FRENCH AND ENGLISH CALOTYPIST OF THE 1850’S:
HILL AND ADAMSON
HENRI LE SECQ
CHARLES NEGRE
EDOUARD BALDUS
THOMAS KEITH
BENJAMIN BRACKNEL TURNER
ROGER FENTON
GUSTAVE LE GRAY
David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Sergeant of the Forty-second Gordon Highlanders reading the Orders of the Day, 1846, salt print from a calotype negative.
David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, John Henning and Female Audience, ca. 1844, salt print from calotype negative.
David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Robert the Monk, 1843, salt print.
David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Life Study, Dr. George Bell, ca. 1845,
salt print from a calotype negative.
Hill and Adamson made the calotype’s suppression of detail an asset. There is a feeling of
intimacy and subtle beauty in their tight expressionistic compositions, along with an
overwhelming sense of atmosphere as light itself becomes a subject.
Hill and Adamson realized that the person in front of the lens was not always the only subject of
the picture. They knew that good photographs were the result of conscientious photographers,
of what modern photographers call previsualization, the awareness that one cannot just point
the camera at a subject and expect a miraculous representation to come forth.
A good calotype was the result of controlling the process, being acutely aware of the light,
constructing a vision, and knowing how it would look photographed. Hill and Adamson
understood the subjective nature and the limitations of the calotype.
While their images are dependent on established styles, their thoughtful, shadowy pictures are
alive and speak directly of the inner, as opposed to the outer, characteristics of their subjects.
- Hirsch, p. 56
Hill and Adamson, James Linton, ca. 1843. Salt print.
The fisherman James Linton leans against a boat in a casual position. Unable to show him at
sea, David Hill and Robert Adamson skillfully surrounded Linton with the attributes of his job, in
much the same way they employed books in their portraits of ministers.
Hill and Adamson made a series of acclaimed portraits featuring the men, women, and children
of the small fishing village of Newhaven, one mile north of Edinburgh.
Arguably the first examples of social documentary photographs ever made, these approximately
130 images dealt with everyday life. The natural appearance of the people suggests that Hill and
Adamson earned the trust and cooperation of the fisherfolk.
- The Getty Museum.
Hill and Adamson, D.O. Hill, 1843. Salt print.
In the numerous portraits made by David Hill and Robert Adamson, Hill himself was by far the
most popular subject. He appeared in more than forty calotypes, often as part of a group
arrangement.
Photography provided him with the opportunity to quickly explore new positioning and lighting;
placing himself in front of the camera made these experiments even easier. In this image he
stands against the doorway of Rock House, perfectly at ease and well-composed.
"I know not the process though it is done under my nose continually and I believe I never will,"
wrote painter David Octavius Hill of the photographic medium. Hill clearly saw his role in the
partnership as providing artistic direction.
Robert Adamson, concerned more with photography's chemical and technical aspects, occupied
a behind-the-scenes role and, as a result, appeared in very few photographs.
-The Getty Museum.
Hill and Adamson, John Francis Campbell, 1843. Salt print.
Hill and Adamson, Portrait of Mary & Margaret McCandlish, 1845. Salt print.
PAUL DELAROCHE’S STUDIO
Paul Delaroche, Napoleon Crossing the Alps, 1850. Oil on canvas.
Anonymous, The Studio of Paul Delaroche, ca. 1840, lithograph.
Henri Le Secq, Tower of Kings at Rheims, 1851. Salt print.
Le Secq became an expert on his native Paris and the self-appointed guardian of its historic
architectural treasures as the city faced urbanization. Unsurprisingly, his photographs of the
city's architecture are the work for which he is best known.
Throughout his career Le Secq only made paper negatives. He gave up photography after 1856,
when paper negatives went out of fashion.
- The Getty Museum
Henri Le Secq, Large Figures on the North Porch, Chartres Cathedral, 1852. Salt print.
Henri Le Secq, Chartres Cathedral, 1852, salt print.
Henri Le Secq, Public Bathhouse or Swimming School, Paris, ca. 1852-53,
salt print from a calotype negative..
Henri Le Secq, Chartres, Escalier dit de la Reine Berthe, 1852. Modern print from paper negative.
Henri Le Secq, Garden Scene, 1852, salt print.
Henri Le Secq, Still Life, ca. 1850, modern print from a paper negative.
Charles Negre, Girl with Basket and Baby, ca. 1850, salt print.
Charles Negre, The Three Sweeps, 1851, salt print.
Image makers no longer had to concentrate only on subjects endowed with upper-class
substance and began to represent the ordinary scenes in life.
