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In this Curious Objects episode, host Benjamin Miller is joined by New York Times photo editor and writer, Anika Burgess to discuss a very significant daguerreotype and the history of photography.
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Transcript
Introduction to 'Curious Objects' Podcast
00:00:10
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Curious Objects, brought to you by the magazine Antiques. I'm Ben Miller. This is the podcast about art, decorative arts and antiques, the stories behind them, and what they can reveal to us about ourselves and the people who came before us.
00:00:23
Speaker
Now, what
Misconceptions and Beginnings of Photography
00:00:24
Speaker
do you picture when you think about early photography? Maybe black and white portrait of a stiff, unsmiling Victorian couple? Well, it turns out there's a lot more to it than that.
00:00:34
Speaker
The dawn of photography in the mid-19th century wasn't just a quiet, scientific discovery. It was a chaotic, creative, and sometimes downright bizarre free-for-all.
00:00:45
Speaker
So think of it less as a science lab and more of a wild west of invention filled with artisans and alchemists, geniuses, gossips, and even a few con artists.
00:00:57
Speaker
Guiding us through this brilliant chaos is Anika Burgess, author of the fantastic new book Flashes of Brilliance, the Genius of Early Photography. It's a book full of stories about hot air balloons, ghosts, microscopes, obsessives, and yes, con men.
00:01:13
Speaker
And as much as it's a history of early photography, it's also a history of science and exploration and of the sometimes dire consequences these adventurers faced when they flew too close to the sun.
00:01:25
Speaker
Our curious
The Craft of Daguerreotypes
00:01:26
Speaker
object is a tiny jewel-like photograph on a sheet of polished silver known as a daguerreotype. It's a little bit of a diversion from the usual curious objects fare of handcrafted decorative art objects, but in its own way, it really is a work of craftsmanship.
00:01:41
Speaker
And we will talk all about that. Anika, welcome to Curious Objects. Thank you, Ben. Thank you so much for having me. Are you prepared to answer some rapid fire questions? Absolutely, let's do it.
00:01:53
Speaker
What's the oldest object that you personally own? It is actually this daguerreotype that we're about to talk about. That is very exciting. I know. And we'll get into a great amount of detail about that piece.
00:02:05
Speaker
How many cell phone pictures do you take when you go on vacation? Oh, oh my God. You know what? I was away in August and i I'm going to say it had to have been more than a thousand.
00:02:16
Speaker
I took many, many. my My cell phone right now, I think, has something like 15,000 images on it. Okay. So you've really benefited from the advent of digital photography. Yes. Yes. Some could say I could probably organize that a bit better, to be honest. well i ah No judgment here. but What kind of music do you listen to while you write, if any?
00:02:39
Speaker
Oh yeah, great question. ah when i are Usually classical. i can't um I can't have any words that are distracting me from the thoughts I'm trying to formulate in my brain.
Sam Falk's Photography Style
00:02:49
Speaker
What was it that made Sam Falk such a brilliant news photographer?
00:02:53
Speaker
Oh my gosh, Sam Folk. Well, you know, i think this is true of really great photographers that you can see there an image and know it's them without being told. And I think his work falls into that category. I first discovered his work when I started working at the Past Tense Storytelling Initiative at the Times, which was a a project that ah delved into the New York Times Photo Archive and told stories from those images.
00:03:20
Speaker
And that was how I first became familiar with his work. And his name just appeared again and again on every wonderful image that I came across. And I was so lucky that I was able to write about him for ah for a piece because he was at the Times for, I think it was maybe five decades, and his output was phenomenal and always of the highest standard.
Importance of Digital Photography for Memories
00:03:39
Speaker
So there's an asteroid headed for Earth, and you have been chosen to be placed on the escape rocket. What one artwork or object are you bringing with you?
00:03:52
Speaker
ah Oh, um yikes. You know, that is, that's a hard one. I mean, I'd have to say a family photo, you know, i would have to say a personal image, but I would maybe hope I could sneak on my cell phone so I could bring all 15,000. Okay, so you're going you're going full digital?
00:04:16
Speaker
Bring as many bits of data as you can. just precisely Exactly. What's your favorite museum to visit? um Gosh, it's really hard. if In New York, um you know, it's ah I'm going to split this one. But recently I took my son to MoMA and we went to the permanent galleries on the fifth
Experiencing Art Through a Child's Eyes
00:04:34
Speaker
floor. You know, he's um he's in elementary school. He's learning about major art movements like art. the surrealists and his learning about cubism and to be able to experience those artworks through him or with his kind of... Him seeing them for the first time was really wonderful and it made me really appreciate how fantastic MoMA is. And then when I'm... You know, I lived in London for a long time before moving to New York and so when I'm in London, I always try to step into the National Gallery.
