Wisconsin Public Television University Place Presents  Dan Fuller Photographic Methods Before Photography  September 4, 2012 UP763   cc >> Welcome to University Place Presents. I'm Norman Gilliland. The year is 1825. The place: Paris. Louise Daguerre is concerned about the mental health of her husband, Louis, who has become obsessed with the idea of creating a permanent image in a thing called a camera. She goes to a chemist by the name of Dumas, and asks him is such a thing even possible? And Dumas says perhaps, someday. What is the origin of Daguerre's obsession, and what will it lead to? My guest is Dan Fuller, professor of art history at the UW-Madison. Welcome to University Place Presents. >> Thank you. >> Daguerre was what by profession that led him into this discovery? >> He was a painter. 

He was an artist, but more particularly, he was a scenic designer in the big theaters of Paris, like the Paris Opera. >> And more than just a set designer, I gather though. He obviously was far more sophisticated than we think of just somebody painting palm trees. >> Well, to be a set designer was maybe to design everything. I mean, all the colors, the props at the foreground of the stage. There's a lot of engineering involved. It was all the mechanics on the stage, too, besides just painting the backdrops. It was the design. He had a lot of people working under him. >> And I think this is an image of Daguerre here that we have coming up in just a moment. 

And the thing with these images, apparently was to create a serious illusion for the audience. >> That's right. Daguerre was really successful, and so much so that some of the productions he worked for people went to see them because of the decorations more than for the acting or the singing. >> The special effects. >> It was all about special effects. But in 1839, he surprised everyone by coming up with what we call photography. The Daguerreotype. And I'd like to start there and then work backwards about where it came from, what he knew, what technology he would be familiar with, what techniques he knew to show that this new kind of image making didn't come out of thin air, that it had a background and a heritage. >> And is this a Daguerreotype we have here? This is a sample of his work? >> That is. That is. 

In Paris, the first Daguerreotypes, the first half year of 1839, they were only capable of recording landscapes or still-lives. They weren't fast enough, they weren't light-sensitive enough to arrest any sort of motion. In 1839, he thought it would be impossible to make a portrait with the Daguerreotype. So that would have to wait for later. >> In order to get the subject to sit still long enough? >> It was impossible. On a really bright day, like this picture in the middle of summer say, it would be at least 10 minutes. >> Which would be asking a lot. >> Yeah. You could get a picture, but the person would be in pain and their eyes would be watery. It would be bad. 

It would be bad. >> So the painter still had the advantage at this point in 1839 in portraiture at least. >> Yeah, unless you love architecture. Unless you loved architecture. >> And what does this indicate in the career of Daguerre here? This image that we have. >> It's a still-life of a plaster cast. I think he's just showing off what the Daguerreotype was then capable of. Minute detail. And when people first saw them, they thought it was a hoax. They thought some device had been in it so that you could draw a minute image like that. 

Some sort of thing that would reduce your drawing. And so people would examine them with magnifying glasses or microscopes, and that's what knocked them out completely because people would count the leaves on trees or the bricks in a facade to prove to themselves that it didn't take someone a month or two to draw these. And the next slide shows sort of the public reaction to it. >> Suddenly everybody's making images. >> In 1839 it was every man who had the money would buy the apparatus, the camera and the chemical equipment to make a Daguerreotype. And this lithograph shows a steamship being loaded with cameras. >> There's a hot air balloon. >> A hot air balloon whose gondola is a camera. A locomotive pulling a chain of cameras. And so the Daguerreotype spread very quickly around the world. 

So by, well, by the end of 1839, Daguerreotypes have been taken, of course, in the United States, in Russia, and in Egypt. In 1841, they reached Australia and Antarctica. In 1842, Daguerreotypes had been taken in China. So within a very few years, these pictures were being made all over the world. >> What kind of a businessman is Daguerre? Because if he has the debut of this process and suddenly everybody's using it, he should become a wealthy man, right? >> Yes if he could control it, and that was the problem. That was the problem. He announced the process existed, and he showed people results in the winter, in January 1839, but he didn't divulge how to do it until that summer because he knew this process really wasn't that complicated and that if he announced it to one person, the whole world would know about it. So he waited until the French Parliament gave him money, and the French Government just bought the process outright and gave it freely to the world. So he had an annuity for the rest of his life, and then his widow had money after his death. So that was the way to protect his rights. 

