1124
they altered the camera’s image. Wall saw no reason for
censuring work that combined “the truth of the one with
the loveliness of the other.”
Composite and hand-colored images required time
and deft handwork. This addition of time was seen as
a way to make photography less mechanical and more
artistic. This in turn increased a photograph’s value and
encouraged photographers to portray subjects previ-
ously reserved for painters. As photographs were not
precious objects, some people took the liberty to interact
with this supposedly fi xed form of representation and
interjected their own personal feeling about the subject.
This began an ongoing exploration of fabricating illu-
sion that expanded the photographic syntax to include
subjective reality and how the tension between the two
could produce new meaning. Hand-coloring and mixed
media methods began to extend and transform the pho-
tograph into areas that conventional photography could
not go. Conceptually, it acknowledges a photograph
is not a fi xed entity, but one that is open to continuos
process that can accommodate change, expansion, and
innovation.
Robert Hirsch
Further Reading
Henisch, Heinz K., and Bridget A., The Photographic Experi-
ence 1839–1914: Images and Attitudes. University Park: The
Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994.
PIAZZI SMYTH, CHARLES (1819–1900)
British astronomer
Piazzi Smyth (who used his middle name together
with his surname) was born in 1819 in Naples, Italy.
He seemed destined for fame in the fi eld of astronomy.
Named after the Italian theologian and astronomer Gi-
useppe Piazzi (1746–1826), he was the second son of
Rear-Admiral William Henry Smyth, F.R.S., who had
once been president of the Royal Astronomical Society,
and Annarella Warington. Piazzi Smyth received his
scientifi c education early, fi rst in his father’s observa-
tory at Bedford and then at the Royal Observatory at the
Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, where he assisted Sir
Thomas Maclear from 1835 to 1845. His fi rst calotypes
date from around 1843; it is likely that he learned the
technique from Sir John Herschel, a close family friend
who was also in Cape Town at this time. His interest in
photography would also have been nurtured in the circle
around his father’s close friend Dr. John Lee, which
included William Henry Fox Talbot, James Glaisher,
and Sir David Brewster; and at the salons of astronomer
and amateur photographer Lord Rosse.
In 1845 Piazzi Smyth was named Astronomer Royal
for Scotland, and the following year became Regius
Professor of Practical Astronomy at the University of
Edinburgh. Though hampered throughout much of his
career by the chronic underfunding of the Calton Hill
Observatory (recently placed under treasury control),
Piazzi Smyth devised brilliant projects relating to
the observation, measurement, and documentation of
astronomical phenomena. One of the earliest of these
initiatives was an expedition to Tenerife, the largest of
the Canary Islands. In June 1856—accompanied by his
new bride, Jessica Duncan—Piazzi Smyth went to the
volcanic island to test his theory that the stars would be
better observed from high points above ground-level
pollution, to observe the solar spectrum, and to measure
the thermal radiation of the moon, thus establishing
the modern practice of high-altitude observation and
pioneering spectroscopy and infrared astronomy. He
also undertook a signifi cant photographic documen-
tation project, resulting in the fi rst stereoscopically
illustrated book: Teneriffe, an Astronomer’s Experi-
ment; or, Specialities of a Residence above the Clouds
(1858), which contains 20 plates (from wet-collodion
negatives on albumen paper) and sold for 21 shillings.
Piazzi Smyth chose the stereoscopic format because
the equipment was comparatively portable and because
he felt it provided maximum accuracy and objectiv-
ity while minimizing the risk of accidental fl aws and
tampering. Far more effectively than the drawings and
paintings he also executed on site, Piazzi Smyth’s pho-
tographs demonstrated the clarity of the atmosphere at
high altitude. Upon his return from Tenerife, he turned
over the printing to Glaisher, a fellow astronomer and
accomplished photographer, and A. J. Melhuish, photog-
rapher and optician. Publisher Lovell Augustus Reeve
then supervised the production of an edition of 2,000,
which entailed the mounting of 40,000 stereo pairs onto
pre-printed pages. Jessica Piazzi Smyth printed addi-
tional photographs for subsequent offi cial reports of the
expedition (1859), and Piazzi Smyth employed another
method of photographic reproduction—a photoglyphic
engraving etched by Talbot—in an account published
the Edinburgh Astronomical Observations (1863).
Piazzi Smyth’s work in Tenerife earned him a
Fellowship in the Royal Society, but his next major
project—an excursion to Egypt to measure the Great
Pyramid of Gizeh—was not as well received, largely
owing to his expressed intent to prove the divine basis
of the pyramids’ construction. Piazzi Smyth had fi rst
encountered this theory in the writings of one of its most
vocal proponents, John Taylor, whom he met through
either Herschel or Lee. Piazzi Smyth was intrigued, and
eventually obsessed, with the idea that the seeming co-
incidence of its measurements (the “sacred cubit”) with
the earth’s polar axis refl ected God’s intervention—and
that he could demonstrate this with modern instruments
of quantifi cation.
PHOTOMONTAGE AND COLLAGE