00:05:03
Speaker
What's a misconception that people have about early photography that you'd like to correct?
Challenges and Fascination of Early Photography
00:05:08
Speaker
Well, ah I think a pretty common misconception is that it maybe was kind of dull and there wasn't much happening. And um I think maybe that misconception comes from the fact that the portraits that we look at, you know, the people do look very serious and obviously they're in black and white.
00:05:24
Speaker
um And I think that really couldn't be further from the truth. You know, i know we'll get into this, but even just taking a portrait photograph in the very early years of photography involved a high level of risk for the photographer and quite a lot of exposure in every sense of the word for the subject as well.
00:05:40
Speaker
What's the single weirdest photo that you came across in your research for the book? Um, gosh, you know, the i enjoyed ah the chapter in the book, ah Flashes of Brilliance, that deals with x-ray photography also looks at the sort of what I call psychic photography, which was this idea that you could photograph thoughts and dreams. um It wasn't new when x-rays came out, but it was certainly kind of encouraged and and sort of like galvanized by the discovery of x-rays.
00:06:12
Speaker
and Through that, there's a lot of sort of wild images of um of hands that were put in a solution of of developing fluid to see if you could photograph the sort of bodily soul. There was an image that a photographer took of his wife who had just died, and he purported that her soul was raising out of her body and that was the cloud on the film. So within that whole sphere of psychic photography, there's a lot of wild and wonderful photos, um all of which really came down to how you'd like to interpret a ah cloud on a plate.
00:06:47
Speaker
So putting aside practicality, what historic camera would you love to be able to use?
Large-Scale Photography and Spiritualism
00:06:54
Speaker
You know, i think Carlton Watkins, he had a mammoth camera that he took to Yosemite. First of all, he took it in the 1860s. And ah it's really hard to know exactly how big this camera was, but the reports are that it weighed 75 pounds. It was a mammoth camera because it took mammoth photographs, which is to say it measured sort of that the plates measured something like 20 by 16 inches. um
00:07:18
Speaker
Just for the sheer weight and dimensions of it, that would be that would be a real kick to to try to use that. Wow. Yeah. Talk about impracticality. yeah Totally. 75-pound camera. Incredible. i bet those pictures were beautiful, though.
00:07:35
Speaker
Unbelievable. Stunning. His composition as well was just extraordinary. And you know it's made all the more um ah kind of revelatory by the fact that he was in such a wild landscape with this enormous camera trying to take these photographs.
00:07:47
Speaker
What's the most unusual source that you've turned to for research? Well, actually, again, as part of the psychic photographs, there was that there's some old journals of a sort of spiritualism movement, which was this idea in the 19th century that the the dead were trying to communicate with us from beyond the grave. And so in my exploration of spirit photographs, which is separate to psychic photographs, but spirit photographs, whereby a photographer said that he or she had captured the image of a ghost on a plate. I turned to some old spiritualist and and sort of psychic related journals, all of which, of course, very vehemently believed in the ability of a photographer to capture a ghost.
00:08:28
Speaker
So how do you feel personally about the digital colorization of historical black and white photos?
Colorization and Authenticity in Historical Photos
00:08:35
Speaker
Great question. i um i think it has a um an aesthetic interest.
00:08:42
Speaker
I think ah it can be really interesting to see the color choices and and how it comes out. I think, however, sort of from an editorial perspective or from the from a um the perspective of verisimilitude or facts, I try to i sort of resist it because it's not exactly how it was recorded. It's added to after the fact. It really is a...
00:09:04
Speaker
another dimension to this very long history of photo alteration. So for that reason, while I appreciate the enormous skill that's involved in doing it, I keep it at arm's length for any sort of editorial or historical purposes.
00:09:22
Speaker
We'll be back in a moment with Anika Burgess. Now, I always like to pause for a moment here and just say a quick thank you to everyone listening.
Engaging with the Podcast Audience
00:09:29
Speaker
You are the reason I'm able to have these conversations that I enjoy so much. And of course, I hope you are enjoying them too.
00:09:36
Speaker
And if you are, I would love to hear about it. And you can reach me by email at CuriousObjectsPodcast at gmail.com or find me on Instagram at Objective Interest. I love to hear your comments, your flattery, ah but also your critiques. If you deign to have any, i would love for you to share your thoughts with me also by leaving a review on Apple Podcasts or rating the show on Spotify. That is a really powerful way to bring more listeners to the show.
