467
Richard Beard fi rst purchased an annual license to use
the process then the rights to adopt the daguerreotype in
England; in 1841 opened the fi rst portrait studio in Lon-
don, and started selling licenses to a number of operators
in the provinces for the astonishing sum of £1200. Obvi-
ously, it would be unrealistic for a photographer to pay
that sum for a licence when the daguerreotype portrait
cost one guinea, a little more than the average urban
weekly wage; and the costs of setting up a studio was
about an average of £1100 for building work, equip-
ment and assistants for a fi nal annual income of £2000.
Despite the presence of these and other portrait studios
in other cities, commercial photography strained under
the restrictive patents covering the daguerreotype and
calotype, and Talbot’s patent fee for the latter was £100
for the fi rst year and £150 each following year. What
was needed to improve the situation was a larger patent-
free market, fast and economical processes, and a large
public forum for distribution. This arrived in the 1850s,
transforming and democratizing photography.
The year 1851 marked the beginning of a new period
in photography with Frederick Scott Archer’s invention
of the wet collodion negative which supplanted all exist-
ing methods, and was the fastest photographic process to
date, and the fi rst, in England at least, free from patent
restrictions. The publication of the unpatented process
led directly to the relinquishment of Talbot’s patent in
1854 and bypassed Beard’s daguerreotype patent by
offering a practical alternative for portrait studios. More-
over it made possible to print thousands of photographic
positives from a single negative. This development
provided the backbone for the stereoscopic and carte-de
visite industries and photography progressed from the
status of a cottage industry to semi-industrialization.
Photographers needed assistants who were paid an
average of £150 per year, this rate referred exclusively
to fi rst-class men, and the number of talented assistants
available was very small, so a percentage of the profi t,
or sometimes an offer of partnership, was necessary to
retain them. Otherwise most assistants were paid near
£50.
Manufactories quickly recognised the demand for
processing equipment. Some cameras from the 1840s to
1900 were sold with a range of trays, fl asks, measuring
cylinders, and printing frames, plus full instructions.
In 1850s the costs for a rigid camera ranged between
18 shillings and £6 while for an expanding camera was
between £1 and £11 and a stereoscopic camera ranged
between £3 and £6. More usually, the photographer
bought what he needed for the plate size he worked with.
The basic requirement was for a glasshouse studio, and
a workroom. In the workroom—in which preparation
and processing was carried out—daylight was fi ltered
using yellow glass or yellow cloth to create safe con-
ditions. In smaller studios it was not uncommon for ashed to be erected outdoors to serve as a workroom. It
was possible to hire fully equipped private glasshouses
at the weekly rent of 5 guineas with six lessons. For
photographers working on location, or at local fairs, port-
able darkrooms built around wheelbarrows, darktents,
and ‘photographic wagons’ were available, with price
dependent upon the level of sophistication.
The 1850s saw an improvement in hauling transporta-
tion which consequently increased output and lowered
prices, producing a wave of prosperity lasting until the
early 1860s. Portrait photographers did good business
in the following years but the days of vast fortunes
from photography were still to come. During the whole
decade, fashionable West-end photographers charged a
guinea for a whole plate portrait, 3 guineas for the same
size coloured, and 5 guineas for a large size, coloured.
The price for a stereoscopic picture varied from 1 to
16 shillings.
In 1858 in New York, where the daguerreotype was
essentially the only process used, only later replaced
by the ambrotype, inexpensive and relatively simple
to set up, there were two hundred studios, producing a
combined annual turnover of $2 million.1860s and 1870s
A growing consumer market demanded better-qual-
ity photographs, made more easily and cheaply, and
technologies were adapted to enhance uniformity and
affordability. New lenses improved image resolution
and reduced exposure times, their costs ranged between
6 shillings and 16 guineas; less expensive glass-plate
negatives, which cost between 2 and 6 shillings for a
dozen and coated printing paper brought a new gen-
eration of inexpensive photographic artefacts. The wet
collodion era and, in the U.S., post-Civil War growth at-
tracted many people to the trade, exceeding the demand
for offered services and prices plummeted.
By 1861, carte-de-visites, tintypes, and stereographs
were being produced in their millions, and success-
ful studios were structured like small factories, with
standardized procedures and a clear division of labour,
They were created with the backing of external capital,
collected in the guise of a joint-stock companies, at the
heart of which the photographer was at best a major
shareholder, but often a merely a salaried employee.
Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri, who was reputed to be one
of the richest photographers, taking 1.2 million francs
(£48.000) a year, charged 30 francs for 25 cartes with
two poses, 50 francs for 50 cartes, 70 francs for 100
cartes and 100 francs for a life-size portrait taken on a
plate. In the summer of 1861 33,000 people made their
living from the production of photographs and photo-
graphic materials in Paris. The same year in London the
number of people earning their living from photographyECONOMICS AND COSTS
Hannavy_RT72353_C005.indd 467 7/5/2007 11:18:07 AM