The role of portraits in the early days of photography and portraits today

1. What are main differences and similarities between portraits in the early days of photography and portraits today?

Photography was introduced in 1839 as the newest was to have a portrait. It was hard to afford for the poor people and middle class, only people from the high class were able to enjoy this new invention. In the first half of the 19^th century a lot of new techniques were introduced which possessed both technical and artistic merits and some disadvantages.

Among some of them was the daguerreotype which was introduced to the public in 1839 by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre and also the first publicly available photography process. The daguerreotype image was created on a silvered metal plate exposed to iodine fumes, forming a light-sensitive surface of silver iodide. Even thought the image produced was significantly sharp, each daguerreotype was unique. At the end this proved to be a major factor for its downfall. Another important process was the calotype invented by Sir John Herschel in 1841. This photographic process is one of the oldest and longest surviving processes because it was relatively simple to prepare and to manipulate. It uses a mixture of ferric ammonium citrate and potassium ferricyanide to produce a light sensitive paper. It required no development or fixing other than washing. As we can see, both of these processes used large quantities of chemical and salts and needed a lot of hours for developing a photo.

Daguerreotype

Calotype

2. Who was the photographer and who was the subject of photographs in the past and today?

In the early years of photography, it was hard to afford a camera because they were very expensive. At the beginning, photographers were artists, painters or anyone who could afford a camera to dedicate their time to taking pictures. In order to take pictures, photographers needed to have a extensive knowledge of chemistry. Among the first photographers were Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, Sir John Herschel and Fox Talbot. The most popular topics were nature and portraits.

Nowadays, cameras are much more affordable and anyone can have one. This makes anyone able to be a photographer. Also, some people want to be professional photographers and go to school to learn new techniques in order to succeed. Another important feature of digital cameras now a day is that we do not need to develop our pictures. They can be easy stored in our computer and then publish them wherever we want. Now, topics can vary according to anyone’s taste. Below there is a picture taken by me when I was in Venice, Italy.

3. What was the impact on technology on the portraits in the past and today?

Before the introduction of photography, it was really hard to have a portrait of someone. The only way you could have a photograph of yourself was by paying a painter to paint a portrait of you. Because of this, the introduction of photography cameras had a huge impact in society.

With the introduction of processes like the daguerreotype and calotype people could have precise reproduction of themselves either on a copper plague or in paper. This replicas were in black in white until in late in the second half of the 19^th Century when natural color photography was invented. But it was just after the 1960’s when people could take their own photos and develop the roll of film.

Nowadays, technology has improved considerably. With the digital cameras we can take as many pictures as we want in order to save memories of any special occasion we want to remember in the future. Developing pictures is much easier and there are a lot of different was to do it and we can choose the kind of paper we want to develop our pictures. Also, features as cropping pictures and photoshop allow us to edit and manipulate our photos in order to get a desirable final picture.

Reference:

British Library. Online Gallery Historic Photographs. Retrieved from http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/features/photographicproject/photographicprocesses.html

Daniel, Malcolm. "Daguerre (1787–1851) and the Invention of Photography". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. Retrieved from http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/dagu/hd_dagu.htm (October 2004)