00:10:05
Speaker
And I'm grateful for your help with that. Thank you. Okay, let's get back to photography. So Anika, you're a journalist and a photo editor, but this book dives into this incredibly inventive period of early photography.
Historical Photography: A Personal Journey
00:10:22
Speaker
So before we get to our curious object, I would love to know what first drew you into this history? Was there even a single image that acted as as the spark for you?
00:10:34
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting you ask that. So I've always been interested in historical photography, and I think it's because I've always been kind of a student of history. And I think it's fascinating to consider how, you know, with photographs, really the first time we could see how people really looked.
00:10:48
Speaker
And there's a quote that I came across, and it varied from journal to journal, but as I was researching the book, and it was, you know, what would we give for a portrait of William Shakespeare? And you can just literally insert any historical name. um And I think that really shows the power of of photography and and how...
00:11:04
Speaker
wonderfully prescient it is to to see somebody in a photograph, or not prescient, but how um extraordinary it is to see somebody who once lived in a photograph and how much we miss it for the people in history that existed before photography. But really what it was, was I have a, and I have a, um I have at my desk somewhere, I found a picture online of a diver underwater wearing ah a hard hat diving suit, helmeted diving suit.
00:11:33
Speaker
from the 1890s, and I was really struck by, firstly, it's a very beautiful and absorbing image. And secondly, I found it extraordinary that somebody could take a photograph underwater in the 1890s.
00:11:45
Speaker
And so I began researching it in more detail, and there's some information about it online that's not quite accurate, but that was really what led me down the path of learning about Louis Boutin, who was a French marine biologist who is in the book and who experimented with underwater photography and really made huge advances.
00:12:03
Speaker
And that got me thinking about its natural corollary, aerial photography. And that the book kind of really snowballed from there. you know I really began realizing that the world of 19th century photography, and I obviously knew some before I started the book or started even thinking about the book. But really, there was there's a whole world there of experimentation and innovation that is, it feels to me to be largely untold.
00:12:26
Speaker
Well, and I think, you know, for many of us, we have a very limited set of ideas about the history of early photography. And as I said, you know, it brings to mind these very stiff, serious portraits.
00:12:39
Speaker
And I think a lot of listeners will be familiar with this idea that ah Sitters needed to hold a pose for a long time thanks to slow exposure and therefore kept neutral expressions, which, you know, on a more a crude and uncivilized podcast, they might call resting bitch face. But early photography, you know, it was about a lot more than just these dour expressions. And...
00:13:03
Speaker
For me, your book really opened my eyes to this incredible array of subjects, not just the the stilted, formally dressed Victorian families, although we will talk about those, but you know the incredible variety of subjects that early photographers were were interested in capturing.
00:13:22
Speaker
And there are so many examples you could tell us about from your book, but ah just for starters, I'd love to hear about some of the the early attempts at aerial photography.
00:13:33
Speaker
Yes, so I mean, I completely agree with you. And I think what's really interesting is when you think about photography, um you know, being introduced to the world, it was this completely new medium that had nothing, that had no previous literature, there was no journals anyone could lean on, there was nobody who had done it for 20 years that could advise, everybody was sort of learning at the same time.
00:13:54
Speaker
And so I think that also gave rise to these moments of innovation. And aerial was certainly one of the earliest. You know there was an idea. well There is, I think, a um a human fascination with flight and with the perspective that you get when you're in the air, which is obviously not natural to humans at all.
00:14:11
Speaker
And there were many ways in which photographers did their very best to get the camera into the air, you know, short of airplanes being invented, which obviously was is how we now mostly know aerial photography to be, obviously drones as well.
00:14:23
Speaker
But there were many different ways in which you could try to get the camera in the air in the 19th century. And the earliest um was, of course, with balloons, gas balloons. And there were many attempts in the 50s and 1850s, I should say. When I say 50s, I mean 1850s. Of course. On this podcast, you can take that for granted.
00:14:44
Speaker
the 1850s, the 1860s, getting a camera into a gas balloon to try to take a photograph. But of course, you were dealing with a whole multitude of problems when you were in the air. that The balloon was rotating and vibrating, so it wouldn't be still. You had no um ability to direct the balloon. You know, balloons didn't have any navigation. They went up and they went down. And you could make them go up and you could make them go down and you could that was about all you could do.
00:15:10
Speaker
So and then from there, the jumping off point to other aerial photography went towards kites. How could you get a kite in the air? And so these i mean, what I kind of love about all of this is obviously, ultimately, the large majority of these were never used because airplanes were invented and aerial photography became part and parcel of that.
