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<\/p>\nWhat comes to mind when you think of 19th-century photography? Dull sepia plates of formal gardens? Or perhaps the winsome pre-Raphaelite wannabes of Julia Margaret Cameron\u2019s staged portraits? Well, think again. In Flashes of Brilliance, the American photo editor Anika Burgess surveys a world of invention and action teeming with chancers, pornographers, detectives, deep-sea divers and balloonists. And then there are the camera-wielding pigeons.<\/p>\n
Photography celebrates its bicentenary next year, marking the moment circa 1826 when Nic\u00e9phore Ni\u00e9pce \u2014 a French inventor who also tinkered with the notion of a motorcycle \u2014 shot a blurry composition of rooftops in eastern France. View from the Window at Le Gras was preserved on a pewter plate treated with a cocktail of bitumen and lavender oil. <\/p>\n
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View from the Window at Le Gras by Nic\u00e9phore Ni\u00e9pce<\/p>\n
ALAMY<\/p>\n
A variety of ambitious and often quite barmy pioneers were waiting in the wings. Burgess considers the introduction of the daguerreotype in 1839 as the game-changer. Louis Daguerre, a former scene painter for the Paris Opera, devised a process of fixing an image on a silver-coated metal plate. \u201cHere was a new medium, bursting with potential, ready to be harnessed with new technology, new approaches, and some highly risky endeavours,\u201d Burgess writes.<\/p>\n
The range of combustible and poisonous chemicals \u2014 from gun cotton to cyanide \u2014 demanded by subsequent photographic methods provided fledgeling shutterbugs with a \u201chost of novel and exciting ways to injure themselves\u201d. Photographers routinely blew themselves up (a scenario spoofed in Kind Hearts and Coronets when Dennis Price\u2019s character uses a darkroom explosion as a cover for murder).<\/p>\n
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In 1887, the introduction of Blitzlichtpulver \u2014 flashlight powder \u2014 only made matters worse. This precursor to the flashbulb was a highly volatile blend of pyrotechnic compounds. \u201cPhotographers lost fingers and thumbs, hands and hair,\u201d Burgess writes. \u201cThat\u2019s if they were lucky.\u201d <\/p>\n
The New York Sun noted sniffily: \u201cThe abuse of flash powders after they fall into photographers\u2019 hands reflects severely upon their intelligence and good sense\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Rising stars of British photography earn their stripes<\/a><\/p>\n Burgess gives a clear and fascinating whistlestop history, from the 1830s through to 1910, of the various technical advances, culminating in the near inconceivable innovation of the x-ray (now photographers could capture what couldn\u2019t even be seen). But it is the accounts of those amateurs and adventurers who conquered the skies, oceans and subterranean spaces with their makeshift cameras Early aerial photography, in particular, delivered outrageous displays of hope over reason. Samuel Cody, an expat American living in England, designed a kite shaped like a giant bat that could carry a photographer (he used his wife as an airborne guinea pig). In Germany, a pharmacist and pigeon fancier called Julius Neubronner patented lightweight cameras that could be strapped to a bird\u2019s breast. Time-delayed shots were taken on the wing, resulting in panoramas fringed with feathers.<\/p>\n \u2022 The other side of London in photographs \u2014 from David Bailey to garage raves<\/a><\/p>\n The peacock in this squadron of flying photographers was a flamboyant French showman named Nadar (real name Gaspard-F\u00e9lix Tournachon). To keep ballast to a minimum, he took his first sky-high shots while dangling from a balloon in the nude. Later, he built Le G\u00e9ant, a vast balloon that stood 196ft high and carried a two-storey basket that slept 12 passengers and housed a darkroom, kitchen and, naturellement, a fully stocked wine store. In 1863, it crash-landed in the countryside and was dragged through the undergrowth for 25 miles. After narrowly missing an oncoming steam train, it finally slammed to a halt, sending Nadar\u2019s wife flying out of the basket and into a river. Being married to a photographer was a dangerous business.<\/p>\n Felix Nadar, who took his first sky-high shots while dangling from a balloon in the nude<\/p>\n ALAMY<\/p>\n Nadar also took his cameras underground to photograph the Paris catacombs, home to six million skeletons. A portrait of him surrounded by skulls is perhaps the earliest example of a ghoulish selfie.<\/p>\n Skulls and bones in the Paris catacombs<\/p>\n ALAMY<\/p>\n Meanwhile, the first underwater photograph \u2014 a rather hazy wet collodion print \u2014 was taken in 1856 by William Thompson, a solicitor from Weymouth. Thompson sealed his camera in a homemade waterproof box, rowed out into Weymouth Bay, rowed back and processed the print in a tent on the beach, all in the time it took to make a cup of tea. Four decades later, a French mollusc specialist called Louis Boutan photographed the knobbly knees of swimmers in the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n Photography was seen initially not as art but truth, Burgess explains. Photographs were \u201cdrawings from nature through the medium of the rays of the sun\u201d, declared the Morning Chronicle. Others called them \u201cmirrors with memories\u201d. But their power to hoodwink soon became apparent. Fraudulent spirit photographers \u2014 using double exposures and multiple negatives to introduce \u201cghosts\u201d into the frame \u2014 preyed on the grieving. And it became commonplace to \u201cretouch\u201d portraits to flatter the sitter \u2014 experts recommended \u201cconsiderable pruning\u201d of double chins.<\/p>\n
that really enthral.<\/p>\n![\"Portrait](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/\/2f6a874c-0c70-401b-8db2-99a7b487ceed.jpg\")
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