ITAP 2 : Genius of Photography- Pt 1

1. What is photography's 'true genius'?

Photography has intrigued us by showing the secret strangeness that lies beneath the world of appearances; it has showed images in different forms using various processes that made photography possible today. It has pleased, outraged, and often disappointed its viewers which is the reason why it makes it photography’s true genius.

2. Name a proto- photographer.

A proto- photographer that experimented with photographic processes was Henry Fox Talbot, the inventor of calotype process associated in the 19^th century, who made major contributions to photography as an artistic medium before the well-known Louis Degaurre the inventor of the degaurretype process which is also associated with the term ‘Mirror with a Memory’, or referred as ‘Mirror of Nature’ that signifies how one sees oneself in a mirror.

3. In the 19th century what term was associated with the daguerreotype?

French photographer Andre Disderi inventor of small photographs usually eight on one large photographic plate, given the term of ‘Carte De Visite’. An albumen print or photograph mounted in a stiff piece of card that frequently revealed portraits of celebrities of that time.

4. What is the vernacular?

The Vernacular contains some of photography’s greatest naturally occurring riches, merely as a gift of the medium itself rather than a product of the genius of the individual photographer. It was associated with any type such as keepsakes, advertising, forensics, documentation for records, passport photo’s, postcards etc every kind of photography that wasn’t intended as art or a piece of art form.

5.How do you 'Fix the Shadows'?
Fixing the shadows was a high purpose, in the 1830's it was found that certain chemcials were light sensitive, chemicals for e.g. silver salts, silver chloride and silver nitrate. To fix the shadows you had to be able to stop carrying the exposure which was troublsome. Henry Fox Talbot's use of fixing the shadows was through camera obscurer, with a mouse-trap camera that held the negative and carrying the paper but to be only exposed for a certain amount of time. Louis Deguerre attempted this also, but started in the early 1800's whose method was the creation of the deguerreotype to fix the shadows using a mirrored metal plate to fix his images.
6. What is the 'Carte de visite'?
The 'Carte de Visite' was a photograph mounted on a stiff piece of card measuring 11.4x 6.3cm, It was introduced in the mid- 1850's by Andre Disderi. These cards frequently  portrayed portraits of celebrities of the day for collection into home albums also known as albumen prints.

7. Who was Nadar and why was he so successful?
Another photographer of the 18^th-19^th century was Gaspard Felix Tournachon also referred to as Nadar who photographed up and coming stars in a style that rewrote the rules of photography which made his style unique and original. Photographing celebrities as equals, his portraits of artists unrivaled by the character of the person with them just standing in his studio as themselves. His photography presented a likeness and authenticity about them.

8. What is pictorialism?
Pictorialism an international style and aesthetic movement that dominated photography during the 19^th century, it was photography at its most po-faced, as it merely created an image rather than simply recording it. Imitating printmaking and drawings the mean, moody and occasionally magnificent Pictorialism.