>> There's a famous myth, which I assume Daguerre was aware of, the, what might be called, the origins of photography or portraiture. >> Or all the arts, really. Yes. In the years just before Daguerre's announcement, in the late 18th century and the early 19th century, this old idea, this old myth of the invention of the graphic arts gained currency again. Do you have that picture up? >> We have this image, yes. >> Yes. That's by Joseph Wright of Derby, an English painter. This is commissioned by an English manufacturer named Josiah Wedgwood, and it shows a scene described by Pliny the Elder, the Roman historian and I guess we'd call him a scientist. And he describes this as the birth of sculpture, but, in a way, I like to think of it as the birth of photography too because this Corinthian maid, she's called, some time before Christ wants to make a keepsake for her young lover who's going off on a trip. And so she, while he's asleep apparently, leaning against a wall. 

>> I'm not sure what that says about their relationship in this image, but you get the idea. >> Well, they're nervous. Both are fragile. She traces his image on the wall, or maybe scratches it into the plaster, the shadow of his profile cast there by a light. It's kind of hidden behind that curtain on the left there. And Pliny says this was the beginning of sculpture, drawing, painting, and really it can be counted as the beginning of photography because what she's doing is noticing an optical effect and finding a way to make it permanent. And so this story, the tracing of shadows, was pretty well considered by the Greeks and the Romans as where the graphic arts began, and you can see why with the next slide, that Greek face. >> Look at this face from Grecian urn as we might call it. >> That's right. From the fifth century before Christ which is all about profile, all about the outline of the figures, and photography too. 

The next slide shows that. >> Look at a series of, these are from the time of Daguerre? This series? >> No, these are from 80-90 years later just showing, working the idea of the profile. But more directly, the next one is from the time of Daguerre. >> And this has to do with, it's obviously another still-life that we're going to be seeing in a moment here, but there's something else going on too in terms of what the Daguerreotype is capable of? >> No, this is actually less going on. This is a picture, a photographic picture made without a camera. A Daguerreotype is a camera picture. This is botanical specimens laid directly on a photosensitive surface. In this case, photographic paper which is, well, it's a direct link to that idea of the Corinthian-made of recording a shadow. >> And that distinction is, in a way, an even more direct form of art than photography because it's actually an image of the thing itself. >> The thing itself. 

It's like a footprint in the sand or a fossil or something like that. >> Like the hand prints, the famous hand prints in the neolithic cave. >> That's right. Like a stencil. >> Yeah, right. >> And that idea of capturing a distinct outline was very popular in the late 18th century during the American Revolutionary period. >> A silhouette. >> Yeah, where machines were made to aid the artist in capturing a very accurate profile of a person like in that picture there. >> Now, another, I guess, famous example of an image that we think of not so much artistic but in technical or practical terms is this way of watching or following an eclipse without staring at the sun. >> That's right. 

This is similar but not exactly the same. There's not shadow unless you have light, of course. So we were talking about silhouettes where you're tracing the shadow, this is an example of a natural camera obscura which is showing the light. This actually was a snapshot taken not too many years ago in Kazakhstan. It's the eclipse, the solar eclipse of 2008. And this effect was noticed in antiquity. Some people said it was Aristotle who first wrote about it. If you're under heavy foliage... >> Like a grape arbor. >> A grape arbor, a magnolia tree, whatever, during a solar eclipse and there's small spaces between the leaves, little apertures, if you look on the ground, or in this case on a white sheet of paper, you'll see the image of the eclipse repeated every time the light gets through. 

But strangely, it's not exactly what you'd see if you looked in the sky. >> It's inverted somehow. >> That's right. It's upside down and reversed right to left. >> Uh-huh. >> Which perplexed people. >> Which is counter-intuitive because there's not a lens involved here. >> No, and you'd think with the irregular hole made between leaves, you'd think the light you'd get on the page would be the shape of the hole. >> Right. >> But instead it's a picture of what's going on in the heavens. 

