William Henry Fox Talbot (English, 1800-1877)

Oxford, High Street, circa 1842

Salt print from a calotype negative

18.7 x 17.4 cm on 24.7 x 19.6 cm paper

Being a Cambridge man did not preclude Talbot his experiencing the thrill of the ancient buildings of Oxford. There was also the practical matter that Oxford was much easier to reach from Lacock than was Cambridge, no small consideration when so much equipment and materials had to be carried to a site in order to photograph it. Talbot’s camera was placed in what is now part of the busy roadway. The exact point is just immediately below Longwall Street. In Talbot’s day, this end of High Street was the eastern and principal entrance into the city by coach from London. Just after crossing the Magdalen Bridge, the Street revealed its curve and the unique character of this sweep had long been appreciated. On 30 July 1842 Talbot reported to Amelina Petit that he had made many fine views of Oxford. The mysterious streaks in the foreground area might at first be mistaken for the traces of moving people. Those streaks are actually flow lines of chemicals in the original negative, a mechanical defect in no way fatal to the effect of the image.

Félix Teynard (French, 1817-1892)

"Pyramide de Chéops (Grande Pyramide) / Égypte / Djïzeh (Necropole de Memphis),"

1851-1852

Salt print, 1853-1854, from a paper negative

24.5 x 30.7 cm mounted on 40.2 x 52.3 cm paper

Félix Teynard was one of the first visitors to Egypt to record its monuments and landscape in photographs. A civil engineer from Grenoble, who may have learned the waxed paper negative process from Le Gray, he traveled on an extended voyage to photograph the architecture and landscape of Egypt and Nubia in 1851-1852. Teynard’s 160 images constituted the most complete photographic record to date of the Nile Valley from Cairo to the Second Cataract. These were printed by the Paris firm of Fonteny in 1853-1854 and published by Goupil in 1858.

Louis-Alphonse Davanne (French, 1824-1912)

The Tower of Pisa, 1853

Waxed paper negative

22.4 x 16.6 cm

The Bibliotheque nationale de France has a print of this negative (Dépôt légal 25/06/1853), No. 4956

George Barker (American, born in Canada, 1844-1894)

Charlotte Street, St. Augustine, Florida, circa 1886

Mammoth albumen print

55.7 x 47.0 cm mounted on 61.0 x 51.0 cm paper

The view shows a mixed commercial-residential street in an African American community in St. Augustine. Among the commercial signs are “Gardiner Bros. Produce & Poultry, Fish, Oysters & Clams” and “Restaurant.”  An African American man and boy with a pail and cane stand at the left foreground. Behind them are a Caucasian man and his two children. Other blurred figures appear further on including a woman at the right.

George Barker was best known for his photographs of Niagara Falls. He was born in London, Ontario and at 18 years of age had opened his own photography studio there. From 1862 he worked with Platt D. Babbit in Niagara Falls where by the late 1860s he opened studio. He became nationally known for his large format and stereographic prints.

Barker was one of the earliest photographers to visit the state of Florida. From 1886 to 1890 he had documented much of northern and central Florida. At the time, photography in Florida was challenging, as much of the state remained undeveloped. He also traveled the United States, documenting natural disasters.

Frederick H. Evans (English, 1853-1943)

"Durham Cathedral: Font & Pillar from Nth Aisle", 1911

Gelatin silver print

25.8 x 15.4 cm, cropped to 23.8 x 14.2 cm by flush paper mat, mounted on 52.2 x 32.6 cm card

Of Evans’s first public exhibition in America at the Architectural Club of Boston in 1897, and apropos of this print made fourteen years later, a reviewer opined that Evans “seems to apply not only the rules of the artist, but those of the writer, to his compositions; for each is a distinct character-study, gay or melancholy, crimson or grey; each with a dominating note of rest or surprise, of prayer or praise, and in its own delightful manner exquisitely accentuating whatever was most individual in the old builders. And all is done tenderly, poetically, with the softest mastery, and a consummate sense of spectacular values.”

