Photography is present everywhere today in the fields of science, advertising, news media, propaganda or simply our personal life, with memories of our holidays or our selfies. It is difficult to imagine a world without. 200 years ago, it did not exist. During the period between the two Napoleons, in the first half of the nineteenth century, experiments were imagined in France and England. When the nephew of Napoleon I, Louis-Napoleon, became Emperor of the French in 1852, photography is doing its little revolution.
What is photography?
The word "photography" literally means "drawing with light." The word was invented by the British scientist Sir John Herschel in 1839 from the Greek words photos (genitive: photos ) meaning "light" and graphê meaning "drawing or writing." The technology that led to the invention of photography combines two distinct sciences: optics, with the convergence of light rays to form an image inside the camera, and chemistry, to allow this image off to be captured and permanently recorded on a photosensitive medium (light sensitive).
The first camera?
An 18th-century artist using a camera obscura
From the Renaissance (in the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries), artists use a kind of primitive "camera" called camera obscura (Latin expression meaning "dark room" and which gave our current word "camera"). This camera obscura allows them to draw from nature in a more precise way. The natural phenomenon that is the basis of it had already been observed for hundreds (or even thousands) of years: an object or a scene is placed in front of a closed box (thus in the dark) pierced just by a small hole; by the action of light penetrating through this hole, the reflection of the object or scene is naturally created as an inverted image in the bottom of the box. [Image] But the camera Obscura allows viewing this image only in real time. To "record" it permanently, the artists hand-draw the image inside the camera.
First photographic experiences
Around 1800, the Englishman Thomas Wedgwood managed to produce an image, in negative and in black and white, inside a camera obscura and to fix it on paper and white leather treated with silver nitrate. This chemical has been known since the Middle Ages to darken naturally when exposed to light. However, Wedgwood is not able to retain the image permanently: its lighter parts also darken after several minutes. His discovery is reported in a scientific journal in 1802 by a chemist, Humphry Davy, in an article that will be translated into French.
The first photograph
In 1816, the French Nicéphore Nièpce managed to capture small camera obscura images on paper treated with silver chloride, another chemical sensitive to light. However, like Wedgwood, he also fails to preserve his images. He began to experiment with other substances sensitive to light, and in 1822 he invented a process he called "heliography" (words that come here again from Greek and mean "drawing of the sun"). Nièpce developed his process between 1826 and 1827 and managed to make the first photograph that can be preserved. She shows a window in Le Gras(Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, Saone-et-Loire), on a tin plate support coated with bitumen diluted in lavender oil. The exposure time (exposure time) of the photo was probably of ... several days!
The daguerreotype - the first commercial success
A few years later, Nièpce teamed up with Louis Daguerre to improve the heliography process using a resin that is more sensitive to light and better treatment of the image after exposure. When Niepce died in 1833, Daguerre discovered a new technique: he replaced the chemical photosensitive silver nitrate with silver iodide. It also improves exposure times, which were so far several hours, when he finds that the image captured in minutes, still invisible, can be revealed later, after a bath of mercury vapor. Daguerre has just invented the development of photos. On January 7, 1839, the discovery of Daguerre was presented at a meeting of the Academy of Sciences. Given the importance of this invention,
The daguerreotype, as we call this new process, is an immediate success, partly because it is not very expensive. In a few years, photography studios are spreading in Paris and around the world. From now on, the middle classes can order portraits, a use that was reserved for a certain elite when only painting allowed, until then, to be represented.
It is said that a camera was taken to St. Helena to immortalize the body of Napoleon I daguerreotype when opening his coffin in 1840. Unfortunately, the equipment was damaged during the trip and did not work ...
Reproduce copies, the other revolution of photography
In 1835, while Daguerre perfected his process, the Englishman William Fox Talbot produced a similar technique to obtain negative photographic images but used paper as a support. This method always requires a significant exposure time, at least one hour. After learning about Daguerre's findings on photographic development, Talbot applies the mercury vapor bathing method to his photographs on paper. The translucent negative it obtains, although less detailed than the daguerreotype, has other advantages: it can be used several times to produce several positive copies. Talbot has just invented the "doubles" of photos. In 1841, he published his results. Now we will call these new pictures "talbotypes" or, more generally, "calotypes" (from Greekkalos, beautiful, and tupos, impression or imprint.) This negative-positive impression process will remain the basis of photographic reproduction throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, until the invention of digital photography.
How is photography welcomed?
In France, this new technology is sometimes unwelcome, especially by painters who see it as a threat to their art. The caricaturist Honoré Daumier, for example, does not hesitate to make fun of the most famous photographers and their clients. The poet and art critic Charles Baudelaire sees in photography the manifestation of the narcissism of modern society: "The filthy society rushed like a single Narcissus to contemplate its banal image on the metal." No doubt, he would have hated selfies!
Artists and photographers-innovators
But not all artists are necessarily hostile to photography: some people guess the creative potential of the new media, like Gustave Le Gray. This trained painter founded his portrait studios, where he photographed his friends and family but also notable and famous clients. He also teaches the photographic technique that he helps to improve. In 1848, he noticed that the application of wax on the paper of the negatives makes it possible to obtain more details on the print. In 1850, he invented a process of glass negative known as "wet collodion" (which will be perfected by the Englishman Frederick Scott Archer). This method combines the precision of the daguerreotype with the reproducibility of the calotype.
The interest and encouragement of the Emperor
Gustave Le Gray is the first official photographer of a French head of state: Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte, nephew of Napoleon I, president in 1848 and emperor from 1852. Like other monarchs, Louis-Napoléon quickly realizes that photography allows to humanize his sovereignty and to get closer to his compatriots. He is also sensitive to the fact that the photographs can be reproduced in large numbers and various formats, in pocket business cards or in more luxurious prints: what diffusion and what publicity throughout the Empire!
Scientific missions and photographic reports
The photograph is not used only for the portrait. The services of photographers are required to document all kinds of subjects for scientific purposes. Napoleon III himself initiated some of these projects: the purpose of the heliographic mission, for example, is to photograph all the French historical buildings in danger. The Emperor also commissioned illustrated reports of photographs of the new military camp in Chalons. He also brought photographers during the Crimean War to follow the French troops engaged against Russia. The photographic reportage and the reportage of war are born!
The beginning of the press photography
Before the invention of photography, news and news are reported mainly by writing or sometimes by prints or paintings. It was not until 1848, at the time of the fall of the July Monarchy, that a photograph of an ongoing event was produced: the barricade in rue Saint-Maur (25-26 June). It will be widely reproduced and disseminated. This photograph is the first historical photograph of France.
A photographic overview of History
Thanks to photography, our perception of the Second French Empire is different from previous periods. We can look at street scenes, city building landscapes, but also cross the eyes of such important people as the imperial family. When it comes to official portraits, an element does not vary with the invention of photography: just as Napoleon I carefully organized his public image through painting, Napoleon III required photographs showing it in his best light.