Postings from "The Story so Far" about the topic are added here - the most recent appears last.
Image: Photographers
The Story Of ... Tourist Photography
Way back in the days pre-printing and pre-photography, people who made journeys to some place to work, be a pilgrim of some sort or to perform some necessary duty might have returned home with a stone, a flower or some kind of curiosity as a keepsake of where they had been. In a way it might have served the purpose of keeping them connected to somewhere distant by giving them a vicarious sense of owning a part of it. Better off people would later buy a work of art or better, have one made, often showing themselves in a portrait painted with a background representing where they had been.
We take photographs. For well over a century travellers have been snapping and picturing distant locations and often having some friend or passer-by take a photo with themselves standing in front of the chosen view. These days the mobile phone has become a ubiquitous means of making a self-portrait with some landmark behind - the Eiffel Tower, Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Iguasu Falls - by holding the mobile at arms length, lens pointed back towards themselves, unless some fellow traveller passing by offers to do it for them. "Can I take it for you?" bids fair to become one of the world's most popular English phrases as the speaker of one language meets the speaker of a different language and both resort to the common communicator - English.
Photography has shaped not only tourism but our understanding and viewing of the world. Still photos, movie film, live TV and video recording help set out our memories and communicate our messages in the language of technovision - since chemical and electronic systems impose a certain vocabulary on the records we make of our travels. Here's a chance to explore how photography has shaped our world view, especially as tourists exploring far-off places. Technology, mass production and cultural fashions have all played their part. Later postings will examine the development of travel photography and those same influences.
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Image: Portrait and painting
Before Photography: Portraits and Paintings
Before photography was invented in the 1840s, and became more widely affordable in the in the early twentieth century, the only way of bringing home pictures of places and people was through painting and sketching. Those well-off young men (and occasionally women) who were sent out on the Grand Tour of Europe, for example, paid artists in the countries they visited to make portraits of them, often with local scenes as backgrounds to emphasise their knowledge of history and culture. Not all of them, of course, bothered to gain much of that knowledge, but the effect of displaying these portraits back home was what mattered. Artists like Pompeo Batoni, Teresa Mengs and Anton von Maron were busy developing a tourist trade.
The examples above show a Victorian gent having his portrait made, clearly with the stress on his feelings of self-importance. The illustration on the right represents the sort of watercolour that could be commissioned or bought off the shelf in places like Paris, Rome, Venice and the other cities of popular travel. It shows part of the Villa Adriani in Tivoli, Italy.
Buying a painting was one thing, but it was more expensive and the traveller only took home a very few. It would have been artistically impressive if you could produce your own works of art by the notebookfull. That could be done, as the next posting will show.
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Image: Whittock's drawing book
Aids To Drawing - The Instruction Book
You may think it odd to include a posting about books for instruction in drawing techniques in a strand on tourist photography. The reason is that it leads to an all-important break-through.
The "Youth's New London Self-Instructing Drawing Book containing a series of progressive lessons" shown here was written by an N Whittock and published in 1836 by G Virtue of Paternoster Row, London. Some pages showed simple preliminary sketches to help the amateur artist to draw figures, animals, objacts and views. Others had engravings (there were no photographic reproductions possible in printing then as the basic processes would not be invented for three years and more) which could be copied. Explanatory text described what to do.
For the artist working on landscapes, views of buildings and the like as a traveller, the problem would remain. Despite books like this, the sketch artist still had to work from life. He, or she, had to sit with paper and pencil, look at the chosen view and create an image on a sheet of paper which would represent it. Could something be done to help that?
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Image: The Camera Obscura
Aids To Drawing: The Camera Obscura
Travellers anxious to draw accurate sketches of the places they saw might take with them a 'camera obscura'. The phrase means 'dark chamber' or 'room' and of course the word for chamber would later be used for the photographic device we know. The ancient Chinese and Greeks both knew of the principles: if a dark room can be constructed with a tiny hole in an outside wall, then in daylight an inverted image of the outside view will be projected through the hole onto the wall opposite. The interior wall is best painted white. If the wall were to be replaced by a translucent screen then the image can be viewed from its other side. So the early experimenters found they could make a wooden box with a pinhole at one end and a screen at the other, and see from the outside an inverted image on the screen. If a mirror could be angled inside then the image could be shown right way up through a translucent screen placed in the top of the box. An artist could place thin paper over it and trace the image, using the result as the basis for a better-drawn sketch or painting. The next step, to a device which could record and preserve the image accurately by photo-chemical means was only a short distance away.
