1007
exposure, people experimented with adding substances
such as water-absorbing zinc salts or honey. From the
1870s the invention of the highly sensitive dry plate
or gelatino-bromide process reduced exposure times
to 1/25 second, and soon after cameras became more
portable. These advances made photographing at night
much easier.
Since it was hard to take photographs in the dark,
particularly with the early techniques, night effects
could be achieved with photographs taken in daylight:
daguerreotypes and calotype negatives produce a re-
versed background that could be interpreted as a night
sky, black against the detailed foreground. Scenes ap-
parently depicting the night were often taken in daylight,
The Illustrated Times (10, 252, 1860) critiquing, for
example, that ‘Messrs Bissou’s no.35 contains a most
successful moonlight effect, though no doubt taken in
sunlight.’ Gustave le Gray photographed directly into
the sun hidden behind clouds to obtain an artistic image
that could be mistaken as night (‘Brick au clair de lune,’
1856, Musée d’Orsay, Paris).
Night subjects suited many of the viewing devices
that were developed. The Italian optician and photogra-
pher Carlo Ponti produced night scenes with his inven-
tion, the ‘Megalethoscope,’ a photographic viewer that
allowed photographs, slid into the back of the device,
to be viewed fi rstly by refl ective light, and then by
light from behind. ‘Place St Marc avec l’eglise’ (1875,
George Eastman House) shows crowds in St Mark’s
square surrounded by illuminations. Areas on the back
of the print have been embellished, and this colouring
could only be seen when light shone through from the
back of the print, echoing the effect of time as the image
revolved from (black and white) day to—when back-
lit—colorful night.
Extra kudos could be earned by taking pictures at
night rather than mocking darkness. One of the earliest
known images of night (strictly twilight), possibly by
Louis Daguerre, is captioned ‘Le ponts en la galerie du
Louvre, à 5.15. Soleil coucheant’ (1839, National Media
Museum, UK). It shows bridges along the Seine in Paris
and is faint but detailed, suggesting that documentary
images of night were possible, and sought after, from
the beginnings of photography.
Providing documentary evidence with photographs
was a signifi cant advance in journalism, and relied on
the problematic assumption that photographs always
represent reality. One of the earliest reportage images
was a daguerreotype of mills burning at night, taken
by George N. Barnard in Oswego, New York, on 5
July 1853 (George Eastman House). The night sky is
lit by huge fl ames, recording a dramatic moment with
startling effect.
The night sky was also documented in a scientifi c
way. Daguerre recorded an image of the moon around
1838, with others following suit. Lunar daguerreotypes
of George Philips Bond and John Adams Whipple
were shown at the 1851 Great Exhibition at Crystal
Palace, London and were so popular that they went on
tour in Europe. The subsequent wet-plate collodion
prints by Warren De La Rue, along with Lewis Morris
Rutherford’s albumen print The Moon, New York (1865)
continued to spark the interest in lunar photography. In
1889, Director of the Meudon Observatory, Jules Jans-
sen, recommended that a photographic atlas of the moon
be undertaken, insisting that photographs would give the
most authentic results. Photographs were also used to
document the movements of comets and stars in the sky,
contributing to scientifi c evidence at the time.
Yet the subject of the moon was also used to evoke
emotion or atmosphere. Ferrier and Soulier’s stereo-
scopic photograph ‘Pont Louis Philippe. Paris. Effet
de lune’ (1860) shows the night sky being investigated
in the same way as John Constable’s painterly explora-
tions of the moody daytime sky. The aim could have
been to capture a specifi c time and place, as well as to
illuminate and fi x the mysterious moon. Moonlight was
a romantic symbol, favoured by schools of artists and
movements such as Luminism, an American movement
in the 1840s and 1850s. As industrialisation advanced
in many cities and nature was revered, night landscapes
either heightened the atmosphere of the modern city at
night, or accentuated its dreamlike qualities.
Whilst artists were exploiting the night imagery in
nature, darkness and photography was used to advance
the spiritualism movement, popular from mid-century.
Various techniques such as double exposures or com-
posite printing were used to produce images of spirits
in darkness. Spirit photography fuelled the fascination
with the supernatural during this period.
In contrast to the darkness used to effect in spirit
photography, many photographers took advantage of
modern artifi cial light sources, such as electricity or
magnesium-based infl ammable powders. In the 1857
Birmingham photographic Society exhibition, an un-
known photographer exhibited a photograph with the
caption ‘Portrait taken by Gaslight at Midnight. This is
a great curiosity, being one of the few attempts made
to obtain Portraits by artifi cial light. The observer will
notice the singular effects of light and shade.’ Dutch
photographer Henry van der Weyde used artifi cial light
and different lenses to take photographs at night. Much
later, in Paris in the 1890s, Belliéni took artifi cial light
out onto the night street. In the last two decades of the
nineteenth century, artifi cial light became a key subject
in photographs as well as an aid to photographers at
night.
Artifi cial light played an important role in socio-
documentary photographs. Jacob Riis used primitive
fl ash photography techniques to document the New York