58
See also: Wet Collodion Negative; and Calotype and
Talbotype.
Further Reading
Archer, Frederick Scott, “On the Use of Pyrogallic Acid in Pho-
tography” The Chemist, May and July 1850.
Archer, Frederick Scott, “On the Use of Collodion in Photog-
raphy,” The Chemist, new series, vol. II, March 1851, [The
communication is dated 18 February].
Archer, Frederick Scott, Manual of the Collodion Photographic
Process, 1st edition, London: 1852.
Archer, Frederick Scott, The Collodion Process on Glass, 2nd
edition, London: 1854.
Archer, Frederick Scott, “Origin of the Collodion Process,” The
Liverpool and Manchester Photographic Journal, 15 June,
1857.
Dommasch, Hans S. and Silversides, Brock, “Scott Archer and
the Collodion Process, The Photographic Journal, vol. 129,
July, 1989, 334–336.
Gernsheim, Helmut, The Rise of Photography 1850–1880,
The Age of Collodion, Thames and Hudson, London: 1988,
9–17.
Gunnis, Rupert, Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660–1851,
London: 1956.
Notes and Queries. Letters from Archer claiming his priority as
the inventor of the wet collodion process, vol. vi, 1852, 612.
[fi rst series, vi 396, 426, vii. 218].
Ray, Sidney F, “Frederick Scott Archer, the Inventor of the Wet
Collodion Process,” British Journal of Photography, vol. 136,
May 11, 1989, 28–29.
ARCHITECTURE
Architectural photography is the depiction of buildings,
their details, and their models. The representation of
architecture in images is as old as painting and drawing.
It had to fulfi ll a number of purposes, from the portrayal
of castles for their proud owners (as in the Books of
Hours by the Fréres Limbourg in the 14th century) over
the documentation of historical structures (as in the
drawings of Renaissances masters) to the autonomous
subject (as in Dutch paintings of church interiours of the
17th century or in the ‘Carceri’ by Gianbattista Piranesi
(1749/61)). As with writings on architecture, the repre-
sentational delineation is not needed for the architectural
process itself but is a matter of communication between
laymen (and sometimes architects). This development
is also responsible for painting and etching traditions of
the 18th century, like the vedute which formed a com-
mon ground for the aesthetic invention of photography
in both style and subject.
In the fi rst art-critical account of the new technique,
Jules Janin referred to the bible by forcing the towers
of Nôtre Dame de Paris: “Become image!” With this
short sequence, he combined two lines of interest—the
new form of depiction not yet named photography, and
building preservation, recently instigated as a common
bourgeois concern by the Victor Hugo’s novel on the
cathedral of Paris. After Janin, every author on the in-
vention of photography had to refer to the delineation
of architecture for which the new medium seemed to
be most appropriate. On the other hand, most inven-
tors had introduced another motif unconsciously: the
view on or through the studio’s window. This was the
utmost of romanticism as it defi ned the limitation of
human vision by the individual eye, even on the base
of a perspectively correct delineation. Both themes can
be traced throughout the early history of architectural
photography by a comparison between the daguerreo-
type and the calotype.
The daguerreotype with its over-exact details piqued
the interest of scientists like the French Dominique
François Arago or the German Alexander von Humboldt
who emphasized its depicting qualities with the descrip-
tion of strays on a window sill. When the fi rst set of
cameras were delivered to Prussia, the fi rst subjects of
the new technique were buildings in and around Berlin.
The photographs were not only of old buildings photo-
graphed as a method of preservation, but also of newer
ones like Schinkel’s new museum. Until the introduction
of the wet collodion process, there was no doubt within
Central European photography that the delineation of
architecture belonged to the daguerreotype. This was not
so for the United Kingdom and some of the American
pioneers in photography: long pictorial traditions in
landscape painting and aquatint graphics had settled an
emphasis on the view “through the looking glass” and
therefore concentrated on aspects full of atmosphere.
This can be traced in the Scottish albums by William
Henry Fox Talbot as well as in early attempts of David
Octavian Hill and Robert Adamson.
In 1845, the young art critic John Ruskin spent a
number of months in Venice studying the wealth of
Gothic architecture. After seeing a daguerreotypist’s
work, he had his servant learn the technique and then
used those images as proofs of his fi ndings. He drew
reproductions of the photogrpahs and then printed those
drawings in his books on the ‘Stones of Venice.’ The
book’s transformation of architectural images from
daguerreotype to etching was not entirely new as Noël-
Marie Paymal Lerebours had already published his ‘Ex-
cursions Daguerriennes,’ surely known to John Ruskin
but not regarded as suffi cient help in his own fi eld. The
landmark in both architectural and photographic history
set by the ‘Stones of Venice’ is that the author would
not have been able to settle his argument without the
aid of the new technique which was not yet a medium.
It is exactly because of this, however, that the ‘Stones
of Venice’ preserved no historical photographs of the
architecture it represented.
In Ruskin’s case, the time from taking the pictures
to their publication was more than eight years, during
which technical evolutions had accelerated substantially.