera can. Place the
paper in the lid with its
emulsion (smooth, shiny)
side up.Tape all four corners to hold it in place. Put
the lid back on, with the
shutter closed over the
pinhole.Tape the lid all
around its edge to prevent
any possible light leaks
and to ensure that it does
not come off as you use
the camera.
With the camera
loaded, you are ready to
take a picture outdoors
(the light will not be
strong enough indoors).
You cannot hold the camera in your hands; it must
remain perfectly steady.
Use tape or a lump of
modeling clay to hold the
camera to a firm support,
such as a porch floor or
railing, the top of a patio
wall, or a wooden box that
you put wherever you
need it.With the camera
pointed at your chosen
subject (one that will not
move), make sure that the
sun does not shine directly
on the pinhole.You can
shade it with your hand or
a piece of cardboard if necessary.To make an exposure, lift the shutter flap to
uncover the pinhole for
about 30 seconds, then
tape it closed again.Take
the camera inside to your
darkroom with the red
bulb to remove the
exposed paper and reload.
If you develop your
own pictures, dry the paper
negative and make a contact print from it in the
normal way with the
emulsion (picture) side of
the paper negative toward
the emulsion (shiny) side
of the printing paper.
Otherwise, keep all your
exposed paper in a lighttight envelope until you
can get a friend to develop
and print your pictures
for you.
.......................................................................
BEGINNINGS • 19
In 1888, the United States
Patent Office issued this
patent to George Eastman
for the Kodak camera.
Given the phenomenal
number of Kodak cameras
that were sold worldwide,
it was among the most
valuable of all patents
issued in the 19th century.
Illustrations demonstrate
how the interior mechanisms worked.
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picture into position behind the projector
lens, one after another. As the disks rotated,
the audience saw a series of images on the
screen. As the disks rotated faster, the
images changed more rapidly until astonishingly they fused into the illusion of continuous movement. The zoopraxiscope
dramatically proved that photography could
not only capture movement but could
reproduce it as well. Although movies, soon
to be invented, used flexible film, not slides,
and a completely different kind of projector, Muybridge had laid a foundation for
the development of motion pictures.
The introduction of faster (more light
sensitive) gelatin emulsions in the 1880s
made shorter exposures possible and created a need for mechanical shutters that
could open and close the lens in a fraction
of a second.These developments also made
it possible to hold a camera in one’s hands
while taking a picture, instead of mounting it on a tripod. Hand-held glass-plate
cameras were manufactured, but another
major advance came when it was discovered how to coat emulsion onto a thin,
transparent material called celluloid. Sheets
of celluloid-base film quickly replaced glass
plates.The sheets were made in the same
sizes as the various standard glass plates, so
the same cameras, lenses, and plate holders
could be used, but the film weighed much
less and did not break if it was dropped or
mishandled.
Before long, many photographers realized that instead of carrying several holders
loaded with individual sheets of film, it
would be far more convenient if film came
in continuous, flexible rolls that could be
cranked through the camera to record several different negatives on a single strip.The
images could be cut apart for printing after
they were developed.
The man responsible for perfecting this
flexible film was George Eastman. He was a
pioneer in the making of dry glass plates,
and in the early 1880s his factory was one of
the busiest in the nation. He was a true
innovator and began experimenting with a
whole new system for taking pictures. He
knew that his idea, if successful, would
replace dry plates, but he was convinced that
the flexible film he had in mind could revolutionize photography and make him an
even greater fortune. After many attempts,
he succeeded in perfecting a paper negative
film with a gelatin emulsion. He also invented roll holders for the new film in sizes that
would fit into any camera.
Eastman then went a step further. He
developed a new type of hand-held camera
designed to use his flexible film and to
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 20
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make picture taking easier than ever before.
He named his camera the Kodak and
introduced it to the world in 1888.The
word “Kodak” had no meaning. Always a
businessman, Eastman invented a name that
he thought was “catchy,” was simple
enough for people to remember easily, and
that would be pronounced the same in
almost any language.
The Kodak camera was a small box,
slightly over 6 inches long, 3 1/2 inches
wide, and less than 4 inches high. Inside
was a roll of flexible film, enough to capture 100 pictures. (The paper-base film was
replaced after the first year with Eastman’s
new flexible celluloid-base film.) The
loaded camera cost $25. When all the pictures had been taken, the owner sent the
entire camera and $10 to the Eastman
Kodak factory where mounted prints were
made from the negatives.The prints were
then shipped back to the owner, along with
the camera containing a new roll of film.
Referring to it as a “photographic notebook,” George Eastman made a point of
describing what he felt his camera had
brought to the world.“Photography,” he
wrote,“is thus brought within the reach of
every human being who desires to preserve
a record of what he sees. Such a photographic notebook is an enduring record of
many things seen only once in a lifetime
and enables the fortunate possessor to go
back by the light of his own fireside to
scenes which would otherwise fade from
memory and be lost.”
To support the sales of the Kodak Camera, Eastman conducted one of the most
intensive advertising campaigns that had
ever been mounted. Almost all the ads contained the slogan “You press the button, we
do the rest.” The response was immediate,
and greater than Eastman could have imagined. Camera and other retail stores everywhere featured the Kodak. Hundreds
of thousands of amateurs—ordinary people who had shied away from taking pictures because of the difficult procedures
involved—eagerly paid $25 for a camera
that was so easy to operate and could preserve their memories of the large and small
events of their lives. That still was too
expensive for many families in the 1890s,
when the average laborer and shop clerk
earned less than $1,000 a year.To reach
them, Eastman produced smaller, less
expensive Kodak models with shorter rolls
of film that users could load and unload
themselves. And, just after 1900 he introduced the Brownie camera, intended especially for young people, in models priced
from $1 to $5. Now anyone and everyone
could afford to take pictures.Total camera
sales rapidly reached into the millions.The
era of the snapshot had begun.
In the United States and soon in countries around the world, Kodaks were carried everywhere.The Kodak became an
integral part of family gatherings, outings,
and celebrations. And as the automobile
became common in the early 20th century,
families who found the car a new means of
visiting places once considered too distant
now took along a Kodak camera as naturally as they included a picnic basket and a
road map. George Eastman had done much
more than invent a camera. He had placed
photography in the hands of millions.
Eastman’s Brownie Camera
was incredibly easy to use.
To attract young users, the
Brownie was named after a
highly popular comic strip
character and was packaged
in a box that featured pictures
of the well-known character.
George Eastman spent millions of
dollars advertising his Kodak camera
at the turn of the 20th century.The
slogan contained in almost all of these
ads became famous around the globe.
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BEGINNINGS • 21
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Chapter
. . . . . . . .Two
...............................................................
Portraiture
F
Louis Pierson. Countess
Castiglione, about 1860.
The French court photographer Louis
Pierson took more than 400 portraits
of the Countess Castiglione, considered the most beautiful woman of her
time, during a 40-year collaboration.
The photographs, commissioned by the
countess and created under her supervision, were both self-advertisement
and self-expression.
rom the earliest days of photography,
the taking of portraits has been by
far the most common of all photographic endeavors. It would be hard
to name a photographer of any merit who
either did not begin by taking portraits
or did not include portrait taking in his or
her career.
The obvious appeal of portraits is that
they provide us with a likeness of someone
we know or admire. But what talented photographers have understood from the beginning is that a true portrait is not simply a
record of someone’s appearance, it is a visual
depiction of that person’s spirit and character.
In 1856, the French photographer Nadar
(Gaspard Félix Tournachon) described the
challenges of taking portraits with a camera.
“Photography,” he wrote,“is a marvelous
discovery, a science that has attracted the
greatest intellects, an art that excites the most
astute minds. . . . Photographic theory can be
taught in an hour, the basic technique in a
day. But what cannot be taught is the feeling
for light. . . . It is how light lies on the face
that you as an artist must capture. Nor can
one be taught how to grasp the personality
of the sitter. To produce an intimate likeness
rather than a banal portrait, the result of
mere chance, you must put yourself at once
in communion with the sitter, size up his
thoughts and his very character.”
Nineteenth-century American photographer Alice Boughton agreed with Nadar
and added her own thoughts on yet another
challenge of photographic portrait taking.
“The painter,” she explained,“usually has
several sittings, sees his subject under varying
conditions in different moods, has a chance,
in short, to become acquainted with the
personality he is to portray. The photographer, on the other hand, has one moderately
short session.”
Like photography itself, photographic
portraiture began with the daguerreotype.
Given their primitive equipment and the
fact that they were learning the infant art of
photography “on the job,” most daguerreotypists contented themselves with producing
as clear a picture as they could and on
attracting as many customers as possible.
Even so, many of the daguerreotypes they
produced revealed more than simply what
the subject of the portrait looked like.
Because of the props used in many
daguerreotypes and the clothing worn by
.......................................................................
PORTRAITURE • 23
Photographic portraiture began
with the daguerreotype. From the
beginning, many daguerreotypists
added to the interest of their pictures by including objects that
were important to their subjects.
Image Not Available
In the early days of photography it
was common practice for relatives
to have pictures taken of the
recently deceased before they were
buried, such as this portrait of a
dead preacher from 1888.
Image Not Available
the sitters, these early portraits often reveal
much about social conditions of the times.
A daguerreotype of a well-dressed seamstress posed at her sewing machine, for
example, shows us that by the early 1850s
the sewing machine had replaced hand
stitching in much clothes production. It also
provides visual evidence that the clothesmaking industry had a social importance
beyond just the items produced. It lets us
know that at a time when it was widely
believed, particularly by men, that a
woman’s place was in the home, the job
of seamstress was one of the few wageearning occupations open to females.
Of all those who took up photography
almost immediately after the medium was
introduced two Boston daguerreotypists,
working between 1841 and 1862, proved
to be the most accomplished portraitists of
all.Their names were Albert Southworth
and Josiah Hawes. Southworth had been a
pharmacist before becoming fascinated
with the early daguerreotypes he saw. He
bought a camera from Samuel F. B. Morse
and taught himself the process. Hawes, a
carpenter and a part-time artist, was also
self-taught. From the beginning, both partners recognized the opportunities that the
newly invented field of photography presented to them. “I cannot in a letter
describe all the wonders of this Apparatus,”
Southworth wrote of his daguerreotype
camera.“Suffice it to say that I can now
make a perfect picture in one hour’s time
that it would take a Painter weeks to draw.”
And Hawes wrote, “As I was one of the
first in the business, I had the whole field
before me.”
Southworth and Hawes were among the
most imaginative of all the daguerreotypists.
Unlike their fellow pioneer photographers
who posed their sitters stiffly in front of their
cameras, the partners continually found ways
to capture their subjects in natural postures.
When one of their subjects stood by chance
in a shaft of sunlight, for example, they recognized the dramatic spotlight effect and
posed their subject in it.They posed some
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 24
The Challenges of Sitting for a Daguerreotype
P
subjects comfortably leaning against chairs
or sofas and showed others in positions that
suggested that they were unaware that their
picture was being taken. Although they
were limited to the use of sunlight coming
through the studio skylights and windows,
they contrasted light tones with dark so
effectively that they set a standard for future
photographers, even those who would have
the advantage of casting light on their subjects with electrical apparatus. One of their
most significant innovations was that of creating photographic “crayon portraits.”
Named for the charcoal and pastel style
used by many artists, these pictures were
distinguished by the way Southworth and
Hawes created portraits by letting the head
and shoulders of a subject “float” in an
undefined surrounding.
Scores of the images captured by Southworth and Hawes were displayed in their
elegant studio and gallery. It was but one of
many similarly sumptuous galleries in the
United States that, by the 1850s, captured
the admiration of both American customers and foreign visitors. Here is how a
French photographic journal described
these establishments: “The American
daguerreotypists,” the journal stated, go to
an enormous expense for their rooms,
which are most elegantly furnished. . . .
Marble, carved in columns or animated by
the chisel of the sculptor, richly embroidered and costly draperies, paintings
enclosed by sumptuous frames, adorn their
walls. On the floor lie rich carpets where
the foot falls in silence. Here are gilded
cages with birds from every clime, warbling
amidst exotic plants whose flowers perfume
the air under the softened light of the sun.
ortraiture, like photography itself, began with
the daguerreotype, and
having a daguerreotype
taken was a challenging
experience.“It’s no use
going to have your portrait
taken by our friend Camera unless you can sit [perfectly] still,” wrote the
author of one of the earliest books on photography.
In order to help their
sitters hold a pose, daguerreotypists employed various props and techniques.
They often had a subject
lean forward with his arms
on the back of a chair or
couch where a second person was seated.Another
technique was to place a
table with a stack of books
on it alongside the subject.
The sitter could then hold
a steady pose by placing
one elbow on the books
and resting his or her chin
on the upraised hand.
A waist-high pedestal
was also often used, to give
a standing subject someplace to rest his or her
hands.The most widely
used device for keeping a
subject still throughout the
exposure was a so-called
head clamp. It was a metal
half-circle on a vertical rod
weighted at the bottom so
it would not tip over. The
sitter’s head could rest back
against the device while his
or her body concealed it
from view.
For the person who
wanted as pleasing a portrait as possible, sitting perfectly still was far from the
only challenge. In order to
get a likeness that would
be acceptable to them, sitters had to assume and
then maintain as natural a
facial expression as possible. Since most early
daguerreotype photographers were totally consumed with the technical
aspects of operating the
camera during the sessions,
it was most often left to
the subject to strike the
attitude and expression he
or she wanted to reveal.
Commenting on the
skill required of the sitter,
novelist N. P. Willis observed,“Some of us know
better than others how to
put on the best look. Some
are handsome only when
talking. Some only when
the features are in repose,
some have more character
in the full face, some in the
profile; some do the
writhings of life’s agonies
with their hearts and wear
smooth faces, some do the
same work with their nostrils.A portrait-painter usually takes all these matters
into account, and, with his
dozen or more long sittings, has time enough to
make a careful study of
how the character is
worked out in the physiognomy and to paint
accordingly. But in
daguerreotyping, the sitter
has to employ this knowledge and exercise this
judgement for himself.”
American philosopher
and author Ralph Waldo
Emerson described this
role of the sitter in just
nine words.After having
his portrait taken by a
daguerreotypist who gave
his full attention to the
mechanics of the process,
Emerson summed up his
experience by stating,“The
artist stands aside and lets
you paint yourself.”
Image Not Available
Sitting for an early daguerreotype with one’s head supported by a clamp was an
arduous and often painful experience. But for millions, the chance to be recorded for
posterity was worth the ordeal.
........................................................................
PORTRAITURE • 25
Albert Southworth and Josiah
Hawes. Untitled daguerreotype,
about 1854.
Southworth and Hawes are considered
to have been the most skilled and sensitive of all daguerreotypists, particularly
in their ability to produce family portraits such as this one. As one photohistorian has noted, their greatest
accomplishment was “achieving an
informality and depth of character that
were novel at the time.”
Like many of their fellow
daguerreotypists, Southworth
and Hawes advertised their services widely. Many of their ads
contained the statement,“We
aim in our profession to please
Artists, and those whose tastes
for the fine arts have been cultivated and refined.”
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This is the American studio. Everything is
here united to distract the mind of the visitor from his cares and give to his countenance an expression of calm contentment.
The merchant, the physician, the lawyer,
the manufacturer, even the restless politician, here forget their labors. Surrounded
thus, how is it possible to hesitate at the
cost of a portrait?”
It is interesting that while taking photographs is almost always an individual
endeavor and partnerships in picture taking
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have been rare, the two most outstanding
collections of early portraits were produced
by photographic partnerships.Two years
after Southworth and Hawes began taking
their daguerreotypes, a pair of Scottish photographers joined forces and started capturing portraits by using the calotype process.
Their names were David Octavius Hill
and Robert Adamson, and theirs was a true
partnership, with each man responsible for
specific tasks. An established portrait
painter, Hill’s role was to direct the taking
of each portrait. He set the pose of each
subject and decided which props and background would be used in each picture.
Adamson worked the camera and developed and printed each photograph.
Hill and Adamson took their pictures
during an era when the gulf between rich
and poor in Scotland, as in many other
nations, was enormously wide. It was a time
when having one’s portrait captured by a
renowned painter or photographer was
considered to be a true indication of social
status. As the partners’ reputation for the
quality of their work grew, scores of wealthy
people along with Scotland’s most notable
figures flocked to Hill’s home, where their
pictures were taken in full sunlight in front
of the house. Although outside, drapes and
furniture were arranged to make the picture
look like an interior room. Not content
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 26
Marcelin. Portraits of Yesteryear
and Today, 1856.
Unlike artists who could fancifully
portray even their most unattractive
subjects in an appealing manner, a
photographer, for the most part, was
limited by what his or her camera
“saw.” In this French cartoon,
“autrefois” (yesteryear) refers to the
period of portrait painting, before
the advent of photography, as
opposed to “aujourd’hui” (today).
with focusing solely on the rich and
famous, the partners on many occasions
packed all their equipment in a horsecart
and hauled it off to nearby fishing villages,
where they took pictures of the sailors and
fishermen who inhabited the docks.
Whether their subject was a wealthy
woman dressed in an elegant silk gown or
a humble fisherman garbed in his working clothes, Hill’s background as an artist
was the greatest influence in the way they
approached each portrait. Hill was
arguably the first photographer to deliberately create photographs that looked
like fine paintings. He brought the paintinglike contrast of shade and light to the
pictures that Adamson exposed by purposely posing his sunlit subjects against
dark backgrounds.
Hill was also aided by the primitive
nature of the calotype itself. The paper
negatives used in producing calotypes were
often uneven in texture, so not all details
were recorded with precision. Many of the
images the partners captured looked as if
they had been produced as much with a
brush stroke as with a camera.
Most significant is the fact that in Hill
and Adamson’s finest portraits the subject
seems to be engaged in something other
than having a picture taken, such as reading
or paying attention to something outside
the frame.These “dynamic” poses give the
pictures a feeling of a brief moment captured, in spite of the fact that the subject
was carefully positioned to avoid any accidental movement and the exposures were
on the order of 30 to 60 seconds.
Napoleon Sarony had a passion for the
theater. He loved to attend performances
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and to be in the company of the stars of hit
plays. Enchanted also with photography, he
was aware that several portrait painters had
built successful careers by responding to the
public’s appetite for likenesses of their
favorite actors and actresses. In 1857 he
opened a photographic studio in the heart
of New York’s bustling theatre district.
Sarony had a personality as colorful as
the performers whose pictures he took. He
dressed himself in gaudy vests, tucked his
pants into high cavalry boots, and topped
his outfit off with an exotic Russian hat
made from curly lamb’s wool. He was also a
great showman. He filled his studio with
exotic curiosities such as suits of armor,
Egyptian mummies, and stuffed crocodiles.
He used a few of them as props, but most
were there simply to satisfy Sarony’s desire
to attract attention. It worked. Crowds
peered through the windows of the studio,
gazing at the objects and hoping to catch a
glimpse of the actors and actresses who, in
increasing numbers, came to the studio to
have their pictures taken.
By the time Sarony began his portrait
taking, wet plate photography had replaced
the daguerreotype and the calotype as the
basic photographic method.After Sarony
took each of his theatrical portraits, he
mounted it on a sturdy 4-by-5 1/2-inch
piece of finished cardboard called a cabinet
card and signed his name below the picture
Robert Adamson and David
Octavius Hill. Handyside Ritchie
and John Henning, 1850.
Hill and Adamson often added
to the dramatic effect of their
portraits by posing their subjects
against a totally dark background, as in their portrait of
two well-known English gentlemen, Handyside Ritchie and
John Henning.
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PORTRAITURE • 27
Napoleon Sarony.
Miss Anderson as
Galatea, about
1880.
Sarony’s photograph
of the actress known
as Miss Anderson,
in costume for a
role, was typical of
the flair that he
brought to his theatrical portraiture.
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with a flourish. He sold so many of these
cabinet cards that many of the world’s
greatest stars and playwrights, such as Sarah
Bernhardt and Oscar Wilde, always anxious
for as much publicity as they could get,
traveled to New York at their own expense
to have Sarony take their picture.
Before Sarony’s career was over, he produced some 40,000 theatrical portraits.
Unlike daguerreotype and calotype portraits, which were bought almost exclusively by the subjects of these images, Sarony’s
pictures were purchased in great numbers
by the public at large. In the process, Sarony
made a great deal of money. Just as important to him, he became almost as much of a
celebrity as many of those whose portraits
he took.
At the same time that Napoleon Sarony
was taking his celebrity portraits, Gaspard
Félix Tournachon, who called himself
Nadar, was taking pictures of famous people in Paris. His subjects included such
celebrities as the composers Giacchino
Rossini and Hector Berlioz; writers Victor
Hugo, Charles Baudelaire, and George
Sand; artists Honoré Daumier, Gustave
Doré, Eugene Delacroix, and Jean-François
Millet; the world-famous actress Sarah
Bernhardt; and leading statesmen—
virtually everyone of significance in art,
literature, theater, politics, and intellectual
endeavors.
A lithographer and accomplished caricaturist as well as a photographer, Nadar
was a tireless individual. Along with his
drawings, sketches, and portraits, he illustrated books and wrote novels. And he was
a photographic innovator. He was the first
photographer to take pictures by electric
light, and produced the first photographs of
the catacombs and sewers that lie underneath Paris. In 1856, he became the first
person to take pictures from a balloon. But
he is best remembered for the power of his
portraits, images distinguished by the dramatic lighting effects he achieved by posing
his subjects under a high skylight against a
plain dark background.
Over the years, some portraits have been
so compelling that they seem to get the
very soul of the person photographed. One
of the earliest of these images was Alexander
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 28
The French photographer Gaspard
Félix Tournachon, better known as
Nadar, was one of the most accomplished and successful of all mid19th-century portraitists. His
elaborate studio in Paris had roof
gardens for outdoor photographing.
Gardner’s portrait of Abraham Lincoln.A
native of Scotland, Gardner moved to
the United States with his family in 1856
and was soon hired by Mathew B. Brady
to serve as a photographic assistant in one
of his New York galleries and then as manager of Brady’s Washington, D.C., establishment. When the Civil War erupted,
Gardner became one of the key members
of Brady’s corps of photographers who
so skillfully photographed almost all aspects
of the conflict. His most compelling image
was his Lincoln portrait, taken in 1865,
just weeks before the American President
was assassinated.
Abraham Lincoln was the most photographed individual of his or any previous
time. One of Brady’s photographs of him
was used on the U.S. five-dollar bill until
the year 2000, when the design of the bill
was changed.Another Brady image of Lincoln, widely circulated as a carte-de-visite
when he was running for President, was
credited by Lincoln as being instrumental
in his election. But Gardner’s portrait is the
most compelling of all.
In taking the picture, Gardner focused
on the exhaustion and sadness expressed in
Lincoln’s eyes. He captured an image that
went to the very soul of a man ravaged by
his role as the leader of a nation at war with
itself, a conflict in which more than
650,000 of his countrymen were killed.
Today, more than 135 years after it was
taken, Gardner’s photograph remains a
symbol of the tragedy of the American
Civil War.
Among the early portraitists was a
woman who, through the body of work
she produced, is widely regarded as one of
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the true photographic geniuses of the 19th
century. Her name was Julia Margaret
Cameron and she was the wife of a distinguished English jurist and classical scholar.
When their children reached adulthood,
she often found herself lonely.Then her
married daughter gave her a camera.The
gift changed her life. She was almost 50
years old, when she took her first picture in
1863 but from that moment on photography became her great passion.
At first Cameron concentrated on taking
allegorical photographs using human models to portray scenes from the Bible.Then
she turned to producing photographic illustrations of well-known works of poetry. But
she found her greatest joy and achieved her
greatest artistry in taking portraits.
Cameron and her well-connected husband were friendly with some of the most
accomplished men of their time. Their
home was on the Isle of Wight, where they
lived next door to the renowned poet
Alfred Lord Tennyson.Among other friends
were the astronomer Sir John Herschel, the
Alexander Gardner. Portrait of
Abraham Lincoln, 1865.
Gardner’s portrait of Abraham
Lincoln, taken at the very end of the
Civil War, revealed the anguish suffered by the man whose fate it was to
have been President of a nation torn
apart by a devastating war.
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PORTRAITURE • 29
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Julia Margaret Cameron. Sir John Herschel,
1869.
One of the innovations that Cameron brought to
her portraiture was photographing her sitters closeup, emphasizing their faces.This technique, which
she used in her portrait of British astronomer Sir
John Herschel, was well ahead of its time.
Julia Margaret Cameron. Portrait of
Mary Hiller, about 1870.
Cameron was a photographer devoted to
expanding the horizons of the medium.
“My aspirations,” she wrote,“are to
ennoble Photography and to secure for it
the character and uses of High Art.”
naturalist and author Charles Darwin, and
poets Robert Browning and Henry
Wadsworth Longfellow. Although she took
hundreds of pictures of her relatives,
friends, and servants, particularly the several
maids who attended her and her neighbors’ households, most of her time was
consumed in capturing likenesses of her
famous acquaintances.
In taking her portraits, Cameron often
employed “improper” techniques in an
effort to obtain images with a personal,
intimate feeling. She sometimes adjusted
her camera or used poor-quality lenses to
achieve soft focus or suppress extraneous
details in a picture to achieve a sense of
mood or “atmosphere” that she felt revealed
the true nature of the person shown.
Above everything else Cameron was a
perfectionist. She spent what seemed to her
sitters like hours positioning and repositioning them and adjusting her camera
until she felt they had assumed the ideal
mood and expression. Her camera used
full-size glass plates, which required exposures of up to five minutes. One of her
neighbors, the celebrated essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle, found his one experience in front of her camera so torturous that
he emphatically announced that he would
never allow her to photograph him again.
Undaunted, Cameron continued to
demand much of herself and her subjects.
Partly it was due to her perfectionist nature.
But there was a loftier reason as well.
Cameron was deeply aware of both the
privilege and the responsibility attached to
recording the likenesses of some of the
world’s most important individuals.“When I
have had such men before my camera,” she
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 30
explained,“my whole soul has endeavored
to do its duty toward them in recording
faithfully the greatness of the inner as well
as the features of the outer man.The photograph thus taken has been almost the
embodiment of a prayer.”
Typical of Cameron’s portraits is her
photograph of famed British astronomer
Sir John Herschel. As one studies the
image, it becomes clear how Cameron’s
belief that “the eyes are the window to the
soul” influenced the nature of her portraits. By using lenses that filled the picture
frame with the head and shoulders of the
subject, she gave photography its first true
physical close-up portraits. And by capturing her subjects as they lapsed into their
own thoughts or moods, she provided the
first psychological close-ups as well.
Cameron was able to achieve a greater
intensity of connection between viewer
and subject than perhaps any other 19thcentury portraitist.
By the last decades of the 1880s, scores
of inventions had led to revolutions in both
industry and transportation. More goods
were being produced around the world than
ever before. People were traveling about
faster and in more different ways than could
ever have been imagined. It was regarded as
an age of progress, a time worthy of celebration. Much of this celebration took
form in a number of world’s fairs and international expositions staged to honor past
triumphs and to present indications of even
greater accomplishments that lay ahead.
By this time also, photography had
become embedded in the consciousness of
people throughout the world. Camera
clubs were common not only in major
cities but in smaller communities as well.
Photographic organizations in the United
States, England, France, Germany, and other
nations regularly held exhibitions, sold
photographs, and awarded coveted prizes to
the photographers whose work was judged
most outstanding. Photographs also played
a prominent role in many of the exhibits
erected at the world’s fairs and expositions.
Some of these expositions, in fact, honored
the medium itself by including a Hall of
Photography.
Of all the photographs displayed at these
expositions few captured visitors’ attention
more than images of Native Americans. By
the time that these pictures were hung, the
Indians had lost their bitter struggle against
As the popularity of photography
increased so too did the regular appearance of major photographic exhibitions
such as the annual exposition of The
London Photographic Society, shown
here in 1858. Commenting on the
importance of such exhibitions, the
London Times claimed they were
“the best attainable index of thoughts
and tastes of the people who flourished
during that particular year.”
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PORTRAITURE • 31
Photography: International From the Beginning
P
hotography was born
almost simultaneously
in France and England, and was introduced
almost immediately into
the United States. It was
in these locations that the
various earliest forms of
the medium were developed and flourished.
Almost from the beginning, however, the roots of
the medium were planted
in other far-flung areas of
the world. In a relatively
short time, photography
became international in
scope.The following are
some early examples.
In December 1839, a
Belgian priest, Father
Louis Compte, landed at
the Brazilian port of Bahia.
Father Compte was the
proud owner of a daguerreotype camera and was
adept at taking pictures.
News of his presence in
Brazil caught the attention
of Brazilian Emperor Dom
Pedro II de Alcântara, who
invited the priest to come
to his palace in Rio de
Janeiro to demonstrate the
amazing procedure called
photography.
Father Compte’s demonstration inspired several
of those in attendance to
become daguerreotypists,
including Florencio Valera,
a resident of Uruguay who
was visiting Brazil. In 1845,
Valera traveled to Europe,
where he bought a daguerreotype camera.When he
returned to Uruguay he
became instrumental in
introducing photography
to that nation.
Of all the Latin American countries, the daguerreotype gained the greatest
popularity in Argentina.
The first photographic
gallery in Argentina’s capital city of Buenos Aires was
opened in June 1843 by a
bookseller, Gregorio Ibarra.
In the next two years several foreigners also opened
daguerreotype studios
there, including the Americans John Bennett and
John Elliot, and the Englishmen Robert Leys and
Thomas Helsby. By 1850, a
young Argentinean, Antonio Pozzo, had become
the country’s best-known
daguerreotypist.Trained by
both Bennett and Helsby,
Pozzo photographed
almost all his nation’s most
important figures.
As in Latin America,
photography also gained an
important early foothold in
both New Zealand and
India. In New Zealand one
pioneer photographer
exerted enormous influence. His name was William
Meluish and he had been
one of Australia’s earliest
daguerreotypists before
opening a studio in New
Zealand. Meluish not only
took masterful daguerreotypes but spent much time
teaching the skill to scores
of aspiring photographers,
including many members
of his own family. In the
1860s he became equally
adept both in taking cartesde-visite and in teaching
this skill as well. For the
images he captured and the
work of those he taught,
Meluish is regarded by
many as the father of New
Zealand photography.
The early popularity of
photography in India, particularly in Bombay, was
also due in great measure
to the contributions of one
the imposing white civilization, had been
stripped of their lands, and had been
forcibly moved onto United States government reservations. Aware that people
everywhere were fascinated by the rich and
ancient cultures of the Indians, by their
dress and customs, and by the stories of the
heroic deeds they had performed, promoters paid many Native Americans to leave
their reservations temporarily and appear
and be photographed at the expositions.
One of the scores of photographers
who took advantage of this opportunity
was Nebraska photographer Frank Rinehart. As the official photographer of the
Trans-Mississippi International Exposition
of 1898, Rinehart took scores of Native
American portraits. He was an accom-
pioneer photographer,
Hurrychind Chintamon.
By the late 1850s the
carte-de-visite had been
introduced into India,
where it became extremely
popular, particularly among
the wealthy people of
Bombay. Chintamon was
the most masterful and
most successful of the early
Indian photographers who
captured carte-de visite
images of literary, political,
and business figures. Chintamon’s most famous
carte was a portrait of the
Maharaja of Baroda.Thousands of these images were
distributed throughout
India. Countless others
were sent to places as far
away as China, where
they may well have been
the first photographs
many people there had
ever encountered.
plished photographer, with a flair for the
dramatic. But he was also a sensitive man,
well aware of the tragic fate the Indians had
suffered. His image of a young Indian chief
dressed in a war bonnet and other symbols
of his rank is typical of the insight he
brought to all his portraits. Reflected in the
chief ’s expression is the fierce pride of the
Native Americans. But etched in his face
also is the sadness of a people who had lost
so much.
Frank Rinehart succeeded in preserving
images of people whose ways of life had forever changed.Two other photographers,
August Sander and Doris Ulmann, undertook lengthy projects in which they sought,
through portraits, to reveal specific classes of
people and the type of work they did.
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 32
Sander and Ulmann lived worlds apart.
Sander, a German, was a person of modest
means from a family of coal miners.
Ulmann was a very wealthy American. Selftaught in photography, Sander began his
project in 1911 when he was 35 years old.
He titled it Man of the Twentieth Century. He
began by making a list of the various occupational types he wished to portray. He
decided to take most of his photographs in
his native Westerwald region because he
knew it so well.“These people whose way
of life I had known from my youth,” he
wrote, “appealed to me because of their
closeness to nature.” Each day he rode his
bicycle to a different area of the region,
where he captured portraits of tradesmen,
laborers, and countless other types. Because
Sander was known to them, his subjects
posed willingly for his camera.The trust
they had both in his abilities and in the
nature of his project resulted in the naturalness of each of the images he captured.
Sander’s plan was to capture some 600
portraits of his countrymen. But because he
had the misfortune to be photographing as
the German Nazi regime came into power,
he was able to capture far fewer images. In
1929 he produced a book featuring many
of the photographs he had already taken.
The Nazis eventually banned the book,
raided his studio, and destroyed many
pictures, because they felt that Sander’s
honest pictures depicted people not representative of the master race they wished to
create. Determined to save as much of his
work as possible, Sander hid his negatives in
the countryside. After the Nazis were
defeated in World War II, the negatives that
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had survived were reclaimed, newly printed,
and widely distributed. Today they are recognized as a masterful depiction of a particular people at a specific time in history.
Much of August Sander’s photographic
genius lay in his ability to avoid stereotyping the people he photographed. His pictures reveal the individuality of his subjects
as well as their social roles.The same can be
said of many of the portraits taken by Doris
Ulmann.
Ulmann learned photography by attending courses taught by the master photographic teacher Clarence White, one of the
Frank Rinehart. Portrait of
an Indian chief, about 1880.
Each article of clothing and ceremonial equipment with which
a Native American chief
adorned himself had tribal or
cultural significance.Whenever
they could, portraitists of the
Native Americans, like
Rinehart, posed their subjects
attired in authentic costume.
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PORTRAITURE • 33
August Sander. Coal
delivery man, about 1915.
Sander’s Man of the
Twentieth Century photographic project included this
image of a man whose job it
was to deliver coal. Sander
defined the purpose of his
project by stating,“Let me
speak the truth in all honesty
about our age and the people
of our age.”
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leaders of the art photography movement
called pictorialism (see Chapter 4). During
the first decade of the 1900s, she concentrated on taking portraits of the scores of
rich and famous men and women who
traveled in the same social circles as she did.
Eventually, however, she became bored with
this work.
She decided to undertake a personal
project that would result in portraits of a
very different type of people. She chose as
her subjects the men, women, and children
whose families had, for generations, been
living in the remote Appalachian region of
the United States. At a time when an enormous tide of immigration had recently
changed the face of the United States, she
became determined to preserve the faces of
what she and many others regarded as
American types.
Attended by a servant, driven by a chauffeur, and attired in a spotless white dress and
gloves, Ulmann traveled throughout the
mountains and valleys of Appalachia carrying out her project. Unlike August Sander,
she was completely unknown to those
whose portraits she took. Her lifestyle was as
different from theirs as could be imagined.
These were simple, hard-working people
whose families for generations had experienced none of the luxuries and few of the
conveniences of life.Yet she had a marvelous ability to put each of those she photographed at ease.
Although her training in pictorialism
often is evident in the style of her portraits,
they go beyond being illustrations or art
studies.They not only reveal the character
of her subjects but include many of the
objects that were a vital part of their everyday lives.The images she captured became
important not only to people interested in
photography but to sociologists and historians as well. Her portrait of an Appalachian
woman, for example, reveals the distinctive
head covering that women in that region
had worn for generations.The picture thus
includes evidence of a sustained, unchanging cultural element. By producing such a
vital depiction, Doris Ulmann, like August
Sander, gave a whole new meaning to what
portraiture could achieve.
Another woman photographer, Consuelo Kanaga, devoted much of her portrait
work to African Americans.“I love to photograph black people,” Kanaga stated,“to
try to capture the strength and dignity I so
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 34
Consuelo Kanaga. Young Girl
in Profile, 1948.
Kanaga was a deeply spiritual
person. She believed that by portraying the inner beauty of her
subjects she was performing a religious exercise.