Here's an example of the same thing, but instead of using foliage, it's a camera. Camera is just the Italian word for chamber. Yeah, that's what you'd ask for if you wanted a hotel room in Rome, a camera. And, kind of confusingly and kind of clearly, this shows it because they've removed two of the walls in the room. The idea is if you have a room completely closed off from the outside except for one little hole that's facing something interesting, like, in this case, an eclipse, the eclipse of 1544, on the wall opposite the hole, you'll get the image of the eclipse upside down and backwards. And, in fact, if you stayed in the room long enough so your eyes would adjust to the gloom, you would see just normal daily activities, people passing around outside, birds flying all through this hole. The trouble is the hole has to be fairly small or you don't get an image. I mean, if you just had a wide open window, there wouldn't be an image. >> You get more light but a very fuzzy or non-existent image. >> Yeah. 

It has to be of a particular size or nearly a particular size. So it has to be rather small. If it's too small, it's too dim. If it's too big, it's too fuzzy. But it existed, people noticed it, solar eclipses, and they noticed it just naturally sometimes too. >> So we tell young people in the audience don't try this trick at home by drilling holes in the wall. The trial and error could get to be pretty disastrous. But, in effect, it is something that you could do as a home experiment. >> You could do it as a home experiment. A box a refrigerator came in would be a good thing. 

You could cut a small hole in it, or you might just notice it somewhere. >> Now, is it possible under these circumstances to see color? >> Sure. It's live. It's live and it's in color, motion, color, everything except that it's upside down and backwards. >> And are there places where this sort of happens accidentally from architectural interference? >> Well, you could imagine that it would be. There could be. You could imagine being in a very tight tent that just has one moth hole in it. Or being in a cave with some kind of covering over the front with just one hole. Or in your bedroom at night with the shades drawn and with just some small aperture you'll notice the lights of a passing care on the street going, passing the opposite direction on the back wall. People notice this all the time, and we have a slide of that. 

>> This is a spectacular image here. You tell me this is a fairly, in effect, it's an accidental, or certainly a natural, byproduct of the architecture here. >> This is a snapshot taken in a castle in southern Switzerland. And it's hard to tell what it is, but I'll tell you what it is. On the left-hand side, just out of the picture, are four or more arrow slits. This is in the wall of a castle. And those arrow slits are small enough that they're functioning as the pinholes of a camera obscura. So we have successive versions of the same image down the wall. And you can see there's color. Although, it's upside down and backwards so it's confusing. 

So if you just look at it and imagine, there's a white cloud surrounded by a little bit of blue. There's some vertical elements, maybe trees, and then finally, really noticeably, there's this red area. They're the roofs of this town. And the next slide shows you what the town looks like. >> We'll see that in just a moment. So I gather it's still a relatively rare phenomenon because you have to have that slit rather than a window, obviously. >> That's right. It would be a much better image if someone would go in that castle and plaster the wall on the right. That would help a lot. >> So you'd get a smooth image. 

>> And it would be better if someone filled in one of those arrow slits and just let the remaining, say, around a tenth of an inch wide hole. The perfect sized pinhole for a situation like that would be a tenth of an inch wide hole projecting onto a wall that's about 12 feet away. But it doesn't have to be perfect. It's perfectly noticeable without that. So if you were curious and interested, you could do some experiments, a thousand, two thousand years ago, and see how this worked. >> And so this, just in passing, is the image of that town which is...? >> Bellinzona. >> Rendered that way through those arrow slits. >> That's right. That's right. So this was something people noticed, whether they did anything with it, for thousands of years from the time of the ancient Greeks. 

Here's another, maybe a better illustration of the same effect. >> With a little bit more of a, it gives you a little better idea of what's actually going on there. And the physics and the thinking behind a lot of this to actually create these effects is very impressive when you think some of it goes back 500 or a thousand years. >> The physics is impressive, but you could discover it accidentally. You don't have to know how it works to make it work, necessarily. Of course, the problem was that if the hole is small, the image is sharp; if the hole is larger, it's brighter but it's less clear. It wasn't really useful for tracing something really useful until you had a lens. >> A lens. >> Because a lens gathers more light and focuses more light than the pinhole could do. And so this is from the 18th century. 

