When did color appear? Color photography
When and where did the first color photograph appear?
May 17, 1861 English physicist James Clerk MAXWELL, * 06/13/1831, Edinburgh, Scotland; † November 5, 1879, Cambridge, England, produced the first color photograph using the so-called additive method. http://tmn.fio.ru/works/72x/311/hist_col...On May 17, 1861, Maxwell was offered the high honor of giving a lecture in London in front of the Royal Institution - an institution glorified by the names of Rumfoord, Davy and Faraday. The topic of the lecture is “On the theory of three primary colors.” And it was at this lecture that James decided to give the final, already indisputable proof of his three-component theory.
When he approached one of the most sophisticated photographers of the time, the editor of Notes on Photography, Thomas Sutton, with a proposal to take a color photograph, he was amazed. And, of course, he refused. It took Maxwell a lot of effort to persuade him.
It was decided to photograph a bow tied from a three-color ribbon, placed against a background of black velvet. Photographing was carried out in bright sunlight and was carried out three times. The first time the bow was photographed was through a transparent flat vessel filled with a solution of copper chloride. The solution was bright green. The other solution through which the second negative was exposed was a copper sulfate solution - it was bright blue. Another negative was obtained through a bright red solution of iron thiocyanate. All these negatives were then printed on glass.
Not without anxiety, on May 17, 1861, James Clerk Maxwell entered the multi-columned mansion on Abermarle Street, Piccadilly, where the Royal Institution was located. Carriages arrived, transporting the important and the infirm; the younger and unmerited people hurried off on foot, with and without wives.
There are three magic lanterns installed in the hall, and heavy glass positives at the ready. In front of the lenses of each flashlight are the same filters that were used when shooting - red, blue and green.
James explains to the assembled ladies and gentlemen the essence of the three-component theory, insisting that the primary colors with which all others can be obtained are precisely these: red, blue, green.
Need proof? Please! James instructs Sutton and his assistants to set fire to bars of calcium carbonate - Drummond's light for magic lanterns. The bars flare up, giving a bright white, slightly bluish light.
The red rays of one lantern cut through the darkness of the hall, then green and blue rays appear in the air of the lecture hall. Three color images are projected onto White screen so that they coincide, and then... Everyone sees a colored, completely natural image of a bow made from a multicolor ribbon, as if created bright colors artist. This is completely different from the usual products of a primitive device, which produces a black and white image, like a bad engraving.
This was, of course, a complete triumph of the three-component color theory. And no one then understood that the main significance of that day was not at all in the triumph of the three-component theory, but in the fact that in the process of proving this theory, color photography was demonstrated to the world for the first time!
Photographer of the Tsar Proskudin Gorsky - color photographs of Tsarist Russia
Some of the very first color photographs taken in the Soviet Union, as well as some of the first color newsreels of the Great Patriotic War, which in itself is a unique phenomenon.
We have practically no Soviet color images of the war, so we are forced to use captured German ones. However, it turned out that there are some things that are native and domestic.
This is not just a color photograph of Kharkov, made using autochrome technology in 1933, but this moment This is the very first known color photograph taken in the USSR:
In the photo Gosprom - The first reinforced concrete building in the USSR.
The fame of Derzhprom immediately after the completion of construction flew throughout the country, and then throughout the world. When clay huts with thatched roofs still stood on the neighboring streets of Kharkov, such a building seemed like something out of fantasy, the embodiment of dreams of a New World, a symbol of an entire era.
Even during excavation work, a mammoth skeleton was found on the territory of the 6th entrance of Gosprom. Probably, the remains of this mammoth and the sight of the reinforced concrete giant erected above them inspired V.V. Mayakovsky, who wrote the famous lines:
“Where the crows hovered, croaked over the carrion,
bandaged in railroad tracks
Ukrainian capital Kharkov is buzzing,
living, laboring, reinforced concrete..” 
