Annotated Mona Lisa, The - Strickland, Carol [71]
Brady, “Ambulance Wagons and Drivers at Harewood Hospital,” 1863, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Civil War photographer Brady’s authentic pictures demonstrated the new medium’s claim to be a “mirror with a memory.”
At Bull Run, Brady was almost killed and was lost for three days. Still wearing his long linen duster, straw hat, and a borrowed sword, a gaunt and hungry Brady straggled into Washington. After loading up on new supplies, he rushed back to the front.
DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY. Jacob Riis (1849-1914) was a New York police reporter who had direct experience with the violence of sordid city slums. After flash gunpowder (the equivalent of a modern flashbulb) was invented, he had the element of surprise on his side and invaded robbers’ hangouts, sweat-shops, and squalid tenements to document appalling conditions on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Riis published the shocking details in newspaper exposes and a book, How the Other Half Lives (1890). His graphic images led to the first legislation to reform housing codes and labor laws.
Riis, “Street Arabs in the Area of Mulberry Street,” c. 1889, Jacob A. Riis Collection, Museum of the City of New York. Muckraking photojournalist Riis documented unsavory living and working conditions among the urban poor, as in this shot of homeless children.
Nadar, “Sarah Bernhardt,” 1859, International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, NY. Nadar photographed Paris’s leading lights like the famed actress.
PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY. Nadar (1820-1910), a French caricaturist, began to photograph the leading artistic figures of Paris in 1853. His portraits of luminaries like George Sand, Corot, Daumier, and Sarah Bernhardt were more than just stiff documentary portraits. He conceived, posed, and lighted the figures to highlight their character traits. For instance, in his photograph of Bernhardt, the archetypal tragic actress, he posed her swathed in a dramatic sweep of drapery. Nadar was among the first to use electric light for photographs and invented aerial photography, hovering above Paris in a hot air balloon. He built one of the largest balloons in the world, Le Géant (“the giant”), and was once swept away to Germany and dragged 25 miles over rough terrain before he could halt the runaway craft.
Cameron, “Call, I follow; I follow; let me die,” c. 1867, Royal Photographic Society, Bath. Cameron was the first to shoot pictures out of focus in order to convey atmosphere.
EARLY PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY
It’s no wonder our ancestors look stiff and grim in early daguerreotypes, given the pain involved in capturing on image. To take the first photo portraits, Samuel F. B. Morse made his wife and daughter sit dead still for twenty minutes on the roof of a building in glaring light with their eyes closed (he later pointed in the eyes). Most photographers had special chairs called “immobilizers,” which clamped the sitters’ heads in a vise hidden from the camera’s sight, to make sure their subjects held still. One victim described the ordeal, recalling that he sat “for eight minutes, with the strong sunlight shining on his face and tears trickling down his cheeks while ... the operator promenaded the room with watch in hand, calling out the time every five seconds.” Despite the discomfort, daguerreotypes were wildly popular. Emperor Napoleon III even halted his march to war in front of a studio to have his portrait taken.
ART PHOTOGRAPHY. Julia Margaret Cameron (1815-79) wanted to capture nothing less than ideal beauty. When given a camera at the age of 48, she began making portraits of famous Victorians who also happened to be her friends: Tennyson, Carlyle, Browning, Darwin, and Longfellow. Cameron excelled at defining personality in intense portraits and said, “When I have had such men before