Historical photographic methods in use today - the art, processes and techniques of alternative photography |
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Writers / Anita Chernewski, Spike MacGee, Sean
History of Alternative processes
A work in progress. Any historians out there with their finger on the facts should feel free to add to this timeline. Send an email to
with your five cents.
1500 |
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1544 |
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1700 |
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1725 |
Johann Schultze, a German physicist discovered that silver salts reacted to light. |
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1800 |
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1806 |
Camera Lucida - A lightweight drawing aid that was patented 1806 by British Scientist William Hyde Wollaston (1766-1828). It was a "light room" consisting of a rod to which a glass prism was affixed. The glass prism had two sides that reflected the scene at which it was aimed. | |
1827 |
Using ' heliography' Niépce produced the first photograph from nature. He photographed his courtyard at his estate in Le Gras. It was taken with a Camera Obscura ad the exposure time was eight hours. The sun had time to move across the courtyard in that time, which is why the shadows are visible on both sides. |
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1829 |
Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, also French, was the inventor of the Diorama - a panoramic light show used for entertainment. He wanted to find a way for images to "record themselves". He sought out Niépce and together they abandoned Heliography and began research silver iodide, which is light sensitive. |
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1833 |
Niépce dies and Daguerre continues the work some time after his death. |
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1834 |
An Englishman, William Henry Fox Talbot, works in a similar way to Wedgewood and produces paper coated with silver nitrate or silver chloride exposing it with a Camera Obscura. Like Niépce, he is able to produce a negative image, but he also realizes that he can contact print it and make a positive image. |
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1835 |
Talbots oldest surviving negative Lattice Window is produced at his home at Lacock Abbey in Wiltshire. He calls it a ' calotype'. Talbot is often called 'The Father of Photography' on account of the discovery that a negative can form a positive and then be reproduced, which is the basis of photography today… well, not counting digital photography. |
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1837 |
Daguerre makes one of the earliest 'silver iodide images' which he calls Daguerrotypes. The quality is fine and exposure times 'only' minutes. |
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1838 |
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1839 |
France: The invention of Daguerrotypes is publicly announced, sold to the French government and released to the public. |
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1839 |
England: Talbot hears of Daguerre's work and produces a paper on his calotype or Talbotype process. |
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1839 |
England: John Herschel (1792 - 1871) managed to fix pictures using hyposulphite of soda. |
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1842 |
John Herschel (1792 - 1871) introduces the cyanotype process, also known as the blueprint process. Kallitype printing is found in Sir John Herschel's paper On the Action of the Rays of the Solar Spectrum on Vegetable Colours, and on Some New Photographic Processes. |
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1843 |
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1844 |
Henry Fox Talbot publishes Pencil of Nature. |
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1851 |
Frederick Scott Archer published details of the wet collodion process, this produced a grainless glass negative capable of making sharp prints, on salt or albumen paper. |
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1880s |
Introduction of the dry plate process in the 1880s. |
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1887 |
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1889 |
W. W. J. Nicol patented the first iron-silver process and he is widely considered to be the inventor of the kallitype. In Nicol's original patent, the print was developed in a silver nitrate bath. He patented several revisions in the early 1890s and in one of these formulas he recommends using silver nitrate in the sensitizer rather than in the developer. This last revision is the method used by most contemporary kallitype printers. | |
1900 |
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1934 |
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The first picture of a pinhole camera obscura is a drawing by Gemma Frisus' De Radio, an astronomer. He used the pinhole in his darkened room to study the solar eclipse of 1544.
Leonardo da Vinci gave a clear description of the Camera Obscura in the 16th century.
Sir Charles Wheatstone publicly presents his reflectin.
In October 1843 Anna Atkins (1799-1871) became the first person to print and publish a photographically illustrated book, using 424 cyanotypes (or as they were known then: "shadowgraphs"). The book was called "British Algae: Cyanotype impressions". It was printed privately and issued in several parts over ten years. Her book therefore precedes Fox Talbot's own Pencil of Nature in 1844.
Pinhole camera from french designers Messrs. Dehors and Deslanders.
PIXIE multipinhole camera is used in space by NASA taking pinhole images of our universe. Stationed on the Polar Spacecraft.
This camera dates from 1934 and was invented by Anson Cross to teach painting in a manner that he thought Vermeer used. Please feel free to continue this timeline email your contribution to us:
Other historical articles: An ironic history of Alt. proc | Cyanotype history | Pinhole history | History of Photographic words and slogans
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Historical photographic methods in use today - the art, processes and techniques of alternative photography
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