Gosprom.1932
Photos from the early 30s
Gosprom building in occupied Kharkov
Gosprom, modern times
Interesting Facts:
The height of the Gosprom building itself is 63 meters. And together with the television tower installed in 1955 - 108 meters.
The usable area of all Gosprom premises is 60 thousand square meters, the area of the construction site is 10,760 square meters.
For the first time in the world, accurate calculations of the most complex reinforced concrete frame structures have been developed and used. The creators of the new method (grapho-analytical method of constant points) are Kharkov design engineers A. Preisfreund and M. Paykov.
Gosprom began to be built using human and horse energy with primitive tools - shovels, stretchers, carts, etc. By the end of construction, the work was already 80% automated. Up to five thousand workers per day (500-600 people in winter), half of whom huddled in wooden barracks, built in three shifts and completed the project in less than two and a half years.
The workers, mostly by hand, dug a huge pit for the building with a volume of 20 thousand cubic meters and transported the soil on flat carts - “grabbers”. Then they leveled the area for the future Dzerzhinsky Square.
At the time of construction, it was the largest “skyscraper” in the USSR, which even today leaves no one indifferent: its volume is 347 thousand square meters. Material - monolithic reinforced concrete. 1,315 wagons of cement, 9,000 tons of metal, 3,700 wagons of granite and 40,000 sq. m. were used. glass The building has 4,500 windows, the glazing area is 17 hectares.
Initially, according to the instructions of the Kharkov Research Institute of Hygiene, the handles on the doors of Gosprom were copper. Doctors advised the use of copper, which is characterized by bactericidal properties and, according to those years, destroys microbes
In the 1930s, up to 25 tons of coal were spent daily on heating the building in winter.
7 out of 12 elevators have been operating without replacement since they were put into operation (1928)
The Gosprom building was built using the “floating formwork” method - innovative in those days - and therefore is a solid monolithic mass of reinforced concrete. Hence the strong strength of the building. Another explanation for the strength is that Derzhprom consists of a group of towers connected by passages, so the natural resonant frequencies of the towers, leaning on each other, greatly weaken the vibrations of the overall structure (this method is used in Japan when constructing skyscrapers in seismic zones).
In the initial design of Gosprom, internal partitions along the building were not provided. The building's façade purposefully faces the east so that the setting sun fully illuminates it. In combination with large glazing, the effect of space and airiness arose. In the setting sunshine the windows seemed to be blazing with fire.
The world's first airbus, the giant K-7 aircraft, was designed at the Kalinin Design Bureau in 1933. It was called “air Gosprom”
Its museum, founded in the 1980s, is open at the 5th entrance of Gosprom.
Theodor Dreiser himself once said about Gosprom: “A miracle seen in Kharkov.”
It is surprising that the reconstruction of Gosprom, carried out modern methods in the 2000s, required several times more time than the entire period of its construction using primitive methods in the 1920s. Derzhprom was built in just three years; The reconstruction has been going on for 7 years and is still not finished. You can draw your own conclusions, everything is obvious...Another interesting photo.
Official biographer of Stalin and “father of party history” Yaroslavsky at his dacha with his grandson, 1938. Grandson - future documentary film director Roman Carmen, died several years ago, son of that famous Roman Carmen: 
By the way, Yaroslavsky himself is quite an interesting person.
Emelyan Mikhailovich Yaroslavsky - revolutionary, activist Communist Party, ideologist and leader of anti-religious policy in the USSR. Chairman of the Union of Militant Atheists.
He was an amazingly prolific propagandist who did not hesitate to use the crudest expressions regarding religion and the Church. In the preface to his most famous anti-religious work, “The Bible for Believers and Non-Believers,” he wrote: “With the help of religion and the church, the ruling classes cloud the consciousness of the workers and toiling layers of the peasantry, turning them into obedient slaves of capitalist, landlord and kulak exploitation. In the Soviet country, millions of collective farmers, consciously participating in the struggle for the construction of socialism, have already broken with religion, realizing its harm to the working people. But there are still many who believe in priestly and kulak religious tales, both in the city and in the countryside. Therefore, a lot of work needs to be done to convince believers that biblical tales are unscientific and harmful.”