Victor Regnault (French, 1810-1878)

"Cours et Logement du Charpentier, Sèvres," circa 1852

Salt print from a paper negative

45.3 x 35.9 cm

Physicist, chemist, and amateur photographer, Henri-Victor Regnault was president of the French Academy of Sciences and a founder of the Société Française de Photographie. He was director of the ceramic factory at Sèvres where this picture was taken. Regnault's picture of the carpenter's house is among the largest prints made from a paper negative, revealing an exploration of the medium's possibilities. The play of shadow and light transforms the house and grounds into a series of graphic shapes and angles anticipating the modern innovations of Walker Evans. The assembly of wooden beams, nails and picnic basket in the picture's center results in a poetic interpretation of life in this factory town.

Several of Regnault's photographs of Sèvres were shown in 1851 at the London Society of Arts.

Charles-Marie-Isidore Choiselat & Stanislaus Ratel (French, 1815-1858 & 1824-1904)

Place Saint-Sulpice, Paris, circa 1843-1845

Daguerreian engraving

12.2 x 15.5 cm on 12.7 x 16.2 cm plate on 13.8 x 18.1 cm paper

In the first decade of photography the majority of daguerreotypes were portraits, as the complicated procedures were best carried out in the controlled conditions of the studio. A few intrepid travelers, Choiselat and Ratel among them, carried daguerreotype equipment with them and made dazzling records of churches, castles, landscapes, classical ruins and more. The works by this pair were mostly made in Paris, the area around Grenoble, and in the south of France.

Hippolyte Fizeau was a French physicist who became fascinated with the potential reproducibility of daguerreotype photography soon after it was announced in 1839. He lived near Saint-Sulpice; Choiselat and Ratel were his neighbors. Fizeau’s experiments with photomechanical printing focused on adapting the traditional etching process to the daguerreotype plate in an effort to reproduce the image. In 1841-1842 Fizeau developed a process for etching daguerreotypes by converting the silvered daguerreotype plate into an intaglio printing plate and printing the duplicated image on paper. Choiselat and Ratel immediately began using this process in the Saint-Supice neighborhood, and improved it so much that their work was rewarded in 1843 by the Société d'Encouragement pour l'industrie. This early example of an original daguerreotype reproduced on paper, brings the otherwise rare camera image to wider audiences.

Unknown American Photographer

House behind a picket fence, 1850s

Quarter plate daguerreotype in a thermoplastic Union Case

In the era before the Civil War, itinerant daguerreotypists travelled from town to town. Most daguerreotypes made were portraits, but outdoor views made rapid progress. The artistry of practitioners became prized as evidenced in this elegant study. A strikingly modern composition the fence is in sharp focus as it frames the slightly hazy house and grounds behind.

Benjamin Brecknell Turner (English, 1815-1894)

"Whitby Abbey," early 1850s

Albumen print from a calotype negative

28.8 x 39.4 cm mounted on  43.5 x 60.5 cm paper

Henri Le Secq (French, 1818-1882)

Right portal, left jamb with Old Testament figures, Chartres Cathedral, 1852

Coated salt print from a waxed paper negative

46.5 x 35.2 cm mounted on 59.5 x 46.2 cm card

The Cathedral of Notre Dame at Chartres is one of the finest examples of French High Gothic and a milestone in the development of Western architecture. In mid-19th century France, Gothic art was a source of national pride. At that time, the French government embarked upon a systematic investigation and restoration of the nation's historic monuments. In 1851 the Commission des Monuments Historiques appointed Henri Le Secq as one of five photographers to document French architecture for the Missions heliographiques. The Commission was so pleased with Le Secq's photographs "reconstruct[ing] stone by stone the cathedrals of Strasbourg and Reims" that they commissioned him to work on Notre Dame of Chartres the following year. The more than forty views that Le Secq produced at Chartres in 1852 constituted a most accurate and poignant record, almost a visual translation of Victor Hugo's description of  a cathedral as a book, an encyclopedia in stone. These photographs express Le Secq's personal passion for architecture and medieval art, permeated by the sensitivity of an archaeologist and resonant with the Romantic fascination for the ruin and the fragment.