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sions was to document the estate of Hernán Cortés for
its current heir. By 1852 Cosmes had moved to Spain
and opened a studio in Cádiz, where he had a versatile
practice, specializing in miniatures, ambrotypes, and
stereographs. He colored the portraits himself, and,
in 1859, announced his discovery of a new method of
tinting them via chemical baths.
In May of 1858 Cosmes partnered with José Martínez
Sánchez, a Madrid photographer, to record the arrival
of Queen Isabel II at the port of Valencia, en route to
Alicante for the opening of the new railway. Their
views of the historic occasion are considered to be the
fi rst instance of narrative photographic reportage of an
individual news event. As offi cial photographers of the
event, Cosmes and Martínez Sánchez were situated at
the port well in advance of the queen’s arrival, and were
thus able to record the entire event from the preparations
for her reception and the crowds awaiting her arrival
to the appearance of her accompanying squadron, the
royal’s trip to shore, and their return to their ship for
lunch the following day. While waiting for the Queen,
who had been expected early in the morning, the photog-
raphers made was is believed to be the fi rst photograph
of dawn taken in Spain.
Beth Ann Guynn
COURBET, GUSTAVE (1819–1877)
French photographer
As it was the case for most artists, the relationship be-
tween Gustave Courbet and photography was two-fold.
He used it as a model for his paintings and to promote
his work. Contrary to others, Courbet made no secret
of it. Those practices were directly related to his art
conception, according to which, art is democratic. For
thirty years, it was known that Courbet used Vallou de
Villeneuve’s photography as a model for his feminine
fi gures. Realism art critics accused him of dirtiness
and of photographic truthfulness. Théophile Gautier,
for instance, trashed “the ugliness of [the] daguerreo-
type” (Salon of 1850–1851). It was with Realism and
a realistic representation that Courbet felt he was most
able to effectively object to the academic model of both
photography and painting.
Photography also helped him to promote his work.
From 1850 to 1883, when was published an album of
his posthumous retrospective exhibition at the Ecole
des Beaux-Arts, Courbet made regularly his painting
reproduced by photography with the object of selling
and distributing the prints. He knew by the way some of
the famous photographers of his time, Etienne Carjat and
Gilbert Radoux who became his friends, Victor Laisné,
Nadar, Robert Bingham, Pierre Richebourg and Charles
Michelez. Thereby, the new democratic medium also
served his art ideology.
Laure BoyerCOURT CASES AND PHOTOGRAPHY
Photography’s fi rst century was riddled with court cases.
Many of them sought to identify photography’s role as
either an art or a science. If a case centered on photog-
raphy as an art, then copyright laws were applicable to
an image’s content. If photography was a science, then
its original inventor could patent the process used to
obtain the image. Some early photographic inventors
choose not to patent their processes to allow the growth
of photography; Fredrick Scott Archer was one of these
photographers. His wet plate collodion process led to
one of photography’s fi rst high profi le cases: Talbot
vs. Laroche. William Henry Fox Talbot held the patent
for the calotype process, which he patented in 1839 in
England. The process required a license in England,
whereas the new wet collodion process did not require
a license and produced a clearer picture; therefore, it
became very popular with photographers. Talbot felt
that this new process infringed on his patent.
Talbot’s original calotype patent, number 8842, had
been granted and sealed in 1841 and was set to expire in- Then in 1851 Archer published his wet collodion
process. Talbot asserted that because this process, like
his own, involved creation of a negative to make a posi-
tive on paper that it infringed on his rights. The threat
of litigation hindered many photographers of the time
from fully embracing the improved process.
Under pressure from the photographic community,
Talbot did relinquish his patent rights for amateur pho-
tographers, but did not extend it to professional pho-
tographers. Talbot still contended his rights included all
photographic processes that produced a positive paper
print as its fi nished product. This act brought the ire of
professional photographers, who believed that Talbot
was standing in the way of photographic progress. On
December 18th 1854, the trial of Talbot vs. Laroche
began. Talbot was seeking damages of 5000 pounds for
violation of the calotype patent. In his defense Laroche’s
contended that, instead of Talbot, Rev. J.B. Reade fi rst
published the calotype and that the calotype process
was not the same as Archer’s process. On December
20th the jury found that Talbot was the true inventor of
the calotype process, but that Laroche had not infringed
on the calotype patent by using the wet plate collodion
process. This decision opened up the new collodion
process to photographers, which quickly surpassed
its predecessors, the calotype and the daguerreotype.
Archer’s process also became central to another set of
court battles in the United States.