The Invention of Photography: the First Fifty Years

Read a neat little paperback The Invention of Photography: the First Fifty Years, by Quentin Bajac (published 2002, Thames & Hudson, translated from French.

Bajac worked as a curator at Musee D’Orsay from 1995 and organised many exhibitions of early photography. This paperback is illustrated with some iconic images I have seen before but also has many I haven’t. From the work of early pioneers such as Daguerre to the arrival of the Kodak camera which made photography accessible to the masses, it is a fascinating short history.

I hadn’t realised that the first Kodak camera arrived as early as 1888, or that so many distant countries, such as China, were photographed, or that even then street photography featured among the pioneering photographers. I am trying to get hold of a copy of John Thomson’s Street Life in London (1877-8). This book gives me a taster and I want to see more.

To order you own copy of this book, go to
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Invention-Photography-First-Fifty-Horizons/dp/0500301115


chosen iconic image

Photo of : Pierrot photographe dit aussi
Le mime Deburau avec un appareil photographique.
[Pierrot the photographer also called.
The mime Deburau with a camera]
By Félix Nadar


In the autumn of 1854 or the winter of 1854-1855, Nadar, who had brought his young brother Adrien into his business, asked the mime Charles Deburau (1829-1873) from the Théâtre des Funambules to pose for a series of "têtes d'expression". Deburau was the son of the famous Baptiste Deburau, the model for Jean-Louis Barrault's rôle in Marcel Carné's film Les enfants du Paradis (1945).
Then, with the help of an influential friend, Félix Nadar exhibited this series of photographs at the Universal Exhibition of 1855 and won a gold medal for them. However, it was awarded not to Félix but to Adrien, who had taken his brother's professional name, calling himself Nadar jeune. This prompted a lawsuit which Félix finally won in 1857.

The portrait of Pierrot as a photographer is the first in the Deburau album. It was the perfect introduction to the series intended to promote Nadar's studio. The star is shown alongside a camera which he seems to be operating. His left hand is telling the model to look at the lens and not at him. With his right hand, he is taking out a plate.
The long tripod on this camera gives it an anthropomorphic look, and it becomes a strange stage companion to the clown. And this couple, man and machine, seems to be a reflection of Nadar, bustling around his own camera. One can imagine the plate in Pierrot's hand containing an undeveloped portrait of Nadar at work, just as the plate taken out by Nadar contains the image we see here. Thus each becomes the photographer and the model of the other. This confusion of identities is in the best tradition of the Commedia dell'arte.

wildlife photography exhibition

The Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition, Natural History Museum.
An amazing show of photographs from around the world. What was interesting is that a, you could not really tell which were in the under 15s section and which were adult, and b,which were amateur and which were professional.
It seems there are two sorts of wildlife photographers: those in the right place at the right time and quick enough to react when they see something hapopening, and those with amazing patience who just wait and wait for the right moment when a creature appears or jumps or looks at the camera. Obviously, in the latter the photographer has already assessed light direction but that doesn’t negate the rapid ability they need to react by pushing the shutter. The exhibiton had shots of wildlife most people will never see, in places they will never go, making many images memorable.

Winner
Bence Máté (Hungary)
A marvel of ants
When Bence first tried to photograph leaf-cutter ants in action, he thought it was going to be easy. It wasn't - he spent hours watching and following them in the Costa Rican rainforest. 'They proved to be wonderful subjects,' says Bence interview in the exhbition catalogue. He discovered that the ants were most active at night. He would follow a column as it fanned out into the forest. Each line terminated at a tree, shrub or bush. 'The variation in the size of the pieces they cut was fascinating - sometimes small ants seemed to carry huge bits, bigger ones just small pieces.' Of his winning shot, he says, 'I love the contrast between the simplicity of the shot itself and the complexity of the behaviour.' Lying on the ground to take the shot, he also discovered the behaviour of chiggers (skin-digesting mite larvae), which covered him in bites.
Nikon D700 + 105mm f2.8 lens; 1/200 sec at f10; ISO 640; SB-800 flash.

Winners: Young Wildlife Photographer of the Year
Fergus Gill (United Kingdom)
The frozen moment
On Boxing Day 2009, it was so cold in Scotland (-17°C /1°F) that the birds were desperate for food. A rowan tree at the bottom of Fergus's garden in Perthshire became a magnet for thrushes - five of the six British species - song thrushes, mistle thrushes, blackbirds, redwings and a flock of about 15 fieldfares, all frantically picking the berries. Fergus wanted to capture the freezing feel of the day while showing the character of fieldfares in action, some of which were hovering to pluck berries. His biggest challenge (other than the cold itself) was to isolate a fieldfare against a clear background, and the only way to get the angle was to stand on his frozen pond. Risking a high ISO setting as well as the ice, he caught both the moment and the delicacy of colour he was after.
Nikon D300 + 500mm f4 lens; 1/500 sec at f4; ISO 800; Manfrotto 680B monopod + 293 tripod head.