The main atheist never thought about giving his texts at least a semblance of scientific objectivity. He “exposed” biblical texts with the help of jokes and unfounded statements; he called the revealed relics of St. Innocent of Irkutsk “12 pounds of rotten bones, eaten away by worms and moths.” 
Yaroslavsky’s anti-religious “enthusiasm” was so strong that he even justified the “excesses” in the anti-religious struggle admitted by some representatives of the Soviet government. In December 1928, at a meeting of the organizing bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the issue of measures to strengthen anti-religious work, which marked the beginning of a new attack on the Church, Yaroslavsky did not find anything wrong in the newspaper headline “The Most Holy Theotokos Amba.” Although even the future chairman of the Commission for consideration of religious issues, Pyotr Smidovich, noted at the same meeting that such attacks only needlessly irritate believers and prevent the Soviet government from pursuing an effective anti-religious policy.
Yaroslavsky did not care about the feelings of believers, and of all forms of struggle, he preferred the physical destruction of churches and the punitive policy of the OGPU. True, he asked Molotov to allow the children of priests to study in a Soviet school, but only so that they could “wash off the stain of this title.” “Comrade Emelyan” (this was the party nickname of the main atheist) believed that the children of the clergy made the most ardent fighters against faith and the Church.
Another favorite brainchild of Yaroslavsky was a series of publications under the general title “Atheist”. These were newspapers and magazines with the crudest drawings and similar texts, whose task was to “eradicate religious intoxication.” Yaroslavsky also wrote numerous articles in which he reproached all religions and clergy for dogmatism and oppression of the people.
However, the main atheist also had a second life. He selflessly, thoughtlessly loved Comrade Stalin and other prominent party members. The fighter against the “opium of the people” was the creator of a biography of Stalin, which in terms of the degree of praise can eclipse any life, and the history of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) - a text that “replaced” the Bible for communists. He was a man completely intolerant of any disputes within the party; he believed that there was only one correct opinion in the world and it belonged to Stalin. Shortly after the assassination of Kirov, in 1934, Yaroslavsky wrote in a letter to Ordzhonikidze: “I ask you, Stalin, Kaganovich, Klim and others: take care of yourself! All humanity needs you, this should not be forgotten. Our party is doing the greatest historical thing in the interests of all working humanity.” 
The chief atheist's veneration of Stalin acquired the features of fanatical faith. A dogmatist to the core, Yaroslavsky even interfered in the personal lives of party members and their behavior; he was ready to expel communists from the party for an extra glass of wine or a not very modest dress. His passion for uniformity led to the fact that some of Yaroslavsky's initiatives irritated members of the Central Committee. Meanwhile, Stalin considered Yaroslavsky not tough enough and sometimes gave him demonstrative “floggings”, after which the main atheist and party historian humiliatingly asked to point out the mistakes and was ready for any changes in his own thoughts and texts. 
Artek 1940 in color. In the Soviet paradise warm sea
It must be said that in the USSR before the war, about 70 color films were shot using two-color and three-color technology (i.e., through color filters), known in Russia since 1911.
However, the film about Artek was clearly shot using a different technology, on multilayer film, possibly purchased from the Germans (or perhaps our experimental one). Therefore, there is absolutely no effect of stratification of moving objects, but the color scheme is very poor, compared to the three-color, for example, with the famous 1939 film about the physical education parade in Moscow.
Well, okay, although it’s bad, the color and the plot are very interesting. How the lucky ones rested in the Soviet paradise by the warm sea on the eve of the war.
Let's see some footage.
Starts with the type of camp boats:
Happy Artek residents appear, all in sailor suits: 
They go on a boat trip.
Having sailed through some cave, they land on the shore, where they discover a crab: 
After the hike in the mountains, the action moves to the camp, where everyone finds something to do to their liking.