It's a camera obscura. And also, the other thing that was realized, you didn't have to be inside the room to see it. >> That's an important breakthrough, isn't it? >> Yes, the camera ceases to be a room 12 feet by 12 feet or something, a black room, when it could just be a box you hold in your hand and have some way to see what's going on inside. So this elaborate camera obscura from the 18th century, the man's using it to trace the outlines of a really complicated little sculpture. And the next slide is a cutaway version of a similar camera, and it shows you how it works. >> But we hasten to say here that these are still images that are dependent upon the moment. In other words, there's nothing permanent about these images. >> Depending on how fast you could draw. >> Yeah, right. >> That's the problem. 

But compared to doing it free-hand with just your eye, much quicker. So that camera, the previous camera worked just like this. A lens at one end, at the other end of the camera a mirror, just a flat mirror set at 45 degrees that throws the image up on a translucent screen like ground glass or wax paper or what have you. And so the image would appear there, and you could put onion skin, tracing paper on top of it and trace the image. And these were known and used for hundreds of years. With the lens, the camera obscura was used for some time before 1550. >> With a lens? >> That's right. Lenses were a late Medieval development, but monks, especially as they aged and their eye sight got weak, needed magnifiers. So first a magnifying glass and then magnifying glasses fit into frames. And so that's the lens you need for a camera obscura, just a magnifier like that. 

Nothing really very fancy. >> And we know that some artists in the Renaissance, I suppose, actually did use lenses to paint. >> This is a disputed area now. >> Uh-huh. >> But, as someone who teaches the history of photography, whoops, someone who teaches the history of photography, yes, I suspect so. It seems to me whenever you see something that strikes you as being, what we call, photo-realistic, that you've got to ask some questions. How it was done and maybe even how quickly it was done. One artist from later than the Renaissance who we know for sure used the camera obscura in his compositions was Canaletto. We know this because we actually have his camera. >> The smoking gun. 

>> The smoking gun. And we have the products of the camera. That's the next slide. >> And we'll see this here. Okay, the products of the camera being? >> Four sketches of a square in Venice. It's the, let me see, what is it? I've lost it. I've completely forgotten the name of it. >> But it's Venice. >> It's Venice. It's a church square. 

You can see the church on the first two sheets, continuing on to the fourth. And the problem is, of course, he can't fit it all in one view. If he was drawing the church free-hand, if he was just sketching it, he could scale it. >> Make the canvas the size that he wanted. >> Well, he could scale it to any size piece of paper he wanted. >> Right. >> But he was using a camera with a fixed focal length lens. So he could only draw what the lens could give him. And why didn't he back up to get more of the church in? Well, there's a canal behind him. >> That could be awkward. 

>> This is the problem we all face when we have a camera and the zoom doesn't get us exactly where we need to be. We back up as far as we can, and often, we have to make a picture out of what the camera gives us instead of finding the very perfect point of view. >> That's true. We tend to overlook the fact that cameras have their limitations too in terms of the picture they can provide. >> That's right. >> All the other limitations in terms of point of view. >> So, Canaletto just had to stand where he could stand, and to make up for the defect of the camera, he moved it four times to make four different views which he pieced together to make a painting. >> So it was a form of panorama, actually. A technique that will still be used today where you have multiple images that are stitched together in a seamless result. >> Absolutely. 

And that's when painting comes in useful. >> Just do it. >> Where you can cover the joints more carefully than you could. >> And is this the same neighborhood that he was working in? >> Yes, it's the same church. >> As rendered in the difference book. Now we'll get into some of the, for lack of a better term, I'll call it physics or optics behind some of these effects. >> That's right. So, if you had a difficult object, a difficult building to paint in the real world, you could use a camera obscura, but if you were inventing something out of thin air, an idealized Jerusalem, people floating in air. >> How do you create proportions? >> How can you make it look correct in terms of perspective? And so one of the highlights of the Italian Renaissance was the development of an abstract geometrical method of producing convincing perspective. This is what a camera obscura does absolutely automatically. 