Negre fabricated a “fast” lens, with increased lens speed, that cold stop most action, giving them
the spontaneous quality of a snapshot.
- Hirsch, p. 63.
I have sacrificed a few details, when necessary, in favor of an imposing effect of a kind that
would give a monument its real character and would also preserve the poetic charm that
surrounded it.
- Charles Negre
Edouard Baldus, Mill, Auvergne, 1854, salt print.
Baldus recognized the imprtance of choosing a vantage point that illuminated the three-
dimensional nature of the subject. In addition to the traditional frontal views of his
contemporaries, he often favored oblique points of view. - Hirsch, p. 66.
Édouard Baldus, Entrance to the Port of Boulogne, 1855.
Salted paper print from paper negative.
Roger Fenton, Recling Odalisque, 1858, salt print.
Roger Fenton, Balaklava Harbor, 1855. Salt print.
Robert Hunt, Suzanna, ca. 1845, salt print from a calotype negative.
Rev. Calvert Jones, Florence, “The Rape of the Sabines”, 1845-46,
salt print from a calotype negative.
Baron Louis-Adolphe Humbert de Molard, Portrait of the Photographer’s Wife, Henriette-Renee Patu, ca. 1847, salt print from a waxed paper negative.
GUSTAVE LE GRAY
&
THE WAXED PAPER NEGATIVE
Edouard Baldus, Windmill at Auvergne, ca. 1864, waxed paper negative.
GUSTAVE LE GRAY’S WAXED PAPER NEGATIVE PROCESS
A good, smooth paper is put on a heated metal plate.
Beeswax is rubbed into it.
It is ironed between blotting paper to distribute the wax evenly and to remove
excess wax.
This renders the paper translucent and fills the paper’s pores to make a
continuous surface for the coating.
The paper is soaked in an iodizing solution ( including rice water and sugar)
which forms a kind of emulsion, and is dried.
The paper is then sensitized by floating in a silver nitrate solution and dried.
The sensitized paper is exposed to form a latent image.
The exposed paper with the latent image is developed, fixed, washed, and
dried.
Thomas Keith, Landscape with Trees, ca. 1855, waxed paper negative.
Benjamin Bracknell Turner, The Willow Walk, Bredicot, ca. 1856, waxed paper negative.
Benjamin Bracknell Turner, Landscape: Trees, Bridge, and Fence,
ca. 1850-55, waxed paper negative.
Louis-Rémy Robert, Jacques-Joseph Ebelman on His Deathbed, 1852. Waxed-paper negative.
Louis-Rémy Robert, Jacques-Joseph Ebelman on His Deathbed, 1852. Waxed-paper negative.
Louis-Rémy Robert, Jacques-Joseph Ebelman on His Deathbed, 1852. Waxed-paper negative.
Gustave Le Gray, Brig on the Water, 1856, combination abumen print.
The contre-jour [backlighted] effect and the passing gleam of light on the water produced by a
momentary opening in the clouds aroused the wonder and envy of all photographers who saw
this picture at the many exhibitions in which it was subsequently shown. The "moonlight"
effect…was due to the necessary exposure.
- Anonymous reviewer, 1856.
The contre-jour [backlighted] effect and the passing gleam of light on the water produced by a
momentary opening in the clouds aroused the wonder and envy of all photographers who saw
this picture at the many exhibitions in which it was subsequently shown.
The "moonlight" effect…was due to the necessary exposure.
As it happened, the luminosity of the cloud-laden sky was equal to that of the water, making it
possible for Le Gray to render each area exquisitely in a single negative.
Here the sun breaks through the clouds at the upper right and reflects on the sea's shimmering
surface directly below.
The brig appears to sail just into or out of the watery clearing.
- The Getty Museum
Gustave Le Gray, Lighthouse and Jetty, Le Havre, 1856 - 1857. Albumen print.
THE COMBINATION PRINT
Gustave LeGray, The Great Wave, Sete, ca. 1856-59.
Combination albumen print from two wet collodion glass plate negatives.
…the wet plate’s insensitivity to all parts of the spectrum except blue and ultraviolet radiation,
gave colors an inaccurate translation into black-and-white tones. Red or green subjects were not
properly recorded and appeared in prints as black.
Exposures, calculated to record detail in the land, overexposed the sky. The amount of
overexposure was not even and produced areas of low density in the negative.
When the negative was printed these sections appeared gray and mottled, an effect not suitable
for picturesque landscapes.
The artistic solution was to make a combination print that was complicated, time-consuming, and
expensive.
It involved making two separate negatives, one for the ground and a second for the sky. After
processing they were masked, with the land’s features printed in from the first negative and the
sky’s from the second.
