Today is Louis Daguerre’s birthday, and Google is helping to celebrate it by devoting their logo to him. Happy 224th, buddy!

Wait, are you really about to ask me who Louis Daguerre was? Hey, it’s OK, to be fair the guy has been dead for about 160 years… Even so, in this line of work I sort of expected more from you. Maybe you’ve heard the word Daguerreotype before? Even my browser spell-checker knows that word. That’s right, it’s a photographic process; that’s probably close enough for most tabletop trivia games.

Unfortunately, this blog is not interested in tidbits of trivia, so get ready for facts. Lots of facts. With historical context.

Returning to the topic at hand, Daguerre’s eponymous method was the first silver-based imaging process and one of the first techniques for creating a photographic image ever. So before you start wagging your tongue and making noises that sound like “why does this guy deserve a Google logo?”, remember that Louis has done more for photography than all of your hiking through the backwoods of Yosemite with a full-frame digital SLR has ever done. Or will ever do, because you are not an inventor. Seriously, assembling an IKEA coffee table is not the same thing as inventing something.

Poor, poor Louis Daguerre. He might have lived longer if making a Daguerreotype didn’t involve boiling mercury until its steam envelops a copper plate treated with iodine vapor. Yes, the Daguerreotype was the first commercially viable photographic process, but it was also a great way to accidentally poison yourself and die. Like that one popular song put it, “Shake it, shake it… Shake it like a poisonous picture…” No, hang on, that doesn’t sound right… Either way, iodine vapor and boiling mercury are among the worst things to get all over your hands and face, and this was the eighteen thirties. You think they had respirators and fume hoods back then? (For trivia buffs: they did not).

Anyway, flip the calendar back a bit and meet Nicephore Niepce (born Joseph Niepce), a French inventor with a totally unpronounceable name who had been fiddling with photographic reproduction since 1793. You see, Niepce liked to reproduce engravings, and the way you reproduced an image in the late 18th century was to point a camera obscura at it and trace the projected image. Niepce had an unsteady hand and couldn’t trace the images well, so he set about his search for a chemical process that might capture the light from the projection.

Ultimately, he was successful, and Niepce is acknowledged by historians as the creator of the first ever photographic image, but his lavender oil-based process (now called “heliography”) had plenty of issues. Like, you know, the eight-hour exposure time. “Please hold still, Madam. Just another six hours.” This is why he only made images of other art or of landscapes. Things that generally hold still all day long.

Niepce began collaborating with artist Louis Daguerre in 1829. After Niepce’s death in 1833, Daguerre continued their work and eventually created the Daguerreotype, a process hardly resembling heliography in method and which overcame many of its challenges. So good was this process that Daguerre was able to sell it to the French government in return for a stipend of 6,000 Francs each year for the rest of his life. Laughing all the way to the bank, Daguerre went down in history as the inventor of the first photographic method that produced results of any lasting value, and Daguerreotypes from that period remain intact to this day, even in spite of their fragility.

In fairness, Daguerre got the French government to give Niepce’s estate 4,000 Francs a year for his contribution to the development of the process, so it wasn’t as though he stole all the glory, although Niepce never got a Google logo dedicated to him. That, I feel, is the true measure of one’s significance within the larger tapestry of history; has Google recognized your contributions by commissioning a logo in your honor that will appear on their main page for one day? No? Then you are nothing.

In that respect, Louis Daguerre joins the ranks of such other consequential people as Charles Darwin, Marie Curie, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Earth Day. OK, so Earth Day isn’t a person, it’s my blog and I like Earth Day so sue me.

The next time you pick up your fancy shmancy digital camera to go out and take 4,000 photographs in an afternoon, I want you to remember M. Louis Daguerre and his iodine- and mercury-coated hands that labored for many hours to create a single image on a copper plate, and who couldn’t even share it on Flickr, because he didn’t have a computer.

The goal of photography is to capture a moment, an idea, a thought, or an event and suspend it in time. Whether it is journalistic, editorial, representational, abstract, or artistic is not important in reaching that goal. Occasionally, as a photographer is striving toward their singular goal, they unwittingly meet another one.

Such is the case with these amazing depression-era color photographs published by the International Business Times; though they were taken at the time as recordings of events (though demonstrating the aesthetic sense of the accomplished photographer), the social and cultural distance between the depression and today has vaulted these images into pure artistry. They are truly breathtaking; scenes from a past world, a past America.

View the entire set of photographs on International Business Times: Rare Color Photos from Depression Era.

Not only is it a glimpse into the harrowing business of commercial photography in those days when view cameras were the best you could get and subjects were all shot under hot lights, but also an entertaining look at the male-dominated professional world familiar to anyone who lived through those decades (or at least watched Mad Men).

As I’m sure you’ve heard, Dennis Hopper passed away just days ago (the 29th of May, 2010). As an actor, I personally loved his roles in such classics as Super Mario Bros., Waterworld, and Speed, though he is best known for Easy Rider, Rebel Without a Cause, Cool Hand Luke, and more. He certainly had a knack for the dramatic, but what I didn’t know was that he also had a knack for photography.

