Unknown photographer, [Portrait of a woman], 1840-65. Daguerreotype in case; 3 1/2 x 2 5/8 inches. Denver Art Museum: Gift of Kerstin and Robert Adams, 2018.580.
William Henry Fox Talbot, A Scene in York: York Minster seen from Lop Lane (Little Black Street), August 1845. Salted paper print; 6 3/8 x 8 in. Partial gift of The A. E. Manley Photography Collection; partial purchase with funds from The Ralph L. and Florence R. Burgess Trust and Photography Department funds, 2010.566
Helen Levitt, N.Y., c. 1940. Gelatin silver print; 12 3/4 x 8 1/2 inches. Funds from the Photography Acquisitions Alliance, 2020.655. © Film Documents LLC, courtesy Zander Galerie, Cologne/Paris
Photography expanded forms of visual expression and transformed the ways we experience and understand the world. In looking back at a few early examples in the Denver Art Museum's collection, we can see some of the many ways the medium has changed throughout its history, as well as how it has remained the same.
The Daguerreotype
The technological and scientific discoveries that make photography possible evolved over centuries and were the product of experiments by many individuals, but the public announcement of the daguerreotype in France in 1839 is widely considered to be the ‘birth’ of the medium.
The daguerreotype process, developed by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre in partnership with Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, produced a highly detailed singular image on a metal plate. These delicate photographs were often small in scale and housed in decorative protective cases. It quickly became a favored medium for portraiture and made having keepsake images of loved ones more accessible than ever before. This early portrait of woman may seem a world different from the many photos we have on our smart phones these days, but it is fulfilling the same desire to hold on to reminders of those we love.
The Calotype
At the same time and unaware of what Daguerre and Niépce were doing in France, English scientist and scholar William Henry Fox Talbot was developing another way of making photographs. He introduced his calotype process not long after the announcement of the daguerreotype. While this method did not capture quite the same level of detail, it was the first negative to positive photographic process—a paper negative was made from which multiple positive prints could be produced. Many other photographic processes were developed in the decades that followed, each offering something different or improved, but the reproducibility of the photograph that Talbot introduced became the basis of modern photography.
This street view of York, England is a beautiful example of a salted paper print made from a calotype negative and it is one the earliest photographs in the Denver Art Museum’s collection. Talbot made this picture just a few years after he introduced his revolutionary negative-positive photo process. Here, we see a quiet street in the town of York with the grand medieval cathedral in the distance. In the early years, photography had limitations—the subject of a photograph had to remain still in front of the camera for an extended period for its image to be captured. This picture appears to have been made on an early morning stroll before the town had awoken, but it may be equally likely that there was activity on these streets that was moving too quickly for the photographic technology of the time to render in the picture.
Within a couple decades, the exposure times for photography were reduced to fractions of a second and capturing motion in a photograph became common place, opening the door to a whole new to realm of possibilities for the medium. As cameras became smaller, more easily portable, and designed for making pictures in rapid succession, photographers began to capture candid moments of urban life. What became known as street photography emerged and was popularized in the twentieth century.
100 Years Later…
Compare Talbot’s early street photograph to this lively one made about a hundred years later. Helen Levitt, celebrated street photographer, made pictures in her hometown of New York City from the 1930s to 80s. She roamed the neighborhood streets with her small hand-held camera making pictures of life in action. Levitt often used a right-angle viewfinder on her camera so she could appear to be looking in one direction while photographing in another, which allowed the subjects of her pictures to remain absorbed in the moment instead of aware of the camera.
This charming photograph of children at play, a reoccurring subject in Levitt’s work, shows the energy of the city and the life that fills its streets each day. A young boy looks as if he’s about to ride his tricycle right through the wooden frame of a broken mirror being held upright by his friends. One can’t help but see a similarity between this picture within a picture and the daguerreotype portrait of a woman, but here the decorative frame contains an ‘action shot’, reflecting both the evolving capabilities of the medium and the increasing pace of modern life.
This photograph is on view through October 25 in our photography exhibition What We’ve Been Up To: People.