00:15:31
Speaker
But I still love these attempts to try something new, even if it failed, even if it meant strapping a camera to a pigeon, which Julius Neubronner did and in the early 1900s, just as a way to try to see the world from a new perspective.
00:15:47
Speaker
So one of the central ideas ah behind curious objects is the wonder of craftsmanship. And from your writing, it seems like these early photographers, really, they were primarily chemists and inventors and artisans rather than what we might describe as artists.
00:16:06
Speaker
and Now, I was particularly interested in a story that you relate about the photographer Oscar Reglender and this kind of transitional moment from, you might call it from workshop towards studio art.
00:16:20
Speaker
Can you tell me a little about that? Yeah, I'm really fascinated by Rachel Lander as well. And he, you know, again, he's an innovator in in a really interesting sense. You know, he had been an artist. He trained as an artist in Sweden before moving to England.
00:16:32
Speaker
And he took off photography and his most famous work and his most also most controversial work is this image called Two Ways of Life. And as you said, it was um it was photography, but it was also real photography.
00:16:47
Speaker
It required real dexterity and craftsmanship because it was actually composed of more than 30 negatives. He had an idea in his head that he wanted to create something from his imagination, an allegorical scene, not use the camera to just mechanically record what existed in everyday life. So he was already taking it outside of the realm of factual reality and into this idea the world of ideas and and storytelling from imagination.
00:17:15
Speaker
And he wasn't the only one, but this is one of the major works in the 1850s. And so through you know a process whereby he ah photographed his models, actually cut the negatives, printed them next to each other, he had to get the lighting correct, he had to get the proportions correct, he created this vast canvas work called The Two Ways of Life. And you know it was very controversial for two reasons. Firstly, it depicted these two youths that were on a crossroads you know on the one side of the print,
00:17:44
Speaker
There was the path of virtue, which it was depicted by people doing you know industry or prayer, I think. And then on the vice side, there's all the terrible things that happen in life, from licentiousness and drunkenness and gambling. And obviously that side also involves some nudity, female nudity.
00:18:03
Speaker
And so the controversy arose firstly because of his use of nudity. and But secondly, within within the photo community, and this went on for a very long time, as to was it okay to use photography in this respect? Was it okay to use photography to show something that wasn't factual?
00:18:19
Speaker
And I think Rage Lander argument would be, well, it's not factual, but it's emotionally truthful. You know, it's about ah an allegorical scene. It's clearly an allegorical scene. He wasn't pretending it was from life.
00:18:30
Speaker
But there were many who seemed to take the whole thing very hard and thought it was preposterous to use photography in this way. I mean, ah on the nudity front, it's just amazing to think that in a culture which had routinely depicted men and women nude in paintings for centuries and in sculpture for centuries or millennia, that the depiction in photography would somehow be scandalous. Well, and I think it it is it came back to, and this was actually said in one of the journals, it came back to the fact that it was seen as this direct reproduction from life. I mean, the camera was called a mechanical contrivance, right? it wasn't ah
00:19:11
Speaker
It was to Rage Lander, but to many it was as a tool. In fact, there's even examples of exhibitions of sort of artwork and machinery and and all the sort of new things of the era and photography being put in the section with machinery, not in the section with art. Mm-hmm.
00:19:27
Speaker
So, you know, and again, as you said, many of the people working at this time or who had originated, who were originally working with photography had some experience in chemistry. You know, it did come from optics and chemistry. So this idea that you could use the camera, which was seen as a mechanical tool to create something from your imagination or from an um allegory to create something that was an artwork was difficult for some people to approach.
00:19:56
Speaker
Okay, let's get to our curious object at long last. And what we have for today is an daguerreotype, which is in in your personal collection. and it's It's in a leather case.
00:20:08
Speaker
It's an image of a woman and a a young girl, perhaps mother and daughter, It's been decorated with gold detailing.
00:20:20
Speaker
We'll put images, of course, online, as always. Listeners can see those at themagazineantiques.com slash podcast. But tell me, for starters, how did you come to own this picture?
00:20:32
Speaker
You know, i had always wanted a daguerreotype because ah because i I knew but I hadn't yet experienced this idea that they are an object as much as an image. You you hold it, it has a case, it has a clasp, it has weight.
00:20:48
Speaker
And especially now, mean, you know, with all the images that are digital, I was fascinated by the idea of it being being something that you might display or hold in your hand. And, um you know, i one of my One of my past times when I'm either you know procrastinating on deadline or just ah sort of messing around the internet is I go to auction houses and i and I sometimes bid on old antiques. And that is where I found this daguerreotype.