The “Chasing Light” blog has a wonderful post containing photos that Hopper took through the years (all of them black and white). I was very impressed with them; they show attention to composition and subject comparable to those of a seasoned professional or serious hobbyist. You could certainly call Hopper a serious hobbyist, though he was more widely known for his feature films than for his photography, painting, and sculpture.

Over at artnet, you can view (and attempt to purchase) 39 other photographs by Hopper that are held by various galleries.

Whether you are into Hopper’s photographs or not, let’s take a moment to remember a great actor and inspirational creator.

I have a question to ask you. What do Santa Claus, this portrait of Lincoln, and great daytime television have in common?

That’s right, they’re all mythical. Well, actually, the portrait is real inasmuch as it physically exists, but it’s one of the earliest (now rather famous) examples of photo manipulation. It turns out that although the photo seems to depict a stoic Lincoln standing beside a writing desk, the only thing in that photo that is actually Lincoln’s is his head. The body is that of Southern politician John C. Calhoun.

Apparently, so few “heroic” portraits of Lincoln existed (perhaps because Lincoln was weary of posing for them) that the only logical alternative was to fake it. In addition to pasting Lincoln’s head onto Calhoun’s body, the text on the papers visible on the desk were changed from “strict constitution,” “free trade,” and “the sovereignty of the states” to “constitution,” “union,” and “proclamation of freedom.”

So who needs Photoshop, anyway?

Via Museum of Hoaxes

There was a time, long ago, when photographs were conceived at the moment the shutter button was depressed. Darkroom techniques were limited at best (the idea that a photographic image could even be created was a modern miracle) and the photographer was required to make near-perfect exposures every time.

Things have changed a lot since then; it’s now possible to do amazing things long after the light has been captured by the camera. Today I’m going to explore some competing points of view and take a philosophical walk through the annals of photographic history to clear up some improper perceptions of digital post-processing.

First, Some History

The first commercially viable photographic technology was the Daguerrotype, a positive-only process (no negative is created and each image can only be made once) resulting in extremely fragile prints on copper plates.

Not only was the development and printing process inflexible and time consuming, but it also exposed photographers to chemicals such as mercury and iodine; not the kinds of things you want to be boiling and possibly inhaling!

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Over time, photographic technology evolved. The system of using silver halide-based negatives emerged, allowing photographers to make more than one print from each of their images; prints that could be handled without fear of destroying them. The printing process itself was transformed from a cumbersome operation using metal substrates and boiling chemicals to the more refined and less hazardous procedure we use today.

It was the invention of the glass negative (circa 1839, possibly by John Herschel, an astronomer by trade¹) that precipitated the institution of photographic post-processing. The negative expanded the photographic process into three steps, which should look very familiar:

1. Exposure
2. Development
3. Printing

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Post-processing, by definition, is altering the image after the light has been captured (hence, post-). Traditionally, these alterations were achieved by modifying the way the exposed film was developed into a negative and the way the negative was printed. For the first time, photographers had the ability to enhance their images beyond the capacity of the film materials of the day; dodging and burning, for example, can create images with a tonal range beyond what can be captured by the film at exposure time.

As photographic technology and techniques surge forward, the photographer is given a progressively more expansive collection of post-processing tools and abilities. Digital photography has completed the transformation of post-processing into an art form unto itself, based concretely on captured-light imagery but possessing all of the characteristics and nuances of a full-fledged medium. Regardless of its flexibility and capabilities, is it not still bound to photography?

“While I have always worked with fairly conventional means and techniques, I anticipate new departures which, if I cannot examine them in my lifetime, will assure the power of future vision and accomplishment.” —Ansel Adams, Carmel, 1976

Artistic Integrity

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Any debate over whether post-processing invalidates the artistic integrity of a photographic work is fundamentally academic. Even before chemical photography existed, artists used camera-like devices such as the camera obscura or optical contraptions like the camera lucida to trace a three-dimensional scene onto paper. Chemical photography and highly sensitive film materials simply permitted artists to capture their subjects faster and with greater accuracy, but never excused an artist from laying hands upon the entire process to reach their artistic goals. Never in the evolution of darkroom techniques was the final product’s status as a photograph questioned.

A perception exists that the medium of captured-light images is pure, not to be spoiled by the meddling of non-optical tools. It may be that the last few decades of photography, during which no paradigm shifts in traditional process have occurred², are responsible for this notion. Or, it may be that the digital world is so vastly different—not in essence, but in physicality—from the world of the darkroom that this discussion has arisen.

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Still, there are those who perceive an imaginary line in post-processing across which a photograph passes into a different state of being and loses its status as a photograph. To me, this distinction is purely semantic. We could debate the definition of “photograph” ad infinitum and never reach a consensus. What does this discussion do for any of us as artists?

Far be it from me to make sweeping generalizations about a field as personal and subjective as art, but I feel as though the detractors of post-processing are the antithesis of its very spirit. Let me explain.

The Question of Intent

You could say that a watercolor splattered with acrylic ceases to be a watercolor. Semantically, that’s true enough; I think that the world of art would classify such a painting as “mixed media.” Perhaps the stumbling block in digital photography is the inextricable relationship between its traditional light-capture methods and the digital “development” tools that make even its most modest creations possible.