The illustrations a camera obscura in the form of a hut in the grounds of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; diagrams of devices for producing camera obscura images; the principles of an artist's camera obscura; and a modern artist's version made by a company in the United States. First three images are from the Wikipedia article on the camera obscura.
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Image: Eastman and the original Kodak camera
The Kodak Camera
The camera obscura beloved of artists an an aid to drawing landscapes and figures (see posting 09.11.08) gave the chance to make the great step to photography. By replacing the ground glass screen at the front of the box by a light-sensitive medium, Louis Daguerre in France and William Henry Fox-Talbot in England - both in 1839 - succeeded in making permanent images. From these beginnings the modern camera began. The devices which followed used glass, paper or metal plates to support the photosensitive media in use. these required complex development, either as permanent and positive images on the plate or as negtive images on glass plates which then had to be printed onto paper in a second photographic operation. The camera user either had to carry the precious plates back to a darkroom where the chemical processes could be employed or they had to take a mobile darkroom in the shape of a special horse-drawn carriage into the field. A high level of skill, time and money as well as a range of chemicals were needed.
It was the American, George Eastman, who made the taking and developing of photographs much simpler in 1888. As a result home photographers and tourists could both have access to what were, for those days, good quality picture-making. Eastman's stroke of genious was to devise a simple box camera loaded with a paper roll-based film able to take 100 circular photographs. Anyone could buy the camera ready loaded with the film. After taking the hundred pictures virtually the whole camera was returned to Eastman's factory. The film was immediately replaced by a new roll and the wooden camera sent back to its owner. A few days later the printed photos followed. "You press the button and we do the rest" said Eastman's publicity. He had also created what became one of the greatest brands of modern times by called the camera a 'Kodak'. The word meant nothing - it sounded crisp and distinctive - which meant that with its growing success it came to mean everything for the amateur photographer. Tourist photography became available to the masses.
The camera was very different from those that followed. On receiving a Kodak the photographer cut a long string that was threaded around it like a parcel, holding the lens cover in place. It had to be parcelled up again when returning it for the film to be developed. The lens was fixed focus and fixed aperture. There was no viewfinder - a paper guide was supplied with the angle of view marked by two diverging lines, ready to be placed on the top of the box above the lens. The customer took a photo and carefully wound the film on until a brass indicator revolved once and lined up with a control mark. The shutter had to be cocked by tugging up a string on the top of the camera. It was fired by pressing a brass button on the left hand side. A steel butterfly winder was turned to advance the film.
The middle photo is of a replica of the original Kodak made at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television in Bradford, UK, in 1988, one of a limited edition. To the left is a photo of George Eastman taking a photo with his No 2 camera on board a ship in 1990. An early Kodak advert aimed at the new tourist market is at the right.
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Image: Kodak Bullseye Special - 1898
Kodak Bullseye Special
This Bullseye Special camera (above) shows the kind of wooden construction that George Eastman adopted in his Kodak cameras.
The left-hand photo shows the film winding butterfly handle and the introduction of a viewfinder using a small mirror. In the second photo the front panel has been removed: the lens and shutter mechanism are much more sophisticated. A rod acts as the cocking device with the shutter release on the left hand side of the lens mount. The viewfinder is clearly seen. The third picture is of the wooden camera carcass lifted out of its box - a metal pull-tab releases it. The spool of film would this time be inserted by the camera owner on the hidden side of the camera; the paper-backed film pulled part way out and wrapped round two thin rollers, one of which is seen at the left, rear. The leading edge is fed into the take-up spool and wound forward a short way. The whole assembly is replaced in the camera bo and latched tight. A small, red window is used to view markers and numbers printed on the film backing and the take-up spool is wound further ro bring unexposed film into the picture-taking position. When all the pictures are exposed the film is removed and sent for developing and printing, or the photographer takes it to a darkroom to do the job themselves.
The whole process is simplified and speeded up. A travelling photographer could take a set of films along and return them for developing at convenient intervals. There was now no need to await the return of the reloaded camera - shooting could continue every day.
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Image: Sanderson Junior and Cycle Wizard cameras
Early Bellows Cameras
The simple box cameras introduced under the Kodak name were similar to the very earliest cameras in that they consisted of a rigid box shape with a holder for a photographic film at the back and a lens at the front, plus simple controls. They were usually fixed focus, often fixed aperture and with a single shutter speed.
