1008
streets at night, publishing his photographs as books
such as How the Other Half Lives (1890). At the turn
of the century, Lewis W. Hine’s photographs accentu-
ated bad working conditions by concentrating on dark
or artifi cially lit spaces. For him, natural light equalled
good health and vice versa.
Lit up at night, the modern city became a fi n-de-siècle
fascination. The French photographer Louis-Gabriel
Loppé was one of the fi rst photographers to document
cities at night, taking advantage of the dry plate process.
He photographed London, Liverpool and Paris produc-
ing works such as ‘Illuminations de la tour Eiffel la
nuit’ (c.1889, Musée d’Orsay). His work was infl uen-
tial: Brassai later reproached Andre Kertez for stealing
Loppé’s idea of photographing at night.
Paul Martin was also infl uential. Imaging the city
in an artistic manner, his ‘Piccadilly Circus at Night,
London’ (1896), for example, was part of the lantern-
slide series ‘London by Gaslight,’ which won a Royal
Photographic Society gold medal in 1896. The exposure
time was around fi fteen minutes and the camera lens was
partly shielded from the lights of passing cars. Martin
accentuated the gas lamps by tinting the prints in this
series blue and yellow. Due in part to the interest in his
work, a society of Night Photographers was founded
in Britain. Photographers including Alfred Steiglitz,
inspired by Martin, made works such as ‘Night, New
York’ (1897), and continued working on night photog-
raphy into the twentieth century.
A complex but popular subject, night photography
in the nineteenth century broaches the gap between
pictorialism and realism, scientifi c and imaginary scenes
and, due to the technical diffi culty in producing images
of night, stood at the forefront of photographic advances
of the nineteenth century.
Sophie Leighton
See also: Daguerre, Louis-Jacques-Mandé; Le Gray,
Gustave; Lunar Photography; Martin, Paul Augustus;
and Spirit, Ghost, and Psychic Photography.
Further Reading
Ferris, Alison, The Disembodied Spirit, Brunswick, ME: Bowdoin
College Museum of Art, 2003.
Hallenberg, Heather, Night Lights: 19th and 20th Century Ameri-
can Nocturn Paintings, Cincinatti,OH: Taft Museum, 1985.
Heilbrun, Françoise, and Bajac, Quentin. Orsay: La
Photographie,Paris, Editions Scala, 2003.
Lenman, Robert (ed.). The Oxford Companion to the
Photograph,London, Oxford University Press, 2005.
Lunn Gallery, Lewis Hine: Child Labor Photographs, Washing-
ton, Lunn Gallery/ Graphics International Ltd., 1980.
Mulligan, Therese, and Wooters, David (eds.), Photography from
1839 to today: George Eastman House, Rochester, NY, New
York: Taschen, 2000.
Schivelbusch, Wolfgang, Disenchanted Night: The Industrialisa-
tion of light in the Nineteenth Century, London, University of
California Press, 1988.
Taylor, Roger, Photographs Exhibited in Britain 1839–1865,
Ottawa, National Gallery of Canada, 2002, http://www.peib.
org.uk.
Email links:
http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/
http://photography.about.com/library/weekly/aa111802a.htmNOACK, ALFRED (1833–1895)
German photographer
Augustus Alfred Noack was born in Dresden on 25th
May 1833. The son of a doctor, he studied xylography,
illustration and engraving at the Dresden Academy of
Fine Arts with Hugo Burkner. In November 1856 he
went to Rome where he was a member of the Deutschen
Künstverein until April 1860. In the same year he moved
to Genoa where he founded one of the most important
Italian photographic factories in Vico del Filo. He
devoted his activity to views of various tourist resorts
in northern Italy but mainly views of Genoa and the
Ligurian landscape. He also took photographs of works
of art in the museums and churches of Genoa, but he
became a very well-known photographer mainly through
his landscapes, which were widely circulated by reviews
and tourist guides and contributed to creating a typical
image of the Ligurian region in accordance with the
19th century vision of pictorial tradition. In the 1880s,NIGHT PHOTOGRAPHY
Noack, Alfredo. Statue of a Little Girl.
The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles © The J. Paul Getty
Museum” “The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles © The J.
Paul Getty Museum.