One of the Artek residents is doing something with a movie camera (photo camera?): 
Others are engaged in shooting: 
“In Artek, everyone can do what they love,” says the voice-over: 
Someone made a futuristic watercraft: 
Then the bugler calls everyone to lunch: 
After lunch and quiet time, you can write a letter home: 
In the evening. 
At the end of the film, the children gather in formation to report on how they rested.
“All the pioneers of the Motherland are always surrounded by the great care of the party,” ringing voices sound: 
More interesting photos. 
The newly built and opened VDNKh in Moscow, 1939: And finally, color newsreels from 1943, the very height of the Great Patriotic War! 
Officer-guide at a German captured gun, summer 1943: 
-->Visitors to the exhibition, mainly women and children, all men at the front. 
Pioneers, ties are still on clips, they will be replaced with a simple knot only in the 50s. 
A guide in the aviation department, with a white pointer in his hands, tells visitors about captured aircraft 
And these are Aerokorb planes before being sent to the USSR under the Lend-Lease program; soon Soviet ace pilots will board them and destroy the Luftwaffe, 1942. 4423 aircraft were delivered from the USA.
“View from the window on Le Grace” - the photograph was already very real.
The original image on the plate looks very specific:
digitization
Niépce photographed the view from the window of his own house, and the exposure lasted as long as eight hours! The roofs of nearby buildings and a piece of the yard are what can be seen in this photograph.
It was a photograph of a table set for a picnic - 1829.
Niépce's method was not suitable for photographic portraits.
But French artist he succeeded in this - his method conveyed halftones well, and a shorter exposure allowed him to take pictures of living people. Louis Daguerre collaborated with Niepce, but it took him several more years after Niepce's death to bring the invention to fruition.
The first Daguerreotype was made in 1837 and represented
photo of Daguerre's art workshop
Daguerre. Boulevard du Temple 1838
(The world's first photograph with a person).
Holyrood Church, Edinburgh, 1834
1839 - the first photographic portraits of people, women and men, appeared.
On the left is the American Dorothy Catherine Draper, whose photograph, taken by the learned brother, became the first photographic portrait within the United States and the first photographic portrait of a woman with open eyes
The exposure lasted 65 seconds and Dorothy's face had to be covered with a thick layer of white powder.
And on the right is the Dutch chemist Robert Cornelius, who managed to photograph himself.
His photograph taken in October 1839 is the very first photographic portrait
in history in general. Both of these experimental photographic portraits, in my opinion, look expressive and relaxed, in contrast to later daguerreotypes, in which people often looked like idols due to excessive tension.
From surviving daguerreotypes
The first erotic photograph taken by Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre in 1839.
On the daguerreotype of 1839 - Port of Ripetta in Italy. Quite a detailed image, however, in some places the shadow ate everything into solid black.
And in this photo of Paris you can see the famous Louvre from the Seine River. Still the same year 1839. It's funny - many of the works of art exhibited in the Louvre and now considered ancient works of art had not yet been created at the time of photography.
Already in the first year of its existence, daguerreotype preserved many imprints of the past. Spreading new technology It went very intensely, surprisingly intensely for such an unusual novelty at that time. As early as 1839, people were already photographing things like museum collections, like this collection of shells.
The next year came, 1840. Man increasingly became a subject for photographs. This is the first photograph of a person in full height(full, not a small blurry silhouette). On it we can see with our own eyes an attribute of the life of the elite of the past, which was already an ancient tradition at that time - a personal carriage ready for the trip and a smart servant inviting passengers to take their seats. True, he is not inviting us - we are a little late. About 170 years old.
But in this photo from the same year - the family of the great Mozart. Although this has not been proven, there is a 90% probability that the elderly woman in the front row is Constance Mozart, the musician’s wife. Both this and the previous photographs allow us to get at least a little in touch with those times that already in 1840 were considered the deep past.
The thought immediately arises that daguerreotypes can bring to us some traces of an even older era - the 18th century. Who was the oldest person captured in the oldest photographs? Can we see the faces of people who lived most of their lives in the 18th century? Some people live up to 100 years and even more.