At around the same time more serious photographers were using more sophisticated cameras. The Sanderson Junior of 1902 - above left - allowed focusing via a bellows arrangement in which the lens-to-photographic plate distance could be adjusted. The lens could also be moved up or down so that buildings and other tall subjects could be photographed without distorting the vertical lines of the subject itself. Before a photographic plate was put into position ready to record the image, a ground glass screen displayed what the lens was viewing, just like the camera obscura had done (see earlier posting). The shutter was more sophisticated, consisting of a roller blind with a narrow slot which moved very fast across the light path behind the lens. However, the camera was quite large and the various brass and wooden fittings all had to be adjusted and screwed tight before work began. This made the camera rather unwieldy compared with the Cycle Wizard camera on the right.
This was also a folding camera with a bellows but smaller and able to be closed up into a small, wooden case. It came with a couple of wooden glass-plate holders and a folded cloth in a neat carrying case. In operation the unit would be mounted on a tripod and the back opened to reveal the focussing screen. To help the photographer see the details on the screen the cloth was draped over both the camera and the photographer's head to block all but the light coming through the lens. When the front panel was let down and a clamp released the lens board could be pulled forward, its base sliding in a metal channel. After adjusting the focus the clamp was tightened. This camera was much more compact and easy to use, handy for travelling and operation in distant places. Yet it could not be carried in a pocket and had to be handled in its case like a small piece of luggage. Photographers out walking, climbing or operating in difficult terrain or around buildings were encumbered by this kind of kit. It would be a revolutionary design introduced just after World War I that helped solve the problem.
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Image: The (fake) Leica
The Leica
In the earliest decades of the twentieth century travellers could take reasonably small camera kits with them but still had to handle some form of wooden box which needed carrying in the hand. Many photographers wanted something smaller. Cinematograph film presented a solution. Movie companies employed it in long lengths and often had offcuts of unexposed film which could be sold to the makers of still cameras.
One invention of 1913 was the Tourist Multiple camera which held 50 feet of 35mm film, allowing 750 exposures. Another, of 1926, was the Ansco Memo loading similar film in small, wooden containers. The most inflential and best quality, however, was the Leica. An engineer named Oskar Barnack worked for the E Leitz Optische Werke. Barnack was a keen mountaineer who took photos but found existing cameras too bulky. He invented one made of metal, turning and shaping the parts himself and adding others made for him. the lens was placed, not at the front of a bellows but of a metal, collapsible tube which could be pulled out of the slim camera body. The shutter was not an iris-type set of interveaving thin plates but a cloth with a slit which moved quickly across the internal frame area. A viewfinder could be attached to a shoe fitting on top of the camera. The picture was orientated along the film length instead of, as in cine cameras, across it, and measured 24x36mm, twice the cine-frame size.
Barnack's camera became known as the 'Ur-Leica' or original Leica. It had caught the eye of Dr Ernst Leica, the owner of the company. He manufactured optical instruments, but was so impressed by Barnack's innovation that in 1923 he had his company make 31 cameras based on the original design. A viewfinder was built in and there were some other changes. The sample batch were praised sufficiently by photographers who used them that Leitz went into production. A thousand were made and introduced at the Leipzig Spring Fair in 1926. Other improvements had been adopted. The camera was a success. Its precision design, high quality lens and, as models were improved successively, ever-better features and variations, led it to be an outstanding piece of work which is still considered a by-word for quality today.
The camera shown above is not a Leica but a fake manufactured in Russia. Factories in the Soviet Union copied cameras made in many countries around the world although they also made others to their own designs with, it has to be said, mixed results. Many people who bought them must have found an inexpensive introduction to photography, however, encouraging them to invest in better cameras later on. My first 35mm camera was a Russian Zenith, with many features drawn from the Leica pattern such as film-loading through the base of the camera. This meant that the film had to be threaded through a slot running between the feed and take-up spools. When I was taking photos from an aeroplane of the snow-covered area of Labrador in early 1969 the film jammed and the pictures were lost. A helpful darkroom technician had to rescue the film and re-thread it.
The photos are modern slides rendered in black and white. The old Leica would, of course, have taken negatives for enlargement - up to very large sizes were possible - while later models would have handled colour reversal (slide) film very happily.
