⏀2.3 • What is Photography–Part 3
⏀2.3 • What is Photography–Part 3
A clarion claim to fame
In ⏀2.1 we looked at assailable assumptions.
In ⏀2.2 we examined hyper-extended unrealities.
In ⏀2.3 we set a reference point to begin the quest for a legal definition of photography.
Being a reference means being a source or origin of primary principles, of fundamentals. The word ‘fundamental’ will appear often from this point forward in this core suite.
The intended process
Law is constructed from language; language is its primary tool. Law is created, recorded, and interpreted as words, as are historical narratives. Our legal system and its lexicon are based on precedent. A logical approach to producing a legal definition of photography would be establishing the (correct) historical provenance of essential concepts and the common and legal lexicons that developed around the invention of photography.
My initial process would be to:
1) identify the invention,
2) when it was achieved,
3) by whom it was achieved,
4) the name it was given,
5) the thought process of how and why it was so named and
6) the fundamental concepts encapsulated in the name.
These details would define the invention.
The process begins
I dug into books, papers, journals, postgraduate theses, and institutional presentations. I spent time and money getting at and examining primary and other sources cited in those resources, which were, in many cases, likely never seen firsthand but merely re-quoted and re-cited as these theses are derivatives of derivatives of previous works. And I endured the agony of reading hundreds of quick-hit “history” posts online.
Despite my oft-stated distaste for “dogsled” retro over-extensions attempting to establish the beginnings of photography, there was and is an innate human desire to create representative imagery in tangible form. All methods are based on technical means, even as basic as digging a crude representation of something in the dirt with a stick or scratching into stone with another stone. And yes, there were those cave drawings.
However, to avoid creating a “dogsled” timeline, I needed to define a set of references that were directly, technically precursive to what would become photography. I will lead with the following 60-second survey to provide a sense of historical inertia leading to a reference point.
A brief survey
The study of optics began in antiquity with serendipitous observations in various and widely distanced places around the ancient world that a natural scene outside a darkened tent or room that had a small hole or slit was projected onto the opposite side of that darkened space with peculiar and particular visual characteristics. Those same observations were later applied to new observations, experiments, and theories about light passing through polished glass or crystals shaped in particular ways. Combined, these observations and optical experiments led to the invention of various optical devices, including two that are relevant to recording visual images.
Around the mid-16th century, alchemists attempted to convert base metals into precious and noticed that some of the chemicals they used were affected by the action of light. Those observations, being irrelevant to their dream, were discarded.
It took a considerable period, but eventually, someone (or more) familiar with both parallel histories had the idea that it might be possible to combine optics and chemistry in a way that would achieve “the dream.”
I assumed that once the academicians had sifted through the ancient, medieval, Rennaisance/Enlighenment-era manuscripts and treatises; identified pertinent names, places, observations, discoveries, hypotheses, experiments, and inventions; and then organized them into cohesive, linear narratives; they would have written a veritable smorgasbord of authoritative texts from which to glean the relevant background information needed for my purpose. As it turns out, that was just a dream.
There are many books written on the history of photography. M-A-N-Y. Some are alleged to be “authoritative” due to their depth, breadth, and the authors' academic pedigrees. But claims to be a “complete” history of such a broad general topic—even subtopics—can’t ever be true. For a secondary diversion proving the point, see here.
Setting the stage
Scarcely has the period of an average life passed away since the labours of the successful experimentalists began; yet, how few of the present generation of workers can lay their fingers on the dates of the birth, christening, and phases of the delightful vocation they pursue. Many know little or nothing of the long and weary travail the minds of the discoverers suffered before their ingenuity gave birth to the beautiful art-science by which they live.1
That passage was written in 1890, referring to the 1830s, before the professionalization of science, when gentlemen with backgrounds and interests across multiple disciplines had been working in several countries on various scientific inquiries into the behavior of light. While doing so, some made (re)discoveries about optics and light-sensitive chemicals that led to observations and experiments of a different nature, spurring new research and incremental developments toward a goal that eventually became widely and generally understood within the philosophical community.