Daniel Waldo, born September 10, 1762, was related to US President John Adams. This man fought during the American Revolution, and in the photograph we can see him at the age of 101.
Huche Brady, renowned American general, born July 29, 1768, had the honor of fighting in the War of 1812.
And finally, one of the first white people born on the American continent is Conrad Heyer, who posed for a photographer back in 1852 at the age of 103! He served in the army under the command of George Washington himself and participated in the Revolution. People from the era of the 17th century - from the 16xx - looked into the same eyes into which we look now!
1852 - the oldest person ever posed for a photograph by year of birth was photographed. Posed for a photographer at the age of 103!
Unlike Niepce, Louis Daguerre left his own photographic portrait as a legacy to humanity. He was such an imposing and handsome gentleman.
Moreover, thanks to his daguerreotype, a photograph of his competitor from England, William Henry Fox Talbot, has reached us. 1844
Talbot invented a fundamentally different photography technology, much closer to the film cameras of the 20th century. He called it calotype - an unaesthetic name for a Russian-speaking person, but in Greek it means “beautiful imprint” (kalos-typos). You can use the name “talbotype”. The commonality between calotypes and film cameras lies in the presence of an intermediate stage - a negative, through which an unlimited number of photographs can be produced. Actually, the terms “positive”, “negative” and “photography” were coined by John Herschel under the influence of calotypes. Talbot's first successful attempt dates back to 1835 - a photograph of a window in the Abbey in Lacock. Negative, positive and two modern photographs for comparison.
In 1835, only a negative was made; Talbot finally figured out the production of positives only in 1839, presenting the calotype to the public almost simultaneously with the daguerreotype. Daguerreotypes were of better quality, much clearer than calotypes, but due to the possibility of copying, calotype still occupied its niche. Moreover, it cannot be said unequivocally that Talbot's images are not beautiful. For example, the water on them appears much more alive than on daguerreotypes. Here, for example, is Lake Catherine in Scotland, photographed in 1844.
The 19th century has seen the light. In the 1840s, photography became available to all more or less wealthy families. And we, almost two centuries later, can see what ordinary people of that time looked like and what they wore.
Family photo from 1846 - the Adams couple with their daughter. You can often find this photograph referred to as a posthumous photograph, based on the child’s pose. In fact, the girl is just sleeping; she lived until the 1880s.
Daguerreotypes are indeed quite detailed, making it convenient to study the fashion of decades gone by. Anna Minerva Rogers Macomb was filmed in 1850.
The first devices for human flight were Balloons. The picture shows the landing of one of these balls in 1850 on a Persian square (now the territory of Iran).
Photography became more and more popular; newly-minted photographers shot not only prim portraits with starched faces, but also very vivid scenes of the surrounding world. 1852, Anthony Falls.
But this photo from 1853 is, in my opinion, a masterpiece. Charles Negre shot it on the roofs of Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and the artist Henry Le Sec posed for him. Both belonged to the first generation of photographers.
The conscience of Russian literature, Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy - this is how he looked in 1856. We will return to him later, and twice as much, because, despite the asceticism of this man and his closeness to ordinary people, Hi-tech they surprisingly persistently reached out to him, trying to capture his image.
More and more new ways of photographing appeared. Here is a ferrotype from 1856 - a slightly blurry, but pleasant image in its own way, its soft halftones look more natural than the bold, clear contours of the daguerreotype.
Since photography became available to people, it means that at some point there must have been a desire to make changes to the resulting picture, to combine two different images or to distort them. 1858 is the year when the first photomontage was made. “Fading” is the name of this work, composed of five different negatives. It depicts a girl dying of tuberculosis. The composition is very emotional, although I still don’t understand why there is photomontage here. The same scene could have been done without him.
The first aerial photograph was taken that same year. To pull this off, it was necessary to attach a miniature camera to the legs of a tame bird. How helpless man was then...
A scene from the 60s... 1860s. Several people go on a trip using the only mode of transport available in those years.