Gustave Le Gray’s seascapes were considered spectacular for not only stopping the action of
the waves but for their dramatic cloud formations, achieved from separately made cloud
negatives.
-Hirsch, pp. 117 - 119.
Gustave Le Gray, Beech Tree, Forest of Fontainebleau, ca. 1856,
albumen print from a collodion wet-plate negative.
Le Gray himself maintains an allegiance to photography on paper. Even though he would
alternate between paper and glass negatives throughout his photographic career, he tells
students and friends that he always tries to give his pictures from glass the pictorial harmonies
he achieves on paper.
Through his intimate knowledge of the physical structure of the paper and the way it holds the
picture, Le Gray appreciates the particularly beautiful appearance of the image lodged in the
paper's fibers.
This quality of absorption--as opposed to the way metal and glass keep the image crisp and
mirror-bright on the surface--subtly softens the descriptive detail captured by the lens.
Le Gray's chemically treated waxed paper considerably modifies photography's initial reputation
for relentless, if enthralling, surface detail, a reputation originating with the astonishing
verisimilitude of the daguerreotype and maintained by photography on glass.
The degree of modification in a paper negative is subtle and poetically eloquent in
withholding certain aspects of the facts before the lens.
This descriptive discontinuity is consistent with many painters' ideas of artistic discretion and
design and appeals to the latent romantic tastes of many professed Realists. Le Gray is
unquestionably one of these romantic Realists.
At Fontainebleau he attempts to orchestrate the light and shadow that intermingle
among the trees. He uses a camera for this because he finds it compatible with the range of
descriptive and dramatic luminosity he seeks to exploit.
His recipes for waxed-paper negatives require exposures in the woods that might last as long as
twenty minutes.
If this is a real drawback from the view of scientific progress, it is a technical exigency which
leads to the kinds of variables that an experimentalist such as Le Cray particularly enjoys.
Exposures with so much time built into them result in pictures that hold no single moment or
gesture; rather, they quite literally represent a subject as seen in the course of many.
- The Photography of Gustave Le Gray, Eugenia Parry Janis
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Madame Louis-Francois Godinot, 1829, pencil drawing.
Gustave Le Gray, Tree, Forest of Fontainebleau, ca. 1856,
albumen print from a collodion wet-plate negative.
Gustave Le Gray, Tree Study, Forest of Fontainebleau, ca. 1856,
albumen print from a collodion wet-plate negative.
Gustave Le Gray, The Pont du Carrousel, Paris: View to the East from the Pont Royal,
1856-57, albumen print from a collodion wet-plate negative.
THE COLLODION WET- PLATE PROCESS
THE COLLODION WET- PLATE PROCESS
Invented by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851.
Collodion is a viscous solution of nitrocellulose cotton fiber dissolved in a solution of alcohol and
ether which dries to a tough waterproof film emulsion.
Collodion with potassium iodide is coated on a tilted glass plate, then sensitized in a bath of
silver nitrate.
The plate is exposed while still moist, its sensitivity being lost in drying.
It is developed immediately in pyrogallic acid, sometimes intensified with gold chloride, and
fixed.
Wet Collodion Process: Coating the Plate.
Anonymous, Traveling Photographer’s Collodion Wet-Plate Darkroom Tent, ca. 1865, engraving.
SEGUIER EQUIPMENT
Wet Collodion Equipment, 1875.
camera
tripod
lenses
sensitizers
coatings
developers
fixers
glass plates
dishes
scales and weights
glass beakers and funnels
pail for fetching water
portable dark tent
porter
wheelbarrow or hand cart
carriage
mules
horse drawn van
total weight more than 120 lbs.
Seguier’s Photographic Equipment.
Collodion Wet-Plate Equipment Tent, n.d.
William Henry Jackson using his 20x24” camera.
THE COLLODION WET- PLATE PROCESS
Advantages:
Great increase in sensitivity, yielding landscape exposures of between 10 seconds and 1 minute and portrait exposures of between 2 and 20 seconds.
Transparent, fine grain, and clear densities produced unequalled tonal richness and clarity of detail.
Became the worldwide standard from mid 1850's to mid 1880's.
Disadvantages:
The glass plates were heavy and breakable.
The coating technique was difficult to master.
The coating had to b performed on site in the dark.
The chemicals were very toxic.
The materials were highly combustible.
TRANSPARENCY
The issue of ‘imperfection’ is a pivotal one and needs to be understood as Archer put it - in
terms of transparency and the flawless, glasslike surface of a collodion negative. His point is that
paper negatives fail in certain respects when judged against the pictorial characteristics of well-
resolved daguerreotypes.