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often find in their faces.” Kanaga was only
21 when, in 1915, she became one of the
first female news photographers, working
first for the San Francisco Chronicle and later
for the San Francisco Daily News. The news
photographs she took and the photo essays
she created for these and other publications
in the 1920s through the 1940s went
beyond demonstrating her skill with a
camera.They revealed the deep compassion
she felt for all those she photographed, particularly those living in poverty or affected
by such injustices as racial prejudice.
Kanaga’s greatest photographic passion,
however, was that of taking portraits. And it
was through portraiture that she captured
many of her most vital images. She was a
meticulous worker who spent long hours
in the darkroom.“I found,” she wrote late
in her life,“that my portraits really stand on
their own because I put a lot into them and
wanted them to be beautiful. I had to make
fifty prints to get one that I liked, so that’s
why I never did get rich.”
Kanaga’s compassion for her subjects
and her appreciation of the beauty of black
facial features can be seen in portraits such
as Young Girl in Profile and Frances with a
Flower. In Young Girl in Profile, Kanaga
achieved the dramatic effect she sought by
contrasting the dark skin and hair of her
subject with the whiteness of her blouse
and hair ribbon. She enhanced the contrast
by having light fall upon the girl’s ear and
lower lip. Her ability to contrast deep
shades of black with splashes of brilliant
whites is evident also in Frances with a
Flower. Here the white of the flower provides the contrast. By taking this portrait
close-up, Kanaga was able to emphasize the
texture of the girl’s black skin which she
admired so much.
The work of outstanding studio portraitists in the 19th and early 20th centuries
paved the way for Consuelo Kanaga and
the many others who, in modern times,
have continued to make portraiture a vital
form of photography. Modern formal portrait photographers have recognized that
the basic elements that go into capturing
an outstanding portrait—pose, facial expression, lighting, and props—have remained
virtually the same as in earlier days. Most
important, they are aware that masterful
portraits are those that depict much more
than a simple likeness of the subject.
There is another link with the past as
well. Just as early portrait photographers
such as Mathew Brady and Napoleon
Sarony built careers on the public’s appetite
for pictures of the well known, many modern photographers have attained significant
success by recording the likenesses of
famous men and women.
Among these photographers was the
Canadian Yousuf Karsh. In 1924, when he
was 15 years old, Karsh fled Turkish brutality in his native Armenia (then part of
Turkey). He went to live with an uncle
who had a photographic studio in the
Canadian province of Quebec.When the
uncle discovered that Yousuf had a talent for
photography, he arranged for his nephew
to be apprenticed to the successful Boston
portrait photographer John Garo.
Karsh remained with Garo for three
years, learning the techniques that would
eventually distinguish his work. Among
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Consuelo Kanaga. Frances
with a Flower, 1948.
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PORTRAITURE • 35
Yousuf Karsh. Winston
Churchill, 1941.
Karsh spent more than 50 years
photographing the most famous
people in the world, including
Prime Minister Winston
Churchill of Britain.The acclaim
he received was so widespread that
he became as famous as the
celebrities whose portraits he took.
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these techniques was an emphasis on strong
lighting, making visible the smallest characteristic details of the face, which would
become his hallmark. During his apprenticeship Karsh also discovered that the most
effective portraits he took were those in
which he relied on his subjects’ poses and
facial expressions rather than on props or
elaborate settings. And he discovered something else:What he enjoyed most was meeting and photographing famous people.
When his apprenticeship was over, he
chose to establish himself as a photographer
in Ottawa, Canada. His fascination with
famous people was a key factor in his decision. Not only had he fallen in love with
Canada, but as he later expressed it,“It was
the best choice I could have made, for
Canada’s capital city was soon to become
one of the important crossroads of the
world, a frequent meeting place for the
giants of the earth.”
For more than the next 50 years, Karsh,
using Ottawa as his base, traveled the world
taking portraits with his distinctive lighting
style of many of the best-known people of
the mid 20th century. His subjects included
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill,
United States Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S.Truman, and Dwight D.
Eisenhower, first lady Eleanor Roosevelt,
authors Ernest Hemingway and H. G.
Wells, architect Frank Lloyd Wright, and
singer Paul Robeson. Many of those who
sat for his camera regarded their Karsh portrait as the most revealing that had ever
been taken of them. As photohistorian
Peter Pollock observed,“Yousuf Karsh, in
his powerful portraits, transforms the
human face into legend.”
Some contemporaries of Karsh also
became masters of portraiture in the mid
20th century, a period that saw the growth
of much photographic innovation. Portraits
by the American Arnold Newman are
marked by dramatic lighting and bold,
graphic composition. He too trained his
camera mainly on well-known individuals,
but he photographed them in their own
environments, surrounded by the objects of
their professions or the tools of their trades,
rather than in the studio. Latvian-born
Phillipe Halsman came to the United
States in 1940, after 20 years as a photographer in Paris. He also photographed
celebrities, with a psychologically penetrating and graphically dramatic style. He
sometimes created fantasy-image portraits,
such as a picture of Salvador Dali in which
everything is suspended in midair, as in one
of Dali’s surrealist paintings. Halsman’s
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 36
delight in the spontaneous and unexpected
led him to persuade many of his subjects to
participate in a moment of play at the end
of a portrait session. The amusing, and often
revealing, results are collected in a book
titled Jumpbook, which consists entirely of
pictures of otherwise distinguished people
jumping into the air.
Today we live in a world where we are
surrounded by portraits. Photographs of
famous men and women appear on many
of the postage stamps we use. Family portraits adorn many of the Christmas cards
we receive. An important part of every
school year for parents and children alike is
the annual school portrait. In most societies
no wedding is considered complete without the official wedding portraits. The
pages of the newspapers and magazines we
read are filled with the pictures of the
famous and the lesser known. Through
these portraits in print, we are able to discover much about the diversity of populations and the differences in social classes.
Portraits have become so important that
they are used as a means of proving that we
are who we claim to be. Driver’s licenses,
passports, and many credit cards are not
considered valid unless they contain a photographic image of the bearer.
Despite the many distinct areas of photography that have emerged since its invention—such as photojournalism, social
documentary, scientific and technical photography, advertising, fashion, and commercial illustration—many professional
photographers still concentrate on taking
portraits. Almost every sizable city or town
has at least one portrait studio. Some, like
Image Not Available
Boston’s generations-old Bachrach studio,
have earned proud reputations for the quality of their work. Still, the vast majority of
portraits are taken by nonprofessionals.
Most of us, without realizing it, are in
fact amateur portraitists.Whenever we capture a likeness of a relative or friend,
whether with a highly sophisticated camera
or a point-and-shoot, disposable model, we
are in reality taking a portrait.The family
albums that we cherish and the informal,
candid pictures of relatives and friends that
adorn our refrigerator doors and sit on our
mantelpieces and tables are perhaps the best
reminders of all, not only of photography’s
popularity but of how portraiture in particular has come to play such an important
role in our lives.
Walker Evans. Penny Picture
Display, Savannah, 1936.
Portraiture has, from the beginning,
been the most common form of photography.A sign outside a photographer’s studio shows faces of all ages.
........................................................................
PORTRAITURE • 37
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Chapter
. . . . . . . .Three
...............................................................
The World Around Us
F
Photographer unknown.
Photographing Avalon Bay,
California, 1906.
As cameras and other photographic
equipment improved, photographers increasingly took pictures of
the world around them. Soon
many were plying their trade in
even the most distant places.
rom the time that photography was
first introduced, one of its greatest
appeals was its potential for bringing
viewers authentic scenes of places
that few people would ever be able to visit
in person. Some daguerreotypists, aware of
this interest, had captured landscape images.
But the quality and scope of their pictures
was limited by the difficulty of truly mastering the process, the small size of the images
(usually 3 1/4 by 4 1/4 inches), and particularly the one-of-a-kind nature of daguerreotypes. By the late 1850s, however, even
though photography had been in existence
for less than 20 years, things had changed
dramatically. Thanks to the development of
the wet plate process, which required less
exposure time than the daguerreotype or
calotype, clear images of nature could now
be captured far more easily.
Most of the photographers, both amateur
and professional, who began to train their
cameras on the land chose to take their pictures close to home. Many concentrated on
the unique characteristics of the terrain that
surrounded them. By the 1860s, it became
commonplace for almost all photographers,
even those who made their living taking
portraits, to spend at least some time taking
pictures of the landscape in their locale.
At the same time, there were other photographers who recognized the public’s
growing desire for views of exotic and faroff places.They began to travel thousands of
miles in order to meet this demand. One of
the distant areas that became a favorite target of these photographers was the Near
East. People around the globe had always
been fascinated with this region, which had
given birth to some of the world’s earliest
civilizations. Of particular interest were the
fabled pyramids and other ancient monuments and temples that had been erected
thousands of years ago, structures that had
long been ranked among the wonders of
the world. Stereograph companies found
they could sell stereo cards of Egypt and the
Holy Land in enormous numbers. Individual photographers discovered that there was
real profit to be made in establishing their
own companies, set up to sell the views they
took to Near East tourists and armchair
travelers around the world.
The interest in exotic lands also led to
the publication of some of the world’s first
photographically illustrated books. The
.......................................................................
THE WORLD AROUND US • 39
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Henri Béchard. Ascending the
Great Pyramid, 1878.
The pictures taken by the early photographers of the Near East helped
shrink the world.“Every day now
lessens the distance between the
traveled and the untraveled man,”
reported the British Journal of the
Photographic Society in 1857.
means of reproducing photographs on a
printed page had not yet been invented, but
publishers began to enhance the appeal of
their books about travel and foreign places
by pasting photographs onto their pages.
Illustrators also copied pictures taken in distant places or used them as reference to
make engravings, which had long been the
basic form of book and magazine illustrations. One of the first significant publishers
of photo-illustrated books was Louis Desiré
Blanquart-Evrard. His 1852 publication of
a volume featuring pictures that the masterful French photographer Maxime Du
Camp had taken in Egypt, Palestine, and
Syria was highly successful.
Between the late 1850s and 1880s,
scores of photographers trained their cameras on the Near East.The photographic
expeditions they mounted resembled military campaigns. Many employed teams of
porters to carry the dozens of huge crates
that contained their cameras, heavy glass
plates, developing chemicals, and other
equipment.To get the pictures they sought,
these photographers traveled enormous
distances by camel, mule, and boat. Often
they were forced to cross desert sands in
searing heat. Yet they produced tens of
thousands of photographs. In the process,
they established themselves as pioneers of
landscape photography.
Two of the most talented of these early
cameramen were the Englishman Francis
Frith and the Frenchman Félix Bonfils.
Between 1856 and 1860, Frith made three
expeditions to the Near East.While photographing there he used three different
types of cameras. One of them was a stereograph camera.Another used 8-by-10-inch
glass plates. The third was an enormous
mahogany camera which took mammoth
images 16 by 20 inches in size. Frith often
photographed the same scene with all three
cameras. He did this so that he could sell
as many pictures in as many different forms
as possible.
Frith’s adventures on his picture-taking
journeys were indicative of the types of
challenges almost all the early photographers encountered in the ancient lands. He
was captured by bandits in the Sinai Desert.
Twice he was shipwrecked on the little
steamboat that carried him up and down
the Nile River. But by the time he had
completed his three photographic journeys
to the Holy Land area, he had taken
enough appealing images to assure the success of his own photographic company.
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 40
Like Frith, Félix Bonfils’s motive for
taking photographs of the Near East was to
produce an inventory of pictures to be sold
throughout the world. Actually, many of
the photographs attributed to Bonfils were
undoubtedly taken by his wife Marie. An
accomplished photographer in her own
right, Marie accompanied her husband on
many of his photographic journeys.
The Bonfilses began photographing in
the Near East in the early 1860s. By 1871
they had taken so many pictures there that
their company boasted a stock of 15,000
prints and 9,000 stereographic views.
Unlike many of their counterparts whose
only goal was to produce images that they
felt would sell briskly, the Bonfilses paid serious attention to the artistic quality of their
photographs as well.Their focus on composition and contrast can be seen throughout
the body of work they produced.
While most of the early photographers
of the Near East financed their own photographic ventures, landscape photography
on a grand scale was introduced in the
United States by photographers employed
by the federal government.These cameramen were hired to accompany the surveying expeditions of the vast unsettled
territories of the American West that took
place in the late 1860s and early 1870s.
One of the first of these survey photographers was Carleton E.Watkins. He had
actually taken scores of photographs of the
spectacular landscape of northern California’s Yosemite Valley before the initial government expeditions were launched.
Through images he captured on his own,
such as that of the mountain called El Capitan, and those he took for the government,
Image Not Available
Image Not Available
Francis Frith. Colossus
of Ramses II at Abu
Simbel, Nubia, about
1862.
Frith’s photograph of this
ancient colossal figure was
taken at Abu Simbel in
Egypt. Looking back on
the challenges he faced taking pictures of the landscapes and antiquities of
the East, Frith wrote,
“When I reflect on the circumstances under which the
photographs were taken, I
marvel greatly that they
turned out so well.”
Félix Bonfils. Pyramid
of Cheops, about 1870.
Marie and Félix Bonfils
were among the most
successful of all the early
photographers of the Near
East.They published catalogues of their images
and sold their pictures
through dealers in the
larger cities of Europe
and America.
........................................................................
THE WORLD AROUND US • 41
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Carleton Watkins. El Capitan,
about 1866.
In taking his pictures of the
American West,Watkins often
focused on magnificent scenery
reflected in a lake in the foreground
of his image. It was a technique
quickly adopted by many other
landscape photographers.
Watkins revealed himself as a photographer
in love with nature. His images present us
with the pure and sublime qualities of a
landscape that was soon to be encroached
upon by humans.
Timothy O’Sullivan was another specially gifted survey photographer. He had
earned much acclaim for the scores of
images he had captured as a member of
Mathew Brady’s corps of Civil War photographers. His experience in taking pictures under the most difficult field conditions served him well in coping with the
challenges he faced in the rugged terrain of
the western lands.The survey photographs
he took are marked not only by his talent
at photographing broad landscapes, but also
by his ability to capture details of the virgin
territory such as the plant life and natural
rock formations that he encountered.
Another survey cameraman, John Hillers,
adopted a special approach. Hillers, the official photographer for an 1871 government
expedition down the Colorado River, was
awestruck by the enormity of the landscape
of that region. In order to convey this
through his photographs he often posed a
lone figure against a majestic backdrop.
Some of the most compelling of all the
survey photographs were those taken by
William Henry Jackson. In 1866, Jackson
left Vermont, where he had been a photographer’s apprentice, and traveled west as a
bullwhacker driving an ox team. In 1869,
he met Dr. Frank F. V. Hayden, the leader of
an upcoming survey, who invited Jackson
to join the expedition as its cameraman.
From that 1870 undertaking until 1879,
Jackson served as official photographer for
eight geological surveys. He was the first
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 42
cameraman to record the amazing features
of the Yellowstone area.The pictures that he
took in that region were so spectacular that
they helped convince Congress to make
Yellowstone the nation’s first national park.
The difficulties that O’Sullivan and the
other survey photographers encountered in
capturing their images were equal to those
faced by the early photographers in the
Near East and other parts of the world.
The lands through which the western survey expeditions traveled were places dominated by high, often dangerous mountains
and deep valleys. Rapidly flowing rivers ran
throughout the region.The photographers
hauled their large cameras and heavy glass
plates up mountains and along rivers
knowing that they had to develop each
image they captured on the spot. Almost
every one of these cameramen experienced
a particular kind of photographic tragedy at
least once. They would lug their equipment thousands of feet up a mountain and
then develop the negatives in the special
darkroom tent they also had to haul during
the wet plate period. On the way down the
mountain there was always the danger that
the mule or horse carrying the developed
glass plates might stumble or even fall off
the side of the mountain, shattering the
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Timothy O’Sullivan.
Photographer’s wagon,
about 1867.
This horse-drawn wagon
was used by a United
States government photographic survey team as it
made its way through the
vast desert territory of the
American West.Traveling
huge distances with heavy
equipment and coping with
desert heat were but two of
the many hardships these
photographers endured as
they compiled their photographic record.
........................................................................
THE WORLD AROUND US • 43
William Henry Jackson. Mammoth
Hot Springs,Yellowstone,Wyoming,
1871.
The government survey photographers
captured the unusual terrain they
encountered as they made their way
west.These natural hot springs were
made even more spectacular by their
tiered rock formation. Artist Thomas
Moran, shown climbing the rocks, also
documented the western landscape.
plates. A day’s or even a week’s arduous
work could be lost in an instant. But the
results were well worth their efforts.
The photographs that these cameramen
took not only captured the majesty of
unspoiled regions that few white people
had ever encountered, but set a photographic standard for all landscape photographers who would follow. There were
other results as well. Once the surveys
were concluded, prints of the photographs
were brought to Washington, D.C., where
they were put on display at several government institutions.
Eventually the survey photographs were
catalogued and housed in various archives
such as the Library of Congress, the
National Archives, and the Smithsonian
Institution. Over the years, thousands of
private citizens from around the world
have purchased prints of these pioneering
landscape images from these archives at
inexpensive prices. Publishers have included selections of these photographs in
scores of books.
At the same time that the survey photographers were taking their pictures,
another group of cameramen was also
operating in the American West. These
were photographers hired by the railroad
companies to document the building of the
western railway lines. One of the earliest of
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 44
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these cameramen was William Henry Jackson, who before becoming a premier survey photographer had documented the
construction of the Union Pacific Railroad. The pictures that the railroad photographers took recorded not only the
progress of the railroad construction, but
the grandeur of the surroundings in which
the building adventure was taking place.
Among the most dramatic of the images
captured by the railroad photographers
were those taken by Andrew J. Russell. As
the official photographer first for the Central Pacific Railroad and later for the Union
Pacific Railroad, Russell, like Timothy
O’Sullivan, had honed his skills as a Civil
War cameraman. His railroad pictures
included views of the building crews as
they tunneled through deep mountains,
laid track over vast areas of open land, and
carried out the scores of other tasks related
to the construction enterprise. His most
spectacular photographs were those he
took of the enormous bridges and trestles
they built to carry the tracks and trains
across the many rivers and gorges along the
railway route. It was through these photographs in particular that Russell most
effectively conveyed the sense of awe he felt
as he confronted both the railway workers’
accomplishments and the land upon which
their achievements took place.
The landscape and expedition photographers of the 1850s through the 1880s
were employed primarily to make objective records of what they saw. Their images
often have great beauty precisely because
of the straightforward manner in which
they present the variety and grandeur of
nature. In the 1890s, a new kind of nature
Andrew J. Russell.Train on
railroad bridge, 1868.
Russell captured this image of a newly
constructed bridge in Utah’s towering
Weber Canyon.The heavy locomotives
and railway cars had been rolled on to
the bridge to test the strength of the
new structure.
.......................................................................
THE WORLD AROUND US • 45
The Mammoth Camera
D
uring most of the
19th century, making
enlargements of pictures was not practical.
Until the mid 1880s, all
printing papers had to be
exposed by sunlight, in
contact with the negative,
which remained the preferred way of printing
into the 20th century.
There were a few enlargers that used mirrors or
were fitted to openings in
opaque window shutters
to direct sunlight through
the negative, but they
were so large, slow, and
difficult to operate that
they were not widely
used.Whatever size print
he wanted, a photographer had to use a plate or
film that size in the camera. Many of the photog-
raphers of the American
West, for example, used
huge cameras capable of
handling glass plates as
large as 11 by 14 inches or
even 16 by 20 inches.
The largest camera ever
built was the one created
especially for an American
photographer, George R.
Lawrence. He was hired by
the Chicago and Alton
Railroad Company to
make highly detailed photographs of their newly
built luxury train. Appropriately named “The Mammoth,” the camera weighed
1,400 pounds when loaded
with its 500-pound glass
plate negative and was 20
feet long with its bellows
extended for focusing. It
took as many as 15 men to
operate the device; expo-
sures in bright sunlight were
about 2 1/2 minutes long.
The 4 1/2-by-8-foot
picture of the train that the
camera took was so unique
that it was awarded the
Grand Prize of the World at
the Paris Exposition of
1900.The camera was used
on a few other occasions to
photograph large interiors,
one of which was at the
huge Chicago meatpacking
headquarters of Swift and
Company. Flash powder, a
forerunner of flashbulbs,
was used for illumination.
Three hundred charges of
the powder, hidden around
the large area, were ignited
simultaneously. However,
The Mammoth proved to
be far too big, cumbersome,
and difficult to operate and
was quickly retired from use.
Image Not Available
The Mammoth camera was one of the largest photographic devices ever made.Although
too large to be practical, it impressed all who saw it.
photographer emerged alongside those
who practiced the documentary approach.
These new photographers wanted to interpret the beauty of nature, not simply to
record or document it.Their concern was
with pictorial beauty rather than literal
accuracy, and they tended to look on landscape scenes much as painters did. They
appeared first in Europe, where the Scotsman James Craig Annan was representative
of the scores of photographers who found
their subject matter in the landscapes of the
British Isles and the countries of Europe.
Annan’s father, Thomas, was a wellknown photographer, and the son James
was introduced to the medium at a very
early age. He spent his formative years
working in his father’s studio. When he
went out on his own as a photographer,
James Annan found his greatest satisfaction
photographing out-of-doors.The images
he produced differed from those of many
landscapists. Rather than giving viewers a
general impression of an area, his pictures
provided viewers with a glimpse of a port
or a farmyard or a castle-dominated hillside
much in the same manner as a traveler
would first encounter them. Among his
most popular photographs was the image
titled Stirling Castle. This picture reveals
Annan’s ability to create an instant impression of a scene.The light shining on the
white horse captures our immediate attention. It is only after looking more closely
at the image that we begin to observe
the details of the farmyard and the presence of the castle looming atop the cliffs.
Annan’s approach proved highly successful.
His photographs were widely exhibited
throughout Europe in the 1890s and the
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 46
James Craig Annan.
Stirling Castle, 1903.
Annan brought a painter’s
eye to his landscape photographs.The contrast
between the dark shadows
and the white horse,
along with the sharp
planes of the buildings
stretching from foreground
to background, give this
photograph a rare threedimensional effect.
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first decades of the 1900s and were reproduced in photography art publications in
the United States.
Although Annan came to reject the subjective and interpretive extremes of pictorial photography, that approach dominated
much of landscape and nature photography
around the globe through the 1920s. Then,
the “straight” approach, which used objective seeing and straightforward technique
to create images of the beauty of nature,
reappeared and gained great strength of
artistic expression.
In 1930, a young Californian named
Ansel Adams gave up his ambition of
becoming a concert pianist in favor of a
new pursuit.A passionate nature-lover, as
early as 1916 he had begun taking what
would eventually be thousands of pictures
of the natural scenes that he encountered in
his native California, greatly influenced by
the pictorial style. But by the late 1920s he
had come to feel the need to make more
artistically honest and powerful images, and
when he finally made the decision to pursue
photography rather than music as a career,
he was dedicated to the straight approach.
He captured both landscapes on the grandest scale and details of small nat-ural objects.
He was happiest photograping such subjects as rocky deserts, mist-shrouded mountains, trees, and other plants, and was
particularly sensitive to the play of sunlight
and moonlight on these subjects. His pictures, from small prints to giant photomurals of the grandeur of the American West
and the national parks of the United States,
became world famous long before his
death in 1984.
Adams’s training as a pianist had a great
bearing on his long photographic career.
He appreciated the need to have excellent
technique and to make an impressive presentation.This was reflected in his statement,“The negative is the score, the print
is the performance.” His acknowledged
masterpieces are large-scale images with a
rich tonal range from deep textured blacks
to creamy whites that emphasize the
majesty and grandeur of nature—a kind of
........................................................................
THE WORLD AROUND US • 47
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Ansel Adams. Dunes, Oceano,
California, about 1963.
Adams approached his work with a
deeply felt reverence for the unspoiled
landscape he photographed.As one critic
observed,“Adams photographs seem to
demonstrate that our world is what we
would wish it was—a place with room in
it for new beginnings.”
photographic grand opera of which he was
the impresario.
Ansel Adams was one of the medium’s
most articulate spokesmen. Rarely has any
photographer’s motivations for capturing
images been expressed as eloquently as
Adams’s when he wrote, “I believe man
must be free, both in spirit and society,
that he must build strength into himself,
affirming the enormous beauty of the
world and acquiring confidence to see and
to express his vision. And I believe in photography as one means of expressing this
affirmation, and achieving an ultimate happiness and faith.”
The introduction first of the wet plate
and then the dry plate, which made landscape photography on a grand scale a reality also made it possible for photographers
to capture architectural images more effectively than ever before. Architectural photography is actually as old as the medium
itself. In his book The Pencil of Nature, published in 1844–46, William Henry Fox
Talbot discussed many of the potential
applications of photography. Pictures of
architecture, monuments, and similar
structures would be of great value in teaching architects, designers, and historians, he
pointed out, as well as their obvious use for
reference. In addition, they would bring
some of the wonders of ancient and modern building to a much wider, nonprofessional audience who would both enjoy and
benefit from them.The book was illustrated
with calotypes, some of which showed
exactly these kinds of subjects.
Hill and Adamson, in addition to their
portraits, made many calotype studies in
the mid 1840s of buildings, monuments,
and ruins throughout Scotland. In the late
1850s, two Englishmen, Dr. John McCosh
and Captain Linnaeus Tripe, produced
images of buildings and structures in India
using the calotype. And the photographs
taken in the Near East by Francis Frith,
Félix Bonfils, and others were often as
important for their depictions of ancient
monuments, temples, forts, and palaces as
they were for their portrayals of the surrounding landscape.
Other major architectural photographic
projects in the mid 19th century included
recording the rehabilitation of French
cathedrals that had fallen into disrepair in
the preceding 200 years. By the last decades
of the century, professional and amateur
photographers throughout the world were
training their cameras on monumental and
historic structures.This was particularly true
in Europe, where one did not have to travel
far to encounter such buildings. Almost
every city, and indeed many towns, contained towering cathedrals, churches, and
cloisters, which were among the most
favored of all architectural subjects.
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 48
Arguably, the most outstanding of all the
architectural photographers was the Englishman Frederick Henry Evans. As a
young man he was a successful bookseller.
He turned to photography because he felt
that the medium, above all others, presented him the opportunity to express the
beauty he found in so many man-made
structures. Most of all, he was taken with
the glory of the cathedrals that he continually encountered in England and on the
European continent.
Frederick Evans brought a whole new
element to architectural photography.
Whereas most of his counterparts focused
on the magnificence of the exteriors of the
cathedrals as they rose into the sky, Evans
found the greatest beauty deep inside the
structures. He took his camera down to the
cellars of the cathedrals and into narrow
side aisles as well as into the huge main
chambers, where he photographed the
massive pillars, the soaring flights of stairs,
and the patches of sunlight playing upon
ancient stone floors.
Evans’s photograph The Sea of Steps—
Wells Cathedral is particularly compelling.
In describing the image he stated,“The
beautiful curve of the steps on the right is
for all the world like the surge of a great
wave. . . . It is one of the most imaginative
lines it has been my good fortune to try
and depict.”
In taking their pictures, Evans and the
other architectural photographers made a
contribution beyond that of producing
beautiful images.The photographs inspired
travelers to visit the structures that were
depicted. Architects everywhere studied the
Image Not Available
images for the examples of superior design
they revealed. Many of these photographs
are still used for the same purpose.
The photographs of natural wonders
and man-made marvels that were produced
in ever-increasing numbers went a long
way toward satisfying the public’s desire for
pictures of places and things they would
probably never see in person. Yet there was
another category of photographs that people around the world were just as eager to
view.These were images of people from
far-off lands, their ethnic cultures, and their
ways of life.
In response, scores of photographers
from different nations undertook photographic projects, some enormous in scope,
designed to fill this need. Four photographers in particular, the Russian cameraman
Frederick Evans. The Sea of
Steps—Wells Cathedral, 1903.
Evans was motivated by his belief in
the power of photography to preserve
a record of the great architecture of the
world.“Without such records,” he
wrote,“it will be impossible for succeeding generations to form any proper idea of [these] wonders.”
........................................................................
THE WORLD AROUND US • 49
Image Not Available
Sergei Mikhailovich
Prokudin-Gorskii. Russian
peasants, about 1915.
This photograph of a Russian
family outside their simple home
was typical of the thousands of
images Prokudin-Gorskii captured of a land and people practically unknown to the outside
world. His endeavor remains one
the most ambitious individual
photographic projects.
Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, the
Swedish photographers Eric and Edith
Matson, and the American Edward S.
Curtis, serve as prime examples.
Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii,
a native of St. Petersburg, Russia, was
descended from one of the oldest and
noblest families in his province. He studied
both science and art, but what he really
wanted to be was a violinist.A laboratory
accident at school, however, left him with a
badly injured hand and he turned his attention to chemistry.
After pursuing advanced studies and
serving as a chemistry instructor, ProkudinGorskii began to undertake various scientific
experiments. He made several breakthroughs
in various areas, but the most important of
all was his development of an early form of
color-sensitive photographic plates. By
1905 he had begun to take color pictures
that could then be turned into slides and
projected upon a screen.
Prokudin-Gorskii became so fascinated
with photography that he decided to make
it his life’s work.Aside from his passion for
the medium, he had several other motivations for doing so. He was in love with the
traditions and history of his country. He
was deeply disturbed that Russian photographers had lagged so far behind their
counterparts in other nations. He was also a
great supporter of Russia’s leader Tsar
Nicholas II and felt that, through a special
photographic project he had in mind, he
could help the tsar become known as the
leader who had led his people to an understanding of their traditions and heritage.
The project that Prokudin-Gorskii
wished to pursue was extraordinarily ambitious. His plan was to photograph all of the
Russian Empire—its natural beauties, its
buildings, and most important, its diverse
people. He knew that such an undertaking
was one that no single person could afford.
It would require special equipment and
travel by railroad, ship, and wagon over
extremely long distances. Such a project
could be made possible only by the financial and political support of the tsar.
Prokudin-Gorskii used all the considerable influence he had with various Russian
officials to obtain a meeting with those
who could pave the way for a presentation
of his project to the tsar. Once he succeeded in arranging such a meeting, he spent
weeks taking photographs that would best
illustrate what he wanted to accomplish.
When the high Russian officials saw the
photographs, they arranged a demonstration to the tsar and the royal family.Tsar
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 50
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Nicholas, in turn, was so impressed with
the images that he agreed to finance the
photographic project, to supply whatever
transportation Prokudin-Gorskii required
during his photographic journeys, and to
give him official papers assuring the cooperation of all those he met along the way.
From 1909 to 1917, Prokudin-Gorskii
traveled the length and breadth of Russia
photographing the peasants and villagers
who lived in farms, hamlets, and towns
throughout the nation. He also captured
images of valleys, rivers, and churches in
each region where he stopped. He compiled an extraordinary photographic
record, particularly of people few outsiders
had ever seen. His work was brought to a
halt in 1917 when World War I broke out
and Tsar Nicholas was overthrown in what
became known as the Russian Revolution.
Forced to flee his beloved country,
Prokudin-Gorskii lived out the rest of his
life in exile in Norway, England, and France.
Eric Matson was eight years old when,
in 1896, he and his parents, along with several other families, moved from Sweden to
Palestine, where they joined a community
of Americans in what became known as
the American Colony.The Colony’s purpose was to supply aid to the sick and
needy of Jerusalem and surrounding areas.
Among its other activities was one that
came to change the lives of Eric Matson
and the woman who became his wife. In
1898 the German Kaiser,Wilhelm II, visited Palestine.The American Colony hastily
organized a photographic department to
record the historic visit.The photographs
that were produced proved to be of such
interest to German officials and to others
who viewed them that the Colony decided
to make the photographic department a
permanent part of its operations, with its
main purpose that of satisfying the needs of
tourists anxious to bring back pictures of
the people and places of the region.
G. Eric Matson. Shepherd with
his flock, about 1935.
Matson took this picture at a spring
located about seven miles outside of
the ancient city of Jerusalem. He
used the image as the first in a
series he created illustrating the
23rd Psalm (“The Lord is my
shepherd...”)
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THE WORLD AROUND US • 51
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Edward Curtis. Kutenai duck
hunter, about 1920.
Curtis was appalled by the treatment
that the Native Americans had
received at the hands of advancing
white civilization. He intended his
photographs to reveal the activities of
a people whose lives were built around
a sensitivity to the natural world.
By the time he was in his mid teens,
Eric Matson and another teenager, Edith
Yanktiss, had become employees of the
photographic department. Eventually
Matson and Yanktiss married, took over
the photographic department, and reorganized it as the Matson Photo Service. For
some 33 years, until Edith’s death, the
couple worked together taking thousands
of photographs of the peoples of the
Middle East.
They captured almost every aspect of
these people’s lives—their many different
occupations, their tribal customs, and their
religious ceremonies.They also produced
compelling photographs of street and alley
life in and around the region. Many of their
depictions were of men, women, and children whose customs and dress were little
removed from biblical times, as in their picture of shepherds watching their flock.
In their determination to capture
images of the diverse peoples of the world,
many photographers, in the last half of the
19th and the early decades of the 20th centuries, sacrificed years of their lives and, in
several cases, their health as well. Perhaps
the greatest effort was that exerted by
Edward S. Curtis, who compiled the most
extensive photographic record of Native
Americans.While other photographers of
Native Americans focused on one or two
tribes or on the various tribes in a specific
region, Curtis was determined to photograph all the tribes that he could reach. He
estimated that his monumental project
would take 15 years. It wound up consuming 30 years of his life.
Curtis’s undertaking required considerable financial support, which he found in
funding supplied by one of the world’s richest men, the industrialist and banker J.
Pierpont Morgan.Armed with this financing, Curtis visited more than 80 tribes and
took more than 40,000 photographs. He
gained the confidence of each of the tribes
by spending months studying its history and
customs before attempting to photograph its
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 52
members.Working with a large 14-by-17inch camera, he captured both portraits and
scenes of the Native Americans’ dwellings,
dress, customs, and rituals.
Curtis’s work brought him high praise,
but he also received significant criticism. In
several instances, particularly in photographing the tribes of the Pacific Northwest, he dressed the Native Americans in
wigs and provided them with other trappings of their earlier days that had vanished
in the face of the intruding white civilization. It was a practice that disturbed those
who felt that in doing so Curtis had falsified his representation of the Native Americans. Curtis’s reply was that his only interest
was in presenting the first Americans as
they were before their way of life had been
destroyed by those coveting their lands. It
was one of the first instances when the
reality of the camera’s ability to misrepresent as well as reveal became an issue.
Despite the criticism, Curtis’s overall
achievement cannot be discounted. Nor
can the fact that he was a true artist with
the camera. His photograph of a Native
American rice gatherer, for example, reveals
his flair for posing his subjects in the most
dramatic manner possible. The way in
which he used the long spikes of the natural growth to frame the woman in the
canoe reveals his masterful sense of composition as well as his determination to ennoble a vanishing race of people.
Between 1907 and 1930 Curtis published his photographs, along with text, in a
20-volume set of books titled The North
American Indians. When it was completed,
the New York Herald hailed the achievement
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as “the most gigantic undertaking in the
publishing of books since the King James
edition of the Bible.” Edward S. Curtis’s
dream of delivering to the world an extensive, personal portrayal of a unique people
and a special way of life had been realized.
By overcoming the many technical and
physical challenges that confronted them,
the 19th-century and early 20th-century
photographers who took the world as their
canvas made vital contributions. By increasing man’s awareness of distant people and
far-off places they shrunk the globe. In the
process they blazed a whole new trail.The
millions of amateur and professional photographers who today have made the taking of pictures far from home one of the
most common photographic experiences
follow in the footsteps of these accomplished pioneers.
Elizabeth Ellen Roberts.Young
woman at a water pump, North
Dakota, 1900.
Some of the most compelling pictures
have been taken by amateur photographers whose work has gone practically unnoticed.Very little is known
about Roberts, but her photographs
tell the lively story of the pioneers
of the American West.