This would be the hard way with a ruler and a pencil. >> Okay. And so what we're seeing here is something that would give us a sense of depth perspective? >> This is the first step in creating linear perspective. In the 1430s, Leon Battista Alberti came up with a how-to book based on the discoveries of his friend Brunelleschi. And he says imagine a window that's as big as the picture you want to paint. If you want a rectangular picture, draw a rectangular window. If you want a square picture, as in this case, draw a square one. And then the next step is deciding where you want the horizon to be. >> So you need, obviously, some horizontal lines here to represent that. >> Sure. 

Well, in the image there, the "A" is this perspective point, and that would be a dot on the horizon that's where the horizon cuts through the plane. >> So we will, bingo, put in the horizon. >> That's right. >> And with arbitrary measurements across the base, you draw them to the perspective point, and you already get the sense of the perspective. It looks like multiple train tracks are heading for a tunnel. >> Right. And this is where it gets to be that fascinating intersection between art and science. >> Absolutely. Absolutely. >> And then we apply it to an actual painting here. 

>> That's right. Well, and the lines existed before the painting because this painting of the Virgin Mary is based on this solid geometric framework. The Virgin Mary did not pose for this painting. This was generated in the studio. But it gives exactly the view you would get if you had this scene. It would be the mechanical geometric way to get at what a camera obscura would show you. So Alberti gives instructions for this geometric method with this imaginary window, and then he gives instructions, well I'm getting ahead of myself, instructions for a real window. Let's go to the next slide. >> Okay, a real window. Here we go. 

>> No, not really. This is a beautiful example of this geometric method where Christ is giving the key to the church to St Peter. >> And you actually have the geometry there in the tiles of the plaza. >> Right. >> A clever idea. >> Yeah. It's an imaginary beautiful Jerusalem with beautiful architecture that never existed looking like that. It's lovely. Although, you do get the sense that the figures are more like chess pieces on a board. >> Well, yeah, the squares certainly help it create that illusion. 

>> So, Alberti discusses that as a way to make a picture with correct perspective, and then he talks about the window in a different way. Instead of just imagining you have a window through which you see the scene that will become your painting, he says make a window. So this is a frame divided by threads to make into little squares. And the important point of this is there's a little viewfinder in front of it on the table. So the artist sits by this table, looks through the little viewfinder and sees the scene, an actual scene, in this case an actual town, through the frame, and he notes where the various parts of the town occur in the grid, and then he transfers that onto a similar grid that's on the right side of the table there. He breaks down the problem into little pixels we call them, picture elements. >> That's true. In a sense it's different from the way television works. >> That's right. >> It's a grid. 

>> If you have a big picture and it's hard to draw, it's easier to break it into a lot of smaller pieces. And this is called Alberti's window or the veil, and this became a very practical, alongside the geometric method, this became a very practical device for artists to use. So here's an example, I guess, from the 18th century used in portraiture, and portraiture, especially, because people don't like to sit for long. So very quickly you could locate the coordinates of the face, get that set down, and then they could come back another day and you can try to get them back in. But at least you have it within a few minutes. >> You do have their proportions at least. >> That's right, so nothing will be horribly wrong. >> Right, which can be the hardest part, I imagine, getting that face to each part to be just where it's supposed to be. >> That's right because just a half inch move and it will change everything. Here's another example of a woodcut by Albrecht Durer of a man doing something very similar, and he really shows that viewfinder he's looking through. 

But instead of making coordinates, he's just painting or drawing the image on glass. He's viewing a man through a glass window, and he's using something like a grease pencil. >> And then he uses that window as the basis for a canvas. >> That's right. If the glass were the same size as the canvas, he'd have to find some way to transfer the grease pencil drawing onto a piece of paper, which you could do by rubbing it hard enough. I think it would transfer enough of it so you'd get the geometry correct. >> So there are all kinds of techniques for recreating the very specific proportions and perspectives that you're seeing here. >> And the whole point of all of this besides they're beautiful pictures, this is another Durer of a similar but slightly different machine, the point of all of this is that the camera is just the last in a long line of machines, optical, mechanical machines that artists found useful to draw, particularly difficult objects to draw, like in this case a lute, this strange pear shape which, if you saw from an oblique angle, might be hard. This is like the game Battleship where the man on the right is actually finding the coordinates, A7, B9, for various points of the lute that the man on the left is indicating with a wand. >> That's another fascinating combination of science and art. 