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Image: Photographic principles - film types
Some Technological History!
The exclamation mark above is because many people will forget that many younger camera users will have little idea of what 'film' meant in relation to still photography. Digital has swept the older technology aside over the last five years. Even innovations like Kodak's Avantix system, which promoted the use of film to provide a set of print format options were soon overtaken despite being the latest fashion in the early 2000s. My own students, when I discussed the creation of destination image via photography, had only vague ideas of what 'film' meant. So here are a few notes.
The early cameras - such as the Cyclo Wizard, above right, used large rectangles of light-sensitive film to record images. A double-sided, wooden, film holder for that camera is shown. Two pieces of film had to be loaded in a darkroom in which subdued red light was the only illumination, as the film was not sensitive to that kind of light. Each film was slipped into slots in the wooden frame, one on each side, and then a thin metal 'dark slide' pushed in to cover up the film when the holder was taken out. The frame was designed to be light-tight at that point, a small brass catch being twisted into a closed position to hold the assembly safely. When the photographer had placed the camera on a tripod and used a ground glass screen to frame and focus the desired picture, the focusing screen was removed and the film holder clipped onto the camera in its place. Then the dark slide on the side facing the lens was pulled clear. The photo could be taken when the shutter was released for a fraction of a second allowing the view through the lens to fall onto the film. The dark slide was replaced to protect the latent image. Later, chemicals would be used to treat the film in order for the light-sensitive coating to reveal its recorded image. Meanwhile, the photographer could remove the film holder, turn it round to present the second film to the lens, and repeat the process. It was a long, slow affair and the darkroom development of the film and subsequent printing of pictures was even longer.
35mm cameras, made popular by the quality and success of the Leice (previous posting), used similar principles but in a much easier and quicker process. Illustrated is a German-made Edixa reflex-B. The film shown is fairly modern but the 1960s camera used very similar rolls of either 24 or 36 frames or photographs. This camera could either use a waist-level viewfinder, as shown, or an eye-level finder based on a prismatic viewer clipped above the waist-level screen. In the diagram the scene viewed has been simulated for clarity. In the middle of the viewfinder is a circle containing two semicircular parts of the overall image. Focusing the lens caused the two semicircular segments to move relative to each other: when they lined up accurately the lens had been focused correctly onto the film. This ran from a feed spool along the inside back of the camera to a takeup spool. Winding-on was by a rapid lever which also cocked the shutter spring. When all the photographs had been taken the film was rewound into its cassette and taken for development and printing.
It all looks very complex and time-consuming compared with digital photography, but it is only quite recently that so-called 'bridge' cameras with high megapixel-counts have been introduced which can match the quality and styles available to the film camera.
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Image: Photographic principles including development
Developing
The previous posting needs a bit of development - literally. How was an image recorded chemically on a glass plate or film turned into a photograph?
The photographer above left is shown using a studio camera. Travelling photographers like the Victorian Roger Fenton would have used a folding wooden tripod but the appearance here was very close. After the photo the early photographers would have done their own developing and printing in a mobile darkroom like that of Fenton, next right above.
Working in the darkroom by the light of a low-power, red 'safelight' the worker first placed the exposed film in a dish containing a chemical developer which turned the invisible latent image into a visible one. It was then rinsed in water, citric acid or acetic acid, then doused in a chemical fixer which made the image permanent. A final rinsing with water removed excess chemicals and the negative was left to dry, perhaps being hung up in a clean atmosphere.
The negative film would then have been sandwiched against light-sensitive printing paper and exposed to a suitable light source - the sun or a powerful indoor light. It was like taking a second photo from the first, and of course having got the original (a negative image as shown above to the left) any number of prints were possible from it. We do need to note that there were other, even earlier processes which produced a single image on metal, glass or paper, in which duplications were not possible. then the paper print was developed, rinsed and fixed, washed again, and left to dry.
In this process the finished picture was the same size as the original negative. Some films and glass plates could be quite large, and glass plates were usually capable of very high quality prints, at least when photo-sensitive coatings were sufficiently well developed. When small format films like 35mm were introduced the result was a comparitively tiny negative. It would be placed into a special projector to direct a focused image down onto a sheet of photographic printing paper in a dark room - white light would be shone through to make an image on the paper ready for development. The Leica camera took a very good negative and this could be enlarged several times.
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