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Further Reading
The British Journal Photographic Almanac and Photographers
Daily Companion: 1870–1879.
The Year-Book of Photography and Photographic News Almanac:
1870–1879.
Cox, Frederick J. A Compendium of Photography, 12th ed.,
London: Frederick J. Cox, 1876 (with appended Descriptive
Catalogue comprising Photographic Apparatus and Chemical
Preparations, March 1875).
Eder, Josef Maria, History of Photography (Trans. Epstean), New
York: Dover ed., Dover Publications, Inc., 1978.
Gernsheim, Helmut and Alison, The History of Photography,
London: Thames & Hudson, 1969.
Harrison, W. Jerome, A History of Photography, Bradford: Percy
Lund & Co., London: Trubner & Co. 1888.
Hughes, Jabez, The Principles and Practice of Photography
Familiarly Explained, 9th ed., London: Simpkin, Marshall,
& Co., 1870.
Pollack, Peter, The Picture History of Photography, London:
Thames & Hudson, 1963.
Robinson, Henry Peach, Pictorial Effect in Photography, Lon-
don: Piper & Carter, 1869. (Helios edition, reprinted second
impression with a new introduction by Robert Sobieszek,
1972.)
Rosenblum, Naomi, A World History of Photography, New York,
London, and Paris: Abbeville Press, 1989.
Taft, Robert, Photography and the American Scene, New York:
Dover ed., Dover Publications Inc., 1964
Tissandier, Gaston, A History and Handbook of Photography
(edited by J. Thomson), London: Sampson Low, Marston,
Low, & Searle, 1876.
Wakeman, Geoffrey, Victorian Book Illustration: The Technical
Revolution, Newton Abbot, England: David & Charles (Hold-
ings) Limited, 1973.
Werge, John, The Evolution of Photography, London: Piper &
Carter, 1890.
HISTORY 7: 1880s
The invention of photography was a signifi cant moment
in the history of art, in fact it meant the acceptance and
assimilation of a new art form. It was characteristic
of this development 50 years later that its practioners
invariably opted for those motifs, themes and genres,
which had traditionally been those of painting and
graphic arts. There are also countless parallels and simi-
larities in the schooling, background and studio methods
of painters and photographers. The domination of the
prevailing convention was extremely strong, forming
a kind of leitmotif, which runs through the history of
photography. Portraits, landscapes, genre scenes and
literary themes were the favored subject matter.
In 1878 an Englishman called Charles Harper Bennett
put the fi nishing touches to a method using gelatine-
silver bromide which reduced exposure time to one
twenty-fi fth of a second. Soon after, plates which had
been industrially adapted became available to the wider
public.
Between 1880 and 1890, the very fi rst portable cam-
eras, which folding darkrooms attached, appeared on
the market. These were used by painters such as Edgar
Degas, as we know from the writing of his friend Daniel
Loppé, a specialist in alpine landscapes who was also
an amateur photographer.
Newspaper illustrations made their appearance in the
1830s. Among the fi rst in an American newpaper was a
woodcut view of the ruins of the great New York fi re of
December 16–17, 1835. But after 1850, newspapers vir-
tually ceased using illustrations, and the public obtained
its visual accounts of people, places, and events through
the pages of such illustrated weeklies as Harper’s and
Leslie’s. In 1873, the New York Daily Graphic made its
appearance, using lithography for the printing of both
type and illustrations (photolithographs). Stephen H.
Horgan was hired as a photographer, but soon took over
management of the paper’s photomechanical printing
operations. As he said later, the appearance of this news-
paper was going to usurp the place of wood engraving.
He did it for the fi rst time on March 4, 1880.
Concurrently, with the progress of the presidential
campaign of 1880, in which James A. Garfi eld won
election by a narrow margin, photographers across
the land began switching tot dry-plate practice. Albert
Levy’s gelatine dry plates and E. & H. T. Anthony &
Co.’s Defi ance plates were taken off the market by Janu-
ary 1881. But others were appearing on the scene. In St.
Louis, Gustave Cramer teamed up with Herman Norden
to perfect a commercial plate that would be better than
anything previously offered. Their activity was another
of the proverbial “burning the midnight oil’ variety.
Eastman’s dry plates were placed on the market by
the Anthonys in December 1880. In Europe, meanwhile,
photoengraving modes using a screening process, such
as Baron von Egloffstein had used in 1865, were adopted
by Joseph Swan in 1879, and by George Meisenbach,
a Munich engraver, in 1882. First single-line screens
which were rotated or turned during exposure with
a negative to achieve a cross-line effect in the image
secured on the sensitized printing surface, later a cross-
line screen which consisted of two single-line screens
cemented together face-tot-face at right angles.
Electric light on the market in 1882 brought a new
brightness and bustle to cities at nighttime, and this
tended to focus increasing public interest on theatrical
personalities, adding further to an already popular craze
of collecting cabinet card and carte de visite portraits of
celebrities in all fi elds.
In 1883 William Schmid of Brooklyn, NY, was
awarded an American patent for the fi rst commercial
version of the hand-held ‘Detective’ style box camera. It
weighed 3.3 pounds and provided a rectangular viewing
window which enabled the user to see the photograph he
or she was about to take. The rear of the camera accepted
one double plate holder, which could be used twice to
make a 3¼ × 4¼ exposures on two separate negative
HISTORY: 6. 1870s