You would not have thought that a painting of a lutenist would be such a technical undertaking. >> Sure, sure. And so you imagine if you had an object that was particularly hard to draw in a painting, you might work it up in a sketch, like on that Durer, and then install it in the painting later. So these techniques, the geometric ones, the optical and mechanical ones were known and used by all artists since the Renaissance. >> Including set designers. >> And they really found their use, it was a vogue, it's still the same way today in set design. So from, what's this, from the 1580s, this amazing theater that was a test bed for all these techniques, what's this, is the Teatro Olimpico in Italy. It was built, finished in 1585. A very strange, strange place. On the right, you see a semi-circular auditorium where the people sat. 

In the middle, there's this flat section where the actors, this is a section just cut right through the building. >> A cross-section. >> A cross-section. And the middle is the flat place where the actors acted. And then, on the left, there's this strange truncated shrinking town. It goes off into the distance to give the illusion if you're sitting out in the auditorium that you're looking at a half-mile of a city when really you're just looking twelve yards toward the back wall of the theater. And this was actually built as a permanent set. So it's kind of like "All in the Family." It never changes. Every play they have, I guess, has to go in front of the same city street. >> It's pretty much the same town. 

>> And a front view from the auditorium would look something like this. So, it looks like an Italian plaza. The problem is, of course, the actors have to act in the front zone. If they go too far back, they'll begin to look like giants. >> So is the stage flat horizontal stage? Or are they working on a raked stage? >> I think that their stage is flat, but then the scenery, yes, it's raked. That's right. That's right. The perspective is what we call forced. It's not flat. It's not two-dimensional, but it's three dimensions compressed into two and a half dimensions or something like that. 

So each stage you have to design separately because it's on flats. A series of usually large paintings marching back toward the back wall of the theater. >> It's fascinating that the set design and the whole kind of illusion of theater was so sophisticated. We're talking about 16th century here. >> Sure. Well, there was money in it. The people who had money were very interested in opera and drama and light entertainment. >> And I suppose you needed something a little more exciting than what you had last year. >> That's right. That's right. 

The designers were in competition with each other, and they wanted to impress even though it was just paint and plaster and thin wood. They had to come up with something new. So by the time Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre came to Paris in, what, 1806 as an apprentice to the head designer at the Paris Opera, this was the sort of decoration he would be expected to come up with. >> Spectacular. >> Spectacular. I mean, how many layers there are before you get to the distance, which looks like it's a river on a summer day. And there's even a bridge going from one side of the stage to the other with people running around on it. So it's all designed with perspective in mind that if you were in the very perfect place, if you were on the seventh row in the center... >> The eye of the prince. >> The eye of the prince where that one point for which the perspective would be just perfect. 

>> It's a little like stereo effect now. >> Sure. >> If you're at the right sweet spot in a room, it's like everything's taking place inside your head, acoustically. >> Absolutely. >> Another idea of how these things were mapped out here. >> That's right. So Daguerre had all these techniques and had desires to push them further. In 1816, he was made the head designer of his own theater on the Boulevard du Temple. Here's a plan of it with the theater next door. On this boulevard were many, many theaters. 

This was a theatrical part of Paris, and you can see, looking down on it, the auditorium and then behind it I've marked in red these various layers of perspective paintings that he would be expected to produce for various productions. And, of course, the paintings would be changed between acts. So you would be in Peru for one act and in Paris for the next one or on the moon, whatever you want. Maybe fantastical places but all looking as if they existed in depth. >> Now, are they using screens for any of this? Painted screens? >> Sure, yeah. They drop down from above or pushed up from the floor. And here's one of his designs, a fantastic design, obviously using the kind of one-point perspective that Alberti suggested because it's an absolutely fantastic place. It's the palace of Aladdin. >> Oh, of course. You have to be fantastic in that. 