The telephone had yet to be invented, and telegraphy was in its early days of introduction. The dissemination of knowledge in the scientific academy was accomplished through personal meetings, personal correspondence, and attendance at meetings of natural philosophy societies or through their journals.
The general public learned of such things through newspapers and periodicals, which often reported on the proceedings of these societies, usually as personal accounts and commentary. However, they might also publish synopses, abstracts, or even complete papers as presented.
Despite the difficulties of understanding the scientific details of the articles, the general public, primarily in England, France, and Germany but not exclusively so, had a hazy awareness of advances toward a “dream” that not so long before could only be imagined by fictionists.
These less-than-instant methods of communication about activities occurring simultaneously over wide distances meant declarations of who did what, when, where, first, were open to later analytic challenges—as some are to this day. But even with these impediments, scientific news was known to travel across Europe in a week or less and reach America in three.
Finding the reference point
Some historians have noted that 1839 was a year of “particularly interesting occurrences”—an “annus mirabilis”—and declared it the year of photography’s birth.
I would cautiously describe it as a year of concentrated significance—and stop there.
Barely had the New Year’s celebrations subsided when the first event relevant to my purpose occurred.
On Monday, January 7, Dominique François Jean Arago, a physicist, mathematician, astronomer (Director of the Paris Observatory), member of the Chamber of Deputies (lower house of the French parliament), and Secretary of l’Académie des Sciences in Paris, rose to address that assembly about a subject he said the public had “only erroneous notions about.”
An announcement
What follows is my synopsis and commentary based on sections of the proceeding article published in the Académie’s publication, Compte Rendu des Séances de l’Académie des Sciences, in the Applied Physics section.
It has been translated from the original French. Words in brackets are translation variations. Words italicized were italicized in the original text:
“Everyone knows2 the optical device called {a/the} chambre obscure or chambre noir”3… “everyone has observed the clarity, with what truth of shapes, color, and tone with which external objects are reproduced” at the focus of the lens, but that “after admiring these images, everyone is left to regret that they could not be made permanent.”
“There is {no longer/there is no need} for regret {or regret is now irrelevant}, an inventor, M. Xxxxxxxx [I’m temporarily obscuring it], a subject of the kingdom, “has {devised/discovered} {particular screens/specialized plates} on which the optical image leaves a perfect imprint; ... where everything contained in the image is reproduced down to the most minute details, with {incredible accuracy/unbelievable exactitude} and finesse. In {truth/fact}, {it would be no exaggeration/not be an exaggeration} to say that the inventor {discovered/has discovered} {the means/the way} to fix the images,4 if his method preserved the colors; but, it must be quickly said “in order not to disabuse part of the public, there is in the paintings, in the copies of [M. Xxxxxxxx], as in a black pencil drawing, as in an engraving, or, better still (the assimilation will be more exact), as in a mezzotint or aquatint, only white, black and gray, only light, darkness and half-{tones/tints}.”
On this inventor’s screens, “the drawing and the object correspond: the white is white, half-tints are half-tints, black is black,” which “distinguishes it from imperfect attempts previously made to draw silhouettes on a layer of chloride of silver.”
His {screens/plates} are coated with a substance more sensitive to light than any other known, that after being placed at the focal point inside the sealed device, “light itself reproduces the forms and proportions of external objects, with almost mathematical precision; the photometric {proportions/relationships} are retained exactly for this method produces drawings, and not {paintings/pictures}.”
Arago was clear that “the extreme sensitivity of the preparation” was not the only distinguishing quality. The inventor also found a way “of removing this property at his will” so that “when his drawings are finished, the plates could be “{exhibited in/exposed to/ full sun} {without being altered by it/receiving any alteration}.”
