177
See Also: Camera Design: 6 Kodak, (1888–1900);
Camera Design: 5 Portable Hand Cameras (1880–
1900); and Lumière, Auguste and Louis.
Further Reading
Erika Billeter, ed. Malerie und Photographie in Dialog, von 1840
bis heute. Zurich: Kunsthaus Zurich, 1977.
Jean-François Chevrier. “Bonnard and Photography” in Bonnard:
The Late Paintings, Sasha M. Newman, ed. Paris: Musèe
National d’Art Moderne, 1984.
Françoise Heibrun and Philippe Néagu. Pierre Bonnard: Pho-
tographs and Paintings. New York: Aperture Foundation,
1988.
Dorothy Kosinski. The Artist and the Camera: Degas to Picasso.
Dallas: Dallas Museum of Art, 1999.
Antoine Terrasse. Bonnard: Biographical and Critical Study,
Stuart Gilbert, transl. Geneva: Skira, 1964.
Charles Terrasse. Bonnard. Paris: Henri Floury, 1927.
BOOKS AND MANUALS ABOUT
PHOTOGRAPHY: 1840s
The world’s fi rst photographic manual was, under-
standably, a modest affair. Published in April 1839 by
Ackermann and Company, Ackermann’s Photogenic
Drawing Apparatus was an eight-page pamphlet offer-
ing detailed instructions for using Henry Fox Talbot’s
pioneering paper negative process. A single copy of the
pamphlet —apparently written with Talbot’s approval
and cooperation—forms part of the Royal Photographic
Society’s Collection at the National Media Museum
in Bradford, England. The introduction refers to the
pioneering nature of this publication:
In offering to the public the following directions for the
practice of Photogenic Drawing, which may emphatically
be called the New Art, we must claim the indulgence of
our readers for the necessarily imperfect nature of some
of the details; the art itself is but in its infancy, and until
the mode in which the drawings were made was liberally
disclosed by Mr. Talbot, a Fellow of the Royal Society of
London, the whole subject was involved in mystery.
Problems with nomenclature were already evident
in that fi rst year of photographic publication, with
the English photogenic drawing apparently seen as
an alternative and interchangeable description of the
French daguerreotype, despite the two being radically
different processes. Thus, amongst the three texts pub-
lished during 1839 by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre,
a translation by J. S. Memes (published in London by
Smith and Elder), was entitled The History and Prac-
tice of Photogenic Drawing on the True Principles of
the Daguerreotype, with the new method of Dioramic
Painting. London publishers W. Strange offered a 46
pp. English translation of History and Practice of Pho-
togenic Drawing by means of the Daguerreotype with
notes and explanations of M. Arago.
Talbot’s own sixteen page treatise, Some Account of
the Art of Photogenic Drawing, or the Process by which
Natural Objects may be made to delineate themselves
without the aid of the artist’s pencil appeared in the same
year, published by R. and J. Taylor. The most substantial
of these early publications, was Daguerre’s An Histori-
cal and descriptive Account of the Various Processes
of the Daguerreotype and the Diorama, published in
London by McLean and Nutt. By the end of the 1840s,
despite a rapid growth in photography’s popularity, only
a further twenty-nine English language manuals and
pamphlets were published, although several of these
were translations from French and German.
Talbot appears to have been content to let others
compile manuals for his photogenic drawing negative
process, and two such pamphlets were published in
1840—Alfred Swain Taylor’s On the Art of Photo-
genic Drawing (London: Jeffrey, 38 pp) and Nathaniel
Whitlock’s Photogenic Drawing Made Easy: A manual
of Photography (London: J. Robins, 16 pp). He did,
however, arrange for the publication of his own im-
portant paper to the Royal Society in 1841 in which
the calotype process was introduced. The Process of
Calotype Photogenic Drawing, Communicated to the
Royal Society, June 10th 1841, a 4 p. pamphlet, was
published by J. L. Cox of London.
The fi rst of several seminal texts by Robert Hunt
was published in 1841. A Popular Treatise on the Art of
Photography, including Daguerreotype, and All the New
Methods of Producing Pictures by the Chemical Agency
of Light was published in Glasgow by Richard Griffi n
and Company, and at 96 page, was the most compre-
hensive account of photographic practice published to
that date. It ran to several editions, the most important
perhaps being the 234 page 1851 volume Photography:
A Popular Treatise on the Chemical Changes Produced
by Solar Radiation, and the Production of Pictures from
Nature by the Daguerreotype, Calotype, and Other
Photographic Processes published by J. J. Griffi n of
London. Hunt’s 1844 treatise, Researches on Light:
An Examination of All the Phenomena Connected with
the Chemical and Molecular Changes Produced by the
Infl uence of the Solar Rays; Embracing All the Known
Photographic Processes, and New Discoveries in Art,
published by Longmans, Green and Longmans was, at
303 page, the largest volume on photography published
in that fi rst decade.
In addition to Daguerre, Talbot and Hunt, other
writers whose works would exert major infl uence over
the practice of the new art also appeared in print during
the 1840s. Signifi cant amongst these was the American
Henry Hunt Snelling. His volume, The History and
Practice of the Art of Photography; or the Production
of Pictures Through the Agency of Light; Containing all
the Instructions necessary for the Complete practice ofBOOKS AND MANUALS ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY: 1840s