What are some of the effects he's creating here? Or how does he create some of these effects? >> Purely from his imagination and geometry. However, sometimes, due to the tastes of the day, he actually depicted places that really existed, especially Gothic ruins. >> Very fashionable. >> And so the next image is a ruined church, Holyrood Chapel, outside of Edinburgh in Scotland which still looks like this today. It's been ruined since the late 18th century, and they had haven't fixed the roof yet. The roof collapsed. But very romantic and the kind of situation where if you worked it up abstractly using geometry, it wouldn't get you there because this is a church that has fallen down. The geometry is very irregular. This is the sort of subject for which going to Edinburgh and using a camera obscura would be very useful to capture something that's irregular. >> The specifics. 

>> And also, forget about geometry and if the perspective is right, but getting the mood right because with a camera obscura you're actually seeing how the light falls on it. And so those fleeting effects of moonlight or whatever would be something you'd notice with a camera that you wouldn't notice just working straight from geometry. And so, Daguerre's next move was to take all he had learned from the theater about the perspective, about these devices like the camera obscura, and coming up with his own creation. He and a partner came up with this new kind of theater called the diorama. >> Okay, now we're getting into some really special effects territory. >> That's right. And you can see on the left-hand side, the lower left-hand side of the picture, his rather large building. It's as tall as the street, three-story building, and it housed three gigantic paintings. How gigantic were they, you might ask. >> I have a hunch it's a matter of immersion. 

>> 71 by 45 feet. So that's about the size of an IMAX theater screen. Actually, I looked it up. And the idea was just to overwhelm the audience with huge scenic effect with very carefully controlled lighting. >> So this is the start of would-be conventional in relative darkness. >> That's right, more than relative darkness. >> Just total darkness. >> Yeah. >> So the audience is wondering what's going on here. >> The ushers in, a full house would be 350 people, they're ushered in, the door is closed, it goes dark, to let their eyes adjust he just used daylight, just had windows with giant dampers on them so they could control it very carefully. 

And they're sitting in the dark, their eyes adjust to the gloom, and then down a tunnel, a dark tunnel, they see a painting, what is a painting, a giant painting begin to glow, but it's far enough away that they can't quite tell that it's a painting. So they see, like, a sunrise on Monte Carlo or a volcano in Mexico gradually come to life and then go through a change. He would change it from lighting on the front of the painting to on the back of the painting, so something he'd painted on the back of it would appear that was invisible at the beginning. So a cathedral that was empty at the beginning of the performance would be full of people by the end, and there'd be candles. >> Stunning. >> That's right. And he could make the moon go across the sky. All sorts of things. This is a section through the Paris diorama. It's kind of confusing. 

There were up to three different screens they used. The audience sat in the middle on a platform that rotated. So they'd see one show in 15 minutes, then the lights would go down again. >> Some kid downstairs cranking it. >> Someone would be cranking it around, and then they'd imperceptibly shift and see another screen and maybe even another screen, another giant painting. And people claimed that they thought it was real. They thought they were transported to the Swiss Alps, if that was the scene. >> It was quite an effect. >> Very convincing. He had a scene of Paris and he actually gave out binoculars for people to examine the details. 

And the best thing, the best thing is if you were the manager of an entertainment like this, there were no actors to pay, there were no dancers, there were no opera singers, there were no managers. >> And you had total control. >> You had total control. No problem with your employees at all. If they wanted to go on strike, you could hire three more people in a day, teach them how to turn the cranks. >> It's like a big magic box, in effect, that these people enter into things. It's also a little bit like one of the more sophisticated rides in Disney World or some place like that. >> It feels really modern like that, and it's strange that Daguerre invented the Daguerreotype which is a rather small picture. The largest, they were 6.5 by 8.5 inches. It seems like what he wanted to invent was something like IMAX. 

>> Right. >> It feels theatrical. It feels like a motion picture in a way. But the kind of motion picture you go to see not for the acting but for the special effects. >> The special effects. Well, what else is new? >> That's right. >> There are films like that today that the special effects trump everything else. >> That's right. So, this is from a toy. Kind of patterned after the diorama. 

I have many frames like this, but here are three to give you a sense of the atmospheric effect. So here we have a scene on a Swiss lake in the morning, say. >> Okay, and then we're going to go straight to... >> It's getting much darker. And then finally, that's right. >> We see some motion down there on the lake too, the boat moving around. >> So this is just a thin painting on the front and the back of canvas or thin paper, and it changes depending up where the light is coming from, from in front of it and from behind it. And we should stay here for a little bit. So, Daguerre is an up and coming inventor, painter, entrepreneur, and always looking for something new. And you can imagine with a scene like this, oh, if I could just have the moon glow by itself. 