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THE WORLD AROUND US • 53
Revealing the World in Pictures
For much of history, extensive travel has been available only to the very
wealthy. Even though the end of the 19th century saw the beginning of
middle-class tourism, most people obtained their visions of far-flung people
and places from pictures. Photographs had the advantage over engravings of
providing “scientific” proof of unknown lands while also having the potential for artistic merit. Encouraged by developments that had made camera
equipment more portable and lightweight and by an eager audience at
home, scores of photographers—many of them amateurs—set out at the
turn of the 20th century to create a visual record of the world.
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Horace A. Latimer.
A Water Carrier—Cuba, 1902.
Photographer unknown.
Chinese women suffering
punishment, about 1900.
Image Not Available
Photographer unknown.
African cliff dwellings, about 1900.
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 54
Image Not Available
Photographer unknown.
Elephant ride in India, about 1900.
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Photographer unknown.
Couple in Ireland, about 1900.
John Dunmore and George Critcherson.
Sailing Ships in an Ice Field, Labrador, Canada, 1869.
THE WORLD AROUND US • 55
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Chapter
. . . . . . . . Four
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Photography as Art
B
Alvin Langdon Coburn. The
Bridge,Venice, 1908.
Coburn, who started photographing when he was eight years old,
was an important member of the
movement known as pictorialism
that brought many innovations to
photography.“I do not think,”
stated Coburn,“we have even
begun to realize the possibilities
of the camera.”
y the last quarter of the 19th century, photographers around the world
had supplied ample proof of the
camera’s unique ability to record
people and places. At the same time, there
were others who were taking pictures for a
different purpose. Convinced that the camera could be used to go beyond simply
recording what was in front of the lens,
these photographers, both amateur and professional, were determined to produce
images of artistic merit. Believing that photographs could be every bit as beautiful and
intriguing as paintings, they pursued a simply stated goal.Their aim was to convince
art critics, other photographers, and the
general public that photography should be
regarded as a legitimate form of art.
The photographs that these early artistic
photographers produced were often little different from paintings. At the time, people
regarded the world’s great paintings as the
highest form of visual art. It was only natural
that artistic photographers began by trying to
produce the same kinds of images as those
created by the greatest artists.They chose
the same types of themes, settings, and compositions. Like painters, they emphasized the
contrasts between dark and light tones
(called chiaroscuro). Many focused almost
exclusively on simple but lovely, often sentimental, subjects. Some portrayed characters
and incidents in fables, myths, or the Bible,
while others attempted to create genre
images, pictures that showed people and
moments from everyday life. Still others, in
the style of well-known painters, created
allegorical photographs. (In an allegory, the
figures represent universal human traits—
such as heroism, chastity, envy, lust, or
despair—not specific individuals.)
Perhaps the most distinguishing characteristic of this early artistic movement was
the way in which many photographers
manipulated their images.Working much
like painters, they used various techniques to
alter their pictures so as to make them look
as much as possible like paintings, pastel or
charcoal drawings, etchings, or engravings.
In the process they created entirely new
printing techniques and new types of photographs that expanded the concept of what
a photograph was.
The artistic approach was one that had
been employed by a few photographers
in the years immediately following the
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PHOTOGRAPHY AS ART • 57
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Henry Peach Robinson. Fading
Away,1858.
Robinson, with the aid of his staff,
made 200 prints of this picture before
attaining one that satisfied him.A
photographic critic of Robinson’s time
called the photograph “an exquisite
picture of a painful subject.”
medium’s invention. As discussed in Chapter 2, the portraits taken by David Octavius
Hill and Robert Adamson were marked by
the way Hill deliberately posed their subjects and used natural light in a manner
designed to make their images look as
much like paintings as simple portraits. But
it was in the late 1850s, slightly less than 20
years after the daguerreotype was introduced, that the full-scale movement toward
creating photographs as art began.
The two men generally credited with
pioneering the art photography movement
were the English photographers Oscar
Rejlander and Henry Peach Robinson.
Before moving to Great Britain, the
Swedish-born Rejlander lived in Rome,
where he supported himself by copying the
work of famous artists. In the early 1850s,
he learned photography and decided to
make it his main mode of creative expression. Almost from the moment he became
a photographer, Rejlander began experimenting with new techniques. At the heart
of these experiments was his desire to
build upon the work of others who had
introduced a new method of creating
photographs.These photographers, most
notably the Frenchman Gustave Le Gray,
had made what were called composite
prints by printing two different negatives
together on the same piece of paper to produce a single, combined image. Rejlander
took this technique much farther, increasing the number of negatives he used. His
first significant art picture, exhibited in
1857, when it created a sensation, used
more than 30 different negatives and took
six weeks to produce. It was so large—16
inches tall and 31 inches long—that two
sheets of paper had to be pasted together to
make the composite print. Originally titled
Hope in Repentance, it became famous under
the name The Two Ways of Life. It was photography’s first major allegorical picture.
Rejlander’s contemporary, Henry Peach
Robinson, was also a painter turned photographer. Like Rejlander, Robinson’s main
goal was to tell a story with his camera, and
he too decided that the most effective way
to do this was through composite prints.
Robinson’s first and best-known composite
art image, produced in 1858, was titled Fading Away. Made from five separate negatives, it was a picture of a dying young girl
propped up in a chair in her family’s parlor
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 58
Platinum Prints
F
while her mother and sister look sadly on.
Robinson, a master at composition, added
to the emotion of the scene by placing an
image of the girl’s fiancé looking out of a
window at the center of the picture, his
back turned to hide his tears.
Along with producing many other sentimental pictures and purported genre
scenes that were popular with both the
public and critics, Robinson wrote several
books that were among the first publications to both praise and describe the techniques of artistic photography. The first of
these books, Pictorial Effect in Photography,
published in 1869, led to the widespread
use of the term pictorial to describe the
photography-as-art approach. The movement itself was known as pictorialism. Robinson attracted many followers
(although within the entire field of photography the art movement was comparatively
small), and a large number of artistic photographs, many of them created out of the
photographers’ imaginations, were produced. Many of these pictures were overly
sentimental or overly imitative of paintings
and spawned a strong negative reaction
from an opposing group of photographers.
The person who led the revolt against
pictorialism was Peter Henry Emerson.
Born in 1856 in Cuba, where his American
father and English mother owned sugar
plantations, Emerson was a distant cousin
of the American writer Ralph Waldo
Emerson. He attended school in the United States, then went to college in England,
where he studied to become a doctor. He
received his degree and made England his
home, but never practiced medicine.
Instead, from 1885 on he devoted himself to
rom the 1850s through
the mid 1890s, the
standard paper for
making photographic
prints was albumen paper,
so called because it was
prepared with egg whites.
(It was replaced by
gelatin-emulsion paper,
like the photographic
paper used today.) Albumen paper, which produced an image composed
of silver, was invented by
Louis Désiré BlanquartEvrard in 1850. Soon
paper coated with albumen was being sold by
dozens of manufacturers.
The paper was so popular
that in order to keep up
with demand, Germany’s
Dresden Albuminizing
Company, the largest in
the world, used some
60,000 eggs a day.
In 1880, however, a new
process was introduced that
produced print images of
platinum rather than silver.They were known as
platinum prints or platinotypes.The new process was
invented by an Englishman,
William Willis. He produced his special type of
printing material by coating
paper with potassium
chloroplatinate and ferric
oxylate.After the coating
was dry, the paper was contact-printed with a negative, by sunlight, in the usual
manner.The print was
developed in potassium
oxylate, fixed with a solution of hydrochloric or citric acid, and then washed.
When Willis put his
new type of paper on the
market through his Platinotype Company, the
product was eagerly adopted by scores of artistic
photographers. It was considerably more expensive
than albumen paper, but
the prints it produced were
more delicate in tone, with
a slightly pinkish cast, and
were far less apt to fade
than most previous—or
later—types of photographs. Pictorial and naturalist photographers alike
welcomed this new and
beautiful material. Peter
Henry Emerson was effusive in his praise of platinum images.“For
low-toned effects and for
the greyday landscapes,” he
stated,“the platinotype
process is unequalled.”
Emerson, in fact, felt so
strongly about what the
platinum print had brought
to photography that he
boldly stated that if the
platinotype process were
ever to become a lost art he
“would never take another
photograph.”
Frederick Evans shared
Emerson’s passion for the
long, delicate tonal scale
made possible by platinum
paper, but when he could
no longer afford it, Evans
in fact gave up his photographic career rather than
use what he considered to
be lesser-quality materials.
In the late 1930s the paper
became so expensive to
manufacture that it disappeared from the market. But
in the years that platinum
paper was available, it permitted scores of photographers, most notably
including Edward Weston
and Paul Strand, to produce
images of great sensitivity
and beauty. In modern times,
certain photographers such
as George Tice and Irving
Penn have hand-prepared
platinum paper and have
used it for making prints for
exhibition purposes.
photography, for which he had developed a
passion during his college years. Emerson
loved nature, particularly the English countryside, and most of his photographs were of
simple scenes such as farming, hay gathering, duck shooting, and peaceful river travel.
Emerson wrote many articles and a
major book in which he declared that photography had the potential to be artistically
superior to any other visual medium. He
also wrote that beautiful photographs
should be framed and mounted in the same
manner as fine paintings. Up to this time
photographs were rarely hung on the walls
of private homes. Instead, they were kept as
individual mounted prints in an album or
portfolio, and commonly were placed one
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PHOTOGRAPHY AS ART • 59
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Peter Henry Emerson. Poling the
Marsh Hay, about 1885.
Emerson had unbending beliefs
about how artistic photographs
should be produced. One of his
strongest convictions was that photographers should develop their negatives on the same day they were
taken so that the mental impression
of what they wished to achieve in
each picture would still be fresh in
their minds.
at a time on an easel in the owner’s drawing room or parlor for viewing. But due to
Emerson’s influence, this began to change.
Emerson’s book, titled Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art, was intended to
counteract pictorialism’s insistence that art
consisted primarily of pictures created out of
photographers’ imaginations. He stated his
main thesis this way:“Whenever the artist
has been true to Nature, art has been good;
whenever the artist has neglected Nature and
followed his imagination, there has resulted
bad art. Nature, then, should be the artist’s
standard.” Emerson gave the term naturalism
to this approach to artistic photography. It
became the foundation of what is now
termed purist or straight artistic photography.
A highly opinionated and difficult man,
Emerson was often openly and harshly
critical of his fellow photographers. He
was vehemently opposed to the composite
print and all other kinds of manipulation
in printing, which he considered to be
photographic trickery, and he made Oscar
Rejlander and Henry Peach Robinson the
targets of some of his most caustic verbal
attacks. It was one of the ironies of photography that this bombastic individual produced many of the most tranquil and
beautiful of all the early artistic photographs. His talent for using very simple,
commonplace subjects in peaceful settings
is evidenced in his photograph Poling the
Marsh Hay. By placing the woman prominently in the foreground and revealing the
hay-gathering activities as a backdrop he
created the peaceful image he sought.The
soft focus of most of the photograph adds
to its appeal.
Emerson thought a photograph should
be focused at one point, with other things
being less sharp because, he argued, that is
the way the eye sees things. He was actually
wrong in this belief, because he did not
take into account the fact that we rapidly
and unconsciously scan a real scene, seeing
point after point sharply, thus building an
impression of total sharpness. In this he
misunderstood a fundamental aspect of the
new and highly influential movement in
painting called impressionism, which he
greatly admired. Although the overall
mood and style of his work often looks
much the same to our eyes as that of pictorialist images of the same period, Emerson
did not arrange or artificially pose his subjects or use any techniques to imitate the
appearance of a painting. His seeing and his
methods were straightforward; he strove
honestly to show the beauty of the subject
in its own terms, not his subjective interpretation of it.
Another English photographer who
shared Emerson’s passion for nature as a
subject was Frank Meadow Sutcliffe. He
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 60
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inherited much of his creative talent from
his father, who was a painter, etcher, printer, and amateur photographer. In 1875,
Sutcliffe’s family moved to the town of
Whitby, Yorkshire, where he began his
photographic career.Whitby was situated
on the English seacoast; its location provided
Sutcliffe with the subject matter for most of
his photographs. He captured images of harbor life, of boats putting out to sea and
returning to shore, of women cleaning or
selling fish, and of fishermen mending their
nets, baiting their hooks, or spending time
chatting with their fellow seamen. He was
particularly fascinated by the children who
spent so much of their time at the harbor
or along the shore. He photographed them
bathing and splashing in the water, climbing upon boats, and watching the fishermen and peddlers at work.
To Sutcliffe, these subjects presented the
opportunity to portray what for him was a
very special type of life. More important, he
saw in them the settings and simple activities for creating images that would be as
picturesque as the finest paintings.
The peaceful scenes that Sutcliffe continually encountered were charming by
nature. But it was his special photographic
talents that allowed him to transfer this
charm to his images. He did not believe in
posing his subjects, because he thought the
resulting photographs would be too artificial, and he had the patience to wait as long
as it took to capture whatever picture he
was taking in the most appealing way. The
photographs he produced were beautifully
balanced, marked by the way he was able to
frame the main subjects in the center of his
images with inanimate or human subjects
Frank Sutcliffe. Water Rats, 1886.
When this photograph of boys jumping in and out of the sea without
any clothes on was first exhibited,
Sutcliffe was actually excommunicated, or excluded, from his church.
He overcame this disapproval and
became recognized as a master of
both light and composition.
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PHOTOGRAPHY AS ART • 61
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George Davison. Berkshire Teams
and Teamsters, about 1888.
Davison concentrated on capturing
images of rural scenes. Like many pictorialists, he often presented a romanticized view of his subjects.
on each side of the picture. However, he
was essentially a pictorialist in his taste in
printing, often manipulating the print to
add atmospheric haze or create a somewhat
impressionistic appearance.
Sutcliffe’s images earned him much
acclaim, but the early pictorialist movement
continued to be the subject of criticism,
particularly from those who felt that photography was becoming too imitative of
paintings. Disturbed by this criticism, a
group of influential English photographers
banded together to spread their beliefs
around the world. In 1891 they founded an
organization which they named the Linked
Ring. They chose this name because to
them it symbolized their stated purpose of
“linking those who are interested in the
development of the highest form of Art of
which Photography is capable.” From its
beginnings, the Linked Ring had enormous influence in photographic circles
both in Europe and America. Eventually it
became the inspiration for an even more
powerful group that would be formed in
the United States.The American group was
known as the Photo-Secession.
One of the founding members of the
Linked Ring was the English photographer
George Davison. He, like both the naturalist Emerson and the early pictorialists, was a
great admirer of impressionist paintings,
particularly the way in which impressionist
artists concentrated on capturing the
changing effects of light as they appeared to
the human eye. Much like their paintings,
Davison’s images were marked by his deliberate contrast of shadow and light, shadings
that appear as if they were created by the
stroke of a brush rather than with a camera.
This approach can perhaps best be seen in
the photograph Davison titled both Berkshire Teams and Teamsters and Part of Day. In
this picture, Davison captured the atmosphere created by a darkening sky signifying
day’s end.The light created by the fading
sun shining through both dark and white
billowing clouds and the shadows cast by
the horses and men in the image make the
figures appear almost as if they were taken
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 62
in silhouette. By framing the lone figure in
the center of the picture with the men and
horses to either side, Davison gave a pleasing balance to the picture.
Thanks to the influence of photographers like Davison, and to organizations like
the Linked Ring, the pictorial movement
spread throughout Europe. In France, a photographer named Robert Demachy not
only adopted the approach but helped pioneer a technique that would be employed
by artistic photographers everywhere.
As a young man Demachy was most
interested in music and in driving fast cars.
He was a successful banker with esthetic
interests. Before he turned to photography
in 1892, he was a literary critic and an amateur painter. He particularly admired the
work of the renowned artist Edgar Degas,
who was himself an amateur photographer
as well as a professional painter. Degas was
taken with the motion studies that Eadweard Muybridge had produced (see page
18). He made many drawings from Muybridge’s pictures, including a lineup of ballet dancers in various postures, drawn to
give the appearance of motion. Several of
Demachy’s photographs are highly reminiscent of Degas’ paintings.
Demachy believed that in order to produce a work of art the photographer had to
regard the photograph he or she took as
just the first step in creating a masterful
image.The key, he was convinced, were the
techniques and manipulations the photographer would then use to add to and change
the photographic image. Demachy was a
pioneer and a master in the use of the gum
bichromate printing process. A negative
was contact printed on paper coated with
an emulsion of gum arabic, potassium
bichromate, and any color of pigment.
Light passed strongly through the thinnest
parts of the negative, which were the dark
areas of the subject, and less strongly
through the middle-tone and highlight
areas. The emulsion hardened in proportion to the strength of the light, so when the
print was developed in warm water the
emulsion would wash away in the lighter
areas, letting more of the white (or colored)
paper show through, but it would remain
more strongly in the middle-tone and darker areas of the positive image.The emulsion
could be applied evenly, or with coarse
brushstrokes, or stippled on, for a variety of
effects. And the photographer could use
very hot water to wash away or alter any
details in the print he desired. It was a
process that allowed Demachy and other
pictorialists to work much like painters.
Demachy’s photographs placed him at
the forefront of those who sought artistry
in their pictures by manipulating their
images. He wrote five books and more
than 1,000 articles describing all of the various aspects of photographic manipulation.
He also traveled throughout the world, lecturing on the subject.
In the last two decades of the 1800s, the
art photography movement in Europe
gained great momentum. Much of it was
due to the appearance of the first photographic exhibitions devoted exclusively to
the work of pictorialist photographers.The
first of these exhibitions, featuring images
by Peter Henry Emerson, was mounted in
Vienna in 1887 by the Club-der-Amateur
Photographers. In the words of one of the
club’s founders, it marked “the first time
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Robert Demachy. Behind the
Scenes, about 1900.
Young ballet dancers were among
Demachy’s favorite subjects. Often he
would manipulate a negative, develop
it, and then apply further manipulations to the negative and develop it
again. As a result, he often produced
very different looking photographs
from the same negative.
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PHOTOGRAPHY AS ART • 63
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Baron Adolphe de Meyer.
Still Life, about 1906.
The still life, a traditional
subject for painting, also
became a theme for photographers. De Meyer was a leading Photo-Secessionist who
would later make his mark as
arguably the world’s first
great fashion photographer.
that art-lovers had been offered a series of
original photographs of interest not in the
objects they represent, but in the interpretation and handling.” Four years later, the
club astounded both the art and photographic worlds by presenting a massive
exhibition of 600 pictorial photographs
selected from more than 4,000 candidates.
In 1893, three other major pictorial
exhibitions took place in Europe. The
Linked Ring mounted what would
become an annual series of artistic photography shows. Robert Demachy and the
English photographer Alfred Maskell presented an exhibition of prints they had
made using the gum-bichromate process.
And the Kunsthalle Museum in Hamburg,
Germany, organized a First International
Exhibition of Amateur Photographers. If
the art world had been astounded by the
huge Club-der-Amateur Photographers
show of 1891, it was positively stunned by
the Kunsthalle Museum’s display of 6,000
artistic photographs. One of the added features of this show was a demonstration of
how to frame photographs properly
according to the tastes of the period.
The attention that artistic photography
received through the growing number of
pictorialist exhibitions had a dramatic effect
on the many European photographic clubs
made up of both amateurs and professionals.When The Photo-Club de Paris staged
its First Exhibition of Photographic Art, the
show took on an importance that went
beyond the exhibition itself. By this time,
the process for reproducing photographs
on a printed page had been invented
(described in Chapter 6), and as an accompaniment to the exhibition the club issued
a booklet containing reproductions of 50 of
the photographs displayed in the show. It
was a forerunner to the illustrated catalog
that is now a regular part of almost all
major photographic exhibitions.
By the beginning of the 1900s, artistic
photography had gained a solid foothold in
Europe. However, it was in the United
States that pictorialism came to full flower.
Much of it was due to the contributions of
one man. His name was Alfred Stieglitz; he
became legendary not only for the photographs he took but for the organization he
founded, the galleries he established, and the
two publications he edited. It was through
all of these that Stieglitz introduced the
work of scores of fellow American and foreign pictorial photographers to the world,
and introduced the newest developments in
modern art to the United States.
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 64
Edited by Alfred Stieglitz, the
journal Camera Notes brought
the work of many of the earliest
pictorialists to the attention of
the public. Published from 1897
to 1903, it also contained articles written by leading PhotoSecessionists and critics.
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Born in Hoboken, New Jersey, Stieglitz
received his university education in Germany, where he studied engineering. He
learned some of the technical principles of
photography in a physics and chemistry
course, but his involvement in photography
really began only after he spotted an inexpensive camera in a shop window in Berlin
and purchased it. After taking only a few
pictures he realized that he was much more
interested in photography than he was in
pursuing an engineering career.
When he returned to the United States,
Stieglitz was amazed to find how popular
photography had become since he had left
for Europe. He was particularly taken with
the artistic approach that an increasing
number of American photographers were
beginning to take. He felt, however, that
these photographers were not gaining the
recognition that they deserved. In 1886 he
joined the Camera Club of New York. He
soon became editor of the club’s journal
and turned it into a publication titled Camera Notes. In its pages Stieglitz published
photographs by pictorialists from both the
United States and abroad.The journal also
contained articles extolling the virtues of
artistic photography and describing its various characteristics.
Although Camera Notes soon became
the nation’s leading champion of pictorialism, Stieglitz was upset with the way that
certain members of the camera club were
voicing their opposition to the movement.
In 1902 he resigned from the club and he
and a group of other photographers founded an organization they called the PhotoSecession.They chose that name because to
them it meant a breaking away from all
previous subject-oriented photographic
movements.
Soon after its founding, the organization
introduced its own publication, called Camera Work. For the next 15 years, Stieglitz
edited and personally solicited all the
images for the journal, establishing it as the
most widely read photographic publication
of its day. Stieglitz and other members of
the Photo-Secession also opened what
became one of America’s most important
art galleries. Its official name was The Little
Galleries of the Photo-Secession, but it was
commonly referred to as “291,” since it was
located at 291 Fifth Avenue in New York
City. The gallery proudly displayed the
Alfred Stieglitz. Photo-Secession
exhibition, 1906.
The Little Galleries of the PhotoSecession became one of the most visited photographic galleries in the United
States. Its permanent exhibitions
included the work of leading pictorialists from around the world.
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PHOTOGRAPHY AS ART • 65
Alfred Stieglitz. Paula, 1899.
Stieglitz’s mastery of light and
shadow marks most of his photographs.“Photography,” stated
Stieglitz,“is my passion.The
search for truth my obsession.”
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work of established pictorialists and introduced the images of still-unheralded artistic
photographers.
Through its art gallery and its publications the Photo-Secession profoundly
influenced photography in America and
abroad. Pictorialists, both amateur and professional, flocked to 291, regarding it almost
as a shrine. The organization’s greatest
impact was perhaps felt most keenly in
photographic clubs throughout the nation.
Inspired by the Photo-Secession, many of
these clubs encouraged their members
even more passionately than their counterparts in Europe to take up pictorialism and
held regular exhibitions of these members’
work.The rediscovered work of Hill and
Adamson, and photographs by Julia Margaret Cameron were shown in special
exhibits at 291. In addition, 291 was the
first gallery in the United States to show
paintings and sculptures by artists whose
work featured new techniques in visual
expression. Among these artists were Europeans such as Pablo Picasso, Georges
Braque, Paul Cessna, and Auguste Rodin,
and Americans such as Georgia O’Keeffe,
John Marin, and Arthur Dove. Modern art
was the primary feature of two later galleries that Stieglitz operated in the 1920s
and 1930s.
In his own photography, Stieglitz
evolved from his early pictorialist style to
an uncompromising straight approach that
characterizes his finest work. He recognized this development in others too, and
gave Paul Strand—who was to become
one of the major American photographic
artists of the 20th century—his first major
exhibition, at 291.
Alfred Stieglitz was always on the hunt
for photographic talent. One of his earliest
discoveries, at the beginning of the PhotoSecession, was a young man destined to
become as famous as Stieglitz himself. His
name was Edward Steichen. As a young
man in Milwaukee,Wisconsin, Steichen
studied painting.When his father gave him
a camera, however, he discovered a new
passion.Although he continued to paint for
most of the rest of his life, his main efforts
went into photography. His photographic
contributions were so great that he would
eventually became known as the “dean of
American photographers.”
Edward Steichen conquered almost
every field of photography. His pictorial
images made him one of the leading lights
of the Photo-Secession. Many of his portraits were hailed as true masterpieces. He
became one of the giants of both advertising
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 66
and fashion photography.As a Signal Corps
cameraman during World War I he captured outstanding war images. Commissioned a lieutenant commander in World
War II, he was in charge of all of the United States Navy’s combat photography in
the Pacific theater of war.
Aside from his own photographic
accomplishments, Steichen was also a curator of photography. From 1947 to 1962 he
served as director of photography at New
York’s Museum of Modern Art.The museum had established a department of photography under the direction of Beaumont
Newhall in 1930, some ten years before
many other major nongovernment museums started adding photographs to their
collections. Under Steichen’s direction in
the years after World War II, the Museum
of Modern Art became one of the world’s
most important photographic repositories.
While at the museum, Steichen organized
the “Family of Man,” the most popular
photographic exhibition ever held. From
1952 to 1955 he traveled the world seeking
the most outstanding images available for
the project.When mounted, the exhibition
included those photographs he had selected
from more than 2 million candidates.
Eventually, the “Family of Man” was
viewed by more than 9 million people in
69 different countries. A book based on the
exhibition has been the best-selling photographic book of all time.
Perhaps more than those of any other
American pictorialist, Steichen’s early artistic photographs are reminiscent of the
paintinglike images produced by Peter
Henry Emerson, George Davison, and
Frank Sutcliffe. Typical of these images
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is Steichen’s Flatiron—Evening, a gum
bichromate print. It is a photograph
marked by its soft, almost ethereal quality.
The contrast of the fragile tree limbs in the
foreground of the picture with the massive
building in the background, and the dark
shadows accentuated by occasional splashes
of light distinguish the picture as a masterful artistic rendering.
Gertrude Käsebier, like Edward Steichen, was another of Alfred Stieglitz’s outstanding protégés. As was the case with
many pictorialists, her work was marked by
the way she expressed her own deepest
feelings and emotions through her images.
Influenced by having grown up on the
American prairie, Käsebier was a strong
Edward Steichen. Flatiron—
Evening, 1905.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the Flatiron Building in New
York City was one of the most commonly photographed of all structures.
Steichen’s is the best-known image
of the triangular-shaped building.
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY AS ART • 67
Gertrude Käsebier. Blessed Art
Thou Among Women, 1899.
Käsebier was one of a number of
women Photo-Secessionists who made
their mark by producing artistic photographs. She also ran a professional
portrait studio in NewYork.
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advocate of the growing early 19th-century
American belief that, rather than be coddled, children should be encouraged to
develop a sense of independence. She
expressed this conviction in many of her
photographs, particularly in her image
Blessed Art Thou Among Women, which
became one of the best known of all pictorialist images.
Almost all of the techniques employed
by those who sought to bring art to their
photographs can be seen in this picture,
which, in several ways, is allegorical in
nature.The child stands at the threshold of
a doorway, which implies that a major
development in her life is about to occur.
Her dark clothing contrasts dramatically
with the all-white garment of the adult
woman, who may be her mother, a guardian, or even an angel.The soft, warm tonal
scale is the result of the platinum process
used for the print.The pose of the subjects
is simple and direct. But Käsebier’s message
is also clear. By having the adult’s hand
placed on the child’s shoulder, she shows
the woman to be supportive and encouraging of the youngster. At the same time,
by depicting the woman’s face in profile
while presenting the child looking boldly
ahead of her, Käsebier tells us that this is
a girl being encouraged to act and think
for herself.
The fact that photography has never
stagnated has been due to the vision and
influence of photographers of all kinds.
Particularly important has been the presence of successful photographers who have
devoted much of their time to passing on
their skills to young men and women seeking to follow in their footsteps.
One of the most influential teachers of
photography was a shy, highly intelligent
man from Ohio named Clarence H.White.
After spending several years as a bookkeeper,
White began taking his first photographs in
1894. Although Ohio was far removed from
the center of Photo-Secession activities in
New York, he became enthralled with the
photographs he encountered in Camera
Work and joined the Photo-Secession.
In his pictures,White concentrated on
simple, innocent domestic scenes. He captured images of youngsters playing childhood games and people caught in the
midst of peaceful reflection.Among White’s
most intriguing photographs is that titled
Drops of Rain. In this typically soft-focused
image, White depicted a young boy gazing
into a glass globe, that object embraced by
the Photo-Secessionists as the symbol of
their movement.
Aside from his photographs, White’s
greatest contribution to the medium came
through his teaching. From 1907 to 1925 he
taught photography at Columbia University.
He was such an effective teacher that aspiring photographers traveled from all corners
of the nation to take his courses. Among his
students, many of whom credited him for
launching their photographic careers, were
such future masters of the medium as
Dorothea Lange, Margaret Bourke-White,
Doris Ulmann, and Paul Outerbridge.
White was also the first president of the Pictorial Photographers of America, an organization which, like the Photo-Secession,
played a key role in gaining acceptance of
photography as an art form.
Although the Photo-Secession captured
so much attention and produced so many
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 68
Clarence White. Drops of Rain,
about 1902.
White was a master at capturing those
he photographed in soft, natural light.
The glass globe was regarded by the
Photo-Secessionists as a symbol of
beauty and the many mysteries of life.
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outstanding images and imaginative photographic talents, its glory days were relatively
short. One of the reasons was that the pictorialist approach of most of its members
was regarded by many critics as a mere imitation of paintings.Alfred Stieglitz himself
was the cause of a number of photographers abandoning the movement. Many
photographers felt that Stieglitz, who was
often dictatorial, played favorites in his
selection of those whose work was published in Camera Work and exhibited in the
Photo-Secession gallery.
The coming of World War I, with its
terrible toll of death and destruction, also
played a major role in pictorialism’s decline.
Suddenly the simple, innocent, charming
life that had been the subject of so many
artistic photographs seemed out of touch
with the real world.
But the decline of 19th- and early 20thcentury pictorialism did not mean that art
photography was abandoned. Far from it.
Beginning in the 1920s, scores of photographers took up where the early pictorialists had left off by adopting bold new
approaches.
These new art photographers eschewed
soft-focus effects in favor of much sharper
images. Most of all, they created whole new
forms of photography such as the photogram and the photomontage.Two men
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PHOTOGRAPHY AS ART • 69
Man Ray. Rayograph, about 1924.
Man Ray’s photograms were a result of his desire
to expand the boundaries of photography. He stated that his work “is designed to amuse, bewilder,
annoy, or inspire reflections. . . .The streets are full
of admirable craftsmen, but so few dreamers.”
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László Moholy-Nagy. Berlin Radio
Tower, about 1925.
Along with creating photomontages,
Moholy-Nagy was most interested in
taking photographs from angles that
revealed the patterns and shapes created by light playing upon natural and
man-made objects.
often regarded as fathers of avant-garde art
photography were the American Man Ray
and the Hungarian László Moholy-Nagy.
Man Ray’s avowed purpose was to free
photography from the mechanics of the
medium, even, in fact, to free it from the
camera. He accomplished this by positioning objects on chemically treated paper. He
then exposed the areas around the objects
by placing them under very strong light.
The result was evocative silhouette-type
images commonly called photograms, but
Man Ray called them “Rayographs.”
Moholy-Nagy was one of the founding
faculty of the Bauhaus, a university of
modern architecture and design in Germany from 1919 to 1933. In the course he
taught on light, film, and photography, students created photograms and experimented with another kind of artistic image
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making called photomontage. Pioneered by
Raoul Hausmann and Hannah Hoch in
1918 and 1919, a photomontage is a modern combination image. It uses individual
elements from several different photographs, and often words or phrases from
printed sources to construct a complex,
often abstract image.The separate elements
may be cut or torn out of the source material, pasted together, and rephotographed,
or they may be brought together by combination printing, as in early pictorialism.
Hand-drawn or painted elements are often
incorporated as well.
The photogram and the photomontage
were but the beginning of a whole new
impetus toward photography as art known
as modernism.“The once popular ‘storytelling’ pictures, the tender landscapes with
sheep, the bowls of flowers, the portraits of
little children have had to make way for
prints in which a new and almost disordered spirit is evident,” wrote the editor of
Vanity Fair magazine.
This approach, which broke new ground
not only in the content of artistic photographs but in how they were taken, could
be seen in the work of the Russian photographer Alexander Rodchenko. Originally a
sculptor and a painter, Rodchenko was one
of the pioneers of constructionism, an
abstract style of both painting and photography that placed the design of a picture
above its content. He was also a champion
of taking pictures from extreme angles of
view, a photographic technique eventually
adopted by scores of mid-20th-century
photographers. Most photographers viewed
their subjects head-on, commonly with a
reflex-viewing camera held at waist level or
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 70
Barbara Morgan.
Spring on Madison
Square, 1938.
Influenced by the work of
Man Ray, Morgan created scores of intriguing
photomontages. A versatile photographer, she also
became known for dramatic images of dancers
in performance.
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a 35mm camera held at eye level. Rodchenko added dramatically to the artistic
effects of his pictures by photographing in a
bold new way.“In photography,” he stated,
“there is the old point of view, the angle of
vision of a man [with a waist-level camera]
who stands on the ground and looks
straight ahead, or as I call it, makes ‘bellybutton’ shots. . . . I fight this point of view,
and will fight it along with my colleagues
in the new photography. The most interesting angle shots today are those ‘down
from above’ and ‘up from below,’ and their
diagonals.” Rodchenko photographed from
windows, balconies, stairways, ladders, and
even trees to get extreme overhead views,
and laid on the ground or otherwise placed
the camera very low to get dynamic
upward-looking angles.
By the 1930s and early 1940s, the new
art photography had gained wide acceptance. Regular exhibitions of modernist
works were increasingly held and were well
attended. At the same time, photographers
such as Edward Weston and Paul Strand (see
Chapter 9) applied their purist or straight
approach to producing images of great artistic merit. It became clear that rather than
dying out with the end of the Photo-Secession, art photography had not only survived
but had taken photography in exciting new
directions.The fact that photographs are
today proudly displayed alongside paintings,
sculpture, and other works of art in museums and galleries throughout the world provides testimony to the achievements of both
the early pictorialists and those who extended their vision.
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PHOTOGRAPHY AS ART • 71
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Chapter
. . . . . . . . Five
...............................................................
Documentary Photography
A
Dorothea Lange, shown here in
1934, was one of the world’s
leading documentary photographers.“There is no real warfare
between the artist and the documentary photographer,” she
wrote.“He has to be both . . . the
documentary photographer is trying to speak to you in terms of
everybody’s experience.”
t the same time that those who
were determined to gain acceptance
for photography as an art form were
first beginning to produce their
images, other men and women, who came
to be known as documentary photographers,
were using their cameras to record people,
places, and conditions more powerfully than
ever before. Photohistorians have commonly
placed the work of documentary photographers into two categories, straight documentary
and social documentary. Both categories involve
photographs of clearly defined groups of
people and the conditions in which they live,
but with differences in emphasis and intent.
Straight documentary refers to pictures taken
to capture specific ways of life before they
have vanished from an ever-changing world.
Often the photographer engages in some
degree of interpretation by using a distinct
style of composition and printing to enhance
the appeal or interest of the pictures.
Social documentary pictures deal with a
specific social subgroup—coal miners of
Appalachia, agricultural workers in a drought
area, people in a nursing home or retirement
center, members of an inner-city gang, for
example.The photographs concentrate on
the individuals and the specific things they
do, or are unable to do, to deal with the
immediate problems of their lives.There is
sometimes an impression that social documentary deals only with negative conditions
and experiences, things that need to be
reformed. However, much social documentary work has the positive intent of making
viewers aware of good and successful social
conditions and programs that deserve support and encouragement.
Of all photographers, social documentarians feel an obligation to be as truthful as
possible about their subjects. Of course, the
choice of what to show and what to leave
out, from how close or far away, and from
what angle of view may be influenced by
unconscious preferences and dislikes. But
the photographers make every effort to
avoid injecting personal interpretation.They
try to select the details and information that
present the real situation truthfully and
objectively.
Straight documentary photography has
dealt with a wide range of lifestyles and
people. Among the straight documentary
photographers was a woman named Frances
Benjamin Johnston.A niece of Mrs. Grover
Cleveland, she was allowed within the White
House, where she took pictures of President
.......................................................................
DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY • 73
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Lewis Hine.Young boys in coal
mine, about 1910 (top).
Joseph Byron. Harrison Grey Fiske
Dinner, 1900 (bottom).
Documentary photographers trained
their cameras on both ends of the social
spectrum. Hine’s picture shows child
laborers working from dawn to dusk
sorting coal, miles underground. Byron
spent most of his career photographing
the lives of the wealthy, such as this
group of business tycoons enjoying a
lavish banquet in New York City.
Cleveland and of several others who followed him in office. She also captured
images of other famous people.These portraits made her one of the most successful
of all early women photographers, but she
became determined to expand her photographic horizons and built a career taking
illustrations and writing articles on social
topics for magazines and newspapers.
Aware that nations around the world
were increasingly curious abut the American system of free public schooling, which
was then little more than 50 years old, she
obtained a commission from the officials of
the Paris Exposition of 1900 to record how
the system was working.The images she
captured of Washington, D.C., schoolchildren inside their classrooms and on various
field trips provided not only a dramatic
portrayal of the free American school system at work but revealed Johnston’s artistry
with a camera.
Her photographs were among the most
highly acclaimed of those shown at the
Paris Exposition and earned her several
other commissions. Among them was one
she received from African-American leader
Booker T.Washington, which would lead
to her most important work.
Washington, a former slave, invited
Johnston to travel to the South to record
life at Hampton Institute in Virginia and
Tuskegee Institute in Alabama, two schools
that had been established to offer AfricanAmerican students both educational
courses and training in skilled trades.
Almost all the parents or grandparents of
these students had once been slaves. From
the moment she arrived at the Hampton
school, Johnston was struck by the dedication of the teachers and students she encountered. She became determined to
share her appreciation of what was being
accomplished through her camera.
She took scores of pictures of young
men and women learning to be carpenters,
milliners, cobblers, farmers, and tradespeople. At first glance, it might appear that the
ambitions of these young people were not
high.They were, after all, studying to be
skilled laborers, not doctors or lawyers. But
in segregated America, filled with severe
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 74
Frances Benjamin
Johnston. Carpentry
students at Hampton
Institute, 1900.
Johnston was among the earliest and most successful of all
documentary photographers.
“The woman who makes
photography profitable,” she
wrote,“must have . . . good
taste, a quick eye, and a talent
for detail.”
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racism, the education they were receiving
represented their best and, in many cases,
their only chance for bettering their lives.
Johnston’s photographs portray the dignity with which the young people of
Tuskegee and Hampton went about their
studies; they also disclose the remarkable
sense of composition she brought to her
images.This special talent can be seen in
her photograph of students learning to be
carpenters. The picture as a whole is
marked by a wonderful sense of balance.
But as one studies the picture more closely
it becomes apparent that contained within
this one image are individual groupings
that could stand on their own as separate
images. It was a technique that Johnston
employed in many of her photographs.
While Johnston was determined to
reveal the accomplishments of African-
American students seeking to enrich their
opportunities, another early straight documentary photographer devoted his energies
to recording a unique way of life before it
vanished forever. His name was Solomon
Butcher. He and his family were among
the early settlers of the Nebraska Territory
of the American West.
Butcher was particularly fascinated with
the sod houses that served as the first
homes of so many families in the region
where he lived. Although the Nebraska soil
was among the richest in the world, it contained almost no trees from which wooden
houses could be built.The soil, however,
was matted with heavy grass that held it
together like rubber. The inventive Nebraska pioneers cut the earth into long strips
and used it like bricks to build their first
homes in the West.
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DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY • 75
Solomon Butcher. Sod house
family, 1886.
Although Butcher’s primary intent
was to preserve a vanishing way of life,
he also wanted to produce masterfully
composed photographs. He arranged
the boys at the left of the picture by
height and framed the picture by placing all the family members to the left
and right of the window and door.
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Arnold Genthe. The Butcher, about
1895.
Genthe was an extremely versatile photographer. In addition to his Chinatown
photographs, such as this one, he was an
accomplished portraitist who traveled
extensively throughout South America
and Europe, where he captured striking
landscape and architectural images.
As more and more people poured into
the region, Butcher witnessed the replacement of the sod houses by homes built of
wood, carted in from distant areas. He
became obsessed with capturing pictures of
the “soddies,” as they were called, before
they became a thing of the past. Day after
day he traveled the long distances between
homesteads, taking photographs of the
unique dwellings and of the families that
lived within them.
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Through Butcher’s efforts, an important, vanishing type of American dwelling
was preserved. But the pictures he took,
such as the image above of a pioneer couple and their four sons, revealed much more
than perhaps even he could have envisioned. As he asked this frontier family to
pose in front of its home, they became
aware that this was perhaps their one
opportunity to have themselves and their
belongings recorded for future generations
to see. Like most of the families he photographed, they asked Butcher to wait
while they hauled their proudest possessions—prized pieces of furniture, farm
implements, bird cages, pets and farm animals—to the front of their dwelling so that
they could be included in the picture.The
result was photographic documentation not
only of sod houses, but of the artifacts of life
on the American frontier.
The period in which the first American
documentary photographers operated, the
middle to late 1800s and early 1900s, coincided with a great tide of immigration to
the United States. The vast majority of
these newcomers (some 30 million) came
from countries throughout Europe,
although many came from China and
Japan as well.
The first Chinese to arrive in the United
States actually made the journey before the
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 76
The Detective or Spy Camera
T
great era of immigration began.They came
to California in the 1850s, seeking to strike
it rich during the Gold Rush days.When
they arrived, they found that strict laws
against people from the Orient barred them
from digging in the gold fields. Determined
to remain in America, they took in washing
and eked out a living in any way they could.
Between 1864 and 1869, many of these
Chinese found jobs with the construction
crews that built the western half of the
transcontinental railroad.
The prejudice that the Chinese encountered led them to band together wherever
they settled in the United States.This was
particularly true in San Francisco, where,
suspicious of outsiders, they created a large
neighborhood that outsiders called Chinatown. It was really a city within a city.
Aware that Americans were curious about
these people whose language, dress, and
customs were so different from their own, a
San Francisco photographer became determined to portray these people to the outside world.
This photographer, Arnold Genthe, had
come to San Francisco from Germany to
tutor the son of wealthy parents. He had
been highly educated in his native country
and was both an accomplished painter and
musician. Almost from the moment he
arrived in the United States he began his
attempts to depict Chinatown’s inhabitants
visually. At first Genthe tried to do so
through paintings, but whenever he took
out his sketchpad, the people he was
attempting to draw ran away. He then
decided to compile his record through
photographs. Once again he met with deep
resistance.
he real-life images
that Arnold Genthe
captured in San Francisco’s Chinatown are
referred to as candid photographs.That is, they are
informal, unposed pictures. Genthe took his
pictures by keeping himself hidden from those he
photographed. In the last
quarter of the 19th century, inventors began to
create all types of cameras
which would allow photographers to take secret,
candid photographs without having to hide.
Known as detective or spy
cameras, these devices
were either disguised as
everyday objects or hidden
within familiar objects.
One of the earliest
detective cameras was the
Stirn Secret Camera,
invented in 1885 by
Robert Gray in New York
and manufactured by the
C. P. Stirn Company.The
camera was worn under a
vest with the lens looking
through a buttonhole, and
pictures were taken by
pulling on a string in the
user’s pocket. Another early
device was the Deceptive
Angle Box. Its hidden lens,
located on the side of the
camera, allowed its user to
innocently point the camera in one direction while
capturing a picture of
unsuspecting people who
were situated off to the
side. Other early detective
devices included tiny cameras placed in the handles
of walking sticks, in the
cases of pocket watches, in
innocent-looking packages,
in the bindings of books,
and even inside ladies’
garters. One of the most
popular of all these cameras
was the French Photo
Cravate, which featured a
tiny hidden camera with
its lens set into an ornamental tie pin.
The success of these
secretive cameras led to even
more sophisticated devices,
some of which were used as
spying devices in World Wars
I and II. Cameras that produced clear, detailed images
were inserted into matchboxes, cigarette packs, and
cigarette lighters. Perhaps the
most interesting of all the
spy or detective devices was
the Doppel Sport Pigeon
Camera, developed in Germany during World War I.
These cameras, equipped
with automatic timers, were
attached to pigeons that
were to fly over enemy
forces and take pictures of
their position and strength.
Much to the Germans’
disappointment, almost all
the pigeons, weighed down
by the camera, crashed to
earth before completing
their missions.
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The detective camera featured in this ad from about 1890 was but one of scores of
devices invented to permit users to take pictures secretly.This particular detective camera
was disguised as a simple carrying case.
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DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY • 77
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Jacques-Henri Lartigue. Delage
Racer at Full Speed, 1912.
Many of Lartigue’s photographs are
marked by the sense of captured
motion.The contrast between the vertical figures of the bystanders in this
picture and the horizontal racing car
is also typical of his technique.
Genthe refused to be discouraged. He
switched to a small camera which he kept
inside his pocket. By hiding in doorways or
behind poles or signs, he managed to capture his subjects unaware by unobtrusively
taking out his camera, shooting the picture,
and slipping the camera back into his
pocket.Typical of his Chinatown images is
that of a butcher at work under the gaze of
a young onlooker. Genthe could not pose
his subjects, nor could he spend any time
composing his photographs.Yet this picture, like many of his others, is marked not
only by its dramatic content but by the
expressive contrast of shadow and light that
he was able to record. Adding to the power
of the image is the look on the butcher’s
face suggesting that the man may well have
spotted the elusive Genthe just as he was
taking the picture.
The desire to capture images of vanishing
or unique lifestyles was not confined to the
United States. In France, for example, photographer Jacques-Henri Lartigue became
a master of the straight documentary
approach. Under any circumstances, the
images that Lartigue captured during his
long career would rank him as one of the
masters of photography. What is almost
impossible to believe is that he took some of
his greatest pictures between the time he
was 10 and 12 years old.
When he was very young, Lartigue both
adored and was jealous of his older brother
Zissou, who was constantly experimenting
with new contraptions and finding new
adventures. In the diary that he kept
throughout his life Lartigue would later
write, “My brother Zissou had a vivid
intelligence and he invented so many
things . . . but I was always the little boy, in
the way, kept in the corner, dying to take
part.” In 1903, when he was seven, Lartigue’s frustrations were put to rest when
his father gave him a camera so that he
could record what he saw around him, particularly his brother’s adventures.The camera was a huge contraption mounted on a
tall tripod. Lartigue was so small that he
had to stand on tiptoe on a stool to take his
pictures. But he had found his life’s purpose. In his diary he wrote,“Photography is
a magic thing. Nothing will ever be as
much fun.”
Lartigue began his picture taking by
capturing images of his large family at play,
at home, at the seashore, and on vacation in
the Normandy countryside.When he was
10, he acquired a hand-held camera and
began taking some of his most memorable
photographs. Many were of his brother and
his friends as they experimented with kites
and the earliest forms of airplanes. The
prospect of the conquest of the air fascinated
him and he constantly begged adults to take
him to a nearby airfield, where he photographed pioneer pilots’ continual attempts
to fly. Before he was even a teenager, he
compiled one of the earliest and most accurate records of the birth of flight.
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 78
Lartigue’s fascination with machines
extended to the automobile. Among his
most compelling images are those of the
automotive races at Orleans and Dieppe.
He was also intrigued with the glamorous
appearance of the elegantly dressed women
of the day. The photographs he took of
them on their daily morning walks or
attending horseracing events constitute yet
another photographic documentation of
the era.The most distinguishing characteristics of his images were their total directness,
clarity, and the sense of excitement they so
often conveyed. For one so young, it was a
remarkable achievement.
While Lartigue was capturing images of
the romance and spirit of his times, another
French photographer, Eugène Atget, was
making his own vital photographic contribution. An orphan, Atget went to sea when
he was very young, serving as a cabin boy.
When his seafaring days were over, he
spent more than 10 years trying to establish
himself as a touring actor. Unable to earn
enough money on the stage, at the age of
40 he decided to try his hand at photography. Needing to begin selling his photographs almost immediately, he found
an outlet for his images in the large Parisian artists’ colony. Many of these artists
commonly purchased photographs of
parks, gardens, buildings, and other scenes
to use for visual reference for the paintings
they created.
Eugène Atget. St. Cloud,
about 1910.
A friend of Atget wrote
about him,“For some time
he had had the ambition to
create a collection of all that
which both in Paris and its
surroundings was artistic
and picturesque.”
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DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY • 79
Eugène Atget. Avenue des Gobleins,
Paris, about 1910.
Atget’s storefront images rank among
the most outstanding of all his photographs. Even though they are absent
of people, there is an unmistakable
human quality about them.
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Brassaï (Gyula Halasz). Couple in
café, about 1935.
“Most of the time I have drawn my images
from the daily life around me. I think that
is the most sincere and humble appreciation
of reality, the most everyday event leads to
the extraordinary,” wrote Brassaï.
Image Not Available
For more than a quarter century, from
1900 until 1927, Atget rose each day before
dawn and roamed the streets of Paris taking
his pictures. He chose the early hours when
the streets would be almost empty so that he
would be undisturbed by onlookers and so
that he could spend as much time as he
thought necessary to capture each image. A
tireless worker, he took photographs of
almost everything that met his eye. He captured the stores, the churches, the parks, the
monuments, the courtyards, and the elegant
specialty shops that gave Paris its distinctive
flavor. He took many of his pictures in
series, photographing workers of all types.
He was particularly fascinated with the
countless horsedrawn vehicles that dominated the Parisian streets. He photographed
them all—coal, brewery, and laundry wagons, funeral coaches, milk and grocery carts.
There is a special poignancy to these
images. All were taken at a time when
Paris, like almost all major cities, was beginning to change dramatically in appearance.
For one thing, miles of houses and shops
were being torn down to permit digging
from the surface to build the Métro, the
Paris subway system.Atget was aware that
many of the finely detailed buildings he
photographed would soon give way to
more modern, less artistically adorned
structures. He also knew that, because of
the automobile, the horsedrawn vehicles
would rapidly become part of the past.The
photographs he took represent nothing less
than a historical documentation of a vanishing Paris.
Atget’s pictures of homes and buildings
are marked by the attention he paid to
every detail—railings, archways, doors, and
staircases. Some of his most compelling
photographs were those he took of the
storefront windows of the many specialty
shops for which Paris was famous.Typical
of these is the image he captured of a men’s
clothing store.The dramatic play of the
white signs against the dark clothing and
the positions of the mannequins make it a
dramatic image. It is a most human photograph, without any person appearing in it.
Atget’s passion for documenting a great
city before its appearance was dramatically
altered in the name of progress was shared
by the American photographer Berenice
Abbott. As a member of a group of photographers who took their pictures under
the auspices of the government’s Works
Progress Administration (WPA) during the
Great Depression, Abbott compiled an
unprecedented visual portrayal of New
York City.
Abbott titled her photographic project
Changing NewYork.To her, New York represented both “the present jostling with the
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 80
past” and “life at its greatest intensity.” She
was determined to document as much of
the city as possible before many of its buildings gave way to skyscrapers.
Abbott took hundreds of pictures from
both street level and rooftops.Time and
again she demonstrated a marvelous ability
to capture striking contrasts of patterns,
light, and shapes.Aware of the importance
of her project she stated,“Photography can
only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of
the past.”
Among the documentary photographers were those who made their mark by
recording what can best be described as the
human condition.Their goal was to photographically capture people of all types as
they made their way through life, documenting the joys and frustrations, the good
and the not so good that are all part of the
human experience. One of the giants of
this approach was a man who gave himself
the name Brassaï.
His real name was Gyula Halasz, but
professionally he called himself Brassaï in
honor of Brassov,Transylvania, the town in
which he was born in 1899.When he was
four years old, his father brought him to
Paris and for the rest of his life he remained
in love with that city.As a young man he
studied art in both Hungary and Germany
and then moved permanently to Paris,
where he spent eight years working as a
journalist. In 1929, encouraged by his
friend the well-known photographer
André Kertész, he took up photography.
The images that Brassaï captured from
the time he turned to the camera can best
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be described as slices of life. Unlike Eugène
Atget, who photographed in the early
morning hours, Brassaï preferred to work
mostly at night. He felt that the atmosphere
created by the evening light was most
appropriate for capturing images of the
various types of people he wished to
photograph.
Brassaï was a highly intelligent man who
gave great thought to every picture he
took. He was a most deliberate photographer who would not snap his shutter until
either the natural or artificial light falling
upon his subjects and their expressions or
Berenice Abbott. El, 1936.
Abbott’s Changing New York
series revealed her mastery at capturing the patterns formed by light and
shadow. She took this picture from
beneath one of NewYork City’s
many elevated railways.
........................................................................
DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY • 81
gestures were exactly as he wished. He used
several different kinds of hand-held cameras, but his genius lay not in his use of his
equipment but in his deep understanding
of what it took to capture an outstanding
documentary photograph.
The masterful documentary photographer, he wrote,“has respect for his subjects,
amounting almost to religious veneration;
keenness of powers of observation; patience
and hawk-like speed on swooping on his
prey; . . . spurning of color and the enjoyment derived form the restraint and sobriety of black upon white; and finally, desire
to get beyond the anecdotal and to promote subjects to the dignity of types.”
Brassaï’s dedication to this vision made it
possible for him to produce unique and
Tina Modotti—Photographer/Revolutionary/Spy
A
s in all areas of the
creative arts, photography has had its share
of interesting and even
controversial characters.
One of the most intriguing personalities of all was
Tina Modotti, who took
documentary and political-activist photographs in
Mexico in the 1920s.
Born in Italy in 1896,
Modotti came to San
Francisco in 1913. Four
years later she married a
poet and artist, Roubaix
Richey. In 1918 she
became a movie actress,
and during the next three
years appeared in several
HolIywood films. Just as
her movic career was ending, her husband died and
she became the companion of American photographer Edward Weston, who
taught her photography.
In 1923 Modotti and
Weston moved to Mexico,
where they eventually
opened two photographic
studios. It was while she
was in Mexico that Modotti’s life changed even
more dramatically. She
became friendly with
some of Mexico’s most
active revolutionaries and
joined the Communist
Party. It was during this
time also that she took her
most outstanding photographs. Many were of
various types of Mexican
workers, whom she felt
were being exploited by
an oppressive government.
Other pictures were
images with a strong
social-political message—
revolutionary propaganda.
Among the strongest such
images were those in
which she grouped
together objects like an ear
of corn, a guitar, a sickle,
and a bandolier (a broad
belt holding a long row of
bullets) representing traditional Mexican ways of life
contrasted with the struggle against oppression.
Modotti’s revolutionary activities brought her
to the attention of Mexican authorities. In 1928
she was accused of helping
to murder a fellow revolu-
tionary with whom she
had begun a romantic relationship. She was found
innocent of that charge,
but the following year was
accused of taking part in an
assassination attempt
against Mexico’s president
and was deported. She first
went to Germany, where
she photographed for a
magazine. She then went
to live in Moscow, where
she abandoned photography in favor of working
full time for the Communist party.
From 1931 until 1934
Modotti worked for a
Russian relief agency called
International Red Aid.
During that time she was
also recruited by the Russian secret police and was
sent on spying missions to
several different countries.
From 1935 to 1938 Modotti was in Spain, where
during the Spanish Civil
War she worked in a hospital and also supplied aid
to orphans. In 1939 she retumed to Mexico and was
granted political asylum.
Three years later she died of
a heart attack while riding
in a taxi in Mexico City.
Throughout her lifetime Tina Modotti was
known mainly for her
political activities. In more
recent times she has gained
recognition for the quality
and power of the social
documentary images she
captured in Mexico. Hers
is a remarkable story, compiled by a woman whose
life was as dramatic as the
pictures she took.
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Tina Modotti. Mexican workers’ demonstration,
1929.
In keeping with her revolutionary beliefs, many of Modotti’s
photographs reveal the difficult life of Mexican laborers.
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 82
haunting photographs.“I invent nothing,”
he said,“I imagine everything.”
The photographs taken by straight documentary photographers provided a great service to all those interested in preserving a
record of the past and in gaining insight into
the human condition.Thousands of images
made their way into archives throughout the
world where they are still studied by students, scholars, and the general public. Scores
of books have included these visual records.
It was, however, the images captured by
social documentary photographers that had
an even more direct impact. Building upon
photography’s ability to persuade as well as
reveal, those who took social documentary
photographs used their cameras to make
people aware of conditions that they felt
cried out for reform.
Many of these conditions involved people who lived in the city. By the middle of
the 19th century, the movement from rural
areas to cities was taking place in nations
around the world.The cities were exciting
places, filled with stores, restaurants, entertainment, and work opportunities of all
kinds. For many, the city became a symbol
of the progress that was being made
throughout the globe. But there was a real
price to this progress.
The factories that were located in most
of the cities lured workers away from
farming areas but paid very low wages.
Most factory workers could not afford to
live in clean, well-kept homes or neighborhoods. Newly arrived immigrants,
most of whom were poor, also made up a
large part of the urban population. One of
the first to train his camera on city poor
people and, in the process, produce pictures which showed conditions in
John Thomson. London
Nomades, 1876.
There is a genuine similarity
between many of Thomson’s
images and those of Frances
Benjamin Johnston. Like
Johnston,Thomson never
demeaned any of his subjects
in his photographs, even
those, like these British gypsies, who were living on the
edge of society.
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need of reform was the British photographer John Thomson.
A passionate traveler, Thomson had
journeyed to the Far East between 1865
and 1870, where he captured images of
people and places few in the Western world
had ever seen. Some of his most compelling photographs, however, were those
he took of poor and destitute people living
in harsh conditions in London.They were
published in a book titled Street Life in London to accompany text written by the
reform-minded reporter Adolphe Smith.
The publication of Thomson’s pictures
represented a photographic breakthrough,
since in Victorian England the depiction of
the social problems of the “lower classes”
was thought to be in bad taste.The impact
that Thomson’s pictures had on the public
paved the way for other photographers
who created even more shocking exposés
of particular social ills connected with
urban life. Of these, the photographer who
........................................................................
DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY • 83
Jacob Riis.Woman and child
in a tenement, about 1888.
This photograph of an Italian
mother and her baby was typical
of the thousands of pictures that
Riis took inside NewYork City
tenements.According to Riis, his
purpose was to show “as no mere
description could, the misery and
vice that [I have] noticed . . . and
suggest the direction in which
good might be done.”
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succeeded in bringing about the most dramatic changes was the Danish-born Jacob
Riis, who came to America at the age of
21. He lived in New York City at a time
when millions of European immigrants in
that metropolis were forced to live in terribly crowded, dirty, multistoried buildings
called tenements.
Riis was primarily a reporter, not a photographer. But when he was assigned to
write newspaper articles about the slums of
New York he found that he needed to take
photographs of the conditions he encountered so that people would believe his
reports. He taught himself how to take
pictures and, beginning in 1877, took his
camera into the tenements and on to the
streets and alleys where the immigrants
continually sought refuge from their crowded, shabby dwellings. The faces of the
people he photographed reflected the pain
and bewilderment of the life they were
forced to endure.
Riis made a concerted effort to portray
his subjects in as dignified a manner as possible. Despite this, he often encountered
bitter resistance to his picture taking. Many
tenement dwellers, embarrassed or angry at
being photographed in such squalid surroundings, resisted his photographic
attempts. On several occasions he was driven from a dwelling by threats to his person
or by a barrage of thrown objects.
But he was not to be deterred. For several years he continued to compile a dramatic visual record of those in desperate
need of help. Among the most telling
of Riis’s photographs is his picture of a
woman holding her baby in the basement
of a tenement.The horrible living conditions, the sparse belongings and the sense of
hopelessness, as reflected in the woman’s
expression, are all revealed.
Riis’s images were widely circulated.
Many were published in newspapers and in
books with such titles as How the Other Half
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 84
Lewis Hine’s photographs
became part of a national crusade to abolish child labor.This
poster, from about 1915, is typical of the way his pictures were
used to make the public aware
of this national disgrace.
Lives (1890) and Children of the Tenements,
(1892).They shocked the nation, but most
important, they inspired city and national
government officials to begin to take steps
to eliminate the conditions under which so
many newcomers to America had been
forced to live.
Lewis Hine was another photographer
endowed with a deep social conscience.
Trained as both a sociologist and a teacher,
Hine took his first photographs at the age
of 37 when he was hired to teach social science and to take publicity pictures for a
private school. Increasingly fascinated with
what he could do through his new-found
photography, he started taking pictures of
various aspects of New York working-class
life, many of which he used as teaching
tools in his social science classes.
Like Jacob Riis, Hine was concerned
with the plight of the thousands of immigrants who were arriving daily in New
York. One of the first series of pictures he
took was of newcomers moments after
they first set foot on American soil at the
immigration depot at New York’s Ellis
Island. Inspired by the results of these
images, Hine signed on as a staff photographer for a magazine.
The photographs he took for the publication caught the attention of the National
Child Labor Committee which, in 1908,
hired him to document photographically
what had become a national disgrace. Nearly 2 million children, aged six to 14, worked
for pennies a day in the nation’s factories,
mines, canneries, quarries, and on the streets.
They had no time for schooling and
worked under the most difficult conditions.
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In order to compile his photographic
documentation, Hine traveled extensively.
He journeyed to the coalfields of Pennsylvania, where in mines deep beneath the
earth he photographed boys as young as 10
years old bent over for hours in awkward
........................................................................
DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY • 85
Jack Delano. Farm couple, 1940.
Many of the Farm Security Administration
(FSA) photographers provided visual testimony
to the indomitable spirit of people caught up in
the worst of times. Dorothea Lange spoke for all
her fellow FSA photographers when she stated:
“I had to get my camera to register the things
about these people that were more important
than how poor they were—their pride, their
strength, their spirit.”
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positions sorting coal (see page 74). He
took his camera to California, where he
captured images of children standing all day
on wet, cold floors shucking oysters, often
working with fingers sliced by the sharpedged shells or the shucking knife. Many of
his most dramatic photographs were those
he took in the factories of New England
and the South where boys and girls worked
from dawn to dusk operating immense,
highly dangerous machines.
When Hine’s long and arduous documentation was completed, the National
Child Labor Committee presented his
images to Congress.They were also widely
published in newspapers and magazines.
Like the pictures of the slums that Jacob
Riis had produced before him, Lewis
Dorothea Lange.
Migrants, 1935.
Lange was always
aware of the impact that
her photographs of displaced farm families
would have on the viewing public.“The camera,” she stated,“is an
instrument that teaches
people how to see without a camera.”
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Hine’s child labor photographs stirred the
emotions of the nation. Due in great measure to the evidence he captured with his
camera, the first national child labor laws
were enacted.
Most documentary photographers
either worked independently or for publications. In the 1930s and early 1940s, however, a group of 10 men and two women
made their mark as documentarians by
making an enormous photographic record
of work done by the Farm Security
Administration (FSA), a United States government agricultural relief agency. Collectively, the some 270,000 photographs they
produced represent what is widely regarded
as the most powerful single collection of
images ever compiled. As far as documentary photography is concerned, the Farm
Security Administration collection is
unique in another way as well. For within
this massive compilation are both outstanding straight documentary photographs and
compelling social documentary images.
The FSA photographic project came
about as a result of the most severe economic depression the United States had
ever experienced. As the stock market collapsed, millions of people, beginning in the
early 1930s, found themselves out of work.
One part of the nation was particularly
hard hit. Farmers in both the Southeast and
the Southwest suffered from the economic
collapse that drastically forced down the
prices people could pay for food. In addition, those in the Southwest had experienced years of drought that had turned
their soil into dust.Tens of thousands, having
lost their farms, took to the road, heading
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 86
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for California, Oregon, and Washington
State in search of agricultural jobs.
In Washington, D.C., President Franklin
D. Roosevelt established the Farm Security
Administration, designed to bring relief to
the hard-pressed farmers.The agency, in
turn, created an Historical Section, one of
whose major tasks was to document photographically the help that the FSA would be
giving to those it was set up to serve. Roy
Stryker, a Columbia University professor
known for his understanding of photography’s value in making records as well as
for his organizational skills, was chosen to
direct the Historical Section. He began
by hiring some of the nation’s most
socially committed photographers to
capture the images. Among them were
Dorothea Lange,Walker Evans, Russell
Lee, Arthur Rothstein, Jack Delano, and
Marion Post Wolcott.
Marion Post Wolcott.
Segregated movie theatre,
1939.
Although she has never
received the acclaim given to
Dorothea Lange and Walker
Evans,Wolcott was one of the
most talented and effective of
the FSA photographers.This
photograph not only reveals
the deep racial prejudice that
was part of the American
scene in the 1930s but also
stands on its own as a beautifully composed image.
Stryker was a man who knew how to
seize an opportunity. He was aware that his
photographers needed to capture images of
FSA agents helping people cope with their
desperate situation.That, after all, was the
stated purpose of the Historical Section. But
he realized also that such an array of photographic talent, combined with government
support and funding, presented the unique
opportunity to capture nothing less than a
portrayal of a people and a nation.
When Stryker gave his orders to his
photographers he directed them not only
to document the hard times that so many
people were undergoing, but to capture
images of rural people and agricultural
workers of all types engaged in their daily
activities. His goal, he stated, was to introduce America to Americans. The FSA
photographers responded by producing
tens of thousands of documentary pictures
........................................................................
DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY • 87
chronicling almost every aspect of the people whose lives were most devastated by the
Great Depression.
Two of the FSA photographers in particular, Dorothea Lange and Walker Evans,
earned fame through the pictures they
took for the agency. Lange became known
for the sensitivity she brought to each of
her images. She was able, better than any
other FSA photographer, to gain the confidence of her subjects and to produce pictures that directly connect the viewer with
both the humanity and the emotions of
people undergoing desperate hardship.
Walker Evans established himself as a
photographic giant through the supremely
narrative quality of his work. In documenting the plight of hard-hit southern farmers
Evans produced pictures that told more
about their condition, their possessions, the
towns they frequented than pages of text
could ever achieve. Many of his photographs spoke eloquently about people
and their way of life through a portrayal of
their daily artifacts. As one photohistorian
stated,“Usually Mr. Evans has dismissed the
dweller from his dwelling, but we can
deduce him.”
Walker Evans.
Country store, 1936.
Signs, calendars, everyday
objects and products—
these were all ingredients
of many of Evans’s most
compelling photographs.
Evans’s Let Us Now
Praise Famous Men,
compiled with author
James Agee, remains one
of the most important
photographic books ever
published.
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 88
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One of the most well known of Evans’s
images is his photograph of the interior of
a country store. Distinguished by Evans’
ability to contrast light and shade and his
highly developed sense of composition, it is
reminiscent of Eugène Atget’s storefront
images. For it too speaks eloquently about
people and their way of life without containing a single human being.
It is almost impossible to overstate the
importance of the FSA photographs to
photography in general and to documentary
photography in particular. More than 60
years after most of them were taken, the
evaluation of them made by photographer
Edward Steichen still rings true.They are, he
stated,“the most remarkable human documents that were ever rendered in pictures.”
One of the major contributions of the
FSA photographers was the way in which,
through their work, they set a standard for
all documentary photographers who
would follow. In the 1960s, for example,
another government-sponsored collection
of photographs portraying people caught
up in difficult circumstances was compiled.
Paul Conklin.Young
Appalachian woman, 1965.
The United States Office of
Economic Opportunity (OEO)
project not only produced memorable and moving images but
also gave its young photographers the opportunity to develop
their skills fully. As such it provided another example of the
vital role that government has
sometimes played in furthering
the advancement of photography.
These images were captured by photographers hired by the United States Office of
Economic Opportunity (OEO). Included
among these photographers were such talented cameramen and women as William
Warren; Linda Bartlett;Arthur Tress, who
later established himself as among the most
innovative of modern photographers; and
Marcia Keegan, arguably the most accomplished of all of today’s photographers of
Native Americans of the Southwest.
The people that the OEO photographers recorded were among the millions
who dwelled in what some sociologists
termed “the other America,” individuals
who, while living in one of the richest
nations in the world, found themselves on
the edge of poverty. Unlike the FSA
images, however, the OEO photographs
have remained almost unknown. Like
images captured by all those who mastered
the documentary approach, they make us
aware that the most outstanding photographs are those that not only appeal to
the eye but touch deeply the emotions of
the viewer as well.
........................................................................
DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY • 89
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Chapter
. . . . . . . . Six
...............................................................
Photographs in Print
T
The invention that allowed photographs to be published alongside
text led to the birth of photographic magazines. One of the
earliest was Germany’s Berliner
Illustrierte Zeitung (Berlin
Illustrated Newspaper).
he history of photography has been
characterized by a continual series of
technical advancements that have
made picture taking easier and have
made photographs more accessible to the
worldwide public. Among the most important of these advances was the halftone
printing process, introduced in the 1880s.
This technique made it possible to publish
photographs alongside words on the printed
page. It was a breakthrough that led the
photograph to become one of the chief
means by which people around the world
get their news and form their opinions
about world events.
Nonphotographic illustrations had
appeared in newspapers, magazines, and
books since the late 1830s.The first weekly
publication to use illustrations extensively
was the Illustrated London News in 1842. Its
immediate success led to the establishment
of similar publications around the world.
Included in these picture weeklies were L’Illustration in France, L’Illustrazione in Italy,
Revista Universale in Mexico, A Illustracato in
Brazil, the Illustrated Australian News, and
Harper’s Weekly and Frank Leslie’s Illustrated
Newspaper in the United States.
Almost all the illustrations in these early
publications were wood engravings made
by technicians who, with their sharp cutting
tools, traced the lines of a sketch, drawing, or
photograph that had been placed on a block
of wood by a draftsman.They removed the
unneeded wood, leaving the lines of the
picture in raised relief. Ink was then applied
and paper was pressed against the block,
transferring the image to it, similar to using
a rubber stamp.
All this changed with the perfection of
halftone reproduction of pictures. Many
individuals had worked toward making the
process a reality but major credit for its full
development is given to the inventors Frederic Ives, Stephen Horgan, and Max Levy in
the United States and George Meissenbach
in Germany.
The key to the halftone process is to
break up the continuous tones of a photograph into a pattern of dots that are essentially unnoticeable to the eye.This is done
by making a copy photograph of the original with a rectangular mesh of fine lines—
somewhat like a window screen—in front
of the film.The intersecting lines on the
screen break the image into a regularly
.......................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHS IN PRINT • 91
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Frances Benjamin Johnston.
Whitening Process, about 1900.
Photographs were used as a basis for
magazine and book illustrations well
before the halftone printing process was
invented. Illustrators would use a photograph as the model for a woodcut that
copied the scene in the photograph as
closely as possible. Johnston’s photograph
(top) of one step in the process of pressing
coins appeared as a woodcut (bottom) in
a popular magazine of the time.
spaced pattern of dots that are large in
dark-tone areas of the picture being reproduced, smaller in middle-tone areas, and
tiny in the lightest areas.The resulting negative is used to make a printing plate with a
corresponding pattern of raised dots that
receive the ink.When a print is made, the
black ink transferred from the largest dots
runs together, or nearly so, in the darkest
areas. In the middle tones, more paper
shows between the smaller dots and the eye
blends the amounts of black and white it
sees to form the impression of various gray
tones. In the highlights, the very tiny dots
are almost invisible; the eye sees mostly
white paper and gets the impression of very
light grays and white.
In modern printing, a halftone screen is
no longer used. Instead, the dot pattern is
produced by scanning the original picture
at high speed with a laser beam.The light
reflected from the print or transmitted
through a slide is electronically sampled
several hundred times a second.The individual samples, called pixels (short for “picture elements”) correspond to dots.They
are recorded digitally by computer circuitry
and used to control the intensity of another
laser that exposes a printing plate.
The halftone process dramatically
changed the nature of newspapers and
magazines. By the early 1900s, photographs
began to appear regularly in many publications. In the process, new forms of photography and a whole new category of
photographers, known generally as press
photographers, were created.
From its beginnings, press photography
has fallen into two basic categories: news
photography and photojournalism. News
photographs are those that depict events of
importance or interest at the time they take
place or immediately afterward. Photojournalism is that form of photography in
which pictures, usually in a series, are used
as the main vehicle for telling a story. Series
of this type usually appear in magazines.