TRANSPARENCY
Archer spoke for many photographers who were frustrated by the difficulty of obtaining prints
from paper negatives with smooth and uniform tonal structures, rich, dense yet open shadows,
and highly articulated details. Thus, the motivation for the invention concerned, among other
matters, the values of resolution, chiaroscuro, and transparency.
TRANSPARENCY
But it is not unreasonable to take the notion of ‘transparency’ to its limit. What seemed at first a
technical problem - reducing the graininess and muddiness of calotype prints - would end as an
aesthetic ideal: providing the viewer with an ‘unmediated’ view of the subject of a
photograph.
- Joel Snyder, On The Art Of Fixing A Shadow.
THE ALBUMEN PRINT
Carleton Watkins, Cape Horn, Columbia River, Oregon, 1867, albumen print.
THE ALBUMEN PRINT
Invented in 1850 by Louis Désiré Blanquart-Evrard, the albumen print became the dominant
photographic printing process for nearly fifty years.
THE ALBUMEN PRINT
First, a thin piece of paper is coated with an emulsion containing both egg white (albumen) and
salt (usually sodium chloride). A subsequent immersion in a bath of silver nitrate renders the
paper light-sensitive.
THE ALBUMEN PRINT
The paper is next dried in the dark, then placed in a frame under a glass negative and exposed
in direct sunlight until the image achieves the proper level of darkness (from a few minutes to an
hour, depending on light conditions.)
THE ALBUMEN PRINT
The print was then washed, placed in a bath of gold toner toner to improve the photograph’s
tone and help protect it from fading.
A bath of sodium thiosulfate then fixed the print’s exposure and prevented further darkening.
Finally, the print was washed and dried.
The effect of gold choride toning on an albumen print.
A portable rack for holding albumen printing frames in sunlight.
Charles Marville, The Chruch of the Pantheon Under Repair, 1870, albumen print.
Francis Frith, Pyramids at Giza, 1858, albumen print.
Francis Frith, Fallen Colossus, ca. 1858, albumen print from a wet collodion negative.
In 1856 Frith made an extended trip to Egypt, traveling up the Nile from Cairo to Abu Simbel.
He photographed along the entire way, using three different cameras: a stereoscopic one and
large format cameras using negatives of 8 by 10 and 16 by 20 inches.
Negretti & Zambra, one of the major photographic publishers in Great Britain, published a
hundred of Frith’s stereo views the following year
The success of these images financed Frith's next trip to Palestine, Syria, and Egypt in late 1857.
He published these between 1858 and 1860. In the summer of 1859, Frith returned to Egypt,
traveling up the Nile to the Fifth Cataract—farther than any earlier photographer had gone.
He returned to Britain and opened his own firm near London, to publish his images, as well as
the work of other photographers.
Francis Frith, The Sphynx and the Great Pyramid, Geezeh, 1863. Albumen print.
Francis Frith, Interior of the Hall of Columns Karnac, 1863. Albumen print.
Charles Marville, Parc Morceau, Paris, ca. 1858,
albumen print from a wet collodion glass plate negative.
Desire Charnay, Chichen Itza, Mexico, ca. 1860, albumen print.
Bisson Freres, Notre Dame Portal, n.d., albumen print.
Collard, Roundhouse on the Bourbonnais Railway, Nevers, 1862-67, albumen print.
J. Andrieu, The Bridge at Argenteuil, 1870-71, albumen print.
Samuel Bourne, Mt. Moira, Gangootri Glacier, 1866, albumen print.
Samuel Bourne, Ceylon Railroad Incline, ca. 1860, albumen print.
Samuel Bourne, Edible Pine, Himalayas, ca. 1860, albumen print.
Adolphe Braun, Still Life, ca. 1860, albumen print.
Charles Aubrey, Study of a Leaf, ca. 1864, albumen print.
Camille Silvy, Street Musicians in Dorchester Terrace, London, ca. 1860, albumen print.
Anonymous, Asylum Patient Suffering from Melancholia, 1876, albumen print.
Anonymous, Niagra Falls with Group and Tower, ca. 1860, albumen print.
Philip Henry Delamotte, Evening, 1856-57,
albumen print from a wet collodion negative.
Adolph Braun, Portrait of Countess Castiglione, n.d., albumen print.
NADAR
Nadar (Gaspard Felix Tournachon) , Sarah Bernhardt, 1856, albumen print.
Nadar, Sarah Bernhardt, 1864/1924. Gelatin silver print by Paul Nadar.
Nadar, Victor Hugo on His Deathbed, 1885/1925. Woodburytype.