An instant analysis
Arago identified the inventor who had solved the problem of retaining the image created within the camera obscure and did so with simultaneously stunning and limited results. There is a descriptive explanation of what “it” is or does but provides no technical details of how it was achieved, with a very specific, albeit peculiar statements that it produces drawings and, specifically, not paintings.
This momentous declaration, hastily orchestrated, was made to the assembled academy by an authority in political and scientific circles, knowing the effect would spread far beyond the hall's walls.
The effect on the general public
As was usually the case after these scientific society sessions, the news was duly reported in the press to the general public. It had the effect of a massive lightning strike. The French press, pre-primed by a propitiously published “scoop” the day before—it and the announcement sharing some suspiciously exact words and syntax—spread the news like rolling thunder immediately across France, which spread across Europe within two weeks.
The announcement provided limited but intentionally titillating information for the general public. Only Arago and selected associates had viewed samples of the images before the announcement. However, that did not impede unrestrained embellished reports of Arago’s descriptions, often with significant errors.
A sampling of what was reported:
Let our readers fancy the fidelity of the image of nature figured by the camera obscura, and add to it an action of the solar rays which fix the image… [French newspaper]
…their fixed and durable impress, which may be removed from the presence of those objects like a picture or an engraving… [French arts journal]
…the precision with which external objects represent themselves…the clearest idea one could give M. Xxxxxxxx’s discovery would be to say that he has succeeded in fixing on paper this faithful drawing. [German newspaper]
…the invention of the camera obscura drawings… [German newspaper]
…all these drawings created by the action of light… [French newspaper]
…fixing the effects of light… [German newspaper]
…10-12 minutes to produce a drawing in which all the gradations of tone are perfectly distinct, like in a pen and ink drawing. [German newsapaper]
… An invention has recently been made public in Paris that seems more like some marvel of a fairy tale or delusion of necromancy than a practical reality. It amounts to nothing less than making light produce permanent pictures…[British periodical]
…Objects that paint themselves with inimitable fidelity; light, compelled by the art of chemistry to leave lasting traces… [personal correspondence to German aristocracy]
…The growing interest attached to this subject (of which we have evidence in almost every foreign journal taking cognizance of the Fine Arts that reaches us)…” [British journal]
…a view of whatever kind, projected on this plate by an ordinary camera obscura leaves its imprint there in light and shade, thus presenting the most perfect of drawings…[personal correspondence from France to England]
…The drawings obtained in this way are remarkable for the perfection of details…[Fine Arts report]
Comments seem ecstatic about this new development but universally speak of it in terms that seem semi-cryptic, figurative, or misused.
The effect within the academy
There was a pervasive air that the resolution of the fixation problem was imminent, yet the captive audience within the hall was reportedly “stunned” by the news of its achievement. My impression was that this was equal parts a news-conference style report—uncharacteristic of the normal philosophic society proceedings of formal presentation of papers— and a deliberate prouncement by an authority, one of their own, to those near and far, engaged in the same pursuit, that the “the dream” they were chasing had been achieved.5
Arago’s resumé and offices made him an unquestioned authority. He reports a resolution to the long-standing impediment to achieving “the dream” while identifying the inventor —with the weight of an authoritative proclamation.
Historian John Werge (1824-1911, a teenager at the time, described the event as “a crack of the whip,” meant as “a stimulant” for those who were engaged in the same pursuit to “show their hand.” Historian Helmut Gersheim, writing in 1955, suggested that “the race was over before it was known to have started.” Having read several works that discuss how this event came to be and its subsequent history and consequences, neither assessment makes sense to me.
Why would there be a rush to make this carefully crafted declaration, said to have stunned the audience of academy members, unless it was deliberately intended to thwart, undercut, or nullify the work of those, known and unknown, to be working on the fixation problem? Work was ongoing simultaneously in various places on the continent, mostly in quiet seclusion or secrecy, because the implications of success—beyond the “purity of scientific advancement”— were known and anticipated but not spoken of openly and publicly among gentlemen of science.6
This pronouncement struck me as having a palpable ex-cathedra overtone. The specific phrasing of “{the means/the way} to fix the images” inferring this method is ‘the one; the only one’ given the qualities of the images produced compared to earlier processes. There is a connotation of finality, a declaration of closure.