The Brooklyn Excelsiors baseball team. Yes, America's favorite sport has a long history.
First color photo - 1861.
Like most other experimental photographs, this image is not rich in content. A checkered ribbon from a Scottish outfit is the whole composition with which the famous scientist James Clerk Maxwell decided to experiment. But it is colored. True, like Leon Scott's sound recordings, experiments with color remained experiments, and it was necessary to wait several more years before the regular production of color images from nature.
By the way, in the picture is the photographer himself.
They also tried to find practical applications for the photo. Guillaume Duchesne, a French neurologist, used photography to present to the public his experiments on studying the nature of human facial expressions. By stimulating the facial muscles with electrodes, he achieved the reproduction of such expressions as joy or agony. His photo reports in 1862 became one of the first book photo illustrations that were not artistic, but scientific in nature.
Some of the vintage photographs look very unusual. The strong contrast and sharp outlines create the illusion that the lady is sitting in the middle of an environment entirely carved from stone. 1860s.
In the 1860s, the real ones were still in service Japanese samurai. Not costumed actors, but samurai as they are. Soon after the photograph was taken, the samurai would be abolished as a class.
Japanese ambassadors to Europe. 1860s. Fukuzawa Yukichi (second from left) acted as English-Japanese translator.
Images of ordinary people have also been preserved, not just representatives of high society. The photo from the 1860s shows an American army veteran and his wife.
As I already mentioned, vintage photographs were often very clear and detailed. A fragment of a photograph of Abraham Lincoln taken in 1863 - his eyes close-up. Overall, this photograph seems to be an echo of something very distant, but when you zoom in, everything changes. A century and a half after the death of this man, his gaze still seems very alive and insightful to me, as if I were standing opposite the living and well Lincoln.
A little more material about the life of an outstanding person. Lincoln's first inauguration in 1861 - this photograph is strikingly different from most photographic materials of the 19th century. The cozy atmosphere of family photographs in the middle of Victorian chambers and the monumentality of portraits of starched celebrities seem like something long gone, while the seething crowd turns out to be much closer to the noisy everyday life of the 21st century.
Lincoln during the American Civil War, 1862. If you wish, you can find a lot of photographic materials about the war itself, filmed directly on the battlefield, in the barracks and during the transfer of troops.
Lincoln's second inauguration, 1864. The president himself can be seen in the center, holding a paper.
And again Civil War- a tent serving as an army local post office somewhere in Virginia, 1863.
Meanwhile, in England everything is much calmer. 1864, photographer Valentine Blanchard photographed the walk of ordinary people along the Royal Road in London.
Photo from the same year - actress Sarah Bernhardt posing for Paul Nadar. The image and style she chose for this photo is so neutral and timeless that the photo could be labeled as 1980, 1990 or 2000, and almost no one would be able to dispute this, since many photographers still shoot with black and white film .
First color photograph - 1877.
But let's get back to photography. It was time to shoot something more impressive in color than a piece of multi-colored rag. The Frenchman Ducos de Hauron tried to do this using the triple exposure method - that is, photographing the same scene three times through filters and combining different materials during development. He named his way heliochromia. This is what the town of Angoulême looked like in 1877:
The color reproduction in this photo is imperfect; for example, the blue color is almost completely absent. Many animals with dichromatic vision see the world in much the same way. Here is an option that I tried to make more realistic by adjusting the color balance.
Here's another option, perhaps the closest to how the photo looks without color correction. You can imagine that you are looking through a bright yellow piece of glass, and then the effect of presence will be most powerful.
Less famous photo by Oron. View of the city of Agen. In general, it looks quite strange - the color palette is completely different (bright blue), the date is also confusing - 1874, that is, this photograph claims to be older than the previous one, although the previous photograph is considered the oldest surviving work by Oron. It is quite possible that only a print remains of the heliochromia of 1874, and the original is irretrievably lost.