The rapid growth and popularity of
these new forms of picture taking created
broad opportunities for photographers.
Along with these opportunities came many
new challenges, particularly for news photographers. For what those who entered
this field quickly discovered was that there
were special skills required in capturing
effective images of newsworthy events.
Among these were the ability to anticipate
when such an event was about to take
place, the talent to snap pictures at the exact
moment the event was happening, and the
stamina to be constantly on the move to
fulfill photographic news assignments.
In meeting these challenges, photographers were aided immeasurably by significant technological advancements that took
place as news photography and later photojournalism became increasingly popular.
Primary among these advances was the
development of 35mm cameras, fast film,
electronic flash equipment, and a variety of
sophisticated lenses.
The camera that had the greatest impact
on press photography was the Leica. It was
invented in Germany in 1913 by Oscar
Barnack and was marketed, beginning in
1925, by the German optical company E.
Leitz Optische Werke.The Leica, which
used 35mm film, was light and easy to handle and permitted taking 36 pictures before
having to be reloaded.
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 92
The immediate success of the Leica led
to the development of other cameras suitable for photojournalism, most notably the
twin-lens Rolleiflex introduced in 1930,
which used 120 size roll film.The work of
press photographers was also made more
effective by the development of small flashbulbs and associated equipment such as the
Burvin Synchronizer, specifically designed
to mount on small cameras like the Leica
for on-the-spot flash lighting.
Two other technological advancements
also had a significant effect on the growth
of press photography. One was the development, soon after the halftone was introduced, of rotogravure, an adaptation of the
photogravure process invented by Karl Klic
in 1879.The other was the invention of
wire and radio transmission of images.
The halftone process prints the same
density of ink for every dot, whatever its
size.The photogravure process creates pits,
rather than raised dots, to hold ink on the
printing plate.The pits are all the same size,
but of different depths, so they hold various
amounts of ink.Therefore, the darkness or
lightness of a printed tone depends on how
dense the ink is at each point.This is almost
the same as in the original photograph,
where tones are created by different densities of developed silver. Photogravure
reproductions can look almost like photographs themselves.The process was used
by many art photographers such as Peter
Henry Emerson in the late 19th century.
However, it was impractical for newspaper
and magazine printing, because it was
expensive and time consuming to prepare a
plate and produced only a few thousand
reproductions before the plate had to be
replaced. Rotogravure, also developed
by Klic, in 1890, overcame these problems.
It produced gravure plates for printing
pictures and text simultaneously that
were mounted on the large-diameter cylinders of high-speed rotary presses. One of
the first weekly rotogravure newspaper sections appeared in England in 1912. By the
1920s newspapers around the world
included a rotogravure section made up
almost entirely of photographs in their
Sunday editions.
In the late 1920s, press photography was
greatly advanced by the perfection of an
electronic system that permitted photographs to be transmitted by wire or cable
and later by radio. Using this system, a photographic news service in America, for
example, inserted a photograph into a
machine that was the forerunner of today’s
fax machines and computer scanners.The
machine directed a narrow beam of light in
a series of lines across the picture and generated a varying electrical signal from the
reflected light.The signal was transmitted to
a recipient in the United States or overseas,
where a receiving machine generated a
copy of it.
The speed with which photographs
could now be sent from field bureaus to a
newspaper’s headquarters for printing in
the next edition was a giant step forward
in bringing newsworthy images to the
public as quickly as possible. It also accelerated the establishment of photographic
departments within agencies such as the
Associated Press and United Press International, to supply news photographs as well
as written news reports to publications
throughout the world.
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News photographers were greatly aided
in meeting the demands of their work
by the development of new lighter and
faster cameras.The German Leica (top)
and the Japanese Kwanon (bottom,
later changed to Canon) in these advertisements from about 1930 were two of
the most widely used.
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHS IN PRINT • 93
Eddie Adams. General shoots
Viet Cong prisoner, 1968.
When he took this picture,Adams
had no idea of the impact it would
have or the fame that this single
image would bring him.Within a
year, the photograph was awarded
the Pulitzer Prize and took first
prize in almost every news photograph contest throughout the world.
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Captain Cecil W. Stoughton.
Lyndon B. Johnson taking oath as
President, 1963.
This photograph, taken shortly after
President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, was printed in newspapers
throughout the world.Vice President
Lyndon B. Johnson is being sworn in
as President while a devastated Mrs.
Kennedy looks on.
All these many advancements in equipment, printing methods, and distribution,
combined with the skills of individual news
photographers, led to some of the most
unforgettable photographs ever taken. Pictures such as that of Charles Lindbergh
landing in Paris after completing the first
solo flight across the Atlantic in 1927, of the
sudden fiery explosion of the German dirigible “Hindenburg” in 1937, of the raising
of the American flag on the island of Iwo
Jima in 1945 after two months of brutal
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World War II fighting, of Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr., delivering his “I Have a Dream”
speech in 1963, to name but a few, have
demonstrated the power and the lasting
effect of the news photograph.
Some news photographs have had such
influence that they have profoundly affected public opinion and changed the course
of events. Such a picture was that taken
during the Vietnam War by Associated Press
cameraman Eddie Adams. In January 1968,
North Vietnamese troops invaded South
Vietnam. On February 1, some of these
troops infiltrated Saigon, South Vietnam’s
capital city. Informed of what was taking
place in the city,Adams rushed to the site.
As he arrived, he encountered a horrifying
sight. A South Vietnamese officer stood
with his pistol pointed at the head of one
of the North Vietnamese infiltrators. Adams
quickly snapped a picture only seconds
before the officer fired and killed the man.
Adams’s photograph was developed in
the Associated Press Saigon office and
transmitted around the world. Outraged
viewers flooded Associated Press offices
with telegrams.The impact of the photograph was greatest in the United States, a
country torn apart by bitter disagreements over its participation in the war.
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 94
The picture fueled efforts of those who
opposed the conflict and changed the
minds of a significant number of those who
supported it.
The vast majority of news photographs
have been taken by little-known photographers.There have, however, been some men
and women who, through the body of work
they produced, established themselves as
masters of this photographic approach.
Among the earliest was Jesse Tarbox Beals.
As a young photographer Beals had been
both a portraitist and a traveling camerawoman. In 1902, impressed by her work, the
Buffalo Courier hired her to head its newly
formed photographic department. In 1903
she achieved what was probably the nation’s
first news photography scoop when she
covered a murder trial. Upon arriving at
the courtroom she found that the judge
had refused to allow pictures to be taken of
the proceedings. Demonstrating the perseverance that would mark legions of news
photographers to follow, Beals placed a
chair next to the courtroom door, on the
outside. She then climbed up on it and
took the only pictures of the trial by shooting through the transom above the door.
Many of the images that Beals captured
were taken in New York City’s tenement
districts. As seen in her photograph of a
father and his three children, she had a way
of putting children at ease and getting them
to pose for her. As in many of her tenement pictures, Beals positioned one youngster in the foreground of the image and
placed the father and the other two children
in a room at the rear, framed by a doorway.
The result was a picture that was threedimensional in effect. Beals’s tenement
images were published in many newspapers.
Like the pictures taken by Jacob Riis, they
helped inspire government officials to take
action to clean up the slums.
While Jesse Tarbox Beals took news
photographs of almost every type of happening or situation, another photographer
made his greatest impact by training his
camera on a particular type of subject. A
Polish immigrant to America, his name was
Usher Fellig.When, in the early 1930s, he
went to work as photographer for several
New York newspapers he adopted the
name Weegee.
In the 1930s and ’40s, mob wars and
murders carried out by crime syndicates
became commonplace in New York. It was
the kind of subject that attracted many
readers to the newspapers for which
Weegee worked. He became a master at
photographing mobster activities and
crime scenes.Typical of these images is the
Jesse Tarbox Beals. Family in
tenement, about 1905.
Beals was one of the most prolific of
all the early news photographers.This
photograph is one of the many she
took to accompany articles describing
the wretched conditions of the New
York City tenement district.
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PHOTOGRAPHS IN PRINT • 95
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Weegee (Usher “Arthur”
Fellig). Their First Murder, 1941.
Weegee’s greatest talent was his
ability to capture the various emotions registered in the faces of those
he photographed.“Many photographers live in a dream world of beautiful backgrounds,” he wrote.“It
wouldn’t hurt them to get a taste of
reality to wake them up.”
picture he took of a group of people newly
arrived at the scene of a murder.The photograph is marked by Weegee’s special ability to capture the full range of human
emotions.The girl in the left foreground
appears stunned.The woman in the center
of the picture is obviously in anguish. Others seem stunned or curious, while the
young man at the far left, for whatever reason, sports a broad smile.
Personally,Weegee was a most outrageous man. Early on, for example, he found
that he had problems photographing mobsters in their limousines.This was because
most of their activities were at night and
the black limousines did not show up as
well as he would have liked in his photographs. He actually had the audacity to
contact some well-known mob bosses and
ask them if they would switch to lightercolored vehicles so he could photograph
them better.Although they refused, his suggestion provided an example of how far he
would go in an attempt to get the pictures
he desired. Always a self-promoter, he
stamped the back of each of his photographs with the statement, “Credit
Weegee the Famous.”
By the end of the 1920s, photographs
in newspapers had become one of the
world’s most common forms of communi-
cation. Aware of their readers’ increasing
dependence upon pictures to get their
news, various newspaper publishers took a
bold step. Rather than printing only a single picture that illustrated a newsworthy
event, they began including groups of photographs which, in themselves, told a story
or gave readers deeper insights into a particular subject.
This movement toward the picture story
was most fully launched in Germany.
There, newspapers such as the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung (Berlin Illustrated Newspaper), the Müchener Illustrierte Presse (Munich
Illustrated Press), and the Arbeiter Illustrierte
Zeitung (Worker’s Illustrated Newspaper)
increasingly filled their pages with stories
told through photographs.
This approach became so popular that
soon magazines in which picture stories
dominated the pages were established.These
early photograph-oriented publications
included Picture Post in England, Vu and Paris
Match in France, and Colliers, Fortune, and
National Geographic in the United States. Out
of these new picture magazines grew both
photojournalism and the photo essay.
Like the newspaper photographers who
faced special challenges in capturing events
as they took place, the men and women
who became photojournalists were required
to possess special skills in order to compile
their photographic stories, or photo essays,
as they came to be called. An effective photojournalist had to be able to conceive a
story that would be of significant interest
to viewers, had to plan what types of photographs would best convey that story,
and had to have the ability to capture a
sequence of images that would best move
the story along from beginning to end.
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 96
Many photojournalists were able to meet
these challenges so well that they produced
photo essays that touched deeply on the
emotions of most who viewed them. Contained within some of these picture stories
were individual photographs which have
remained etched in the public memory.
Many of the photographers destined to
become masters of photojournalism were
either employed by or worked on special
assignment for a magazine called Life.
Launched in 1936 by Henry Luce, who
had previously founded Time, a news magazine that used comparatively few pictures,
and Fortune, a business magazine that featured many photographs, Life became the
most widely read magazine of its day. It
brought photographs into the homes of
millions of people throughout the globe
and established the photo essay as one of
the principal means of conveying human
conditions and world developments.The
enormous scope of the magazine could be
seen in its stated purpose.“To see life, to see
the world; to eyewitness great events; to
watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud”; Life’s editors wrote,“to
see strange things; . . . to see man’s work; . . .
to see and take pleasure in seeing; to see
and be amazed; to see and be instructed.”
Many of the photo essays created by Life
photographers remain among the most
powerful ever compiled. Some touched
Life’s readers so deeply that many of these
readers became personally involved with
the subjects of the picture stories. In 1961,
for example, Life published Gordon Parks’s
picture story of a 12-year-old boy named
Flavio da Silva who, with his povertystricken parents and their eight other children, lived in a slum in the hills outside Rio
W. Eugene Smith.
Photograph from “Country
Doctor” photo essay, 1945.
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Smith was one of the most talented of all the photo essayists.
This picture is from a photo
essay he created for Life magazine depicting a day in the life
of a country doctor.The doctor
is seen stitching up a cut on a
child’s forehead, just one of many
medical tasks he completed in a
single day as Smith followed
him with his camera.
de Janeiro in Brazil. Flavio suffered from
severe asthma attacks. Parks’s pictures of his
suffering, of his parents and his brothers and
sisters sleeping in one bed, and of the horrendous conditions in general in which the
family lived elicited a huge emotional
response from Life’s readers. Letters poured
into the magazine’s offices. Many contained
money, which Life gave to Flavio and his
family. Some letters included offers to
adopt the boy. Thanks to the power of
Parks’s photographs, the Children’s Asthma
Research Institute and Hospital in Denver
arranged for Flavio to be brought to its
facilities, where he was treated for his asthmatic condition free of charge.
Through the images they captured, several Life photographers became internationally known. One, Margaret BourkeWhite, became one of the most famous
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHS IN PRINT • 97
A skier flies through the
air over Innsbruck,
Austria, in the 1957
International Ski Jumping
Contest.The ability to
print photographs alongside text led to the birth of
sports photography.
Pictures of athletic events
and achievements became
so popular that it was not
long before magazines
devoted entirely to sports
made their appearance.
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photographers in the world. Raised in
Bound Brook, New Jersey, Bourke-White
attended seven colleges before finally earning a degree from Cornell University. Her
life changed dramatically when, in the early
1920s, she discovered photography.“We all
find something,” she would later write,
“that is just right for us, and after I found
the camera I never really felt a whole person again unless I was planning pictures or
taking them.”
The cover of Life’s very first issue featured
a Bourke-White photograph. The main
story in the initial issue was a photo essay
taken by her. For the next 21 years, she was
one of Life’s most prolific photographers.
She took pictures in almost every corner of
the globe. She photographed miners in
South Africa, wealthy landowners in Hungary, and peasants throughout Europe. She
was the only non-Russian allowed to photograph the bombing of Moscow by the
Germans in World War II. In 1943, she
became the first woman photographer to fly
on a United States combat mission.
The many assignments carried out by
Life’s photographers and by all the photo-
journalists who worked for countless other
picture magazines frequently placed them
in difficult and often dangerous situations.
In Europe, for example, the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson captured
many of his images at a time marked both
by the prospect of war and a bitter conflict
itself. Cartier-Bresson was a man who had
no doubts as to what constituted the vital
element in capturing a compelling photojournalistic image.“Photography,” he stated,
“is for me . . . based on the pleasure of
observing and the ability to capture a decisive moment in a constant struggle with
time.” Over a long career, Cartier-Bresson
captured hundreds of such “decisive
moments.” In any situation, emotions, facial
expressions, and movements are always
shifting and changing, he explained.This
creates a stream of instants when these
things come together and make the meaning or feeling of the situation visually clear.
Then that instant is gone, but others will
follow. These are the decisive moments
when pictures should be taken. Photohistorian Beaumont Newhall noted the photographer’s uncanny ability to capture such
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 98
Advertising and Fashion Photography
T
he ability to print
photographs in magazines had a dramatic
effect on the world of
advertising. Manufacturers
could now use photos in
their ads which, in most
cases, were far more effective as a selling tool than
drawings.While many
areas of business increasingly turned to photographs to entice
customers to buy their
goods, the greatest impact
was felt in the fashion
industry. For clothing
designers and merchants,
fashion photography presented the greatest vehicle
they had ever had for
introducing new clothing
trends and selling their
merchandise. Just as Life
had introduced people
everywhere to photojournalism and Fortune had
promoted the industrial
photograph, magazines like
Vogue,Vanity Fair, Harper’s
Bazaar, and Women’s Home
Companion helped turn
fashion photography into
an art all its own.
Art et Decoration, in
Paris, and Vogue were the
two magazines that pioneered the fashion image.
As early as 1913, Vogue
began to feature the photographs of Adolf de
Meyer, the man who is
now commonly regarded
as the world’s first great
fashion photographer. De
Meyer’s work was characterized by his ability to
capture the textures in the
clothing worn by his subjects in images that were
tonally rich and dazzling
with light.
Edward Steichen’s photographs of the latest styles
appeared in Art et Decoration in 1911, and by the
beginning of the 1920s
Vogue was featuring his
fashion images. Steichen
brought a new look to the
then still-infant world of
fashion photography in the
way he composed his pictures. He arranged his
models into several groups
and placed these groups at
various places within the
camera’s eye.This gave a
dramatic sense of design to
the photographs, making
them arresting images in
their own right. His photographic style changed to
keep up with the styles of
the times, and he soon surpassed De Meyer, who
seemed less adaptable.
In the 1930s,American
photographer Toni Frissell
pioneered another important approach to fashion
photography. Frissell was
the first to take models
away from the confines of
the studio and to photograph them in exotic places
around the world.These
dramatic settings and the
animated poses she created
for her models resulted in
a whole new type of fashion image. Frissell’s techniques were soon copied
by fashion photographers
throughout the world.
By the 1950s, fashion
photography had become
one of the most commonly
encountered forms of the
medium.Then and in the
decades that followed, two
photographers in particular,
Irving Penn and Richard
Avedon, elevated the fashion image to new heights.
Working with the simplest
lighting and without special props, Penn created
pictures that captured
viewers’ attention through
bold contrasts and poses
that emphasized the almost
abstract forms of the garments. In other pictures he
created striking still-life
arrangements of jewelry,
gloves, and purses, and
other accessories. He pio-
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Toni Frissell. Tyrall Plantation, Jamaica, 1948.
Frissell changed the world of fashion photography by photographing her models in
intriguing outdoor settings. It was a technique that soon became standard practice for
fashion photographers.
neered big, bold closeups of
lips and eyes to show new
lipstick colors, eye shadow,
and other cosmetics.
Richard Avedon’s
approach was, in many
ways, the opposite of that
taken by lrving Penn. His
fashion pictures had an air
of energetic, unrehearsed
elegance and sophistication
about them. Many of Avedon’s techniques, including
his use of electronic flash to
dramatically freeze movement in mid-phase, have
been copied by today’s
fashion photographers.
In more recent times,
certain photographers have
set new standards in fashion photography through
the dramatic and colorful
images they have captured
as part of ongoing advertising campaigns for specific
clients. American Bruce
Weber, for example, has
become known for the
consistently imaginative
photographs he has taken
for such clients as Ralph
Lauren, Calvin Klein, and
Banana Republic, and
which have appeared in
GQ, Details,Vogue, and
other fashion magazines.
ln the l980s and ’90s,
many of these publications
increasingly adopted the
practice of using celebrities, particularly movie and
television stars and noted
sports figures, as models for
the clothing they featured.
The British photographer
David Bailey has been
among the most prolific of
those who have focused on
capturing the lifestyles of
the famous while featuring
their often trend-setting
choices in fashions.
Perhaps the best known
of today’s photographers
who have helped turn fashion photography into an art
form is the American
Annie Leibowitz. One of
the most admired portrait
photographers, Leibowitz
has become recognized as
well for her advertising
images. She won particular
acclaim for the compelling
photographs she took
for her advertising campaigns on behalf of American Express and The Gap.
Her fashion images continue to appear regularly in
Vanity Fair and Vogue.
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHS IN PRINT • 99
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Henri Cartier-Bresson. Children
playing among ruins, Spain, 1933.
“Of all the means of expression,”
wrote Cartier-Bresson,“photography
is the only one that fixes forever the
precise and transitory instant.We photographers deal in things which are
continually vanishing, and when they
have vanished, there is no contrivance
on earth which can make them come
back again.We cannot develop and
print a memory.”
moments:“Cartier-Bresson is able to seize
the split second when the subject stands
revealed in its most significant aspect and
most evocative form.”
Cartier-Bresson began photographing
seriously after encountering a series of
Eugène Atget’s photographs. For nine years,
beginning in 1931, he photographed
throughout Europe, demonstrating an
openness to the world that would characterize all his work. In 1940, however, a year
after World War II broke out, he was drafted
into the French army. Captured by the Germans, he spent three years in a prisoner-ofwar camp. After three separate attempts, he
managed to escape from the prison camp
and spent the rest of the war working in the
French resistance movement.
When the war was finally over, CartierBresson resumed his photographic career,
carrying out assignments all over the world.
Unlike photojournalists who pursued the
physical action of events and the important
people involved, Cartier-Bresson most
often showed how the events affected ordinary people, how they reacted and
responded. Among his subjects were
Portuguese fishermen, villagers in Romania, Yugoslavia, and Greece, refugees in
India and Pakistan, European residents in
China when the change to Communism
occurred, pedestrians in Italy and Russia,
and picnickers along rivers in France. His
subjects were in many ways the same kind
of people as the magazine readers who
would see the pictures.This “everyday,”
human quality of his photographs gave
them immense appeal. Some of his most
powerful images were those he took of
children in war-torn Europe. His picture of
youngsters playing in bombed-out ruins
during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–39
stands out as one of his very best. By capturing the youngster in the right foreground just as he was climbing on some
debris and picturing the young man in the
background just as he was about to throw a
stone, Cartier-Bresson provides evidence of
what he meant by “the decisive moment.”
His use of the huge hole in the wall to
frame the picture and the positioning of
the other children in the image reveals the
way in which almost all his photographs
were masterfully composed.
Margaret Bourke-White and Henri
Cartier-Bresson set a standard for all future
photojournalists through the ways in which
they demonstrated their determination to
capture the images they sought no matter
how great the challenges. Beginning in the
1950s, a group of African photographers
followed in this tradition by demonstrating
their willingness to take enormous chances
in order to take pictures they felt the world
needed to see.These photographers worked
for the South African magazine Drum. They
continually risked their lives in order to
capture images portraying the evils of
apartheid (the name of the policy of racial
segregation in South Africa).
In presenting photographs of apartheid
and of black Africans’ struggle for freedom,
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 100
Drum’s owner, Jim Bailey, and editor
Anthony Sampson accomplished what can
be regarded as a publication miracle.
Although many South African magazines
had been banned after printing such pictures, Bailey and Sampson somehow managed to include anti-apartheid photographs
in Drum along with pictures of weddings,
nightlife, and other events.
The photographers who contributed to
Drum were a talented and courageous lot.
In order to create their picture stories they
often donned disguises to get into places
from which they otherwise would have
been kept out. Some, determined to take
pictures inside South Africa’s notorious
prisons, actually got themselves arrested and
took hidden cameras inside their cells.Typical of these photojournalists was the South
African photographer Peter Magubane. In
1969 while he was taking pictures for
Drum and for a daily newspaper, Magubane
was arrested for supposed crimes against
the state. After two years in prison he was
released, but he was banned from taking
photographs for five years.
When the five years were over Magubane resumed his photojournalistic career.
Undaunted by continual government
scrutiny, he continued to take photographs of apartheid practices, particularly the exploitation of black African
children. Late in his career Magubane
spoke for many of his fellow African photographers when he stated,“In my work,
and in the kind of pictures I chose to produce, I wanted to liberate myself, liberate
my people, liberate the oppressor and let
the world understand through my images
what we were going through, what
apartheid meant . . . to capture the images
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that would make the world understand
why black people are so angry in this
country of South Africa. I said to myself,‘I
don’t care. If I die for the cause, so be it. If I
see a picture . . . at all costs, I will try to get
that picture.’“
The vast majority of photographs that
appeared in Life, Drum, and the other news
magazines were of people.There was, however, another type of subject which, beginning in the 1930s, increasingly captured
photographic attention.The picture magazines had come into being at a time when,
after decades of industrial development,
machines and huge structures allied to
industrialism increasingly dotted the landscape. For many people around the world
these machines and structures, such as manufacturing plants, bridges, and dams,
became powerful symbols, not only of the
progress that had been made but of even
greater advancements that seemed to lie
ahead. Aware of the fascination with the
icons of industrialism, those who published
Peter Magubane. Couple
dancing, 1957.
Although Magubane devoted most of
his photographic career to depicting
black South Africans’ struggle for freedom, he also photographed other subjects. Like many of his images, this
picture appeared in Drum magazine.
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHS IN PRINT • 101
Margaret Bourke-White. Ammonia
Gas Tanks, 1938.
Bourke-White’s appreciation of the beauty
created by the lines of industrial structures
can be seen in this picture of giant storage
tanks.Along with photographing industrial objects in their entirety, Bourke-White,
like many other industrial photographers,
often focused her camera on details within
massive structures and machinery.
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Charles Sheeler. Ford Plant,
Detroit, 1927.
For many years, Sheeler’s photographs, like this image of an
automobile plant outside of
Detroit, Michigan, were far less
heralded than his paintings.Today
they have come to be recognized
as equally powerful representations of his unique vision.
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the picture magazines made certain that
many of their issues contained pictures of
the latest machines and structures. Out of
this emerged yet another photographic
approach known as industrial photography.
While those who took up this approach
came from many nations, two American
photographers in particular, Margaret
Bourke-White and Charles Sheeler, produced some of the most compelling of
all industrial images. Bourke-White and
Sheeler shared a common motivation for
taking their industrial photographs.Aside
from the symbolic nature of the machinery
and structures they wished to portray, both
found a very special beauty in industrial
objects. It was this vision that led to the
special quality of their images.
Before becoming a major Life photographer, Bourke-White had taken many industrial photographs for Fortune. It was Fortune
that championed industrial photography,
much in the same manner as Life promoted
and inspired photojournalism.The photographs that Bourke-White took for Fortune, as well as the many other industrial
images she captured, were characterized by
the way she was able to convey qualities not
commonly attributed to utilitarian objects.
“Any important art coming out of the
industrial age,” she wrote,“will draw inspiration from industry, because industry is alive
and vital.The beauty of industry lies in its
truth and simplicity. Every line is essential
and therefore beautiful.”
Among Bourke-White’s most striking
images is the one titled Ammonia Gas Tanks.
In the picture she presented the enormous
tanks as objects to be appreciated for their
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 102
aesthetic qualities as well as for their function.
That she took the picture while men,
dwarfed by the structure, were toiling atop
them, was not accidental. By doing so,
Bourke-White deliberately illustrated another
belief of those who championed industrial
progress.That was the conviction that no matter how huge or complex an industrial object
was, it could be controlled by human beings.
Bourke-White’s fellow photographer
Charles Sheeler was also motivated by the
shapes of structures that he found all around
him. Sheeler’s most masterful pictures were
those he took in the late 1920s under commission of the Ford Motor Company. Ford’s
main manufacturing facility, called River
Rouge, was located just outside of Detroit. It
was the largest industrial complex in the
world.The photographs that Sheeler took
there were of men working amidst enormous
machinery, of elevated crosswalks that connected operating areas, and of towering
smokestacks and gigantic blast furnaces.
Sheeler pursued a dual career as both an
artist and a photographer. His paintings, which
established him as one of America’s most talented and respected artists, often focused on
the beauty he saw in the lines and shadows
contained in such simple objects as barns and
staircases.This emphasis on shapes characterized his industrial photographs as well.
Like Margaret Bourke-White, Esther
Bubley also produced masterful industrial
photographs in which she conveyed man’s
control of even the most towering and complex machinery and equipment. Bubley’s
Tomball Gasoline Plant is a photograph that
goes beyond an eye-arresting industrial image.
It is a most human picture as well, taking the
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viewer into a specific aspect of the human
experience.
As such, Bubley’s photograph is representative of the power of photographs in
print, for among photography’s greatest
attributes is its ability to convey experiences
we all share.Thanks to news photos, photo
essays, and all other forms of photographs
in print, this sharing of human experiences
has become an almost daily occurrence.
Esther Bubley. Tomball Gasoline
Plant, 1945.
Bubley first made her mark as an
FSA photographer. She solidified her
photographic career by producing dramatic industrial photographs such as
this one in Tomball,Texas.
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PHOTOGRAPHS IN PRINT • 103
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Chapter
. . . . . . . . Seven
...............................................................
War Photography
I
Many of the most emotionally
affecting photographs have been
taken during armed conflict. In
this picture, taken during the
Korean War by U.S.Army
Signal Corps photographer Al
Chang, a man comforts a fellow
soldier who has just witnessed the
death of a close friend.
t is a sad fact of history that the story of
almost every nation is filled with its participation in numerous and often tragic
wars. Since the early 1850s, barely a
dozen years after the birth of photography,
the camera has been on the scene to record
these conflicts. By the early days of the 20th
century, in fact, photographers had become
so numerous and so visible on the battlefield
that during the 1912 Balkan War, King Ferdinand of Bulgaria complained,“This photography is not a profession. It is a disease.”
The first war photographs were taken by
a Rumanian, Carol Baptiste de Szathmary,
who in 1853 captured images of conflict
between Russia and Turkey over Wallachia
and other Rumanian territory. His coverage
was limited and the pictures were not widely distributed.The dispute that de Szathmary witnessed soon grew into a much
larger conflict. Known as the Crimean War
(1853–56), it pitted English, French,Turkish,
and Sardinian troops against Russian forces
in a fight over the control of the Black Sea
province of Crimea.This war became the
first to be recorded with a significant number of pictures.They were taken by an Englishman, Roger Fenton, who is recognized
as the world’s first major war photographer.
When the war erupted, Fenton, who had
studied law and then had become a landscape photographer, saw an opportunity to
record the conflict. His undertaking was
officially approved by the British government and was funded by a commercial publisher, both of which had specific reasons for
doing so. Opponents of the war at home in
England had spread stories of the horrible
condition of the British troops in the
Crimea. Queen Victoria and the English
government were hopeful that Fenton’s pictures would disprove these stories.The publisher,Thomas Agnew, hoped that books and
individual prints of Fenton’s pictures would
be profitable offerings. For political and
commercial motives, it was understood that
no pictures would be made of dead bodies,
the wounded, soldiers dying of cholera, and
other devastating situations that a few newspaper correspondents had been describing
for a year or more.
In order to carry out the first major
recording of an armed conflict, Fenton and
two assistants journeyed to the Crimea by
boat, taking with them five cameras, 700
glass plates, developing chemicals, tools, and
rations of food. Fenton also took a specially
constructed wagon that was fitted out as a
.......................................................................
WAR PHOTOGRAPHY • 105
Roger Fenton used this wagon to
transport his heavy equipment
throughout the Crimea. He also
used it as a darkroom to develop
his wet plate negatives.
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darkroom. He often found himself in real
danger, particularly when shells exploded
around the highly visible wagon. Fenton’s
photography was limited by the size and
weight of his equipment, and by the collodion wet plate process that he used to make
his glass-plate negatives. He had to prepare,
expose (for no less than three seconds
under the best of conditions, most often 10
seconds or more), and develop the plates on
the spot. As a result, he could not take
action pictures. Instead, his pictures showed
soldiers, camps, trenches, and fortifications.
They also revealed the aftermath of the
fighting. Some of his photographs showed
the ground littered with cannonballs that
had killed 600 English cavalrymen in an
area called The Valley of the Shadow of
Death. It was this slaughter that was later
Roger Fenton.
Camp of the Fifth
Dragoon Guards, 1855.
Fenton’s photographs of the
Crimean War were taken
before it was possible to
capture motion with a camera. However, the many
compelling pictures he took
of military camps before,
between, and after battles
have earned him recognition as the world’s first
major war photographer.
made famous by Alfred, Lord Tennyson in
his poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade.
Typical of the pictures that Fenton
produced is his Camp of the Fifth Dragoon
Guards. The picture reveals the experience
Fenton had gained in producing large-scale
landscape photographs before coming to
the Crimea. It is an image that tells us as
much about the Crimean terrain as about
the military campaign.
After a year in the Crimea, Fenton was
seriously sick with cholera and returned to
England for treatment and recuperation,
bringing with him 360 glass-plate negatives. His pictures were displayed both at
the Royal Photographic Society and the
Victoria and Albert Museum. But the public was sick and tired of the war and the
special taxes imposed upon them to pay for
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 106
Civil War photographers
captured images of every
aspect of the conflict,
including this group of
African-American Union
soldiers awaiting the call
to their next battle.
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it, and the pictures did not sell. In 1862,
Fenton suddenly, and apparently without
explanation, gave up photography and
began practicing law. Eventually a group of
his negatives was purchased by Francis
Frith, who published two small books with
prints of the images pasted in.
Only five years after the Crimean War
began, a much greater conflict captured the
world’s attention.The American Civil War
was the most costly and tragic event in the
history of the United States. Before the war
ended, some 623,000 men were killed and
hundreds of thousands of others were
wounded.
More photographs were taken during
the Civil War than had been taken in any
previous armed conflict. Some 300 cameramen photographed the activities of the
Northern army alone. Among the lesserknown but talented of these photographers
were George Cook, Thomas C. Roche,
Samuel A. Cooley, Jacob F. Coonley, and
three brothers from Pennsylvania,A. J., S. L.,
and J. L. Bergstresser.The most important
and productive photographers of the Civil
War, however, were those hired and directed by Mathew B. Brady.
In 1861, when the Civil War began,
Brady had already established himself as
America’s premier photographer through
the hundreds of daguerreotypes, cartes-devisite, cabinet photos, and other portraits his
studios produced and displayed. As soon as
the hostilities started he became determined to organize a team of photographers, equip them, and send them into the
field to capture every aspect of the war.
Only three days after receiving President
Abraham Lincoln’s permission to do so,
Brady began to establish photographic
bases in the various war zones and to assign
members of his team to each of these areas.
Throughout the entire course of the
war, from 1861 to 1865, Brady’s camera
corps produced tens of thousands of photographs. Like Fenton, they used the wet
plate process and so could not take action
pictures. However, they recorded almost
everything else, often first with a full-plate
camera and then again with a stereograph
camera.The negatives were developed on
the spot, and the photographers kept field
records—notes on the date, location, situation or event, and the people in the pictures. Couriers collected the glass negatives
and the field records at intervals and carried
them to Brady’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. There the pictures were catalogued, prints were made, and captions and
descriptive text were written, based on the
photographers’ notes. Harper’s Weekly had a
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WAR PHOTOGRAPHY • 107
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The Civil War introduced the world
to the largest weapons that had ever
been used.These weapons and the
soldiers who manned them were
favorite subjects for photographers
who recorded the conflict.
Photographic portraits have always
revealed more than simple likenesses. Portraits taken during the Civil
War, such as this daguerreotype
from about 1864, disclose the
incredible youth of many of the soldiers on both sides of the conflict.
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contract for the use of Brady pictures and
published more than 1,000 of them as wood
engravings accompanying news articles.
The Civil War photographers captured
thousands of images of soldiers and their
officers as they relaxed in camp or drilled
during long lulls between battles. Many of
their most dramatic pictures were of the
extensive artillery batteries and of the men
who operated some of the largest weapons
the world had ever known.They also took
scores of photographs of the sailors and the
ships that were part of the naval aspect of
the conflict. Field hospitals, long lines of
supply wagons, acres of piled-up munitions, military trains, hastily erected bridges,
telegraph corpsmen—everything that had
to do with the war was photographed.
The pictures they took revealed the
extraordinary youth of the men in both
armies.They also disclosed the incredible
human price paid by both sides.The most
haunting of all their photographs were
those of individual soldiers dead in the forest or behind sandbags and earth embankments, and of long rows of dead lying
beside stone walls or in open fields immediately after battle. People had never seen
such stark, devastating images before.The
reality of the photograph made the horror
of war inescapable.
That was true, too, of the images of
Southern cities left in ruins by advancing
Northern troops. Arguably the most powerful of these pictures was a photograph of
the Confederate capital of Richmond,Virginia, taken in 1865 by Timothy O’Sullivan
after Northern troops and artillery had
devastated the city. The scope of the
destruction, which was O’Sullivan’s reason
for taking the picture, is obvious.The photograph is made more compelling by the
presence of the two women garbed in
black. The all-black clothing was not
unusual for the day, but their dress, particularly that of the hooded figure, can also be
seen as a symbol of mourning for the
destruction and the loss of a way of life.
And one wonders if it was an accident that
O’Sullivan’s picture highlights the stirring
of life among the ruins.
There has always been controversy over
how many of the Civil War photographs
Mathew Brady actually took himself.We
know that many of the images were captured by Timothy O’Sullivan, George Gibson, John Reekie, David Knox, and George
Barnard.We know also that thousands of
others were taken by Alexander Gardner
and his son James.The Gardners took so
many outstanding photographs during the
conflict that when the war was over they
were able to publish 100 of them in two
volumes titled The Photographic Sketchbook of
the Civil War.
