A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Photography was “born” in January 1839 when the photographic process discovered by two men was announced within days of each other in Paris and London.  The first to reach the ‘winning post’ was Louis Daguerre of France and then Henry Fox Talbot of England. [See below] Both man were very litigious and charged high fees to use their processes.  For centuries before these experiments had been made with light-sensitive chemicals, including Leonardo da Vinci and Thomas Wedgwood but, until the discovery of fixatives, images quickly faded.

Further experiments by photographers, chemists and many others followed throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and still continue today.  This included improvements in photographic material, the camera and its lens, the size and format of the images as well the creation of permanent and coloured photographs resulting in an overall fall in exposure time and prices.   Dating old photographs depends on the size, format, studio settings and, above all, the costume of any individual in the image.

Louis Daquerre’s (1789-1851) process consisted of a copper plate with a thin coat of polished silver sensitized with iodine and developed in mercury vapour.  The cased one-off ‘Daguerreotypes’ are rare, were expensive, needed a long exposure, have a ‘mirror-like’ appearance and may be laterally reversed and/or coloured.

Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) of Laycock Abbey, Wiltshire, the ‘father of photography’, who had discovered how to make permanent images by 1835, hastened to announce his process within days of Daguerre.  His images - known as ‘Calotypes’ or ‘Talbotype’ - were made on salted notepaper, sensitized with silver nitrate and developed with salt, became transparent when waxed and could be used to make multiple copies.

Wet collodion negatives or Ambrotypes (1851-c1880) were made on glass plates.  The process announced in by Frederick Scott Archer in 1851 consisted of coating the plates with sticky collodion, sensitizing in silver nitrate and developing immediately.  The unpatented process was quicker, cheaper and popular.  Wet collodion was also used on cheap black-painted metal - ‘tintypes’ - popular at fair-grounds and the seaside between 1856 and 1930s.

French photographer, Adolphe Disderi (1819-1890) invented a camera which made multiple small images.  The thin contact prints were pasted onto cards known as ‘Carte de visite’ (1856-c1905; 51mm x 114mm; 2½” x 4½”).  The process came to London and ‘cartomania’ set in when everyone wanted their ‘likeness’ taken after cartes of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were widely sold in 1861.

Between c1866 and c1914, cabinet cards (95mm x 14mm; 3¾” x 5½) were produced but were rare until the 1880s-90s.

Gelatine dry plates

George Eastman (1854-1932) of America was the originator of transparent celluloid roll film and marketed the Kodak camera.  From 1888 amateurs could buy a complete camera, film for 100 circular photographs plus processing for £5.  “You press the button, we do the rest” became their slogan.  The result was that by 1900 informal ‘snapshots’ of smiling people were appearing in family albums and twentieth century photography took off.

Twentieth Century

The death of Queen Victoria in 1901 marked a turning point in photography.  The introduction in 1898 of the folding Kodak camera with its extending bellows and variable shutter speeds and apertures, together with the 5-shilling Box ‘Brownie’ in 1900 created led to a sharp rise in amateur photography.  Professional studios retained about half the market but studio settings and photo mounts became simpler. 

Fashion - General

Fashion - Women (1900-1960)
The ‘swan-back’ corsets with fussy, frou-frou, frills, lace and light fabrics - of the Edwardian
period gave way to much simpler and unstructured clothes in the economies of the First World War.  V-necked blouses - ‘pneumonia’ blouses - replaced the high collar of the 1890s.  Skirts began to shorten and heavy underwear discarded.  By the end of the war the clothing revolution was well under way and culminated in the boyish short styles / dress and pull-on cloche hats of the 1920s.  Bias cut skirts lowered to mid-calf in the 1920s with small hats worn tipped to one side.  Rationing, ‘Utility’ clothing and military-style tailored suits with square shoulders, knee-length skirts and sensible laced shoes were a feature of the Second World War in the 1940s. Hats were always worn. Despite the enormous changes, the older generations, fearful of being regarded as “mutton dressed up as lamb”, ignored fashion and continued to wear clothes reminiscent of their twenties. This meant long skirts, dark colours, black or dark stockings and, always, hat and gloves when going out.

Fashion - Men (1900-1960)
The dark three-piece suit dominated the period for all classes until after WWII.  The more formal morning coat worn with striped trousers and a top hat was worn by City gents and politicians, etc until WWI.  Hats were always worn and indicated status: the boater gave way after the War to flat caps for workers (and leisure wear for all classes) and bowler hats for managers. Stiff collars were worn by professional business men but, by the 1920s, soft collars with the points pinned behind the tie were favoured by the aspiring working and lower middle classes.  Gloves and spats were popular for weddings in the 1920s and 30s, periods when sleeveless, fair-isle sweaters also appeared.  During the War, it was uniforms for all males, military and home front (Home Guard, Fire Service, ARP, etc.).