00:21:17
Speaker
And I was even, i was a little cautious at first because it can also be very easy to mistake a daguerreotype for an amber type, which is had a similar case, similar, similar-ish appearance. So it was only when I really received it in the mail and i and I opened it up, opened up the box, could I be sure it was a daguerreotype? And and I was just enchanted by it and I still am.
00:21:37
Speaker
so So tell me about the subject. um what What do you know about these women or or what can you perhaps infer about them? Yes, so what I've been able to ascertain about this image, um because there is no names on it and I cannot find a photographer imprint either, and I did um remove part of the case, but I'm loath to go any further than that and actually see if there's anything stamped on the um the copper frame itself.
00:22:03
Speaker
ah is that it was from 1851 or 1852. And I know that because of the detailing on the case. And there's a fantastic book I used called Fixed in Time by Sean Nolan, which will help you date your your old photographs.
00:22:18
Speaker
And also from the clothing. And for that, I refer to another book called American Victorian Costume and Early Photographs by Priscilla Harris Dalbrimple to sort of like zero in on when that timeframe would have been.
00:22:32
Speaker
But other than that, as is the case for for many daguerreotypes, you know it's not uncommon to to not know who the people are in the picture. and And it's interesting, I was reading recently, or rereading rather, one of my sources, and in 1853, there was a newspaper that estimated ah that some 3 million daguerreotypes are being produced in the US per year.
00:22:55
Speaker
So notwithstanding all of those that would not have survived the test of time, there are still many out there that have and whose subjects remain anonymous. It's just this lovely it's kind of a lovely mystery that um I will likely never know who is in this picture. And you mentioned the the weight of it. I mean, how does it feel physically to hold a daguerreotype?
00:23:16
Speaker
I mean, ah it must be different from just holding a printed photograph. I mean, completely different because of course it's in this case and the case has ah has a pattern on it, the pattern of roses. And so already you're feeling the texture of the case.
00:23:29
Speaker
um It is worn and then this one is missing its hinges, but on the inside there's red silk leather. And then the main thing you notice when you when you first open it up and look at it is um is that you get a mirror image of yourself as well. And at the time there was a very famous phrase that was used about daguerreotypes. They were called and a mirror with a memory. And from a certain angle, you can see yourself.
00:23:52
Speaker
And then from another angle, you can see the picture. And so you can imagine somebody looking at this and looking at, for example, a picture of their mother. And you can understand why it was maybe called a mirror with a memory, because you may be looking at your own family's picture and yet also seeing yourself reflected in the in the glass, in the in the polished silver.
00:24:10
Speaker
So let's talk about the craft a little bit, because you know making a daguerreotype involved polishing silver-plated copper sheet, fuming it with mercury vapor, and a lot of other, frankly, dangerous sound sounding steps. And in some ways, this reminds me of the artisans I'm more familiar with who applied gilding to silver or bronze, which was a process that involved a whole lot of vaporous mercury floating around the workshop, so similarly hazardous to one's health.
00:24:43
Speaker
um But tell tell me about the process that was used to to create this piece. This would have been made, um the other thing I should point actually before I go into that is the size of this. Daguerreotypes are often very small and they were divided into plate sizes and this is called a sixth plate which means it is two and a quarter, two and three quarters actually by three and one quarter. So it's not very big. I can hold this in the palm of my hand.
00:25:08
Speaker
um But the process by which it would have been created, yes, as you rightly pointed out, would have involved dangerous chemicals. um Because this is a portrait and because of the timeframe, it would have been not only mercury but probably also bromine, because that also came in as a way to sort of speed up the exposure times that allow portraits to be possible. Because when daguerreotypes were first introduced, the exposure times were too long for portraits. They could only capture landscapes or still lights.
00:25:37
Speaker
um So that would have been the process the photographer would have followed. And i you know and and what I also find really fascinating to think about is what how would the the woman and the girl in this picture what was the process like for them to sit for what i'm assuming was their first agerotype it's possible that all the woman had another one but the girl is very young what would have been like for them to go into the photographer's studio had they read um instructions on what to wear what colors to wear uh had they been told to steer clear of um very busy patterns had they read about what their poses should be like? How long did they have to sit still for? Because the exposure times varied enormously. It depended on time of year.
00:26:19
Speaker
It could depend on what the weather was doing. Did they have to hold a pose for five seconds or was it more like 20 seconds? These are the factors that we can only speculate on.
00:26:29
Speaker
But I think it is fascinating to me that this is some 170 years old and it is still it's still a very clear image And then there is an element of hand artistry in addition to the the image itself, because this daguerreotype has this delicate hand applied gold detailing on the sitter's jewelry.