As for Brady, in 1861 he did take some
photographs during the first Battle of Bull
Run, in Virginia, near Washington. His
greatest contribution, however, was in
keeping most of his team together, motivating and directing them, and going deeply
into debt to finance the operation. He also
did the public a great service by exhibiting
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 108
Timothy O’Sullivan. Ruins in
Richmond,Virginia, 1865.
By the end of the Civil War, many
of the great cities of the American
South had been destroyed.Viewers
around the world were shocked by
the photographic record of the devastation the war had caused.
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many of the pictures in his Washington studio. Said one newspaper,“Mr. Brady has
[brought] home to us the terrible reality
and earnestness of war. Crowds of people
are constantly going up the stairs [of the
gallery]. Follow them and you will find
them bending over photographic views of
the fearful battlefield, taken immediately
after the action.”
Brady had hoped that once the war was
over he would be able to sell enough of the
photographs to the government to cover
the heavy costs he had incurred in carrying
out his operations. But the government,
anxious to put the bitter war behind it, did
not respond in the way he had hoped. In
January 1896, mired in poverty, he died as a
result of injuries suffered when he was
struck by a horsedrawn streetcar. It was a
sad end to what had been a brilliant career.
The limitations that the wet plate
process imposed on Roger Fenton and the
Civil War photographers were eliminated
with the coming of dry plates and film in
the 1870s and 1880s, and by the first decade
of the 1900s technical advances in photographic equipment had brought additional
significant changes. There were now a
number of small hand-held cameras available that made moving quickly from one
scene of military action to another easier
than ever before. Faster film emulsions and
accurate shutters made it possible to photograph action of all kinds. In addition, the
rise of photographic news magazines made
demands for pictures of wartime action
greater than ever before. All of these
advancements and developments came into
play in the years between 1914 and 1945
when nations from around the globe
became immersed in two world wars.
In 1914, political disputes in Europe that
could not be resolved ignited a war that
pitted two giant alliances of nations against
each other. On one side were the Central
Powers (Germany,Austria-Hungary,Turkey,
and Bulgaria). On the other side of the
conflict were the Allied Powers (Great
Britain, France, Italy, and Russia). In 1917,
the United States was drawn into what
........................................................................
WAR PHOTOGRAPHY • 109
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Their ability to capture motion enabled
World War I photographers to compile
some of the most dramatic war images
ever taken. In this photograph from
1918, the cameraman froze the action
at the moment a soldier was about to
be felled by poison gas.
became known as World War I on the side
of the Allied Powers.
World War I marked the first time that
armies established their own official photographic units, usually as part of their existing signal corps, whose sole task was to
document the conflict.The photographs
that these cameramen were allowed to
take, however, were tightly controlled.The
governments of the warring nations, anxious to keep morale up at home, often forbade the photographers from taking
pictures of the dead and dying and often
prevented them from showing their troops
suffering a defeat.
In 1939, the major nations of the world
went to war again. Unlike World War I,
which was fought entirely in Europe,
World War II was a truly global conflict,
with battle zones around the world.The
war pitted Germany, Japan, and Italy, countries seeking world power, against England,
France, Russia, and, beginning in 1941, the
United States. Before the conflict was over,
some 70 million soldiers, sailors, and air-
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men were involved and more than 45 million people, including millions of civilians,
were killed.
More pictures were taken during World
War II than in any other conflict, exceeding
by far those taken in the Civil War. In addition to the work of photographers in every
military service, countless other pictures
were taken by newspaper photographers
from around the globe, and by men and
women employed by the world’s picture
magazines and news and photo agencies.
A significant number of World War II
photographers had previously experienced
the horrors of armed conflict.The Hungarian-born Robert Capa, for example, had
established himself as arguably the world’s
premier war photographer through the
dramatic images he had captured during
both the Spanish Civil War (1936–37) and
the Japanese invasion of China (1938). In
World War II, the photographs that Capa
took in Europe, along with those taken by
W. Eugene Smith in the Pacific, set a standard for all photographers who covered the
conflict. Many of these cameramen—and
women—had a special motivation for taking their World War II photographs.This
motivation was expressed by Edward Steichen, who stated,“If we could really photograph war as it was, . . . in all its monstrous
actuality, that could be a great deterrent to
war.” Steichen himself played an important
role in the conflict. Rejected by the United
States Army because it felt he was too old,
Steichen was accepted by the Navy. Commissioned a lieutenant commander, he
organized a photographic unit that captured dramatic images of the naval and aerial aspects of battles in the South Pacific.
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 110
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Many of the pictures that Steichen’s
photographic unit took went beyond that
of recording the war.They were outstanding photographs in and of themselves. Such
a picture is that of crew members of an aircraft carrier awaiting the return of the
planes and air men they had launched into
battle (page 115).The photograph, taken by
Wayne Miller, is marked by the photographer’s use of the waning light of day to
capture the men in silhouette. A portion of
a propeller in the left foreground emphasizes the setting. A dramatic element is provided by the way Miller captured the crew
members in postures clearly indicating their
concern as they anxiously waited to learn
the fate of their comrades.
As in World War I, the governments of
the various warring nations tried to control
the types of pictures the World War II photographers took or their editors published.
No photographs of dead United States soldiers, for example, were released to the
public until late in the conflict. Some pictures presented as “on the spot” action
scenes actually were posed. Others were
cropped by the photographer—or more
usually by editors—to achieve the most
dramatic effect. But the vast majority of
World War II images were authentic, taken
by combat photographers and accredited
war correspondents who accompanied the
troops into battle.
One of the major outcomes of World
War II, as far as photography was concerned, was the way in which people
throughout the world came to expect to
see photographs taken in the heat of battle.
Robert Capa expressed it this way:“If your
pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not
close enough.”The result was pictures that
transported viewers directly into the action.
The result also was the increased number
of photographers who were killed while
capturing their images. Capa himself died
when he stepped on a land mine while
covering the Indochina War in 1954.
Some of the most gripping photographs
are those that depict the range of emotions
displayed by both military participants and
civilians affected by war. During World War
II, for example,Toni Frissell captured an
unforgettable image of a young boy sitting
in front of his London home, which had
just been destroyed by a German bomb
(see page 113). His mother, father, and
brother lay dead in the rubble.The expression that Frissell caught on the youngster’s
face speaks legions about the horrors of
war and of the way in which even the most
innocent civilians are affected by it.
Another photograph which, like the
Frissell image, had enormous impact on the
worldwide public when it was widely
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G. L. Hall Optical Company. Boat
Exercises—Naval Training Station,
Hampton Roads,Va., 1918.
Wartime photographers captured military preparations at home as well as battle abroad.This panoramic photograph
shows one of the premier training centers
for naval personnel during World War I.
During World War II, the intense
interest on the part of the public to
receive photographs of the action
taking place around the world
motivated manufacturers of cameras and film to produce even more
advanced equipment.This ad from
about 1943 was for a wartime
Kodak camera.
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WAR PHOTOGRAPHY • 111
Margaret Bourke-White: War Photographer
T
hrough the pioneering
industrial photographs
she took for Fortune
magazine and the photographs and photo essays
she produced for Life,
Margaret Bourke-White
became one of the bestknown magazine photographers of her time. She
was one of the most prolific and accomplished
war photographers as well.
Her combat assignments began in 1938 when
Life sent her to Spain to
photograph that nation’s
civil war. But it was during
World War II when she
took pictures of the action
in Great Britain, North
Africa, Italy, and Germany
that she made her mark as
a war photographer.
Bourke-White’s World
War II experience began
in July 1941 when she
went to Moscow on
assignment from Life to
photograph the German
air raids that were wreaking havoc on that Russian
city. She was the only nonRussian photographer to
record the attacks. During
one of the raids a bomb
exploded near the roof of
a building upon which she
was photographing. She
saved herself and her precious camera by diving
through a skylight and
falling shaken, but safe, to
a floor below.
Two years later BourkeWhite had an even more
harrowing experience. She
was aboard a troopship
headed for the American
and British invasion of
North Africa when the
ship was sunk by a torpedo
from a German submarine.
Although she spent a
frightening night in a
lifeboat in the middle of the
ocean not knowing what
daylight would bring, she
managed to capture compelling photographs of her
companions in the lifeboat.
Only a month after this
expenence she talked her
way aboard the lead plane
of a bomber group whose
mission was to destroy the
most important airfield in
North Africa. She thus
became the first woman
ever to fly on a bombing
run. Despite the fact that
the temperature in the
unheated plane, flying at
l5,000 feet, was -40°F, she
managed to keep her camera from freezing and took
some of the most spectacular of all the bombing
raid pictures produced
during the war. Life printed them in a long story
titled “Life’s Bourke-White
Goes Bombing.”
During the rest of the
conflict Bourke-White
took thousands of pictures
in various European theatres of operation, most
notably in Italy’s Cassino
Valley, the site of some of
the bitterest fighting of the
war. Her most memorable
pictures, however, were
taken in the spring of
1945, shortly before the
war in Europe ended. On
April 11th she accompanied troops led by General
George Patton as they
entered the German concentration camp at
Buchenwald where thousands of Jews and others
had been slaughtered by
the Nazis. Describing what
she encountered as “more
than the mind could
grasp,” she took pictures of
naked corpses and starving
camp survivors that, when
published around the
world, became forever
embedded in the memory
of all who saw them. Later
she photographed other
concentration camps,
entering one even before
American troops arrived.
After the war, BourkeWhite was asked to
describe what motivated
her to take such horrifying
pictures.“Difficult as these
things may be to report or
photograph,” she replied,
“it is something we war
correspondents must do.
We are in a privileged and
sometimes unhappy position.We see a great deal of
the world. Our obligation
is to pass it on to others.”
printed in newspapers and magazines was a
picture taken by U. S. Army Signal Corps
photographer Al Chang during the Korean
War (1950–53), fought by North Korea,
supported by China, against South Korea,
aided by United States and other United
Nations troops.The photograph (page 104)
captures the scene as an American soldier is
comforted by a fellow Marine moments
after learning that his best friend has been
killed.The inclusion in the picture of the
third Marine paying close attention to his
book in order to give his comrades their
moment of privacy adds to the poignancy
of the photograph.
As far as photographers were concerned, the deadliest conflict in history was
the Vietnam War, fought in the 1960s and
the first half of the 1970s between communist North Vietnam and United States—
backed South Vietnam. During this long
and divisive war, more than 70 North Vietnamese photographers were killed, and
more than 135 cameramen and camerawomen from other nations lost their lives.
Among photographers from around the
globe who recorded the conflict were two
South Vietnamese brothers, Huynh Thanh
My and Huynh Cong Ut, both of whom
took pictures for the Associated Press. In
1972 Huynh Cong (“Nick”) Ut captured a
photograph of children running away from
an American-aided napalm bomb attack in
South Vietnam. Eventually awarded the
Pulitzer Prize, the highest honor a photograph can receive, the picture is regarded by
many as the single most powerful image
taken during the entire war. It is also
viewed as one of the most influential war
photographs ever taken. Its impact was
most eloquently described by the American writer Sally Quinn: “When people
who had been for the war saw the picture,
they thought ‘Oh my God, what are we
doing?’ It was the beginning of the end of
the war. For all the words that had been
written about Vietnam, there was nothing
that had the power of this picture.”
By the time theVietnam War was fought,
television had come to play an important
role in the lives of millions. Increasingly
it became the major way that countless
people obtained their news. Television,
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 112
however, has not diminished the importance of the war photograph.Television
reportage, no matter how immediate and
dramatic, appears on the screen for a few
moments and then is gone. A war photograph, like all still pictures, has a permanence that allows it to be studied and
considered over and over again.This vital
attribute of the war photograph was clearly
evident in the coverage of more recent
conflicts such as the Persian Gulf War, the
hostilities in Bosnia and Kosovo, and in
other armed confrontations around the
world.What has become clear is that there
is no more powerful or lasting means of
visually recording the heroism, the
indomitable human spirit, and the triumph
and tragedy of armed conflict than the war
photograph.
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Toni Frissell. Boy in ruins
of his house, 1945.
“The story of my life,” wrote
Frissell,“is told in terms of photographs I have taken, places I
have visited, and people I have
met.This is as it should be. A
photographer keeps a biographical
record with every new assignment
and the photographer’s subjects
help shape her destiny.”
Huynh Cong (“Nick”) Ut.
Children running from
bombing attack, 1972.
This photograph of children
running in terror from a
napalm bombing attack has
become a symbol of the horror
and frustration of the Vietnam
War. It is yet another reminder
of the power that photography
has in influencing peoples’
thoughts and opinions.
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WAR PHOTOGRAPHY • 113
World War II in Pictures
The extraordinary number of photographs taken during
World War II revealed all aspects of the first truly global conflict in history. Robert Capa gained international fame for
combat pictures such as the one shown here of a soldier
pinned down by enemy fire during the Allied invasion of
German-held France. A German photographer captured Nazi
troops parading before German dictator Adolph Hitler shortly
before Germany launched all-out attacks on its neighboring
countries.The images of the fighter plane returning to its carrier base and the carrier crewmen on deck are two of the tens
of thousands of pictures taken by members of Edward
Steichen’s Naval Aviation Photographic Unit. Joe Rosenthal’s
picture of the American flag being raised at Iwo Jima has
become the most famous of all World War II images.
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Robert Capa. Normandy
invasion, 1944.
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Photographer unknown.
Nazi troops, 1942.
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Photographer unknown.
American soldier administering blood plasma, 1945.
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 114
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Charles Kerlee.
Fighter plane returning to carrier, 1945.
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Joe Rosenthal.
Iwo Jima flag raising, 1945.
Barrett Gallagher.
Carrier crewmen on deck, 1943.
WAR PHOTOGRAPHY • 115
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Chapter
. . . . . . . . Eight
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Photographs in Color
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Hand-coloring a daguerreotype was
a delicate process. But many skilled
daguerreotype artists were able to
produce images of great beauty,
including this one from about 1850.
This color photograph of activity in a
street on New York City’s East Side
was taken by photographer Henry
Peabody of the Detroit Publishing
Company.The color image was produced through an early color electroprinting process that the company used
some 30 years before the development
of color film made color photography
practical for almost everyone.
F
rom the time that scientists and
inventors began their attempts to
produce a permanent photographic
image, one of their main goals was to
capture pictures in color. In describing his
earliest experimentations to his brother, for
example, Nicephore Niépce, who in 1826
succeeded in producing the first photographic image, stated emphatically,“I must
succeed in fixing the colors.” Louis
Daguerre felt that, despite his enormous triumph in producing the first usable photographic process, it was not a complete
success, because daguerreotypes were unable
to capture images in natural color.
Daguerreotypists who took their cameras outdoors knew that there would be a
large market for scenes in color. By the mid
1840s, the public, which only five years earlier had been thrilled simply to be recorded
in a photograph, was increasingly expressing
a yearning for likenesses in color. In
response, photographers tried to use paints,
crayons, and colored pencils to hand-color
the images their cameras produced.What
they soon learned was that hand-painting
daguerreotypes was a tedious and very difficult undertaking. Few had the artistic skill
for the task. In addition, the daguerreotype
image was very delicate and easily damaged
by a careless brushstroke.They solved their
problem by turning to a whole new type of
craftsman—the hand-coloring expert.
In the United States, where the daguerreotype gained its greatest popularity, handcoloring by specialists became a common
practice. Several books on the subject were
published, providing instruction on how to
get the best results from watercolors, pastels,
and colored crayons. During the daguerreotype era, the American Artists’Association,
an organization made up exclusively of professional colorists, was formed.
As the daguerreotype was replaced by
new forms of photographs, many colorists
turned to hand-painting ambrotypes and
tintypes. During the American Civil War,
when many soldiers carried tintypes of their
loved ones, a colored tintype was an especially treasured possession.
The first person to make a photographic
presentation of the principles on which all
color photography would eventually be
based was the British physicist James Clerk
Maxwell, who built on the early 19th-century work of Thomas Young and Hermann
.......................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHS IN COLOR • 117
Tintypes, such as this rare
image of an Indian chief and
his wife from about 1880, were
less fragile than daguerreotypes
and thus easier to hand color.
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Before the collodion process
became popular for making wet
plate negatives, it was used for
making positives on glass.The
glass plates could be inserted into
a special lantern slide projector
and shown on a wall, screen, or
other flat surface. Many viewers
were introduced to the marvels
of color photography by viewing
lantern slides such as this one
from about 1910.
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von Helmholtz. In 1861 Maxwell delivered
a dramatic demonstration that any color
could be recreated by mixing red, blue, and
green light in varying proportions. Before a
gathering at the Royal Institution of London, Maxwell projected three lantern slides
of a plaid ribbon upon a screen. He used a
separate projector for each slide. Each slide
was a black-and-white positive image contact printed from a negative that had been
photographed with a container of either
red, green, or blue liquid in front of the
lens, which acted as filters. In front of each
projector Maxwell placed the same liquid
filter used to take each picture.When the
red, green, and blue projected images were
adjusted to overlap in register, the picture
on the screen was imperfect, but unmistakably in color.
Maxwell’s achievement provided inspiration to scores of individuals who were
attempting to capture an effective color
image. In the last decades of the 1800s, several innovators—most notably Louis Ducos
du Hauron and Charles Cos in France and
John Joly in Ireland—conducted many
experiments using various types of color
screens and filters.The importance of their
work lies in their attempts to make glass
plates selectively color sensitive for exposure
in the camera.This would be a long step up
from Maxwell’s cumbersome liquid filters.
In 1904 an important advance took
place with the introduction of a black-andwhite emulsion that was sensitive to all colors (called panchromatic sensitivity). This
emulsion made it possible, later that same
year, for two French brothers, Louis and
Auguste Lumière, to achieve the longsought-after goal of capturing color on a
single plate in a camera.They accomplished
this by using small grains of potato starch
that were transparent enough to serve as
tiny color filters. A mixture of equal
amounts of grains dyed orange, green, or
violet (essentially equivalent to primary
red, green, and blue) was coated onto a
glass plate along with the new emulsion.
When exposed and processed, the result was
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 118
a full-color slide. Plates were made in standard sizes, 3 1/4 by 4 1/4 inches and larger.
The Lumières patented their plates
under the name Autochrome in 1904 and
three years later began manufacturing them
for sale. Photographers around the world
rushed to adopt the new process. In that
same year,Alfred Stieglitz introduced this
new miracle of photography to America
through a major exhibition of autochromes
taken by himself, Edward Steichen, and
another Photo-Secessionist, Frank Eugene.
For the next three decades the Lumières’
process, although somewhat limited in
choice of subject by the long exposure time
required, dominated color photography.
In the mid 1930s a breakthrough took
place that would do for color photography
what George Eastman’s Kodak camera had
done for photography itself. Just as the
Kodak placed the camera in the hands of
millions, the introduction of Kodachrome
film made taking pictures in color possible
for almost everyone.
The invention of Kodachrome film was
due, in great measure, to the efforts of two
young men, Leopold Mannes and Leopold
Godowsky. Both men were talented musicians. Mannes was a third-generation
member of the Damrosch family, which
made major contributions to the development of serious music in the United States,
and whose parents established the worldfamous Mannes School of Music in New
York City. He would become a celebrated
concert pianist, would write acclaimed
chamber and orchestral music, and would
inspire countless future musicians through
his teaching. Godowsky was an accomplished violinist who, among other musical
achievements, would hold chairs in both
Heinrich Kühn.
Group, 1908.
The autochrome, one
of the first forms of
color photography,
allowed photographers to produce
delicate, beautiful
images.The German
photographer
Heinrich Kühn was
an early master of
the autochrome.
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the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra and
the Los Angeles Philharmonic.
The two Leopolds met at Riverdale
Country School in New York.They quickly discovered that they shared not only a
passion for music but for invention as well.
After attending a physics class in which the
instructor explained the challenges faced in
achieving an easy-to-use form of color
photography, they joined forces to attack
the problem.
The school gave them permission to use
its physics laboratory and Mannes’s parents
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PHOTOGRAPHS IN COLOR • 119
From the earliest days of
photography, those who
expressed the desire to go
beyond black and white
were particularly eager
to capture the beauties
of nature in color.This
1938 Kodak ad
announces that the desire
can now be realized.
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allowed them to work weekends in an
unused kitchen in the family’s apartment.
Their early experiments, which centered
around inventing a camera that could effectively capture color images, were interrupted when Mannes went off to Harvard and
Godowsky enrolled at the University of
California. In 1922, after each had graduated, Godowsky returned to the East Coast
and they resumed their experiments in
earnest. By this time they had decided
upon a whole new approach.They came to
the conclusion that the answer to attaining
a practical means of color photography was
to be found not with a different kind of
camera, but with a whole new kind of film.
Their specific goal became that of perfecting a film coated with three layers of emulsion each sensitive to one of the primary
colors of light: red, green, and blue.
By 1930 Mannes and Godowsky had
gone a long way toward achieving this
goal.There were still many refinements to
be made, but the young partners were out
of money and needed more sophisticated
equipment.These obstacles were removed
when officials at the Kodak Research Laboratory invited them to work with the
Kodak staff and to take advantage of the
laboratory’s facilities.
By 1935 Mannes, Godowsky, and their
colleagues at Kodak had perfected a film
that produced full-color positive images
when it was processed. Called Kodachrome, it was released for use in 16mm
movie cameras and soon thereafter in
35mm size for use in still cameras. In order
to process this new film it was necessary to
use three different color developers. However, in 1936 Germany’s Agfa Company
introduced a film called Agfachrome that
required only a single color developer.
More improvements in color quickly
followed. Between 1939 and 1943, both
the Agfa Company and Eastman Kodak
introduced new color negative films, from
which prints were made, and advanced
printing paper that greatly improved the
quality of color prints.Yet even with these
advancements, all color processing printing
had to be carried out by a commercial
photofinisher.
Then, in the years 1947–50, Eastman
Kodak introduced three new products that
made color photography processing and
printing available to everyone. One of these
products was a color negative film called
Ektacolor. The second was a matching,
easy-to-use printing paper.The third was a
more convenient, high-quality slide film
called Ektachrome. All could be processed
by the photographer.
Although most professional photographers still preferred to have processing and
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 120
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printing done by a commercial firm, these
products and others introduced shortly
thereafter by several companies, including
Fuji of Japan, created an enormous increase
in amateur color photography. As a result of
this continued flow of products and
processes, the vast majority of pictures were
soon being taken in color.
Perhaps the greatest challenge that color
presents to the photographer is the beauty
of color itself.The temptation is great to
capture a blaze of hues in the belief that
color alone will make an outstanding picture. But just as tonal range alone does not
make a great black-and-white picture, it is
not colors themselves but the photographer’s sensitive use of them that produces a
fine photograph. Some of the most masterful of all color images are those composed
of subtle tones with carefully selected
accents of color. As photographer Edward
Weston, a master of both black-and-white
and color photography once stated,“Those
who say that color photography, will eventually replace black and white are talking
nonsense.They are different means to different ends.”
Despite the challenges of color photography, many photographers have
become masters of the approach. They
have, for example, been able to produce
color images that feature striking textures,
designs, and patterns. Certain of those
photographers have effectively used specific colors in their images to express
emotions and feelings evoked by the subject in front of their camera. Others have
been able to use color to convey the feeling of light and atmosphere in special and
exciting ways.
One of the greatest of the early modern
masters of the color image was Eliot Porter,
a man whose photographic contributions
were made after an abrupt change in
Photographer unknown. Boating
party, 1915.
A number of Japanese photographers
were among those who, in the early
20th century, worked toward achieving
an efficient means of color photography.Their work was marked by the
way they used color to enhance the
graceful presentation of their subjects.
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHS IN COLOR • 121
Eliot Porter. Great Spruce Head
Island, Maine, about 1955.
Porter had a lifelong interest in birds.
His color photographs of them, taken
with long-distance lenses, are marked
by their clarity and the way he was
able to “arrest” his subjects in flight.
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Jan Groover. Still Life, 1968.
Groover has become known for
complex and innovative color still
lifes.The beauty of her images is
enhanced by her use of the platinum print process.
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careers. After graduating from Harvard
Medical School in 1924, Porter taught biochemistry and bacteriology at the school
for several years. During his student days he
had begun taking photographs and in 1939
Alfred Stieglitz presented an exhibition of
Porter’s work. The acclaim that these
images received changed Porter’s life. He
gave up science and medicine and devoted
himself to photography.
Porter was an avowed naturalist. His
images are distinguished by the way in
which he was able to capture various shadings of light to accentuate the range of colors he found in natural objects like rocks
and trees. Porter was also a master at tracing
the delicate patterns and colors to be found
in leaves and grasses. Above all, his work is
marked by the discipline he brought to
each of his images. He never photographed
color simply for color’s sake. Subtlety was
his trademark, resulting in photographs that
time and time again featured brilliant
accents played against softer tones.
In more recent times, photographers
such as William Eggleston, Jan Groover, and
Joel Meyerowitz have become celebrated
for the special ways in which they have
used color. Eggleston is generally credited
with having played a major role in the
acceptance of color by some of its harshest
detractors. As late as 1976 color had been
ignored by many serious photographers
and critics who regarded its use as trivializing the medium. But in that year New
York’s prestigious Museum of Modern Art
went a long way toward “legitimizing” the
use of color by mounting a solo exhibition
of 75 of Eggleston’s color prints. Critics
hailed the way Eggleston, through the use
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 122
of color, had captured images that were
both lyrical and at the same time often
mysterious.
The work of Jan Groover has been
marked by the way in which she has carried on the approach of the artistic photographers who in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s
brought a new, modernistic vision to photography. In the 1970s Groover made
images primarily concerned with form and
design, rather than literal content.Among
other innovations, she often created pictures that present architectural details in
three groups. For example, in one photograph the lower corner of a bronze door
and the columns and steps that surrounded
it are shown from three different distances
and angles of view.
In the 1980s, Groover’s concern with
sculptural form led her to create a series of
photographs in which manufactured goods
are contrasted with natural objects. For
example, household implements such as
eggbeaters, spatulas, pie pans, and cups and
saucers are presented alongside the leaves
and blossoms of plants. In other photographs, common household utensils are
arranged to reveal their form and structure
by the play of ambient color reflected from
their surfaces. Groover’s work has continued
to evolve and she is today regarded as one of
the outstanding artists of color photography.
Like the photographs of Eliot Porter,
Joel Meyerowitz’s images are characterized
by their contrasts and subtlety of tones.
While Porter concentrated almost entirely
on objects he found in nature, Meyerowitz
has focused on a variety of subjects. He
spent several years photographing the wide
range of colors presented by urban street
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life. He produced a compelling book made
up entirely of pictures of red-headed people. But he has responded to nature, too.
Another book focused on the beauty of
wildflowers. Some of his most memorable
work has used color to capture the beauty
of light in the natural world.
The variations in illumination presented
by sunlit beaches, dramatic sunrises and
sunsets, and often spectacular storms on
Cape Cod, Massachusetts, has provided
Meyerowitz with scenes that are particularly appropriate for his mastery of light and
shadow. Especially compelling is Meyerowitz’s photograph Bay/Sky, Provincetown
contained in Cape Light, one of many
books that have featured his images. In the
picture, Meyerowitz captured the soft pink
hues of the clouds amid the remaining blue
of the sky.The play of light on the water,
on the lone person in the image, and on
(Continued on page 126)
Joel Meyerowitz. Bay/Sky,
Provincetown, 1977.
Meyerowitz has said that the special sense of mood and light in his
Cape Cod pictures was inspired by
the paintings of some of his favorite
artists, including Edward Hopper.
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PHOTOGRAPHS IN COLOR • 123
The Glory of Color
Since the time it became widely available, color photography has been applied to a great range of
purposes. Initially it was used mainly for advertising and fashion photography; Louise Dahl-Wolfe
was among the first fashion photographers to use color.Toward the end of the Farm Security
Administration project (see page 86), documentary photographers such as Marion Post Wolcott
began to capture their images in color. Although color was not much respected by the art world until
the 1970s, contemporary photographers such as Ernst Haas,Andreas Gursky, and Joel Sternfeld have
received critical acclaim for their innovative use of it.William Wegman, another prominent photographer (see page 141), uses color to emphasize the details in his humorous photographs.
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Marion Post Wolcott.
Children fishing, Anniston, Alabama, 1940.
Louise Dahl-Wolfe.
The Covert Look, 1949.
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Ernst Haas.
New York skyline, 1975.
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 124
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William Wegman.
Harvest, 1994.
Andreas Gursky.
Chicago Board of Trade, 1997.
Joel Sternfeld.
McLean,VA, December 1978.
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PHOTOGRAPHS IN COLOR • 125
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Bob Krist. Mount Orgueil Castle,
about 1995.
This photograph of a castle in
England’s Channel Islands is one of
thousands of images that have made
Krist one of the most successful of all of
today’s travel photographers.“I am particularly fond of photographing at dusk
or twilight, when the sky is still a rich
blue before it turns black,” states Krist.
the sailing vessel in the far background add
to the impact of the image.The most dramatic feature is the effect created by the
stark white and red of the small boat in the
foreground contrasted with the darkening
sand upon which it lies.
Many of today’s most accomplished
color photographers are men and women
who make their living by carrying out
assignments for picture magazines. One of
the most talented and successful of these is
Bob Krist, who photographs for National
Geographic,Travel & Leisure, Gourmet, and
other publications. His work has produced
stunning images made on assignments that
have taken him around the world from the
United States to Malaysia.
Keenly aware of the special demands
and challenges faced by those who make
their living by hopping from one often
hastily decided upon assignment to another, Krist also spends considerable time
teaching. He offers his students the following advice:“Once you leave your quiet,
organized, and orderly studio, you find that
chaos reigns supreme. It is a jungle out
there, full of wondrous discoveries, as well
as pitfalls and unforeseen obstacles. A lot of
what happens to you depends on both how
versatile and well prepared you are to deal
with the unknown and how quickly you
can react and improvise.”
Typical of the way in which Krist is able
to adapt to all conditions and sometimes
surprise himself with the way both natural
and artificial light can transform a scene is
his experience in producing the striking
image of Orgueil Castle on England’s
Channel Islands. Describing his shooting of
the picture, he writes,“What is great about
dusk is that no matter how bad the weather
is, the sky will eventually turn blue for a
while after sunset. . . . I’d been battling gray,
rainy skies all day on Jersey and I was
scheduled to move on to another island the
next day. Despite the drizzle, I set up my
tripod across the harbor from the castle and
waited for dusk. I knew that the town’s
neon signs and streetlights would glow
nicely, but I was pleasantly surprised by
how wonderful the castle, illuminated with
floodlights, looked.”
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 126
Jay Maisel. Boy blowing
bubble, about 1985.
Maisel’s photographs appear
in magazines and advertisements as well as in art galleries.Widely traveled, he
photographs only in color.
“I see in color,” he says.
“Everyone does.”
Like Bob Krist, Jay Maisel is one of the
busiest of today’s photographers.Working
exclusively in color, Maisel’s images are
marked by an elegant simplicity of both
color and form and by the painterly qualities he brings to them.
Although he photographs around the
world, Maisel’s great passion is capturing
powerful and beautiful photographs of the
United States. Speaking of this endeavor,
which he has pursued for three decades, he
states, “An all-inclusive view of America
would be a never-ending task. By the time
you finish one end the other needs work.
Patterns emerge in terms of form and content. Light changes and may be better down
the road, or later on, or in another season or
another place. So the task continues.”
Maisel has a special ability to capture
people in interesting poses. His picture of a
boy blowing a bubble is such an image,
made even more compelling by the dramatic contrast of the young man’s bright yellow
clothing with the red and green wall.
Aside from the influence color photography has had on the work of photographers, its impact in many other areas has
been profound. Color photography, for
example, changed the whole world of
advertising.Through color images, manufacturers are able to appeal to potential customers in more enticing ways than once
thought possible. Color photography has
also had a dramatic impact on the world of
art. Before the advent of color, students
were forced to study the works of the great
masters in black and white. Now color
slides, transparencies, and prints make it
possible to examine great paintings in all
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Photography has enabled the
medical profession to make far
more advanced diagnoses than
once thought possible.This
thermogram from about 1995
reveals that the fingers on this
patient’s hand are warmest
while the knuckles are coolest.
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their glory no matter where the original
paintings are housed.Today, the public has
become so accustomed to seeing pictures in
color that most newspapers print their feature news and sports photographs in color.
Some of the most spectacular uses of
color have been made possible by continued advances in modern technology.
Sophisticated computers, for example, are
now used to enhance photographs in such
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PHOTOGRAPHS IN COLOR • 127
Photography has profoundly changed our
vision of the universe.
Astronauts, armed with
cameras, have given us
spectacular pictures of
man’s travels beyond
the earth’s atmosphere
such as this one of a
space walk.
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a way that features hidden or unclear to the
naked eye are revealed. Patterns formed by
specific colors in these photographs enable
archaeologists to discover buried sites, military personnel to locate camouflaged areas,
and geographers to produce the most accurate maps ever created.The world of medicine has also benefited greatly from the use
of color photography. Computer-enhanced
X rays, which permit different densities of
bone, marrow, and tissue to be revealed
through specific colors, have made medical
diagnosis a more exact science than ever
before. Scientists in some fields are now
aided by what is called electrophotography.
Using this process an object is placed on a
sheet of unexposed film. A burst of electricity from a metal plate beneath the film
produces a picture that reveals, through various colors, properties of the object that
otherwise might remain unknown.
Perhaps the most dramatic use of color
has been its use in photographically probing the deep reaches of outer space.The
extraordinary revelations made through
color images taken by cameras in the hands
of astronauts, or mounted on powered telescopes, or aboard space satellites has resulted
in nothing less than a much deeper understanding of our universe. One can only
imagine what the reaction of innovators
like James Clark Maxwell, the Lumière
brothers, or Leopold Mannes and Leopold
Godowsky would be if they could see what
their pioneering efforts in color photography have spawned.
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 128
Color Films and Papers
C
olor photography is
based on the YoungHelmholtz three-color
theory of vision. According to this theory, the central portion of the retina
of the eye contains receptor cells called cones that
are individually sensitive
to one of the primary colors of light: red, green, or
blue.When the cones are
stimulated by various
strengths of red, green,
and blue wavelengths they
send composite signals to
the brain, which interprets
them as all the colors we see.
Based on this theory,
modern color film has three
light-sensitive layers. One
layer, containing blue-sensitive emulsion, is sensitive to
blue light. Another layer,
containing green-sensitive
emulsion, is sensitive to
green and blue light. A
third layer, containing red-
sensitive emulsion is sensitive to red and blue light.
Because all the emulsion layers are sensitive to
blue, color films have a thin
yellow filter layer under the
top blue-sensitive layer to
prevent blue wavelengths
from reaching the greenand red-sensitive layers
below (a yellow filter absorbs blue).When color
film is exposed to light
from a scene in front of
the camera, each layer of
film records only its own
color. The film is then
exposed to white light and
developed so that dyes are
produced in each emulsion
layer. Any remaining
silver in the emulsions is
bleached out along with
the yellow filter, leaving a
full-color image. The processing of color print paper
is essentially the same as
that of the color film.
Modern Color Film
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Color Photographic Paper
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PHOTOGRAPHS IN COLOR • 129
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Chapter
. . . . . . . . Nine
...............................................................
Modern Photography
I
Sebastião Salgado. Serra Pelada,
Brazil’s Klondike, 1986.
Salgado captured dramatic images of
men and women who, despite technological advancements, continue to
work at hard labor.The photographs
in his Workers series, such as this
one of a gold mine in Brazil, have
been acclaimed as a visual tribute to
labor and the human condition.
n the 1960s, toward the end of his long
photographic career, 84-year-old Edward
Steichen expressed his opinion as to
what lay ahead for the medium to
which he had contributed so much. “In
the past few years,” he wrote, “there has
been such a larger number of free-spirited,
independently thinking young photographers—seekers, probers, and explorers of
new horizons—than we have heretofore
encountered.They give ample assurance
that the future of photography is richer in
prospect and potential than ever before.”
Steichen has been proved correct.What
he could have added, however, was the fact
that photography’s ability to remain an everchanging, ever-growing medium is due not
only to the skills and imaginations of modern-day photographers but also to the ways
in which they have learned so much from
those who have gone before them.