Still life with a rooster - another heliochrome by Oron, made in 1879. It is difficult to judge what we see in this color photo - a shot of stuffed birds, or a photocopy of a hand-drawn painting. At least the color rendition is impressive. Still, it's not good enough to justify such a complex photographic process. Therefore, the Oron method never became a widespread method of color photography.
But the black and white flourished. John Thompson was one of a breed of photographers who approached their work from an artistic point of view. He believed that smart and neat intellectuals, prim members royal families, stern generals and pretentious politicians - this is not all that may be of interest to photography. There is another life. One of his most famous works, made in 1876 or 1877, is a photo of a tired beggar woman sitting sadly at the porch. The work is called “The Unhappy - Life on the Streets of London”.
Railways were the very first urban mode of transport, by 1887 they already had a fifty-year history. It was in this year that the photograph of the Minneapolis junction railway station was taken. As you can see, freight trains and the man-made urban landscape are not very different from modern ones.
But the culture and ways of presenting it in those years were completely different. Radio and television, the Internet and multimedia libraries - all this will appear later, many, many years later. Until then, people, without leaving their homes, could only get verbal descriptions of life, traditions and cultural objects of other countries from newspapers. The only opportunity to get more deeply in touch with the culture of the whole world, seeing its artifacts with your own eyes, is through travel and exhibitions, for example, the World Exhibition, the most grandiose event of those times. Especially for the Exhibition, on the initiative of the Prince Consort of England, the Crystal Palace was built in the mid-19th century - a structure made of metal and glass, huge even by the standards of modern shopping and entertainment centers. The exhibition ended, but the Crystal Palace remained, becoming a permanent place for the exhibition of literally everything - from antiques to the latest technical innovations. In the summer of 1888, the Handel Festival took place in the huge concert hall of the Crystal Palace - a luxurious musical performance with the participation of hundreds of musicians and thousands of singers. The collage of photographs shows the concert hall during the various years of the Crystal Palace's existence until its destruction in the fire of 1936.
Intercity passenger transport 1889
Canals in Venice "Venetian Canal" (1894) by Alfred Stieglitz
A very lively photo... but something else was missing. What? Oh yes, the colors. Color was still needed, and not as an experiment, but as a...
Saint-Maxime, Lippmann_photo_view
Color defines the essence of many things in photographs, from blooming plants to the rich blue of the ocean. The ability to produce color photo prints changed the world of photography in many ways, but in the early 19th century this colorful side of photography was never explored.
Initially, film reels and photography were in black and white, but the search for ways to produce color film continued throughout the 19th century. Corresponding experiments were carried out, but the colors in the photographs did not last and quickly disappeared.
If history is to be believed, the first color photograph was taken in 1861 by physicist James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879). One of the early methods of producing color photography was laborious and required the use of a total of 3 cameras.
first color photograph
In 1915, Prokudin-Gorsky (1863-1944) became the first to use this process to take color photographs. He took a color filter and placed it in front of the lens of each of the three cameras. In this way he could obtain three basic color channels, also known as RGB, that is, Red, Green and Blue. Prokudin-Gorsky continued what he started with another technique, in which he used three-color plates and applied them sequentially.
Against the background of ongoing experiments, Hermann Wilhelm Vogel (1834-1898) at the end of the 19th century was able to obtain emulsions that had the necessary sensitivity to red and green light. Later, the Lumière brothers invented the first color photographic film, called Autochrome.
Autochrome was launched in 1907. This process involved the use of a flat mesh filter whose colored dots were produced from potato starch. Autochrome was the only color film available until the German company Agfa introduced color film called Agfacolor in 1932. Following her example, Kodak released three-layer color photographic film in 1935 and called it Kodachrome. Kodachrome film was based on three-color emulsions.
Following Kodachrome film, Agfa released Agfacolor Neue film in 1936. Agfacolor Neue film had colored connecting elements that were integrated into the emulsion layers, which simplified film processing and gave impetus to the development of the photographic industry. All color photographic films, with the exception of Kodak, are based on Agfacolor Neue technology.