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Because traditional darkroom development tools have always been part and parcel to the process we call “photography,” even since the earliest days of its existence, it’s hard to suggest that they are separate mediums or separate forms of art. I contend that digital photography is no different. A digital photographer may not use chemical developers or optical enlargers, but the process is fundamentally the same. Those who claim otherwise tend to draw the line at a subjective point in the editing process, one which marks no meaningful boundary.

Rather than introducing entirely new mechanics or technology, digital post-processing of any degree makes use of the same fundamental operations that produce simple and austere works. Because the tools are the same, it is the methods themselves, the intricacies of the artist’s process, that are called into question; something that has never happened in photography before, certainly not to this degree.

What do you think? Are there Photoshop filters or third-party software tools or certain editing techniques that transform a photograph into a photographically-derived work, not deserving of the name “photograph?” Where do you draw the line?

I think that it’s an artist’s duty to carefully examine each viewpoint in this discussion and then promptly ignore them all.

1. Edit: It was brought to my attention that Herschel wasn’t responsible for the “invention” of the negative, although he probably coined the term. For more information about this stage in photography’s early development, read about William Fox Talbot, John Herschel, and the wet plate collodion process
2. Digital photography is unquestionably a paradigm shift, but the idea of collecting light through a lens, capturing the resulting image, and reproducing that image on paper is exactly the same as it was when the term “photography” was first conceived in 1832.

Pure photography is defined as possessing no qualities of technique, composition or idea, derivative of any other art form. The production of the “Pictorialist,” on the other hand, indicates a devotion to principles of art which are directly related to painting and the graphic arts.

Group f/64 was conceived in explicit opposition to the Pictorialist movement, which “subscribed to the idea that art photography needed to emulate the painting and etching of the time.”² Quite to the contrary, Group f/64 believed very strongly that photography “must always remain independent of ideological conventions of art and aesthetics that are reminiscent of a period and culture antedating the growth of the medium itself.”³ These are two very different viewpoints. One sees photography as a medium through which to create works representative of the predominant aesthetics and style of other types of art at the time, and the other sees photography as a new medium with its own aesthetics and style that should be preserved.

Purists almost by definition, the members of Group f/64 sought to stretch the boundaries of photography through strict adherence to its core methods. They used as few image-altering devices or techniques as possible; no lens filters, no exotic darkroom processes or equipment. Their images aspired to a crisp, infinitely-focused, tonally brilliant standard upon which many future photographers would base their own explorations.

It should be noted that although Ansel Adams used extensive, complicated darkroom techniques on many of his most famous prints, he was both an advocate of smart, precise post-processing as well as maintaining the integrity of the medium by minimizing distortion of the subject, and it was likely for the latter reason that he helped to form Group f/64.

But that was 1932. The “ideological conventions of art and aesthetics” of 1932 have been entirely replaced in the age of the computer. Almost in parallel to the 1932 Pictorialist/pure photography dichotomy, there are those who see digital photography as a mere convenience; a new, faster, and in some ways more inexpensive way to maintain similar aesthetics to photography of the past, and there are those who see digital photography as an entirely new medium.

I believe that both viewpoints are correct. However, digital photography certainly brings with it a veritable cavalcade of new capabilities and equipment, inheriting credibility and respect from its traditional, silver halide forebears, but independent from them in all other ways, both technical and aesthetic.

That being the case, what now embodies the “qualities of technique, composition or idea” specific to “digital photography?” If a new group came about with the same goals as Group f/64, but updated for digital photography, what would its major tenets be? With such extensive editing capabilities in the hands of even the beginner through Photoshop, Paint Shop Pro, The Gimp, iPhoto, et. al., it goes without saying that manipulation of the image is going to play a role. Whether it is basic tonal adjustment and sharpening, or more drastic and potentially destructive edits, such changes fall comfortably under the umbrella of digital photography as a medium.

When Ansel Adams stood before the St. Hernandez valley on that day in 1941, he could see in his mind the process that would be used to bring the exposure to life, from development to printing. It is that mastery of craft that has perhaps been forgotten now that the capacity to make hundreds, if not thousands, of exposures is available. This is one impact of the digital revolution. Scarcity encourages innovation; when there is less to work with, more attention is paid to planning and execution to squeeze every drop of that creative juice out of the moment.

Likewise, abundance breeds laziness. It’s too easy to snap 100 exposures of a subject in the hopes that one is in focus when each exposure costs you nothing and with cameras capable of several exposures per second.

This article doesn’t mean to draw conclusions. The ratio between excellent photographers and poor photographers is likely to be much the same today as it was in Ansel’s time (counting only those who consider themselves serious hobbyists and amateur professionals; photography is no longer exclusive to the exceptionally passionate and the exceptionally wealthy.) Still, digital photography raises a lot of interesting questions and only time will tell how it will be treated by the art historians of the future.

1. Wikipedia, Group f/64
2. Wikipedia, Pictorialism
3. ibid.