00:26:51
Speaker
So tell tell me about that process. That's really visually striking. It is beautiful, isn't it? And also a little bit on their cheeks. They've made their cheeks a little of their cheeks a little pink. um You know, when the daguerreotype was introduced, one of the, I mean, everybody was baffled. Everybody thought it was the most extraordinary thing in the world. Daguerre released it to the world. He wrote a manual which was translated into many different languages. It was really this absolute phenomenon and people couldn't believe what they were seeing.
00:27:19
Speaker
That said, these images are still in black and white, which was still something that people really struggled with. And you know to your point earlier about how people looked in images, there's a lot of very amusing commentary from this period as to how daguerreotypes were very unflattering.
00:27:34
Speaker
One of my favorites is that somebody said that bad daguerreotypes can look like fried fish stuck to a silver plate. um Somebody else said, you know, the ah the most dangerous enemy of the daguerreotype is human vanity.
00:27:47
Speaker
ah So they were seen as almost too truthful, but one way to get around, at least certainly what was called, another article called the the metallic and death-like hue of a daguerreotype was to add color to it. And that was that came about quite quickly, mostly I think for... um for commercial reasons, because the photographer needed their customers to be happy. And so by adding pigment with a very fine brush, you could bring some life, some color into these images. And this example, as you said, it's just the finest detail of the jewelry, the rings, the brooch, the earrings, and the cheeks. I've seen other daguerreotypes, and you can find them online, where the entire image has color added to it, every single element. it it is like a hybrid painting photograph.
00:28:34
Speaker
um A little bit like the colorization we were talking about I mean, funny you should say that because, yes, ah apart from it happened at the time. and um And this was something actually that continued, you know, even after the daguerreotype um was sort of faded out because other protesters came in that were...
00:28:50
Speaker
faster and easier to use, there was still, obviously, images still lacked color, and they did so for a very long time. And so painting on or adding color, whether it was in the form of pigment and a brush, as with the daguerreotype, or with crayons, it continued for a long time afterward.
00:29:06
Speaker
You know, it never occurred to me before just now as you're talking, but some there's something so funny about this idea that, you know, as we today look at black and white images or or film, we think of that as being old fashioned or maybe artistic, right? Right.
00:29:27
Speaker
But there was a time when black and white images were actually the cutting edge of technology. that Everyone had been accustomed to color images in the form of hand illustrations and paintings and so on. and And then suddenly there were these black and white images, which were revolutionary. Yes, absolutely. And they had a real, they had this, you know, they're often talked about having this metallic clarity. And again, that goes back to what we were saying about how, you know, the camera can only be this accurate recorder of life because they brought back images that were absolutely clear and and sharp and they showed every single item in the scene. Nothing had been selectively removed, like they might be in a painting, um but they were in black and white.
00:30:11
Speaker
So I think there are a lot of interesting parallels actually between photography and decorative arts history. And it's one of the reasons i was I was excited to talk to you. I mean, this this idea of...
00:30:23
Speaker
mechanical reproduction. And you know Walter Benjamin's essay has come up on this show before, and I'm sure will come up again, but you know the the increasing reproducibility of objects, if you think about something as as basic as manufacture furniture,
00:30:42
Speaker
you This led to a striation of quality and of cultural prestige along the spectrum between handcraft and and machine manufacturer. And daguerreotypes were impossible to reproduce, but then eventually it became easier and and eventually trivial to reproduce photos.
00:31:01
Speaker
And I think here, especially of a camera that you describe in your book, the Kodak 1, which is released in 1888, and that famous slogan, you press the button, we do the rest.
00:31:15
Speaker
mean, what what did that do for society's relationship with images? and And please, you know, answer that in one sentence.
00:31:25
Speaker
Wow. Okay. is A few words possible. i do my best. Okay. That to me is a fascinating period, the 1880s, when it became much easier to ah to take photographs. I'm just going to backpedal ever so quickly, if I may. you know Daguerreotypes, they were ah revelatory and also short-lived because of improvements to processes. And so certainly by the 1880s, they'd already been um superseded by the collodion process. But that still had its own drawbacks, principally, that you had to prepare everything on the spot with your photograph, and you had to develop it there and then. So it had some real logistical complexities.
00:32:03
Speaker
But then a new type of plate was developed whereby they were effectively ready to go. you know The analogy, I guess you could say, is um You know what? It's not even an analogy. It's the idea of you just put film in your camera and go. That was exactly what it was. And that, of course, is what the Kodak No. 1 made possible. Not only that, the Kodak No. 1 was also the first camera whereby you could send your film out to be developed.
00:32:30
Speaker
We think about, i mean, if anyone is old enough to remember going to a one-hour Photoshop with your camera or your disposable camera and getting the film developed, this was...
