Photography and architecture. Key concepts in theoretical approaches to photography.
Modernism of Julius Shulman: The perception of Southern California landscape through architectural photography, Slav Zatoka
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It is important to mention some names and facts that contributed to the two groundbreaking photographic processes introduced in 1839. Photographic image would not be possible without such inventions as camera obscura, convex lens and the photochemistry process. The camera obscura often appears in encyclopedia entries together with the name of Leonardo da Vinci and his sketch from 1519 (Columbia 1112), however da Vinci never claimed the design. As recently discovered, the credit belongs to a Basra born polymath and philosopher Ibn al-Haytham who wrote a seven-volume work on optics between 1010 and 1021 while under a house arrest in Cairo. The book came to Europe translated to Latin as Book of Optics. The author’s name was also Latinized to Alhacen or Alhazen (Alhacen’s Theory of Visual Perception). He experimented with Albeit Almuzlim (Latin: Camera Obscura) in his attempt to explain the nature of light. Alhacen’s theory of vision will be discussed later in this chapter. In 1558, Giovanni Battista della Porta, in his Magia Naturalis mentions Camera Obscura fitted with a convex lens that improves the brightness and clarity of the image. In 1725, a German physician observed that light changes the color of a chalk moistened with a solution of silver in nitric acid, and finally in 1816, a French amateur scientist, Joseph Nicéphore Niepce was able to produce faint images on paper using a camera obscura and silver salts applied on paper surface, however he was not able to prevent his prints from darkening and could not preserve the image (Coe 9).
Historians of photography often refer to 1839 as the year in which the photography was invented. The two processes that were introduced simultaneously were daguerreotype by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre in Paris and calotype, also known as Talbotype by William Henry Fox Talbot in London. These two processes differed fundamentally. Daguerreotype was a unique, laterally inversed positive monochrome image on a metal plate. Calotype was a negative to positive process. First, a laterally inversed negative had to be produced in camera and treated chemically to make a translucent original negative to be used later to make contact prints on chemically treated paper. The result was a monochrome picture with normal spatial and tonal values. Despite it’s immense popularity daguerreotype was doomed. It was unduplicatable and very expensive. The idea behind the calotype had been perfected over decades and the use of negative to positive chemical photographic process was widely used for more than 150 years.
Figure 2 Julius Shulman (photographer) Case Study House #22, Los Angeles, 1960 Pierre Koenig, Architect, Getty Research Institute, © J. Paul Getty Trust.
Julius Shulman’s most recognizable and the single most reproduced architectural photograph, House #22 (see Fig. 2) is a direct descendant of William Henry Fox Talbot’s calotypes. The choice of camera, lens and printing also corresponds directly with the basic principles of early photography. Shulman used a large format view camera, which consists of a lens plate, a lens, back plate with a negative holder and bellows and a focusing screen (Photographing Architecture and Interiors 19-45).
Shulman was a pioneer in applying new techniques in architectural photography. One of them was the use of multiple exposures and artificial lights in order to achieve a uniform exposure throughout the frame. This pioneer approach to architectural photography will be discussed later in the next chapter. Given the popularity of images like House #22, we may be the last fine examples of this chemically based photographic process before the dawn of the digital photography. [1]
We must now move on to presenting some of the critical approaches to photography and shall concentrate on the basic principles of visual perception in Alhacen’s Book of Optics. We will discuss ways of seeing art as described in John Bergers’ Ways of Seeing. Furthermore, in this review, we shall discuss Susan Sontag’s On Photography and an essay: Camera Constructs by Andrew Higgott and Timothy Wray.
[1][endif] Suggested further reading on optical chemical photographic process: Rosenblum, Naomi. A World History of Photography. Fourth Edition. New York: Abbeville Press, 2008. Print. , Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present. 5 edition. Paul Getty Museum, 2011. Print.