Paul Strand was one of those photographic giants whose work has both inspired and instructed scores of today’s
photographers. He captured thousands
of images of people, places, and nature
throughout the world. He was a most sensitive photographer who constantly sought to
impart as much meaning to his images as
possible. Speaking of his approach to taking
pictures, for example, he stated,“It is one
thing to photograph people; it is another to
make others care about them by revealing
the core of their humanness.”
Strand’s desire to give meaning to his
images is often marked by the simplicity and
directness of his pictures.Typical of most of
his photographs is the picture titled The
Family, Luzzara, Italy, 1953. Like so many of
his images, it is a photograph characterized
by such directness in both form and subject
that it does not cause an immediate sensation. But as one studies it more closely, the
sensitivity and the power of the picture
become apparent.
The photograph is a masterpiece of
composition, framed on one side by the
man leaning against the building and on the
other by the family member leaning against
his bicycle.The group of three figures in the
doorway presents a powerful focal point.
The varying shapes and forms of the housefront and doorway, and the soft play of light
contrasted with the dark interior beyond
the entrance, add to the picture’s appeal. So
too does the way in which Strand was able
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MODERN PHOTOGRAPHY • 131
Paul Strand. The Family,
Luzzara, Italy, 1953.
Through honest yet sensitive images, Strand offered
proof of photography’s ability to penetrate the human
soul.“I have come,” he
wrote,“to value photography more and more for
those things which it alone
can accomplish.”
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to capture the differing expressions on the
faces of the family members.That so many
photographers working today have taken
up the search for the elegant apparent simplicity that Strand achieved is the greatest
testimony to the influence he exerted.
The work of Edward Weston has also
had a profound impact on modern photography.A native of Illinois,Weston moved
to California in 1911, where he opened his
own photographic studio. Influenced by
the pictorialists, his earliest photographs
were artistic and sometimes abstract in
nature. In the early 1920s, he went to Mexico along with fellow photographer Tina
Modotti. There he changed his photographic approach. Abandoning pictorialism, he decided that what he really wanted
to do was to photograph the world around
him.“The camera,” he wrote,“should be
for a recording of life . . . whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.”
In 1927,Weston returned permanently
to California. He had a small portrait studio
but devoted as much time as possible to
personal work. He began to photograph
the extraordinary forms that he encountered along the Pacific coastline. Along
with capturing magnificent landscape
images, he also focused on specific natural
objects. Almost everything in nature
became a subject for his camera—tangled
trees and stumps, rock formations, and
shells. He saw beauty in every natural form,
even in commonplace vegetables.To him,
the delicate, precise overlapping of layers in
an artichoke sliced down through the middle was as photographically intriguing as
the towering mountains or crashing surf
that were also objects of his camera.
Among Weston’s most intriguing images
is the picture titled Cypress, Point Lobos,
1929. It is a photograph that exemplifies his
ability to see things that others could not
initially perceive.When Weston encountered the root, the pattern of the lines of
growth made it appear as if it were on fire.
He captured this feeling by photographing
the root close-up from the angle that best
conveyed his perception.As we study the
image we can understand what renowned
photographer Cecil Beaton meant when
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 132
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he stated that Edward Weston “succeeded
with his passion, in making us see the
world around us in his way.”
Minor White was a photographer who
believed that simple objects could be the
basis for pictures that expressed the photographer’s deepest feelings. He took an
approach now embraced by many photographers.White’s images contained a genuine
sense of mystery.They were photographs
that left it to the viewer to develop an
understanding of what each image really
meant.White’s goals, he wrote, were “to
photograph some things for what they are,
and others for what else they are.”
In further explaining this approach,
White described it as a theory of equivalents,
a term first used by Alfred Stieglitz. To
White,“equivalents” meant dividing the
experience a person has in viewing a photograph into three parts.The first part of
the experience is the photograph itself.The
second part is what takes place in the viewer’s mind while observing the picture.The
third part is the innermost feelings that
come to the viewer when he or she later
remembers the image.
The photograph White titled Windowsill
Daydreaming is representative of his work.
At first viewing it appears to be an image
simply capturing various shapes and patterns formed on a wall by light pouring
through an open window. But as far as
White was concerned it was much more
than that. In describing the image, he stated
that while it captured a sight frequently
seen, his purpose in taking the picture was
to give viewers an opportunity to study it
and to consider whether the image moved
them to recall more profound experiences
in their lives. White was well aware that
what he wished to accomplish through the
photograph would be experienced by relatively few who saw it. But that, he felt, was
sufficient.To him, any photograph that made
viewers think and feel beyond the subject of
the picture itself was well worth taking.
Many of the photographers who came
to prominence in the last half of the 20th
century owed their approach to the work
of not one but of several photographers
who came before them.Trained as an engineer, Harry Callahan became committed
to photography after attending a workshop
conducted by Ansel Adams and then studying with Laszlo Moholy-Nagy at the New
Bauhaus in Chicago. His path toward eventually becoming known as “the photographer of the commonplace” was inspired in
great measure by his appreciation of the
work of Paul Strand. His decision to make
the expression of his own inner feelings the
basis for much of his photography came as
the result of a lecture he attended given by
Minor White.
Before his long career was over, Callahan became known for the scores of
intriguing images of city life that he captured. He also produced striking nature
studies. He broke new ground through the
Edward Weston. Cypress, Point
Lobos, 1929.
To Weston, these roots of a cypress tree
seemed to be on fire.“All these forms
are my neighbors,” stated Weston.
“If with clear vision I have seen more
than the average person sees—well,
that’s my job.”
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MODERN PHOTOGRAPHY • 133
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Minor White. Windowsill
Daydreaming, 1958.
White once defined his photographs as
mirages, meaning that they were not
what they appeared to be. His images
challenge each viewer to bring his or
her own interpretation to the picture.
imaginative use of multiple exposures to
combine several views into a single picture.
And he became a master of modern color
photography.
Callahan’s photograph of a weed reveals
his fascination with line and form. It is a
striking example of the way in which he
was able to produce an intriguing image
even when training his camera on the simplest of objects.
Like Harry Callahan’s, the work of
Aaron Siskind has had significant influence
on scores of modern photographers.
Siskind’s career was marked by the complete about-face he took in his approach to
the medium. Early on he concentrated on
capturing starkly realistic images of such
subjects as life in New York City’s Harlem
and Bowery neighborhoods. But in the
1940s he began to take very different kinds
of pictures.
Stating that “for the first time in my life
subject matter as such . . . ceased to be of
primary importance,” Siskind began to
concentrate on making abstract images.
For the next two decades he took close-up
photographs of everyday objects that are
usually ignored. Focusing on the patterns
he saw all around him, he photographed
the designs on walls and discarded pieces of
metal. He also captured intriguing designs
created by oil and water stains on various
textures of paper.
Siskind’s approach went beyond influencing the work of many photographers
who followed him. It also inspired designers in other fields who incorporated the
shapes and patterns he captured into their
own creations.
While Callahan and Siskind became
heralded for the artistic qualities they
brought with them, another mid-20thcentury photographer, Robert Frank,
gained acclaim for a very different type of
photograph. Frank began his career as a
fashion photographer and then entered the
field of photojournalism, carrying out
assignments for such magazines as Life,
Look, and Fortune. Frank, however, who
was endowed with a passionate sense of
individuality, came to dislike working for
others, particularly corporate-minded magazine publishers.
In 1955, with the aid of his friend Walker Evans, he applied for and received a
Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship,
which enabled him to undertake a twoyear photographic tour of the United
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 134
States. Using a 35mm camera he crisscrossed the nation capturing images of
roadside bars, parades, automobiles, highways, gas stations, and billboards. Many of
his pictures included the presence of the
American flag hanging on buildings,
adorning parade reviewing stands, and
waving above large outings.
In many ways Frank’s photographic journey was similar to that undertaken earlier by
Evans for the Farm Security Administration.
Both men were sensitive to how much the
artifacts with which people surrounded
themselves revealed about their way of life.
But whereas Evans celebrated various
aspects of American life, Frank’s images were
a far less positive portrayal.
In 1958 Frank’s photographs were published in Paris in a book titled Les Americains and the next year as The Americans in
the United States. Regarded by most
reviewers as downbeat, the book at first
elicited a negative reaction from much of
the public as well.What those who railed
against it failed to recognize was that in
Frank’s portrayal of loneliness and desperation there was also beauty and tenderness.
Frank’s own evaluation of what he had discovered and photographed was contained
in his explanation of why he had taken his
pictures in black and white instead of color.
“Black and white,” he stated,“is the vision
of hope and despair.”
In the next decade a dramatic turnaround took place. The Americans became
nothing less than a bible to many of the
thousands of those caught up in the youthful rebellion against the corporate culture,
social inequity, and certain long-held values
that was a major part of the 1960s. In the
Harry Callahan. Detroit,
about 1947.
In the hands of a masterful
photographer, even the simplest object can be made to
represent something beyond its
natural form. In this Callahan
photograph, a weed takes on
an appearance both human
and abstract.
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Aaron Siskind. Jerome,
Arizona, 1949.
When they first appeared,
Siskind’s images disturbed
many photographers who felt
they were more like abstract
paintings than photographs. It
was not long, however, before
they came to be appreciated for
what Siskind intended them
to be—works of art and
design that remain within the
realm of photography.
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MODERN PHOTOGRAPHY • 135
Diane Arbus. King
and queen of the ball,
about 1967.
Arbus’s images of subjects not commonly photographed include
pictures of older people
trying to appear younger
than they are.This is her
photograph of a couple
who had been crowned
king and queen of a
senior citizens’ ball.
Robert Frank. Political rally,
1956.
Frank believed that a photograph
should be able to stand on its own
without any text. Many of his
photographs, such as this one of a
tuba player at a political rally, are
playfully ironic.
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process, The Americans became a book that
has had a profound influence on scores of
today’s photographers.
Another photographer whose work has
inspired the approach of many modern
cameramen and women captured images
that were not usually the subject of the
camera’s eye. Her name was Diane Arbus.
She seemed a most unlikely person for producing the kind of photographs she took.
A small woman, easily moved to tears, she
grew up in a wealthy household in New
York City.Yet some of the photographs that
brought her fame were of retarded people,
of disadvantaged children, and of misshapen
men and women who were often cruelly
referred to as freaks. Others were of
“fringe” people: hippies, transvestites, topless dancers, street people.
Arbus’s purpose in taking these pictures
was not to demean her subjects. Rather, it
was to make viewers pause and reflect
upon the fact that they should not take
whatever advantages they had in life for
granted. Ironically, the images that created
the angriest response were those of “normal” people, ordinary middle-class individuals. Her straightforward photographs
revealed that most people are blind to how
they really look.They have self-images that
to a large extent only they themselves see.
“I really believe,” she wrote, “there are
things which nobody would see unless I
photographed them.”
Over the years, many people have been
disturbed by the content of Arbus’s photographs. Some viewers, for example, were
upset when her picture of a man and
woman who had been awarded the title of
king and queen of a senior citizens’ ball was
published. They felt that Arbus had
demeaned the couple by making them
look foolish. Others who encountered the
photograph, however, praised the image for
its honesty. As one critic evaluating Arbus’s
pictures as a whole has written,“[They are
photographs] very difficult to stay out of. . . .
What disturbs people more than the subjects of these pictures is the intensity of
their power to . . . stop us . . . and ask ourselves who we are.”
In an increasingly urbanized world, it is
not surprising that the city and those who
dwell within it is today one of the most
popular of photographic subjects. Among
those who have mastered the art of what is
commonly referred to as street photography is Lee Friedlander. A dedicated New
Yorker, Friedlander has used that city and
its inhabitants as a means of exploring the
modern human condition. Operating with
a 35mm camera, he has obtained many of
his pictures by mingling inconspicuously
among city crowds and buildings until
finding a subject that intrigues him. Some
of his favorite subjects have been store windows, monuments and statues, church
steeples, city intersections, construction
sites, and men and women often lost in
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 136
thought as if contemplating the realities of
city life. Many of his photographs feature
reflections of people and objects seen in
windows, mirrors, and showcases.
Among Friedlander’s most arresting
images are the street scenes he has captured.The untitled photograph of a man
walking along a sidewalk toward the camera is typical of these pictures. Like almost
all Friedlander’s street photographs, it is a
deliberately informal picture taken on the
spur of the moment but rich with informative, expressive elements.The man is surrounded by artifacts of city life—the
prominent store sign, the lamp poles, the
overhanging streetlights, the automobiles. It
is a simple photograph, yet striking in the
way it captures the atmosphere of a particular place at a particular time.
In recent decades the world of photography has benefited from the emergence of
masterful photographers from countries not
previously heralded for their contributions
to the medium. In Mexico, for example,
three photographers in particular, Graciela
Iturbide, Pablo Ortiz Monasterio, and
Manuel Alvarez Bravo, have garnered worldwide attention for the quality of their work.
Although Graciela Iturbide has photographed throughout much of Latin
Lee Friedlander. New York
street scene, about 1965.
Writing about his photographic
experience, Friedlander stated,
“I was finding myself at times in
the landscape of my photography.
I might call myself an intruder.
At any rate [my photographs]
came about slowly and not with
plan but more as another discovery each time.”
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MODERN PHOTOGRAPHY • 137
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Alexander Raota. Breaking
horses, about 1985.
Raota is a modern Argentinean
photographer. His photographs are
marked by a dramatic sense of
action and his ability to portray the
emotions of his subjects.
America, she has been primarily motivated
by a desire to discover the Mexico of her
ancestors. She has spent much of her time
living among the Indians of her country,
documenting their daily lives and customs.
Pablo Ortiz Monasterio has been driven by
his desire to depict the collision between
Mexican values and traditions and the challenges of everyday modern life. His most
outstanding work has been accomplished
in Mexico City, where he has portrayed the
contrasts between old and new and the
struggles of the many poor people to maintain their dignity in a metropolis of more
than 20 million.
Manuel Alvarez Bravo is widely regarded as the greatest of all Mexican photographers. In a career that has spanned almost
seven decades, he has not only produced
countless masterful images but is credited
with being the inspiration for the accep-
tance and the growth of photography in his
native country.
It has been only recently that Alvarez
Bravo’s work has received the full recognition that it has long deserved. Perhaps that
is because, unlike so many photographs
noteworthy for their power and dramatic
effects,Alvarez Bravo’s images are so often
subtle, almost hushed in tone. Rather than
photograph what might be considered life’s
most telling moments he has always
focused on the much quieter happenings in
between. As photohistorian Kathryn Livingston has noted,“Alvarez Bravo’s genius
lies in seeing the wrinkles of the life around
him—the indecisive moment as it were. . . .
What he captures best is life in the rests
between the notes.”
Some of today’s photographers have
worked in well-established forms of the
medium, adding their own special talents
........................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 138
and unique vision to take pictures that are
as strong as anything that has been done
before—even stronger, in the judgment of
many people. Such a photographer is the
Brazilian photojournalist Sebastião Salgado.
A self-taught photographer, Salgado has
spent the last 25 years taking pictures of
armed conflict around the globe. He has
gained his greatest acclaim thus far, however, through the images that resulted from a
huge photographic project he conducted.
In a world where new technology is
rapidly replacing old methods of working,
Salgado, in the late 1980s and early 1990s,
took his camera to many nations to document men and women still involved in
manual labor. Published in 1993 in a book
titled Workers, Salgado’s photographs depict
such scenes as thousands of laborers toiling
with pickaxes and shovels in a Brazilian gold
mine (see page 130), other laborers working
the sulfur mines of Indonesia, and men digging the Channel Tunnel between England
and France. Since their publication, the pictures in Workers have been acclaimed as
offering a profound commentary on the
human condition while, at the same time,
providing a powerful tribute to labor.
In the late 1990s Salgado added to his
growing reputation through another lengthy
photographic project.This time he traveled
throughout India and other developing
nations to capture unforgettable images of
people being dispossessed of their land.
Salgado has proved to be as much at
home capturing pictures of individuals and
landscapes as he is in recording huge groups
of people at work. Perhaps his greatest ability is the way in which, even while photographing scenes of general despair, he is
able to portray the dignity of each of the
people he photographs.
In contrast to the approach of photographers such as Salgado, many modern photographers have made their mark by
continuing the medium’s proud tradition of
blazing new and imaginative trails.This has
been particularly true of Cindy Sherman,
who has risen to international fame by
producing images that have been termed
“true theatre.”
In the 1980s Sherman created a sensation when she compiled a series of 69 photographs she called Untitled Film Stills. Her
Manuel Alvarez
Bravo. Optical
Parable, 1931.
Bravo’s genius can be
found in the way he
portrays ways of life in
a casual yet powerful
manner. His messages,
wrote one critic,“reach
us by slow and continuous flight; little by little they saturate us.”
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MODERN PHOTOGRAPHY • 139
purpose in creating the images was to satirize the stereotypical ways women had
long been portrayed in many movies. Sherman appeared in each of the photographs,
assuming such roles as a bored housewife, a
femme fatale, a rebellious teenager, and a victim of abuse. She left it to each viewer to
imagine a story line for each picture.
Sherman followed up this provocative
series by creating another one titled History
Portraits, designed once again to call attention to the historic stereotyping of women.
This time her subject was the world of art
rather than the world of movies. Her purpose was to parody the ways artists from
the past had traditionally portrayed women.
Once again Sherman appeared in each
photograph. She donned various wigs and
dressed herself in the ornate costumes typical of the clothing worn in the portraits she
was satirizing.
Sherman’s wide acceptance in the general art world is evidenced by the fact that
her photographs are included in major collections of such prestigious museums as the
Pompidou in Paris, the Museum Folkwang
in Essen, Germany, and New York’s Museum of Modern Art. As photohistorian
Revel Golden has noted, it is a success due
to Sherman’s unique ability to produce
images, that “shock us into reassessing cultural icons that have become so ingrained
in daily life we have actually stopped questioning their purpose.”
Another of today’s highly regarded photographers does not photograph people at
Cindy Sherman. Untitled Film
Still, 1977.
Sherman is the most prominent
feminist photographer, known for
images of herself in various
assumed roles. Here she is posed
as a young innocent in a potentially dangerous situation, perhaps
about to be rescued by some hero.
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 140
Jerry Uelsmann. Apocalypse II,
1967.
Many of Uelsmann’s images were
created not to impart information but
to challenge the viewer to bring his
own thoughts and perceptions to the
picture.This photograph was made by
combining several negatives and
printing them as a single image.
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all.William Wegman (see page 125) concentrates on taking whimsical pictures of dogs,
providing us with a delightful example of
the way humor has come to be accepted as
a legitimate element in seriously conceived
photographs.
A graduate of the Massachusetts College
of Art, where he studied painting,Wegman
turned to photography in 1966. In 1970
two events took place that were to change
the course of his career.While attending a
party he came across a plate of salami. Fascinated with the small specks of peppercorn
on the salami slices, he constructed a photograph, which he titled Catto, in which the
specks had apparently leapt out of the slices
and covered his hand.This image, which
launched Wegman into that modern-day
whimsical form of photography known as
constructed reality, became an instant hit
wherever it was shown.
It was in 1970 also that Wegman responded to a newspaper ad for Weimaraner
puppies. He named the dog he purchased
Man Ray after the innovative American
photographer. Little did he know at the
time that Weimaraners were to affect his
professional life even more dramatically than
the success of his Catto image.
As Man Ray and a second Weimaraner
that Wegman purchased grew older they
began repeatedly to wander in front of the
camera whenever he was taking a picture.
Rather than be upset, Wegman made a
bold decision; he would include the dogs in
his photographs. It was an inspired move.
For more than 25 years Wegman has used a
succession of dead-panned, sometimes costumed Weimaraners as the stars of hundreds
of images acclaimed not only for their
humor but for the more serious, often satirical message the viewer is apt to find in
each picture.
From the earliest serious, no-nonsense
images of those who sat before the
daguerreotype camera to William Wegman’s innovative portrayals of his dogs,
photography has taken mankind on a journey that has changed the way we view the
world. Photography has become the universal language understood by people
everywhere.
Photography has become the world’s
shared experience, involving us emotionally
in the triumphs and the tragedies, the joys
and sorrows of people throughout the
world. It has provided us with an indelible
record of who we are, where we’ve been,
and where we seem to be headed.
Because photography has become so
much a part of our lives, it is impossible to
recount all the ways in which we encounter
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MODERN PHOTOGRAPHY • 141
Instant Photography
T
oday we live in a world
where taking photographs is the most
popular hobby for tens of
millions of people around
the world. Much of this is
due to the way in which
modern technology has
made picture taking easier
than once thought possible. One of the most revolutionary breakthroughs in
this modern technology
was the creation of the
Polaroid Land Camera,
created by the American
scientist and inventor Dr.
Edwin H. Land.The first
camera to provide instant
prints to the user, the Land
Camera first appeared on
the market in 1948.
The original Polaroid
Land Camera worked
this way:A large roll of
print paper and a smaller
roll of negative paper connected by leaders were
loaded into the top and
bottom of the camera
through the back.After a
picture was taken, the photographer pulled on the
leader tab that extended
through one end of the
back.This pulled the print
paper and the negative
paper together between a
pair of rollers.The rollers
broke a pod of processing
chemicals at one end of
the print paper and spread
these chemicals evenly
between the two papers.
After one minute, the finished print could be
removed from the camera
through a flap in the back.
When all the pictures had
been taken, the negative
roll was discarded and the
camera reloaded.
Current Polaroid cameras made for use by amateur photographers feature
film packs of individual
sheets that combine negative and positive layers and
processing chemicals all in a
single sheet.When a picture
is taken, a motor drive
forces the sheet through the
rollers and out of a slot in
the camera. A color image
processes in full light in one
to three minutes.There is
nothing to discard. Polaroid
black-and-white and color
films for professional use in
large-format cameras have
individual peel-apart negative and positive sheets.
Some provide a film negative that can be used in an
enlarger to make additional
prints.There is also a
Polaroid color slide film
for 35mm cameras.
it.The sporting events and outdoor concerts we attend, for example, are punctuated
by the constant flash of cameras.The nature
of tourism has changed. Safaris to Africa, for
instance, are now enjoyed by travelers
armed with cameras rather than guns. Families commonly choose vacation sites based
on pictures of a particular spot or area.The
badge of the tourist has become the camera
draped around the neck.
Ironically, one of the most revealing
examples of how prominent a role photography plays in our lives is the occasional
controversy it stirs.When, for instance, an
exhibition of Robert Mapplethorpe photographs featuring sexually explicit photographs was held, the furor it caused
reached all the way to the halls of the United States Congress.
The exhibition became a political issue,
with many congressmen demanding that it
be closed down and that funding be withdrawn from the National Endowment for
the Arts, the government agency that had
financed the exhibit. Other congressmen,
arguing that art should never be censored,
stood behind the exhibition.Throughout
the controversy, the issue was whether or
not what might be regarded by some as
tasteless or offensive art should be publicly
shown.The issue was not whether photography is an art form.That this was taken
for granted, even during this emotional
debate, is yet another solid indication of
how far the acceptance of photography
has come.
Technologically, the advances made in
photography in recent times have been
nothing short of remarkable. Among these
has been the perfection and widespread use
of inexpensive disposable cameras. Made of
plastic with 35mm film sealed within them,
disposable cameras come equipped with
viewfinders and a built-in flash. Some disposables take panoramic pictures, while
others have a built-in zoom lens.
Once all the pictures have been taken,
the user takes the camera to a store that
develops film.There the film is removed
and prints are made.The store sells the used
device back to the manufacturer, where the
materials are recycled to be used for making new disposable cameras.
The most recent marvel of photography
is the digital camera, which captures images
electronically on a removable disk or card.
As each picture is taken the user can view it
on a screen at the back of the camera.The
user then inserts the image disk or card into
a computer, where the pictures are clearly
displayed on the monitor screen.The pictures can be stored for future viewing and
can be printed out or e-mailed to family
and friends.
Among the most intriguing of all the
items introduced into the world of photography has been computer software for
working with photographic images.The
most widely used such program is called
.......................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 142
Robert Rauschenberg.
Retroactive II, 1964.
Rauschenberg is one of a number
of artists who have produced compelling collages using a variety of
materials, including photographs.
Pop artists of the 1960s, such as
Andy Warhol, embraced photography as the most popular, or
democratic, of all mediums.
Image Not Available
Today the ability to use computer
software such as PhotoShop to alter
the content of photographs allows for
the creation of highly imaginative
and deceptive images, such as this
one by Jann Lipka.
PhotoShop.This innovative software allows a
user to manipulate a photograph in almost
every way imaginable. Subjects can be rearranged in the picture or deleted completely, while whole new subjects or backgrounds
can be added to the image. Colors can be
changed. People’s heads can be put on the
bodies of others. Because PhotoShop makes
it so easy to alter a picture, many courts have
now ruled photographs to be inadmissible as
evidence in legal proceedings.
The pioneers of photography, despite all
their contributions, could probably never
have imagined that photographs would one
day be taken in the far reaches of space or
on the depths of the ocean floor. It is
unlikely as well that even inventive geniuses
such as George Eastman or Eadweard
Muybridge could have foreseen the digital
camera or PhotoShop. And who among
the early innovators could have foreseen
that one day, thanks to the technological
marvels of communications satellites and
the digital system called the Internet, it
would be commonplace to send photographs in a matter of seconds from one
place to another without leaving one’s
desk? One thing is for certain. Given all
that has taken place, we can be sure that
even more remarkable photographic
advancements lie ahead.
Image Not Available
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MODERN PHOTOGRAPHY • 143
Chronology
mid 1700s
c.1855
The camera obscura as a portable box starts
to appear, laying the groundwork for the
ideas of photography as we know it.
The first cameras for taking stereographic
pictures are introduced.
The ferrotype process (tintypes) is introduced to the United States.
1806
William Hyde Wollaston invents the camera
lucida.
1827
Joseph Nicephore Niépce produces a small,
crude but permanent image on a metal plate.
1839
Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre demonstrates the first practical method of recording
images with a camera.
1841
William Henry Fox Talbot perfects and
patents his calotype process.
Albert Southworth and Joseph Hawes begin
taking daguerreotype portraits.
1844
Talbot publishes his Pencil of Nature.
1849
Mathew Brady opens his first daguerreotype
studio.
1851
Frederick Scott Archer introduces the collodion (wet plate) process.
The first flash equipment, operating with
magnesium powder, is introduced.
1853
Roger Fenton begins taking pictures of the
Crimean War.
1854
1856
Francis Frith begins photographing in the
Near East.
1857
Oscar Rejlander begins creating photographs using multiple negatives.
1861
Oliver Wendell Homes perfects the most
popular of all devices for viewing stereographic pictures.
James Clerk Maxwell presents the first
demonstration of the principles upon
which color photography will be based.
1861–65
Mathew Brady and his photographic corps
document the Civil War.
1866
Carleton Watkins photographs Yosemite
Valley.
1869
Henry Peach Robinson publishes his
Pictorial Effects in Photography.
1870s
Timothy O’Sullivan and William Henry
Jackson photograph the American West.
1871
Richard Leach Maddox introduces the dry
plate process.
Adolph Eugène Disdéri patents the
carte-de-visite.
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 144
1872
1907
1946
Eadweard Muybridge captures motion with a
camera, through successive frames.
Edward Curtis begins publishing his 20volume The North American Indian.
1881
1910s
Eastman Kodak introduces Ektachrome, the
first color film that can be processed by the
photographer.
The Eastman Dry Plate Company is founded.
Karl Klic introduces the photogravure process.
Lewis Hine takes his child labor photographs.
1947
1913
Dr. Edwin Land introduces the first instant
print camera, the Polaroid Land Camera.
1888
The Leica camera is introduced.
George Eastman introduces the Kodak handheld camera and flexible film.
The halftone printing process is perfected.
1921
Man Ray creates his first rayogram.
1890
c.1925
Jacob Riis’s How The Other Half Lives is
published.
László Moholy-Nagy begins creating his
photograms.
Photographic transmission by wire or cable
is perfected.
1891
The Linked Ring is founded in Europe.
Edison develops the motion picture camera
utilizing Eastman’s flexible film.
1895
Eugène Atget begins to photograph Paris.
1930
The twin-lens Rolleiflex camera is introduced.
1897
Alfred Stieglitz begins publishing Camera Notes.
1935
1900
The Farm Security Administration (FSA)
photographic project begins.
1902
The Family of Man photographic exhibition
begins its long run at New York’s Museum
of Modern Art.
1959
Robert Frank’s The Americans is published.
1963
The Kodak Instamatic Camera is introduced.
1966
Flash cubes are introduced.
1969
1934
Automatic flash equipment is designed for
hand-held cameras.
Eastman Kodak’s Brownie debuts, selling for
$1.00.
1955
Astronauts take the first pictures on the
moon.
1977
Cindy Sherman begins her photographic
series Untitled Film Stills.
1987
1936
The first issue of Life magazine is published.
The organization known as Photo-Secession is
1937
formed in the United States.
Kodachrome color film, developed by
Leopold Godowsky and Leopold Mannes, is
1903
Alfred Stieglitz begins publishing Camera Work. introduced.
1904
1940
The Lumière brothers introduce the
autochrome color process.
Ansco and Agfa color films are introduced.
Both Kodak and Fuji introduce disposable
cameras.
1988
Sony and Fuji introduce the first digital
cameras for consumer use.
PhotoMac,the first image manipulation program for Macintosh computers,is introduced.
1990
Adobe Photoshop is introduced.
......................................................................
CHRONOLOGY • 145
Photography
Museums
and Websites
Listed below are some of the major museums where you can view photographs taken
by recognized masters of photography and
those who may be lesser known. By contacting these museums, either by telephone
or through their websites, you can find out
about current or forthcoming exhibitions.
Some of these places, such as the Library
of Congress, have specific collections of
photographs on their websites. By logging
on to them, you can study the images wherever you have access to a computer.
Note: At www.icom.org/vimp/world.html
you will find an online directory of museums throughout the world, organized by
country. Another site, www.art4net.com,
contains a listing of worldwide photographic exhibitions.
UNITED STATES
Arizona
The Center for Creative Photography
The University of Arizona
1030 North Olive Road
P.O. Box 210103
Tucson, AZ 85721
520-621-7968
www.creativephotography.org
Image Not Available
A museum and research center devoted to
photography as an art form.The center has
a year-long schedule of photographic exhibitions.
California
Heinrich Kühn. Windblown, about 1900.
The goal of many pictorialists was to produce
photographs that looked as similar to European
paintings as possible, such as this image by
German photographer Heinrich Kühn.
J. Paul Getty Museum
1200 Getty Center
Los Angeles, CA 90049
310-440-7300
www.getty.edu/museum/
A museum with a huge collection of European and American photographs, the Getty
offers a range of special exhibitions.
The Museum of Photographic Arts
1649 El Prado
San Diego, CA 92101
619-238-7559
www.mopa.org
One of the first museums in the country
dedicated to the photographic arts.Visitors
have the opportunity to view the work of
some of the most celebrated photographers
in the history of the medium.
District of Columbia
Library of Congress
101 Independence Avenue SE
Washington, DC 20540
202-707-5000
www.loc.gov
The Library of Congress houses one of the
largest collections of photographs in the
world. Special exhibitions of photographs
are held in each of the Library’s two main
buildings.
Georgia
High Museum of Art
1280 Peachtree Street
Atlanta, GA 30309
404-733-4400
www.high.org
One of the leading museums in the southern United States, this museum has spacious
galleries devoted exclusively to the exhibition of the works of both well-known and
less familiar photographers.
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 146
Illinois
Michigan
Art Institute of Chicago
111 Michigan Avenue
Chicago, IL 60603
312-443-3600
www.artic.edu
Detroit Institute of Arts
5200 Woodward Avenue
Detroit, MI 48202
313-833-7000
www.dia.org
Spanning the history of the medium, this
museum’s holdings contain images taken by
many of the world’s most celebrated photographers. Exhibitions of photographs by
such masters as Eugène Atget, Paul Strand,
and Alfred Stieglitz are regularly held.
This institution is the fifth-largest fine arts
museum in the United States. Within its
more than 100 galleries are several devoted
to the exhibition of photography.
Minnesota
Walker Art Center
Vineland Place
Minneapolis, MN 55403
612-375-7600
www.walkerart.org/jsindex.html
Kansas
Spencer Museum of Art
1301 Mississippi Street
University of Kansas
Lawrence, KS 66045
785-864-4710
www.ukans.edu/~sma
The Helen Foresman Spencer Museum of
Art is the art museum of the University of
Kansas, Lawrence, and has a large photographic collection.
Massachusetts
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
466 Huntington Avenue
Boston, MA 02115
617-267-9300
www.mfa.org
One of the nation’s leading museums, the
MFA holds continual exhibitions of the
work of photographers ranging from some
of the world’s first cameramen—and
women—to photographers working today.
The Walker Art Center is known for its
major exhibitions of 20th-century art, multidisciplinary approach, and innovative education programs.
Missouri
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art
4525 Oak Street
Kansas City, MO 64111
816-751-1278
www.nelson-atkins.org
One of the country’s premier art institutions, this museum’s holdings range from
the beginnings of photography to the present, including a large collection of Francis
Frith prints of Egypt.
Saint Louis Art Museum
Forest Park
St. Louis, MO 63110
314-721-0072
www.slam.org
Housing works by photographers from all
periods of the medium, this museum is
known for the quality of the special photographic exhibitions it regularly holds.
New York
George Eastman House/
International Museum
of Photography
900 East Avenue
Rochester, NY 14607
716-271-3361
www.eastman.org
The George Eastman House’s photographic collection is justifiably regarded as one of
the most comprehensive in the world. Just
as George Eastman revolutionized photography, this museum that bears his name has
revolutionized the world of photographic
exhibitions.
The International Center
of Photography (ICP)
1133 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10036
212 860-1777
www.icp.org
The International Center of Photography
is a museum with changing exhibits, a
school, and a center for photographers and
photography. Each year, ICP presents the
Infinity Awards for excellence in photography, one of the most prestigious photographic awards.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
1000 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10028
212-879-5500
www.metmuseum.org
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PHOTOGRAPHY MUSEUMS AND WEBSITES • 147
Founded in 1870, the “Met,” as it is fondly
called, is one of the finest museums in the
world. Its photographic collection and
exhibitions have long been acclaimed
worldwide.
Museum of Modern Art
11 West 53rd Street
New York, NY 10019
212-708-9400
www.moma.org
Pennsylvania
Philadelphia Museum of Art
26th Street & Benjamin Franklin Parkway
Philadelphia, PA 19130
215-763-8100
www.philamuseum.org
Among the largest art museums in the
United States, it has one of the nation’s oldest photographic collections and holds regular exhibitions of both old and new works.
A pioneer in mounting photographic
shows, this museum, known as MOMA.
was the site of the historic 1955 “Family of
Man” exhibition.
Whitney Museum of American Art
945 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10021
212-570-3676
www.whitney.org
The Whitney, founded by Gertrude
Vanderbilt Whitney, houses one of the
world’s foremost collections of 20thcentury American art. It holds regular photographic exhibitions.
Ohio
Texas
Amon Carter Museum
3501 Camp Bowie Boulevard
Fort Worth,TX 76107
817-736-1933
www.cartermuseum.org
Collections at this museum span from
ancient Egypt to works of contemporary art.
Its photography department mounts permanent, temporary, and traveling exhibitions.
Washington
Seattle Art Museum
100 University Street
Seattle,WA 98101
206-654-3100
www.seattleartmuseum.org
One of the most user-friendly museums in
the nation, it complements its exhibitions
with films and lectures.
AUSTRALIA
Specializing in all aspects of American art,
the Amon Carter houses the work of scores
of American photographers.
Australian Center for Photography
257 Oxford Street
Paddington, NSW, 2021
Sydney, Australia 02 9332 1455
www.acp.au.com
Dallas Museum of Art
1717 North Harwood Street
Dallas,TX 75201
214-922-1200
www.dm-art.org
The mission of the center is to “promote
and enrich the understanding of photobased art in Australia” through exhibitions,
education, and publications. It houses exhibition spaces, an extensive workshop, and a
research library.
This museum has many programs designed
especially for young people. It holds both
permanent and temporary photographic
collections.