When the poet, playwright, and novelist Victor Hugo died in 1885, Nadar went to his deathbed to
make a final image as a memorial of the great man. Nadar's sketch of the death chamber
showed that black drapery was tied across a window behind the bed and then to one of the
bedposts in order to visually isolate Hugo's recumbent figure against a somber background. For
the photograph, a mirror reflected light back from the window to provide detail in the shadow
area.
- The Getty Museum
Nadar, Mére Marie Jamet, 1861. Albumen print.
Nadar, Gustave Dore, 1855-59. Albumen print.
Doré appears here in the flush of newly earned celebrity, a jaunty young man in checked
trousers and a scarf. His sweep of hair cascades across his head as if blown by the wind; his
overcoat gapes open to reveal a leg poised to carry him forward, as though he has places to go
and can only sit still for a moment. Although the chair in which he sits is clearly visible, he
appears to hover unanchored above it. Nadar has captured the spontaneity and energy of a
young artist on the rise.
- The Getty Museum
Nadar, Jean-François Millet, 1856-58. Salt print.
Nadar, Gustave Mathieu, 1855-59. Salt print.
Nadar’s approach was direct and simple, making use of plain dark backgrounds and, when
possible, full natural light. Later, through the aid of reflectors, screens, veils, and mirrors, he
made considerable use of side lighting to model the features of the face.
Nadar favored three-quarter views, using poses that often hid the sitter’s hands in order to
emphasize the facial expression and the body. Nadar was able to organize his subject around
recognizable gestures and looks that revealed the character’s essence while breaking down the
sense of distance between the subject and the photographer.
The subjects in many of Nadar’s portraits seem to have participating in the act of photography
rather than just undergoing it. Spontaneity was in play, often revealing a part of the sitter’s inner
psychological being.
He knew how to suppress detail and sharpness, moving sitters through different levels of focus
to bring out their essence. In his work, the sitter’s clothes were an important element of
personality, used to build an atmosphere of class, ethnic, and social character previously
unachieved in photography.
“Photography is a marvelous discovery, a science that has attracts the greatest intellects, an art
that excites the most astute minds - and one that can be practiced by any imbecile.
… Photographic theory can be taught in an hour, the basic technique in a day.
“But what cannot be taught is the feeling for light… It is how light lies on the face that you as
artist must capture. Nor can one be taught how to grasp the personality of the sitter.
“To produce an intimate likeness rather than a banal portrait, the result of mere chance, you
must put yourself at once in communion with the sitter, size up his thoughts and his very
character.”
- Nadar, 1856, in Hirsch, pp.85-86.
Nadar, Dore, 1854-55. Albumen print.
Nadar, Pierrot the Photographer, 1854-55. Albumen print.
Nadar, Baudelaire, 1856-58. Albumen print.
Nadar, The Photographer’s Wife, 1890. Gsp.
Nadar, View in the Catacombs, 1861. Albumen print.
"One of those places that everyone wants to see and no one wants to see again" is how Nadar
described the catacombs. The Paris catacombs were former underground quarries that were
refitted to house skeletons. Nadar ventured into them to create an unprecedented series of
photographs illuminated by flashlight. He used a magnesium lamp, visible in the lower right
corner of the image.
- The Getty Museum
Nadar, The Catacombs, 1861-62. Albumen print.
Nadar, Paris Sewers, albumen print.
THE AMBROTYPE
Anonymous, Franklin Fire Hose Company, Utica, New York, 1858, hand-colored ambrotype.
THE AMBROTYPE
Ambrotypes were direct positives, made by under-exposing collodion on glass, bleaching it to
reverse the tones, and then placing a black background - usually black velvet - behind it.
The image appears like a positive because the silver reflects some light while the areas with no
silver at all will appear black.
Ambrotype with half the backing removed to show positive and negative effects..
The Ambrotype became popular because:
Less exposure time was needed than with the Daguerreotype.
Production was cheaper and quicker, as no printing was required.
Because the negative could be mounted the other way, by placing the collodion side on top of the backing material, there was no lateral reversal, as there was in most Daguerreotypes.
Unlike Daguerreotypes, they could be viewed from any angle.
THE TINTYPE
Anonymous, Billy the Kid, ca. 1880, tintype.
THE TINTYPE
The tintype, also known as a ferrotype, is a variation on the ambrotype.
It is produced on a blackened metallic sheet (not, actually, tin) instead of glass. The
plate is coated with collodion and sensitized just before use, as in the wet plate
process. It is a direct reversal process.
It was introduced by Adolphe Alexandre Martin in 1853, and became instantly
popular, particularly in the United States.