LIGHT AND MAGIC: THE CAMERA

The camera is really very amazing.  Think about it: something which is real is somehow copied onto a piece of paper, and the picture on the paper looks exactly like the real thing, and it only takes a few minutes for this strange little machine to make the whole thing happen.  Digital cameras have of course changed everything, because the film does not have to be developed and the picture shows up right away on a little screen on the back (and this is a completely different mysterious process; different from the original camera, but still quite amazing and difficult to comprehend).

It does seem magical, when you consider it.  Cameras are so easy to get these days, and photographs are almost everywhere, and we’ve lost the sense of wonder that existed in the early days of photography.  But just imagine it.  The best way for people in the year 1820 to keep a picture of a lover was to have someone paint a picture, and the picture did not look like the lover; it looked like a painting of the lover.  In 1824, when the first photograph ever was made, it became possible to make a picture of a person that looked exactly like the real person.  An invention like that would have rocked the world.  And it did.

The first man to make a photograph and find a way to keep the picture on a piece of paper was named Joseph Nicéphore Niépce.  He was the first photographer ever, in a sense.  And yet, the only picture we have of him from the time when he invented photography is a portrait painted after he died, and which was based on a bust that had been done of him.  It seems a terribly inaccurate way to make a picture of a man, and how ironic that the first man to photograph the world would be represented so imprecisely to future generations.

 The earliest photograph still in existence was taken by this man, Niépce.  It is not a terribly pretty thing, especially by our standards of photography today.  But despite its roughness, this picture represents the first attempts ever to make a photograph and to fix it so that it could be looked at over and over.

The most important thing about Niépce’s discovery was that he was able to keep the picture on paper (actually, in his case it was a metal plate).  The idea of the camera obscura has been around for a long time.  Aristotle knew about it, and so did Leonardo da Vinci.  Camera means “chamber,” and obscura means “dark,” so the camera obscura is really nothing more than a dark room, or a dark box.  A small hole in the side of the room or box will project a picture of the outside world onto the wall of the chamber.  It’s true – you can do it in your bedroom.  But more on that later.

Artists used the camera obscura for years to make a projection of what they wanted to draw so that they could simply trace it.  They knew that you could make an image of something show up somewhere else, but no one had found a way to keep that image.  That was what was so significant about Niépce.  But you have to feel sorry for the poor guy.  Not only do we know him through a painting based on a bust, but he never received any recognition for his discoveries.  He died a poor man and an unknown man.

But he did work, at least briefly, with a man by the name of Daguerre.  Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre was his full name, and he was a showman.  He refined Niépce’s process and became rich in the process.  Daguerre called his photographs “daguerreotypes,” rather arrogantly, and he died a wealthy man and a famous man.  He does not quite seem worthy of his predecessor, who called his pictures “heliotypes” and never got any glory for the invention.  But such is life.

Further work on photography, which moved the art (or science, depending on how you look at it) closer to what we know today, was done by a British fellow named William Henry Fox Talbot.  He was something of a chemist, and he experimented until he found chemicals which could be applied to paper so that the sun would leave the image from a camera obscura upon the paper.  He published the first book ever to be illustrated with photographs and called it The Pencil of Nature.  No one could quite believe that the pictures were real – that was how amazing photography was in 1844!  Fox Talbot included the following notice in some copies of his book:

This image is a photograph of a page from the introduction to the
1968 edition of Fox Talbot's book, The Pencil of Nature.

This is what photography was in its early years.  It was revolutionary and earth-shattering.  Taking pictures of the real world that looked like the real world was mysterious and exciting.  Why don’t we get excited about it anymore?  Why do we take cameras and photographs for granted?

Of course the answer is simple.  Photography is everywhere, and it’s inexpensive, and so we forget that there was ever a time that it did not exist.  But just stop for a minute and consider what it is.  It’s completely incredible.  We get upset when a photo turns out with funny shadows or is not in focus.  We seem to forget how ridiculous it is that we are seeing the world in color through a little box (and, in the case of the digital camera, that we are seeing it only seconds after the picture was taken!)

Now back to the camera obscura.  Since it’s just a box or room with no light in it, you really can make one in any room that you can make completely dark.  My husband and I set one up in our bedroom last night.

First, we covered the only window in the room with plastic trash bags.

We had to supplement with other assorted items to get the room completely dark.

Then we cut a little hole in the trash bag. 

This is what our window looked like when we were done. 

And when we woke up this morning, this is what we saw on our bedroom wall across from the window.

So this is what it's like to be inside a camera.

It’s upside-down and backwards, but this is a pretty perfect image of the view out of the window.  Try it at home.  It works best if the wall across from the window is light-colored and doesn’t have anything on it.  Direct sunlight on the window also helps.

As a point of reference, this is what you would have seen if you looked straight out the window:

The camera obscura helps to demonstrate how amazing photography really is (mostly because, ironically, it is less familiar than the much more complex camera-machine).  Isn’t it crazy that light coming through a tiny hole can make such a detailed picture?  Isn’t it crazy that our little boxes with little holes can make such a detailed picture last forever?

Grab a photograph.  Hold it in your hands and try to imagine that you are Joseph Nicéphore Niépce and that this is the first time you have ever seen the world on paper looking almost as good as it does through your eyes.  Marvel at the wonder of the photograph and the mystical little black box that is the camera.

With my Canon Rebel, my personal "little black box."

Information on the history of photography is taken from The illustrated history of the camera from 1839 to the present (Tubbs, D. B., and Michel Auer. Boston: New York Graphic Society, 1975. Print.)