This was a quickly contrived, arresting first strike in a long-term plan between Arago and The Inventor. It is a story with its own extensive and fascinating history that is, unfortunately, mostly outside the scope and direction of this project, but portions relevant to that purpose will appear in future discussions.
The effect on this project
With a reference point now clearly established and a full understanding of how “the dream” was accomplished, we can move on to concerns closer to the present.
What’s that you say? You don’t fully understand? Really!
It’s all right there, magnificently concise and plain as day to all who heard it then and to us reading about it almost two hundred years later!
You disagree. You are perplexed. You have questions.
So did they.
The announcement was carefully crafted, allegedly to supplant the hazy hearsay, rumors, erroneous assumptions, and salon gossip rampant at the time, but did little more than raise many more questions.
As it was intended to do.
Process review
So…for my process purposes, was this announcement the jackpot!…or not?
Let’s review the status of my 6-point process checklist:
1) identify the invention: Not clear. We have issues with discriminating between discovery and invention that must be resolved.
2) when it was achieved: We are not given a date, but there is a strong inference it was very recent.
3) by whom it was achieved: A name was given, but I have held it back for now.
Notably, and very oddly, regarding my last three points:
4) the name it was given,
No naming term is given, leaving
5) the thought process of how and why it was so named and
6) the fundamental concepts encapsulated in the name,
—the very fundamentals at the core of our definitional purpose—not addressed and so unresolved at this juncture.
The announcement said some specific things in peculiar ways that seem alien to us. In our time, we think we know—that “everybody knows”— what he is talking about. We expect to see certain words used, but they never appear. Instead, we are perplexed to see ‘discover/discovery’ and ‘invention/’invented’ being used interchangeably in both the announcement and coverage throughout Europe. The equating with drawing, painting, and even engraving, creates a perplexing disconnect from what “everybody knows” is being described.
The perplexity and intrigue get deeper after the announcement. In the next post, my process quest continues as I zero in on events leading to formally establishing the core fundamentals and their nomenclature.
From the Introduction of The Evolution of Photography, John Werge, 1890
He is addressing an audience already generally knowledgeable about the topics he will address, and so casually begins by saying, “Everyone knows…” Some members of the European academy, including Arago, had been reporting on their optical research, some on light-sensitive materials and others on both, for a few decades. Arago was among those whose research and presentations were published in various academic society proceedings, transactions, and other journals.
“Chambre obscure” and “chambre noir” translate to “dark chamber” and “dark room,” respectively. Discussions that follow from this point forward are based on understanding the meaning of these and other closely related terms and their translations at that time. It’s a fundamental subject, so I strongly recommend diverting to my primer on the device, concepts, and nomenclature before continuing to read further into this post. Find it here.
“En verite, il n’y aurait pas d’exagération à dire que l’inventeur a découvert les moyens de fixer les images,…”
This was the first public step of a contrived political/public relations and marketing plan. It also seemed meant to impart a “cutting heads” and figurative decapitation-like pall over potential rivals (a predictive harbinger of Crossroads and Kill Bill?) but constrained in the gentlemanly manner commensurate with these earliest days of the Victorian era and its institutional protocols, practices…and politics.
After the announcement, some had plenty to say and much to debate. Were there O-Ren Ishii-like consequences? We’ll get to all that in due course.
From a letter by Jean-Batiste Biot (a colleague of Arago and one of the few people authorized to see the “screens” before the announcement) to Henry Fox-Talbot of England, 10 Nov 1839: “Gentlemen scholars sometimes gossip like old women, only their chatter runs through Europe instead of being confined to a household.”