00:32:41
Speaker
code Kodak was doing this in their late 1880s. And so now to answer your question, you see, I didn't give you a short answer at all. Well, this may be unfair of me to ask.
00:32:52
Speaker
To now answer your question, it had an enormous impact because all of a sudden photography was um more affordable. Mostly it was easier to do. And you could end a lot of the the cameras that were then were developed from this new plate technology were small, they were unobtrusive, you could take hidden and hidden photographs, candid photographs. It really changed the relationship between um not only the person taking the photo and their camera, because the cameras are so easy to use, but also the relationship between the person taking the photograph and their subject.
00:33:24
Speaker
People could now be hidden, which led to a whole host of problems. Okay, well, we we could go down that rabbit hole for multiple books, I'm sure.
00:33:37
Speaker
So that that one was a little philosophical. um So maybe if I could just get another fun story real quick. um i want I want you to tell me about these incredible detective cameras yeah from the era, you hidden in and books or or walking sticks or picnic baskets. Or the buttonhole is my favorite. you know this This was born out of this this dry plate technology whereby it was now easy to take pictures. And so therefore that that changed camera design. Cameras became easy to use. Some of them became smaller and lighter. And some of them were completely disguised. My favorite disguise for a camera is the picnic basket.
00:34:20
Speaker
um That was my favorite. And also, um as you said, law books. But the most incredible archive exists in in Sweden of a man ah who was a young student in Oslo in the early 1890s who had a buttonhole camera, which was this circular disc camera that you wore around your neck and the lens poked through your buttonhole. And by pulling a string, you could take these candid photographs of people walking down the street or people saying hello to you, and they would have had no idea their pictures were being taken.
00:34:48
Speaker
And it's so fascinating to me because by the end of that decade, there was um a column in a newspaper that was called Taken Unawares, and it was snapshots of celebrities taken without them without them being aware of it, which is feels 20th century. It feels so like the magazines we'd see in the 1980s and onwards, right?
00:35:06
Speaker
The birth of TMZ. christ owes a lot to the buttonhole camera well and then of course you but later you think of spy films and know soviet uh era espionage and absolutely you know using hidden cameras for actual espionage purposes absolutely um but these these early cameras were they actually used to spy on people or or was it really more about the the novelty of candid photography I mean, the type of cameras i've been referencing, the buttonhole or the picnic, certainly novelty, you know, they weren't especially well produced and didn't have the best lenses. But, you know, there is an example, which is in the book, of um of ah of a press photographer sneaking a hat camera into a magistrate's court in London and taking secret photographs of suffragists who were on trial. So there's certainly early examples of those kind of hidden photographs being used for press purposes because those images were ultimately published in the UK.
00:36:04
Speaker
I'm sure there must be another interesting book or a series of books about the emergence of legal theories around photography and especially unwilling participants. Absolutely. i mean, ah you know, it's a really fascinating area. And especially when you consider that I think from i think it was from 1870 or 1871, it was mandated to take photographs of prisoners in in in England and Wales in prisons. But you know what led to this problem with the suffragists was that they refused to have their photo taken, and they weren't the only ones. There's certainly um instances I read of people refusing to have their photograph taken by the police by screwing up their faces or by putting their hair over their faces or or just doing anything they could to avoid their faces being documented.
00:36:52
Speaker
Yeah, well, and yeah the the the lineage of the mugshot, I'm sure it could be explored very thoroughly as well. and I mean, with that question, I think you know one of the one of the um challenges with this book was the question of um how do you slice the history? you know one of the things I love about the history of photography is that it intersects or crosses over with every field if you're interested in interior design there'll be a history of photography and interior design if you're interested in engineering there'll be a history of photography and engineering and so for me one of the big questions was um how to how to frame it in a way that tells this unexpected these unexpected stories of photography um and you know it was it was difficult in some instances to not include certain stories but as you said there'd be multiple books on the subject Yes. Well, and as it is, your book is filled with these brilliant stories ah of people pushing the medium and often, to me, at least very unexpected directions.
00:37:50
Speaker
I mean, one of my favorites is this example you discuss of the the Scottish inventor, James Naismith, who wanted to photograph the moon.
00:38:01
Speaker
Makes sense. I mean, who wouldn't want to see a beautiful picture of the moon. And he did create beautiful images of something, but it it just wasn't quite the moon, right? No, exactly. And I you know talk about artistry. I mean he was an engineer, but his father had been an artist and he became fabulously wealthy from inventing the steam hammer.
