The History of Photography
EDWARD WESTON. Waterfront, 1946. From a Kodachrome Transparency
The History
of Photography
from 1839 to the Present Day
BY BEAUMONT NEWHALL
THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
Distributed by Simon and Schuster, New York
To ALFRED STIEGLITZ, 1864-1946
whose search for truth through photography spanned half the camera’s past
COPYRIGHT, 1949. THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK. PRINTED IN THE U.S.A.
FOREWORD AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For more than a century, the camera has been a vital means of communication and expression. The growth of this contribution to the visual arts is the subject of this book. It is a history of a medium, rather than a technique, and of the seeing of those who have not been content to use the camera merely as a tool.
Photography is so linked to science that technical explanations are inevitable in any discussion of the esthetics of the camera. Although technical matters are taken up in the following pages, no attempt has been made to retell the scientific development of the photographic process.
This book was begun as an illustrated catalog of the exhibition Photography 1893-1937 which I organized for the Museum of Modern Art in 1937. In 1938 the text and illustrations were reprinted, with minor revisions, as Photography: A Short Critical History. The present text, although based on this earlier research, has been entirely rewritten and a new selection of illustrations has been made. Two of the chapters first appeared in the Magazine of Art and Antiques.
I wish to extend grateful thanks to:
The John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, for the Fellowship grant which enabled me to spend a year of uninterrupted research, study and writing.
Nancy Newhall, my wife and colleague, for constant encouragement, stimulating suggestions, searching criticism, and for sharing with me the fruits of her research, which I have freely used in Chapters 5, 8 and 9.
Ferdinand Reyher, for helping me to sharpen my thinking and my writing.
C. E. Kenneth Mees, Vice-President in charge of research, Eastman Kodak Company, for showing me how the theory and practice of photographic processes could be more clearly and accurately described.
Harold White, for unpublished material gathered for a forthcoming biography of Fox Talbot.
Monroe Wheeler of the Museum of Modern Art, who asked me to write this book, for his patience and encouragement.
Berenice Abbott, Alden Scott Boyer, P. Baron of the Societe Frangaise de Photographic, Walter Clark and Victor Moyes of the Eastman Kodak Company, Helmut Gernsheim, J. Dudley Johnston of the Royal Photographic Society, Zelda Mackay, Daniel Masclet, A. Hyatt Mayor of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Henry Allen Moe of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Dorothy Norman, Louis Walton Sipley, Robert Taft, Miss M. T. Talbot, and John A. Tennant for their many favors.
Sources for all quotations are given in the appendix; for permission to make use of copyrighted material I am indebted to the authors and publishers named there. I have used passages from some of my own writing first published by Art News, Arizona Highways, Minicam Photography, and the Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes.
My greatest debt is to the photographers who have allowed me to reproduce their work; their names are printed with their photographs. If photography has art potentials, it is because photographers have made it so; for them I have written this book. beaumont newhall
TRUSTEES OF THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART
John Hay Whitney, Chairman of the Board; Henry Allen Moe, ist Vice-Chairman; William A. M. Burden, 2nd Vice-Chairman; Sam A. Lewisohn, 3rd Vice-Chairman; Nelson A. Rockefeller, President; Philip L. Goodwin, ist Vice-President; Mrs. David M. Levy, 2nd Vice-President; Ranald H. Macdonald, Treasurer; John E. Abbott, Alfred H. Barr, Jr., Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss, Stephen C. Clark, Rene d’Harnoncourt, Walt Disney, Mrs. Edsel B. Ford, A. Conger Goodyear, Mrs. Simon Guggenheim, Wallace K. Harrison, James W. Husted, Mrs. Albert D. Lasker, Henry R. Luce, William S. Paley, Mrs. E. B. Parkinson, Mrs. Charles S. Payson, David Rockefeller, Beardsley Ruml, James Thrall Soby, Edward M. M. Warburg, Monroe Wheeler.
HONORARY TRUSTEES
Frederic Clay Bartlett, Mrs. W. Murray Crane, Duncan Phillips, Paul J. Sachs, Mrs. John
S. Sheppard.
CONTENTS
PACE
1. THE ELUSIVE IMAGE 9
Use of cameras by artists since the Renaissance — Schulze's observations on the light sensitivity of silver salts —The demand for pictures met in the eighteenth century by
the silhouette, physionotrace and camera lucida — Wedgwood makes unfixed prints by light action, 1802 —Niepce takes photographic negatives, 1816 — Searches for a direct positive technique — Meets Daguerre — Becomes his partner
2. THE MIRROR WITH A MEMORY 17
Daguerre perfects Niepce's technique — First success, 1837 —Names it daguerreotype—French government purchases secret — Divulged at public meeting, August
19, 1839 —Spread of daguerreotype — Technique — Portraits at eight-minute exposures — Technical advances in lens-making, sensitizing, toning — Americans excel — Landscapes — Portraits of celebrities — Brady — Southworth & Hawes — The daguerreotype becomes obsolete
3. PRINTS FROM PAPER 33
Talbot makes contact prints and camera negatives with silver chloride paper, 1835 — Shows results in London, 1839, to establish priority over Daguerre — Adopts Herschel’s discovery of “hypo” as fixing bath — Perfects calotype — The Pencil of Nature (1844) — Patent litigation — Hill and Adamson — Introduction of calotype to America — To France: Blanquart-Evrard, Le Secq — The forgotten man, Bayard
Early despair at recording motion — Talbot photographs by electric spark. 1851 —
O. W. Holmes learns from photographs how man walks, 1863 — Muybridge photographs galloping horse, 1878 — Perfects technique in Philadelphia — Evidence doubted: moving pictures made —Gelatin dry plate, 1871 — Perfection: introduction of film by Eastman — Hand cameras — Martin — Black’s Picture Plays —Edison and Lumiere brothers — Hurter & Driffield investigate properties of dry plates, 1892 — Orthochromatism and panchromatism — Enlarging — Anastigmat lenses
8. PHOTOGRAPHY AS AN ART 119
Emerson's Naturalistic Photography, 1889 — Platinum paper — Photogravure — Controversy over Emerson’s theories —His renunciation — The Linked Ring, 1892 — Stieglitz wins his first prize — Organizes American amateurs — His hand camera work, 1893 — Edits Camera Notes — Gum printing — Photo Secession, 1902 — Camera Work
— Steichen — “291” — International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography, Buffalo, 1910 —Growing dissatisfaction with photographs which resemble paintings
Miniature camera system predicted, 1840 —Piazzi Smyth's 1865 trials — Hand cameras dictate new conception of cropping — Powerful lenses open new fields: “candid” photography — Salomon — The Leica — Wolff — Cartier-Bresson — Levitt — The Rol-leiflex — Electric flashbulbs — Barbara Morgan — High speed electronic flash