Cleveland Museum of Art
University Circle
11150 East Boulevard
Cleveland, OH 44106
216-421-7340
www.clemusart.com
Nicephore Niépce. It has regular photographic exhibitions.
Harry Ransom Humanities
Research Center
P.O. Box 7219
Austin,TX 78713
512-471-9124
www.hrc.utexas.edu/
The Ransom Center at the University of
Texas is an interdisciplinary archive and
museum that holds more than 5 million
original prints and negatives, including
the first photograph ever taken, by Joseph
CANADA
Glenbow Museum
130 Ninth Avenue SE
Calgary, Alberta T2G OP3
Canada
403-266-4100
www.glenbow.org
The Glenbow is a museum, art gallery,
library, and archive, all of which focus on
the human history of Canada’s Northwest.
It features exhibitions of work by Canadian
photographers throughout the history of
the medium.
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PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 148
Located inside a 15th-century barn, this
museum commemorates the life and work
of William Henry Fox Talbot. It holds exhibitions of a broad range of work by contemporary and 19th-century photographers.
National Gallery of Canada
380 Sussex Drive
P.O. Box 427, Station A
Ottawa, Ontario K1N 9N4
Canada
613-990-1985
www.national.gallery.ca
This museum features regular exhibitions
of works by Canadian cameramen and
women, as well as photographs from
European and American photographers.
Vancouver Art Gallery
750 Hornby Street
Vancouver, British Columbia V6Z 2H71
Canada
604-662-4700
www.vanartgallery.bc.ca
Featuring the work of Canadian photographers, this museum holds both permanent and temporary exhibitions.
Justina M. Barnicke Gallery
Hart House
7 Hart House Circle
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario M5S 3H3
416-978-8398
www.utoronoto.ca/gallery
Although specializing in images captured
by Canadian masters of the medium, this
gallery regularly displays the work of photographers from around the world.
ENGLAND
The Fox Talbot Museum
Lacock, Chippenham
Wiltshire SN15 2LG
England
44 1249 730 459
Imperial War Museum
Lambeth Road
London SE1 6HZ
England
44 207 416 5320
www.iwm.org.uk
This museum is dedicated to an understanding of the history of modern war and “wartime experience.” It has a comprehensive
collection of photographs taken from World
War I to the present day and holds regular
exhibitions of war photography.
National Museum of
Photography, Film & Television
Bradford
West Yorkshire BD1 1NQ
England
44 1274 20 20 30
Founded in 1983 as part of the National
Museum of Science and Industry, it holds
an impressive photographic collection,
including the world’s first negative, created
by William Henry Fox Talbot.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Cornwall Road
South Kensington
London SW7 2RL
England
44 207 942 2000
www.vwm.ac.uk
One of the most renowned museums in the
world, the Victoria and Albert contains 146
galleries. The works of masters of British
photography are regularly exhibited at the
museum.
FRANCE
La Maison Européenne de la
Photographie
82 rue François Miron
75 004 Paris
France
33 1 44 78 75 00
www.mep-fr.org/us/default.htm
The permanent collection of the European
House of Photography consists of more
than 15,000 images and is representative of
international photography from the end of
the 1950s to the present.
JAPAN
National Museum of Modern Art
3 Kitanomaru Koen
Chiyoda-Tokyo 102-8322
Japan
813-3214-2561
813-3272-8600 Information service
www.momat.go.jp
The National Museum of Modern Art was
opened in 1952 as Japan’s first national art
museum. Along with works by photographers from many nations, its exhibitions
feature images taken by acclaimed Japanese
photographers.
Tokyo Metropolitan
Museum of Photography
1-13-3 Mita
Meguro-ku
Tokyo 153-0062
Japan
813-3280-0031
www.tokyo-photo–museum.or.jp
The exhibits and photographic holdings of
this museum are primarily by Japanese
photographers.
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PHOTOGRAPHY MUSEUMS AND WEBSITES• 149
Further
Reading
General Histories of Photography
Beaton, Cecil, and Gail Buckland. The
Magic Image:The Genius of Photography
from 1839 to the Present Day. London:
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1975.
Frizot, Mitchel, Colin Harding, and Pierre
Albert, eds. A New History of Photography.
New York: Könemann, 1998.
George Eastman House. Photography from
George Eastman House, Rochester, NY.
New York:Taschen, 1999.
Goldberg,Vicki, and Robert Silberman.
American Photography: A Century of
Images. San Francisco: Chronicle, 1999.
Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present. 5th rev. ed.
New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1982.
Rosenblum, Naomi. A World History of
Photography. New York: Abbeville, 1997.
Sandler, Martin W. America, A Celebration!
New York: Dorling Kindersley, 2000.
———. American Image: Photographing One
Hundred Fifty Years in the Life of a Nation.
Chicago: Contemporary Books, 1989.
———. The Story of American Photography:
An Illustrated History for Young People.
New York: Little, Brown, 1979.
Stepan, Peter, ed. Icons of Photography: The
Twentieth Century. New York: Prestel,
1999.
Szarkowski, John. Looking at Photographs:
100 Pictures from the Collection of the
Museum of Modern Art. Greenwich,
Conn.: New York Graphic Society,
1973.
Aspects or Periods of Photography
Darrah,William C. The World of
Stereographs. Gettysburg, Pa.:William C.
Darrah, 1977.
Image Not Available
Eastman Kodak Company. The Joy of
Photography. Reading, Mass.: AddisonWesley, 1991.
Eauclaire, Sally. The New Color
Photography. New York: Abbeville, 1981.
Finn, David. How to Look at Photographs:
Reflections on the Art of Seeing. New York:
Abrams, 1994.
Fleming, Paula Richardson, and Judith
Luskey. The North American Indians in
Photographs. New York: Harper & Row,
1986.
John T. Daniels. Flight of the Wright brothers, 1903.
Taken at the moment when the Wright brothers achieved the longsought-after conquest of manned flight, Daniels’s image was one of the
earliest published photographs to have a significant effect on the viewing public. It provided visual evidence of a miracle of its age.
......................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 150
Goldberg,Vicki, ed. Photographs in Print:
Writings from 1816 to the Present. New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1988.
Willis, Deborah. Reflections in Black: A
History of Black Photographers, 1840 to the
Present. New York: Norton, 2000.
Jones, Edgar. Father of Art Photography:
O. G. Rejlander, 1813–1875. Greenwich,
Conn.: New York Graphic Society, 1973.
Greenhill, Ralph. Early Photography in
Canada.Toronto: Oxford University
Press, 1965.
Wood, John, and Merry A. Foresta. The Art
of the Autochrome:The Birth of Color
Photography. Iowa City: University of
Iowa Press, 1993.
Karsh,Yusuf. Karsh: A Sixty-Year
Retrospective. Boston: Bullfinch, 1996.
Guggenheim Museum. In/Sight, African
Photographers, 1940 to the Present. New
York: Abrams, 1996.
Individual Photographers
Haworth-Booth, Mark. The Golden Age of
British Photography 1839–1900:
Photographs from the Victoria and Albert
Museum with Selections from the
Philadelphia Museum of Art . . . . New
York: Aperture, 1984.
Alinder, James, and John Szarkowski. Ansel
Adams: Classic Images. Boston: Little,
Brown, 1986.
Hurley, F. Jack. Industry and the Photographic
Image: 153 Great Prints from 1850 to the
Present. New York: Dover, 1980.
Daniel, Pete, and Raymond Smock. A
Talent for Detail:The Photographs of Miss
Frances Benjamin Johnston, 1889–1910.
New York: Harmony, 1974.
Margolis, Marriane Fulton, ed. Camera
Work: A Pictorial Guide. New York:
Dover, 1978.
Meredith, Roy. Mr. Lincoln’s Camera Man:
Mathew B. Brady. 2d rev. ed. New York:
Dover, 1974.
Newhall, Beaumont. The Daguerreotype in
America. 3rd rev. ed. New York: Dover,
1976.
Peterson, Christian A. Alfred Stieglitz’s
Camera Notes. New York: Norton, 1993.
Rosenblum, Naomi. A History of Women
Photographers. New York: Abbeville, 1994.
Stryker, Roy Emerson, and Nancy Wood.
In This Proud Land: America as Seen in the
FSA Photographs. Boston: New York
Graphic Society,1973.
Sullivan, Constance, ed. Great Photographic
Essays from Life. Boston: New York
Graphic Society, 1978.
Callahan, Sean, ed. The Photography of
Margaret Bourke-White. Boston: New
York Graphic Society, 1975.
Ford, Colin, ed. An Early Victorian Album:
The Photographic Masterpieces
(1843–1847) of David Octavius Hill and
Robert Adamson. New York: Knopf, 1976.
Frank, Robert. The Americans. New York:
Pantheon, 1986.
Frank,Waldo, et al., eds. America and Alfred
Stieglitz: A Collective Portrait. Millerton,
N.Y.: Aperture, 1979.
Frith, Francis. Egypt and the Holy Land in
Historic Photographs. New York: Dover,
1980.
Gernsheim, Helmut. Julia Margaret
Cameron, Her Life and Photographic Work.
2d. ed. Millerton, N.Y.: Aperture, 1975.
Hurley, F. Jack. Marion Post Wolcott:
A Photographic Journey. Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1989.
Maddox, Ben. Edward Weston, His Life and
Photographs:The Definitive Volume of His
Photographic Work. Millerton, N.Y.:
Aperture, 1979.
Metzger, Jerald C., intro. Walker Evans:
Photographs for the Farm Security
Administration. New York: Da Capo,
1973.
Michaels, Barbara L. Gertrude Käsebier:The
Photographer and Her Photographs. New
York: Abrams, 1992.
Millstein, Barbara Head, and Sarah M.
Lowe. Consuela Kanaga: An American
Photographer. Brooklyn, N.Y.: Brooklyn
Museum, 1992.
Newhall, Nancy. P. H. Emerson:The Fight for
Photography as a Fine Art. New York:
Aperture, 1975.
Plimpton, George, intro. Toni Frissell,
Photographs: 1933–1967. New York:
Doubleday, 1994.
Sobieszek, Robert A., and Odette M.
Appel. The Daguerreotypes of Southworth
and Hawes. New York: Dover, 1980.
Steichen, Edward. The Family of Man:The
Photographic Exhibition. New York: Simon
& Schuster, 1955.
———. A Life in Photography. Garden City,
N.Y.: Doubleday, 1981.
Trachtenberg, Alan. America and Lewis
Hine: Photographs 1904–1940. New York:
Aperture, 1977.
......................................................................
FURTHER READING • 151
Page references in boldface type refer
to illustrations.
Index
Workers in the early 1900s
assembling the Number 4A
Folding Kodak camera, considered to be the ancestor of all
modern folding roll cameras.
Abbott, Berenice, 80–81
Changing New York, 80, 81
Adams, Ansel, 47–48, 66, 133
Adams, Eddie, 94
Adamson, Robert, 26–27, 48, 58
Adobe PhotoShop, 142–143
Advertising photography, 20, 21, 26, 124
African Americans
Portraits of, 34–35
Schools and school children, 74–75
Agee, James, 88
Agfachrome, 120
Agfa Company, 120
Agnew,Thomas, 105
Albumen prints, 14, 59
Allegorical photography, 29, 57, 58, 68
Alvarez Bravo, Manuel, 137–138, 139
Ambrotypes, 15, 117
American Artists’ Association, 117
American Civil War. See Civil War
photography
American Colony, Palestine, 51–52
American school system, 74
The Americans (Frank), 135, 136
American West
Sod house family, 75–76
See also Native American portraits
Annan, James Craig, 46–47
Stirling Castle, 46, 47
Annan,Thomas, 46
Appalachian region photo project, 34, 89
Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (Worker’s
Illustrated Newspapers), 96
Image Not Available
Arbus, Diane, King and Queen of the Ball,
136
Archer, Frederick Scott, 13, 144
Architectural photography, 48–49
Paris street scenes, 80
Plumbe dageurreotypes of
Washington, D.C., 13
See also street photography
Art et Decoration (Paris), 99
Artistic photography, 34, 56–71, 134–
135
Art photography movement, 34, 57–59,
62–69
Atget, Eugène, 79–80, 81, 100
Autochrome, 119
Avalon Bay, Calif., 38, 39
Avant-garde art photography, 70
Avedon, Richard, 99
Bailey, David, 99
Bailey, Jim, 101
Barnack, Oscar, 92
Bartlett, Linda, 89
Beals, Jesse Tarabox, 95
Beaton, Cecil, 133
Béchard, Henri, 40
Bennett, John, 32
Bergstresser brothers, 107
Berhnardt, Sarah, 28
Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung (Berlin
Illustrated Newspaper), 90, 91, 96
Blanquart-Evrard, Louis Désiré, 40, 59
Bonfils, Félix, 40, 41, 48
Boughton, Alice, 23
Bourke-White, Margaret, 68, 97, 100,
102–103, 112
Ammonia Gas Tanks, 102, 103
Brady, Mathew B., 12–13, 29, 35, 42,
107–109
Brassaï (Gyula Halasz), 80, 81–83
British gypsies, 83
Brownie camera, 21
Browning, Elizabeth Barrett, quoted, 9
Bubley, Esther, 103
Butcher, Solomon, 75–76
Byron, Joseph, 74
Cabinet card, 28
Cahoon, C. D., 9
Callahan, Harry, 133–134, 135
Calotypes, 7, 10–11, 27, 48
Camera, fundamental features of, 11
Camera Club of New York, 65
Camera Notes, 65
Cameras
35mm cameras, 92
Camera obscura (dark chamber), 8
Detective, or spy camera, 77
Digital cameras, 142
Disposable cameras, 142
Eastman’s Brownie camera, 21
Kodak instamatic camera, 20, 21, 119,
......................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 152
Leica, 92–93
“Mammoth” camera, 40, 46
Pinhole camera, 19
Polaroid Land Camera, 142
Rolleiflex twin-lens, 93
Stereographic camera, 16, 40
Camera Work, 65, 68, 69
Cameron, Julia Margaret, 29–31, 30, 66
Candid photography, 77
Capa, Robert, 110–111, 114
Cape Light (Meyerowitz), 123
Carlyle,Thomas, 30
Carte-de-visite, 16, 32
Cartier-Bresson, Henri, 98, 100
Castiglione, Countess, 22
Celebrity photography, 27–28, 35–36
Censorship, 142
Chang, Al, 112
Chiaroscuro, 35, 57
Child labor photographs, 85–86
Children of the Tenements (Riis), 85
Chinatown photographs, 76–78
Chintamon, Hurrychind, 32
Church, Frederick Fargo, 6
Churchill,Winston, 36
Civil War photography, 29, 42, 107, 108,
109
See also Brady, Mathew
Cleveland, Grover, 73–74
Club-der-Amateur Photographers, 63,
64
Coburn, Alvin Langdon, 57
Colliers, 96
Collodion wet plate process, 13–17, 39,
106, 107, 109
Colorado River, 42
Color photography, 50, 116–129
Agfachrome, 120
Autochrome, 119
Ektachorome slide film, 120
Films and papers, 129
Kodachrome, 119–120
Combat photography. See war photography
Composite prints, 58
Compte, Fr. Louis, 32
Computer-enhanced photography,
127–128, 142–143
Conklin, Paul, 89
Cook, George, 107
Cooley, Samuel A., 107
Coonley, Jacob F., 107
Cos, Charles, 118
Crimean War, 105–107, 106
Critcherson, George, 55
Curtis, Edward S., 50, 52–53, 145
Kutenai duck hunter, 52
Daguerre, Louis Jacques Mandé, 7–9,
117, 144
Daguerreotypes, 7–9, 11, 12, 23–25, 24,
26
Challenges of sitting for, 25
Handcoloring of, 117
Studios, 25–26
Dahl-Wolfe, Louise, 124
Dali, Salvador, 36
Daniels, John T., 150
Davison, George, 62–63, 67
Berkshire Teams and Teamsters, 62
De, Szathmary, Carol Baptiste, 105
Deceptive Angle Box, 77
Degas, Edgar, 63
Delano, Jack, 86, 87
Demachy, Robert, 63, 64
De Meyer, Adolphe, 64, 99
Depression era. See Great Depression
Detroit Photographic Company, 117
Direct positive image, 8–9
Disdéri, Adolphe Eugène, 16
Documentary photography, 72–89
Farm Security Administration project,
86–89
Political activist photography, 82
Social documentary, 73, 83
Straight documentary, 73, 82
Doppel Sport Pigeon Camera, 77
Dresden Albuminizing Company, 59
Drum (South African magazine),
100–101
Dry plate process, 17–18
Du Camp, Maxime, 40
Dunmore, John, 55
Eastman Dry Plate Company, 145
Eastman, George, 6, 7, 20–21, 119, 143,
145
Eastman Kodak, 120
Edgerton, Harold, Flying bullet, 5
Eggleston,William, 122–123
Electrophotography, 128
Elliot, John, 32
Emerson, Peter Henry, 59–60, 63, 67,
93
Eugene, Frank, 119
Evans, Frederick Henry, 49, 59
The Sea of Steps-Wells Cathedral, 49
Evans,Walker, 37, 87, 88–89, 134
Country store, 88, 89
Exhibitions
Club-der-Amateur Photographers
exhibitions, 63–64
Eggleston’s color prints at MOMA,
122–123
“Family of Man” exhibit, 67
Kunsthalle Museum exhibit, 64
Linked Ring exhibit, 64
Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession
(studio “291”) exhibits, 65–66
London Photographic Society annual
exhibition, 31
Mapplethorpe exhibit, 142
Paris Exposition (1900), 74
Photo-Club de Paris, 64
Porter exhibit, 122
Royal Photographic Society display,
106
Trans-Mississippi International
Exposition (1898), 32
Victoria and Albert Museum, 106
World’s fairs and expositions, 31
Expedition photography. See survey
photography
“Family of Man” exhibit, 67
Farm Security Administration (FSA),
photo project, 86–89
Fashion photography, 99, 124, 134
Fellig, Usher. See Weegee
Fenton, Roger, 105–106, 109, 144
Ferrotypes (“ferro”). See tintypes
Film
Color films, 129
Ektachrome slide film, 120
Ektacolor film, 120
Fast film, 92
Flexible film, invention of, 20–21
Fuji film, 121
Kodachrome film, 119
Fiske, Harrison Grey, 74
Fortune, 96, 97, 99, 102, 134
Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 91
Frank, Robert, 134–136
Friedlander, Lee, 136–137
New York Street Scene, 137
Frissell,Toni, 99, 111, 113
Frith, Francis, 40, 41, 48, 107
Fuji (Japanese film company), 121, 145
Gallagher, Barrett, 115
Galleries. See museums and galleries;
photographic studios
Gardner, Alexander, 16, 28–29, 108
Gardner, James, 108
Garo, John, 35
Genthe, Arnold, 76–78
Geological surveys. See survey photography
Gibson, George, 108
Godowsky, Leopold, 119–120, 128
Golden, Revel, 140
Gray, Robert, 77
Great Depression, photographic projects,
80–81, 86–88
Great Pyramid, Egypt, 40
Groover, Jan, 122, 123
Gum-bichromate process, 63, 64
Gursky, Andreas, 124, 125
Haas, Ernst, 124
Halasz, Gyula. See Brassaï
Halftone printing process, 91–92
Halsman, Phillipe, 36–37
Hampton Institute,Virginia, 74, 75
Harper’s Weekly, 91, 107–108
Hauron, Louis Ducos du, 118
Hawes, Josiah, 24–26, 26
......................................................................
INDEX • 153
Hayden, Frank F. V., 42
Helmholtz, Hermann von, 118, 129
Helsby,Thomas, 32
Henning, John, 27
Herschel, Sir John, 29, 30, 31
Hill, David Octavius, 26–27, 48, 58, 66
Hiller, Mary, 30
Hillers, John, 42
Hindenburg explosion, 94
Hine, Lewis, 74, 85–86, 145
Horgan, Stephen, 91
How the Other Half Lives (Riis), 84–85
Huynh Cong Ut (“Nick” Ut), 112,
113
Huynh Thanh My, 112
Hyposulfite (“hypo”), 9
Ibarra, Gregorio, 32
A Illustracato (Brazil), 91
Illustrated Australian News, 91
Illustrated London News, 91
Immigrants, 76–77, 84–85
Industrial photography, 99, 102–103
Instant photography, 142
International Center of Photography
(New York City), 147
Iturbide, Graciela, 137–138
Ives, Frederic, 91
Jackson,William Henry, cover, 42, 44,
45, 117
Johnson, Lyndon B., 94
Johnston, Frances Benjamin, 15, 73–75,
92
Joly, John, 118
Jumpbook (Halsman), 37
Kanaga, Consuelo, 34–35
Karsh,Yousuf, 35–36
Käsebier, Gertrude, 67–68
Blessed Art Thou Among Women, 68
Keegan, Marcia, 89
Kennedy, Jacqueline, 94
Kerlee, Charles, 115
Kertész, André, 81
King, Martin Luther, Jr., 94
Klic, Karl, 93
Knox, David, 108
Kodachrome, 119–120
Kodak camera, 20, 21
Korean War photography, 104, 105, 112
Krist, Bob, Mount Orgueil Castle, 126
Kühn, Heinrich, 119, 146
Kunsthalle Museum (Hamburg), exhibit,
64
Land, Edwin H., 142
Landscape photography, 38–55
Lange, Dorothea, 68, 72, 73, 86, 87, 88
Lantern slides, 118
Lartigue, Jacques-Henri, 78–79
Delage Racer at Full Speed, 78
Latimer, Horace A., 54
Lawrence, George R., 46
Lee, Russell, title page, 87
Le Gray, Gustave, 58
Leibowitz, Annie, 99
Leica (camera), 92–93, 145
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (Agee
and Evans), 88
Levy, Max, 91
Leys, Robert, 32
Life (news magazine), 97, 98, 101, 112,
134
L’Illustration (France), 91
Lincoln, Abraham, portraits of, 29
Lindbergh, Charles, 94
Linked Ring, 62, 63, 64
Lipka, Jann, 143
Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession
(studio “291”), 65–66
Livingston, Kathryn, 138
Look (news magazine), 134
Luce, Henry, 97
Lumière, Louis and Auguste, 118–119,
128
National Child Labor Committee,
85–86
National Geographic, 96, 126
Native American portraits, 31–32, 33,
52–53, 89, 118
Naturalistic Photography for Students of the
Art (Emerson), 60
Nature photography, 45–47, 59–61, 122,
132–133
Near East photography, 39–41, 48
Negative-positive calotype process,
10–11
Newhall, Beaumont, 67, 98
Newman, Arnold, 36
Newspaper photography, 35, 90–103,
110
New York City
Mobster activities, 95–96
Skyline, 124
Slum and tenement living, 84, 95
Street scenes, 67, 80, 81, 116, 137
Niepce, Joseph-Nicéphore, 7, 117
The North American Indians (Curtis),
53, 145
McCosh, John, 48
Maddox, Richard Leach, 17
Magubane, Peter, 101
Maisel, Jay, Boy blowing bubble, 127
Mannes, Leopold, 119–120, 128
Man of the Twentieth Century (Sander’s
photo project), 33, 34
Mapplethorpe, Robert, 142
Marcelin, Yesteryear and Today, 27
Maskell, Alfred, 64
Matson, Edith (Yanktiss), 50
Matson, G. Eric, 50–51
Shepherd with his flock, 51
Matson Photo Service, 52
Maxwell, James Clerk, 117–118, 128
Meissenbach, George, 91
Meluish,William, 32
Mexican photographers, 137–138
Meyerowitz, Joel, 122, 123, 126
Middle East photo project, 51–52
Miller,Wayne, 111
Modern photography, 130–143
Modotti,Tina, 82, 132
Moholy-Nagy, László, 70, 133
Morgan, Barbara, Spring on Madison
Square, 71
Morgan, J. Pierpont, 52
Morse, Samuel F. B., 12, 24
Mount Orgueil Castle, England, 126
Müchener Illustrierte Presse (Munich
Illustrated Press), 96
Muybridge, Edweard, 18–19, 63, 143,
144
The Horse in Motion, 18
Office of Economic Opportunity
(OEO), photo project, 89
Ortiz Monasterio, Pablo, 137–138
O’Sullivan,Timothy, 42, 43
Black Cañon of the Colorado, 14
Ruins in Richmond, 108, 109
Outerbridge, Paul, 68
Nadar (Gaspard Félix Tournachon), 23,
28, 29
Panchromatic sensitivity, 118–119
Paris
Lindbergh landing, 94
Storefront images, 80
Street scenes, 80
Paris Match, 96
Parks, Gordon, 97
Pedro II, Dom (emperor of Brazil), 32
The Pencil of Nature (Talbot), 48
Penn, Irving, 59, 99
Photo-Club de Paris, 65
Photo Cravate, 77
Photograms (“Rayographs”), 70
Photographic clubs, 31, 62, 63, 64, 65
Photographic magazines, 91
Photographic process
Developing the latent image, 8–9
And emulsion, 17, 63
And emulsion for panchromatic
sensitivity, 118
Fixing the image, 9
See also names of specific processes
The Photographic Sketchbook of the Civil
War (James and Timothy Gardner),
108
Photographic studios
Brady studios in New York and
Washington, D.C., 12, 29, 107
Description of, 25–26
......................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY / AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY • 154
This photograph of an American
family was left behind on the
lunar surface as evidence of man’s
visit to the moon.
Image Not Available
Evans window display, 37
Nadar studio in Paris, 29
Plumbe studios worldwide, 13
Sarony portrait studio, 27
Southworth and Hawes studio, 25
Steiglitz studios, 64–66
Studio “291,” 65, 65–66
Weston in California, 132
Photographic techniques
Abstract images, 134
Angle shots (angles of view), 70–71
Artistic approach to photography,
57–58
Close-up portraits, 31
Color filters, 118
Composite prints, 58
Computer-enhanced images,
127–128, 142–143
From a balloon, 28
Impressionist art influence on, 60, 62
“Improper” or experimental, 30
Light and dark contrasts, 35, 57, 81
Lighting effects, 28, 58, 62–63
Manipulating the image, 63
Multiple exposures, 134
Patterns of light and shapes, 81
Photomontage, 70
Photography
Censorship, 142
Early history of, 7–21
Invention of, 7–8
Meaning of the word, 8
Types of, 37
World’s first photograph, 8
Photogravure process, 93
Photo-illustrated books, 39–40
Photojournalism, 92, 96–98, 99, 100, 134
Photomontage, 70
Photo-Secesssionists, 62, 64, 65, 66, 68,
71, 119, 145
Pictorial Effect in Photography (Robinson),
59
Pictorialism, 34, 59, 62–69, 132, 146
Pictorial Photographers of America, 68
Picture Post (England), 96
Pierson, Louis, Countess Castiglione, 22,
23
Pixels (“picture elements”), 92
Platinotypes, 59
Platinum prints, 59
Plumbe, John, Jr., 13
Capitol of the United States, 13
Polaroid Land Camera, 142, 145
Political activist photography, 82
Pollok, Peter, 36
Porter, Eliot, 121–122
Portrait photography, 22–37
Daguerreotypes, 12–13, 23–25
Pozzo, Antonio, 32
Press photography. See news photography; photojournalism
Prokudin-Gorskii, Sergei Mikhailovich,
50
Quinn, Sally, 112
Railroad photography, 44–45
Raota, Alexander, Breaking horses, 138
Rauschenberg, Robert, 143
Ray, Man, 70, 141
Reekie, John, 108
Rejlander, Oscar, 58, 60
Revista Universale (Mexico), 91
Riis, Jacob, 84–85, 95
Rinehart, Frank, 32, 33
Ritchie, Handyside, 27
Roberts, Elizabeth Ellen, 53
Robinson, Henry Peach, 58–59, 60, 144
Fading Away, 58, 58–59
Roche,Thomas C., 107
Rodchenko, Alexnder, 70–71
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 87
Rosenthal, Joe, Iwo Jima Flag Raising, 94,
114, 115
Rothstein, Arthur, 87
Rotogravure process, 93
Royal Institution of London, 118
Royal Photographic Society, 106
Russell, Andrew J., 45
Russian Empire photo project, 50–51
Salgado, Sebastião, 131, 139
Sampson, Anthony, 101
Sander, August, 32, 33, 34
Sarony, Napoleon, 27, 35
Miss Anderson as Galatea, 28
School portraits, 37
Sheeler, Charles, 102–103
Sherman, Cindy, Untitled Film Still
series, 139, 140
Siskind, Aaron, 134, 135
Slide projectors, 19–20
Smith, Adolphe, 83
Smith,W. Eugene, 97, 110
Social documentary, 73, 83
Soughton, Cecil W., 94
South Africa, racial segregation
(apartheid), 100–101
Southworth, Albert, 24–26, 26
Space photography, 128
Spanish Civil War photography, 82, 100,
110
Stanford, Leland, 18–19
Stanley Dry Plate Company, 18
Steichen, Edward, 66, 89, 99, 110–111,
114, 119, 131
Flatiron Building at Night, 67
Stereographic photography, 16–17, 41,
107, 144
Stereoscope, 16
Sternfeld, Joel, 124, 125
Stieglitz, Alfred, 64–66, 69, 119, 122,
133, 145
Paula, 66
Stirling Castle (Scotland), 47
Stirn Secret Camera, 77
......................................................................
INDEX • 155
Straight documentary, 73, 82
Strand, Paul, 59, 66, 71, 131–132, 133
The Family Luzzara, Italy, 131, 132
Street Life in London (Smith), 83
Street photography, 67, 80–81, 83, 116,
136–137
Stryker, Roy, 87
Studios. See photographic studios
Survey photography, 41–44
Sutcliffe, Frederick Meadow, 60–62, 67
Water Rats, 61
Uelsmann, Jerry, 141
Ulmann, Doris, 32–34, 68
Untitled Film Stills series (Sherman),
139–140
Talbot,William Henry Fox, 48
frontispiece, 7, 8, 10–11
Lacock Abbey, 10
Leaves of Orchidea, 10
Talbotypes. See calotypes
Tennyson, Alfred Lord, 29, 106
Theatrical photography, 27–28
Thomson, John, 83
Tice, George, 59
Tintypes, 15, 117, 118, 144
Tournachon, Gaspard Félix. See Nadar
Tress, Arthur, 89
Tripe, Linnaeus, 48
Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, 74–75
War photography, 67, 104–115
Warren,William, 89
Washington, Booker T., 74
Watkins, Carleton E., 41, 144
El Capitan, 42
Weber, Bruce, 99
Wedding portraits, 37
Weegee (Usher Fellig), 95
Wegman,William, 125, 141
Wells Cathedral (England), 49
Weston, Edward, 59, 71, 82, 121, 132–133
Cypress, Point Lobos, 1929, 132, 133
The West. See American West
Wet plate process. See collodion wet
plate process
Valera, Florencio, 32
Venice (Italy), 56
Vietnam War photography, 94–95, 112,
113
Vogue fashion photography, 99
Vu (France), 96
White, Clarence H., 34, 68, 69
Drops of Rain, 68, 69
White, Minor, 133
Windowsill Daydreaming, 133, 134
Whitman,Walt, 16
Willis,William, 59
Wolcott, Marion Post, 87, 124
Wollaston,William Hyde, 144
Women, stereotyping of, 140
Workers (Salgado), 130, 131, 139
Work Progress Administration (WPA),
photo projects, 80–81
World War I photography, 67, 77, 109,
110–111, 114–115
World War II photography, Iwo Jima
photo, 94, 114, 115
Wright brothers flight, 150
Yanktiss, Edith. See Matson, Edith
(Yanktiss)
Yellowstone area, 43, 44
Yosemite Valley, Calif., El Capitan, 41, 42
Young,Thomas, 117, 129
Zoopraxiscope, 19–20
......................................................................
PHOTOGRAPHY • 156
Picture
Credits
Aperture, Paul Strand Archives: 132; Art
Institute of Chicago: 70 bottom, 136 bottom; Associated Press: 94 top, 113 bottom; Berlin Illustrated Newspaper: 90;
Benthos, Inc.: 127 bottom; Black Star: 97;
Brooklyn Museum: 35 top, 35 bottom;
Camera Notes: 54 right. 65 top; Camera
Work: 27 bottom, 30 right, 47, 62, 63, 64,
65 bottom, 69, 119, 146; Community
Service Society, New York: 95; Contact:
130; Detroit Institute of Arts: 78; Drum
Magazine: 101; Getty Museum: 10 bottom; Humanities Research Center,
University of Texas: 8; International
Museum of Photography at George
Eastman House; 6,55 bottom right, 58,
61, 83, 118 bottom, 122 bottom; Journal
amusant: 27 top; Courtesy, Bob Krist:
126; Library of Congress 10 top, 13 bottom, 14, 15 bottom, 16 top, 18, 24 top,
25, 28, 29 bottom, 30 left, 33, 34, 37, 38,
40, 41 top, 41 bottom, 42, 43, 44, 48, 50,
51, 52, 54 top, 54 bottom, 55 top, 55 bottom, 56, 60, 66, 67, 68, 70 top, 74 top, 75,
76 top, 76 bottom, 79, 80 top, 80 bottom,
84, 86 top, 86 bottom, 87, 88, 92, 98, 99,
106 top, 106 bottom, 107, 108 top, 108
bottom, 109, 110 bottom, 113 top, 114
middle, 114 bottom, 115 bottom right,
116, 124 top right, 133, 136 top, 137,
141, 150; Courtesy, Jann Lipka: 143 bottom; Magnum Photos: 100, 114 top;
Courtesy, Jay Maisel: 127 top; Matthew
Marks gallery: 125 bottom; Metro
Pictures: 140; Metropolitan Museum of
Art: 22, 102 bottom; Courtesy, Joel
Meyerowitz: 123; Museum of
Contemporary Art, Chicago: 143 top;
Museum of the City of New York: 74
bottom, 81; NASA: 128, 155; National
Archives: 110-111 top, 115 top, 115 bottom left; Naylor Collection: 2,5,9,15 top,
17, 20, 21 top, 21 bottom, 24 bottom, 26
top, 26 bottom, 29 top, 36, 49, 71, 77, 82,
93, 96, 111, 117, 118 top, 120, 121, 122
top, 124 left, 124 bottom, 135 top, 135
bottom, 138,152; Northampton,
Massachusetts Historical Society: 12,
North Dakota State Historical Society:
53; Oakland Museum:72; Pace Macgill
Gallery: 125 top right; St. Louis Art
Museum: 102 top; Sandler Collection:
8 bottom,16 bottom, 45, 85,89, 104;
Smithsonian Institution: 46; United States
Department of Agriculture: 3; University
of Louisville Photographic Archives: 103;
Victoria and Albert Museum: 31, 139;
Courtesy,William Wegman: 125 top left.
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Acknowledgments
It would not be possible to compile a
book of this nature without the help of
many individuals. I am once again deeply
grateful to Thurman (Jack) Naylor,owner
of one of the world’s most complete private photographic museums and collections. Jack’s generosity in allowing so
many of the unique images in his possession to be used in this book and the technical knowledge he has shared with me
have been invaluable.
I would also like to thank Jesse Johnson
of the Photoduplication Department of
the Library of Congress for her prompt
responses to my requests and questions and
Ulrich Figge for his photographic genius.
As always, Carol Sandler typed all of the
several drafts of this book without complaint and provided valuable suggestions all
along the way. I regret that space does not
allow me to extend my deep gratitude
individually to the curators and staff members of the many institutions from which
the photographs in this book were
obtained.Please accept my blanket thanks.
Finally, I have had the great fortune of
having Lisa Barnett as my editor. If I have
accomplished what I set out to do in this
book, it is because of her superior editing
skills, her help in shaping the volume, and
her refusal to allow us to compromise on
finding “just the right photograph.”
About the Author
Martin W. Sandler is the author of 41
books. His Story of American Photography:
An Illustrated History for Young People
received The Horn Book Award in 1984.
Sandler’s other books include America, A
Celebration!, The Vaqueros:The World’s First
Cowmen, and a Library of Congress
American History series for young adults.
An accomplished television producer and
writer as well,Sandler has received Emmy
and Golden Cine awards for his television
series and programs on history, photography,and American business.He has taught
American Studies to students in junior
high and high school, as well as at the
University of Massachusetts and Smith
College. He lives in Cotuit, Massachusetts,with his wife Carol.
