Media History — Visual Revolution

camera obscura

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Terms in this set (21)

image through pinhole projected onto wall
-Daguerre and Niepce
Wedgwood was the first to get an image but didn't know how to make it permanent, so he didn't get credit

1837, (1830s)
-created an image on silver-plated copper with exposure w/ a time of about 15 minutes
-one of a kind, no reproductions
-expensive
-original exposure time ~ 8 hours

Who didn't like photos?

Artists and writers

Collodion process

-1851
-wet-plate photography
-chemical mixture used to coat a plate of glass or iron that makes it sensitive to light
-can be reproduced b/c there are negatives
-can be sold nationwide
-important for the Civil War

Civil War photographer
-images taken during the Civil War were the first to be distributed to a large public audience
-photojournalism
-realistic images changed society's perspective on war

First conflict to be photographed?

The Crimean War (1853-1856)
-both were photographed but this didn't make it to the papers b/c there wasn't the correct technology

Prior to the Civil War...

-illustrated papers were all the rage
-they just weren't illustrated with photographs

Prior to photos

-wood and steel engravings were used for illustrations
-papers would send a sketch artist
-sketches would become engravings
-most of these papers were monthly but some were weekly
-20+ engravings

How did Civil War photographers work?

-Two photographers
-one mixes the chemicals on a glass plate
-other sets up the camera and subjects
-glass plate, chemicals inserted in camera, exposed to light
-return to "darkroom" on wagon to develop

When could photographs be printed?

-After the Civil War
-half toning allowed a negative to be exposed through a screen that broke the image into a series of black and white dots of different sizes
-resulting image fooled the human eye into seeing a continuous tone from white, through grey, to black