This is Daguerre thinking, if we could just shut down all the lights and have a phosphorescent paint on that part of the screen where the stars just twinkle. >> Right. >> If we could have a scene where the volcano and after the eruption we just have this dim glow. If I could make it carry its own light or the eyes of a tiger in the jungle. He was thinking about that and he experimented with phosphorescent paints to use in the diorama. >> Makes sense. >> And at some point, he looked at his other tools and imagined, well if I painted a sheet of paper or a piece of canvas with phosphorescent paint and put it in the back of a camera obscura and exposed a daylight scene to it, wouldn't that scene be recorded by the phosphorescent paint? Wouldn't it begin to glow? Of course. And he did it. And so you'd get this strange greeny-yellow scene that just fades away slowly. So that was Daguerre's obsession that his wife was so concerned about. 

He couldn't make the picture stay. >> So now we're taking... >> We wanted that one substance that would be impressed by the light and retain the impression. >> It's just chemistry, though. Didn't Louise have the right idea to go to talk to a chemist about this? >> Apparently Daguerre himself didn't though. He knew tons about mechanics and about paints, but he was no chemist. He was no chemist. And in the development of photography, he took on a country gentleman named Nicephore Niepce who knew more about chemistry than he did, and together they put together all the element they needed. Niepce died and Daguerre finally stumbled upon the perfect combination which in this case was the light sensitivity of silver iodide developed with mercury fumes and fixed in saltwater. That was his provisional solution. 

That's what the first Daguerreotypes were. And so this picture, this final picture today is a view out the window of the diorama. His mega-spectacle. >> This is one of his breakthroughs here. >> This is one of his, exactly, one of his breakthroughs. On that street, the Boulevard du Temple, where his first theater had been in the entertainment section of Paris, in the middle of the morning, 8:00 in the morning, this street is crowded with people and with carriages and wagons and horses, and there's no one there because the exposure is at least 10 minutes, maybe 15 or 20, except for that one man. There's one man in the lower left. >> Who stood still for that long. >> Who stood still having his shoes polished. >> And then everyone else, because they moved so much during that period of time, were in effect reduced to a blur and then below that totally disappears. 

We still see photographs on the same photographs now from later, even photographs of Lincoln, for example, where his foot's a blur because in the course of that, whatever, five or ten minutes... >> Seconds with Lincoln. >> He moved his foot. >> That's right. >> You get these phantasmal images. >> That's right. We're not used to sitting through two-hour sermons. Maybe our ancestors could sit still for four minutes, but by Lincoln's time, exposures were down to a matter of seconds. But five seconds is still a long time. If you're a four-month-old baby, five seconds is forever. 

>> Forget it. >> That's right. >> So we've come then to 1839 now. >> Right. >> And the Daguerreotype really catches off, and popularly famous people were having Daguerreotypes made, Frederic Chopin for example, famous picture of Chopin in his last years, but we're not calling it photography. >> Well, the Daguerreotype was announced and as soon as it was announced, other inventors, all over the world apparently, suddenly realized that they had come up with something like that also. So, immediately, there was competition. There's an Englishman who had previously, perhaps, invented a kind of photography on paper. There was a Frenchman living in Brazil who apparently, some years before, had come up with something similar. But Daguerre had all the publicity, and he had all the publicity because he had the support of the French government. 

A scientist and politician named Francois Arago became friends with Daguerre and saw the results of the process and was convinced that this would be a good thing for France. And so he pushed legislation through that made Daguerre seem like the one and only person who'd worked on this and that he deserved a government pension. >> Let's say he did. >> For the first decade of photography, the Daguerreotype was it. There were other forms of photography, but the Daguerreotype was the highest in public esteem. >> Well, sometime we're going to have to have you back and find out the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey would say. My guest has been Dan Fuller. Thank you very much. >> You're welcome. >> For running through the history, the pre-history if you will, of this form of capturing images. 

I'm Norman Gilliland. Thanks for joining us, and I hope you can be with me next time for University Place Presents.