00:38:23
Speaker
And so he retired and and sort of spent his days and and nights mostly um on astronomy. And he sketched the moon through the telescope. He did these wonderful drawings on on gray paper with chalk.
00:38:35
Speaker
But it wasn't sort of sufficient to him. He was also interested in photography. And I think, again, there's this idea that photography would be more accurate. But of course, when you're photographing the moon in that time, you have many problems. Most of all is that you have longer exposure times. The moon is very far away, and it's at nighttime.
00:38:52
Speaker
And he was really specifically fascinated with the surface of the moon. And so he turned his chalk drawings into plaster models, actual, I think there were 50 centimeters by 50 centimeters, like actual plaster models that he crafted by hand.
00:39:06
Speaker
And then he photographed them in bright sunlight to create these um shadows, the kind sort of create these shadows that you may see on the surface of the moon if you look closely through a telescope.
00:39:18
Speaker
And he put them together in a book all about the moon. But what I love about Nazmuth is that he wasn't, well, there's this inherent kind of contradiction. He wasn't trying to pull the wool over anybody's eyes. He was saying, these are this is how I created them. These are models. this is This is what I'm speculating the surface of the moon looks like. These are models. I've done them to the best of my ability. And he was praised, ah you know, the the book itself was praised for being incredibly faithful and truthful.
00:39:46
Speaker
So this wasn't like NASA faking the moon landing. Well, you know, I also love the idea that, you know, this the the sort of paranoid conspiracy theories about the moon and fakeries predates 1969. Yes.
00:40:01
Speaker
Well, and then on the even stranger side of things, you've already alluded to the rise of spirit photography. um And I'd love to hear a little bit more about some of the controversies around that.
00:40:14
Speaker
You know, this is so fascinating to me because um I think what's interesting to me about spirit photography is that if you take it for granted that spiritualism um was a belief, that people really did believe that you could speak with somebody once they had died, and if you had only a very limited knowledge of photography, you could see how somebody that was was gullible, maybe also grieving, could could come to a photographer and have a spirit photograph taken and really believe its authenticity.
00:40:43
Speaker
But on the other hand, the photographers that were doing this were doing it to make profit. And they were doing it either through double exposure, so they would partially expose portrait and then expose the actual sitter who was purporting to look for her or his lost relative.
00:40:59
Speaker
um or they would do it through a similar process to what Rachel Lander did with his two ways of life, where they'd be layering the negatives. But yeah the example of a photographer in France is is really goes to show the extent to which it was a real fraud perpetuated upon people to take their money. I mean, this photographer in France, Doiger, he was found to have in the back room of his studio something like 240 people
00:41:27
Speaker
printed out portraits of faces that he would clip on to a mannequin and partially expose before then going to take the portrait of his customer. So he would have a photo that was appropriate to whichever deceased he was trying to double expose in this negative, at least close enough to be convincing to the yeah to the customer.
00:41:48
Speaker
Yes, I mean, even more than that, he would get his receptionist to sort of ascertain from the customers they came in what the appearance was of the person they were hoping to see on the negative, and then they would approximate approximately try to match that. um And then, you know, this wasn't and only in France at all. It was in America. you know, Mumler was a big figure, William Mumler. He was also tried for fraud, but um but he did not get convicted the same way the French photographer did. It was in England as well at the same time. And it really, it continued on as well, not in France so much as it did in England and America, but this concept that it was possible to photograph a ghost didn't totally die with that court case in in New York.
00:42:28
Speaker
Now, going back to your daguerreotypes for a minute, what what would you like to know about it that is still a mystery for you as of now? think In many ways, I prefer to know the photographer than the people involved with it. um If I knew the photographer, I think I would obviously then have a location.
00:42:49
Speaker
um There's a lot of really amazing business records online where you could search up how long somebody was a photographer for and what their background was. That's that's what I would like to know the most. And I would, I mean, this is, I mean, if we're just going to be in the world of dreaming now, it would be wonderful to know who did the hand tinting because that wasn't always the photographer that did that. um And in this instance, I think it's been done very delicately and with some real artistry.
00:43:16
Speaker
Well, if listeners have ideas, let us know. Please, I would welcome that. And meanwhile, Anika, congratulations on the book. Again, the title is Flashes of Brilliance. It's out now.
00:43:29
Speaker
And I encourage listeners to ah to take a look at that. and And thank you so much for being with me today. Thank you so much for having me. I've enjoyed it so much.
00:43:39
Speaker
Today's episode was edited by Julian Minerva. Support from the Magazine Antiques editorial team includes senior editor Sarah Stafford-Turner, managing editor Christine Hildebrand, and editorial assistant Arbashi Lele.