Creativity begets creativity! This can be proven by the fact that Kodachrome color films were invented by Leopold Mannes (1899-1964) and Leopold Godowsky, Jr. (1900-1983), two very famous musicians. Leopold Godowsky Jr. was the son of one of the great pianists of his time - Leopold Godowsky.
Color photography actually revolutionized the era and showed the impact of color through vibrant and detailed images, including photographs of World War II and the devastation caused by natural disasters. Color photographs captured emotions and surroundings in such a way that they were used more and more in newspapers, magazines and even on book covers.
MILESTONES OF COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY
1777 - Karl W. Schiele noticed that silver chloride quickly darkens when illuminated with violet rays of the spectrum. The idea of obtaining a color image directly captured the imagination of some of the pioneers of 19th-century photography, but eventually it became clear that another route was needed, involving the use of color filters or subtractive dyes.
1800 - Thomas Young lectures at the Royal Society of London on the fact that the eye perceives only three colors.
1810 - Johann T. Seebeck discovers that silver chloride, when exposed to white light, absorbs all the colors of the spectrum.
1840 - Edmond Beckerel, in the course of experiments, obtains a color image on plates coated with silver chloride.
1861 - James Clark Maxwell receives a three-color image.
1869 - Louis-Ducos du Hauron publishes Colors in Photography, in which he outlines the principles of additive and subtractive color methods.
1873 - Hermann W. Vogel obtains an emulsion sensitive not only to blue, but also to green.
1878 - du Hauron, together with his brother, publishes the work "Color Photography", which describes the methods they used to obtain color images.
1882 - Orthochromatic plates (sensitive to blue and green light, but not red) appear.
1891 - Gabriel Lipman obtains natural colors using interference. On Lipman's photographic plate, the grainless photographic emulsion was in contact with the layer liquid mercury. When light fell on the photographic emulsion, it passed through it and reflected off the mercury. The incoming light "collided" with the outgoing light. As a result, a stable pattern was formed in which bright places alternate with dark ones. Gabriel Lipman was awarded the Nobel Prize for this research.
1891 - Frederick Ivis invents a camera for producing three color-separated negatives by shooting in one exposure.
1893 - John Joule invents the linear raster filter. Instead of an image composed of three color positives, the result was a multicolor image. Until the 1930s, raster photographic plates made it possible to obtain acceptable, and sometimes simply good, color images.
1903 - The Lumière brothers develop the Autochrome process. Exposures in good light did not exceed one or two seconds, and the exposed plate was processed using the reversal method, resulting in a color positive.
1912 - Rudolf Fischer discovers chemicals that release dyes during the development process. These color-forming chemicals - color components - can be added to the emulsion. When the film appears, the dyes are restored, and with their help, color images are created, which can then be combined.
1924 - Leopold Manis and Leopold Godowsky patent the two-color subtractive method using film with two emulsion layers.
1935 - Kodachrome films with three emulsion layers go on sale. Because the color components for these films were added at the development stage, the buyer had to send the finished film to the manufacturer for processing. Transparencies came back in cardboard frames.
1942 - Kodacolor film goes on sale - the first film capable of producing color prints.
1963 - The Polaroid camera goes on sale, allowing you to take instant color photographs within a minute.
Despite the abundance of photographers, often self-made, few can tell in detail about the history of photographs. This is exactly what we will do today. After reading the article, you will learn: what a camera obscura is, what material became the basis for the first photograph, and how instant photography appeared.
How did it all begin?
ABOUT chemical properties People have known sunlight for a very long time. Even in ancient times, anyone could say that the sun's rays make the skin color darker, they guessed the effect of light on the taste of beer and the sparkling of precious stones. History goes back more than a thousand years of observations of the behavior of certain objects under the influence of ultraviolet radiation (this type of radiation is characteristic of the sun).
The first analogue of photography began to be truly used back in the 10th century AD.
This application consisted of the so-called camera obscura. It is a completely dark room, one of the walls of which had a round hole allowing light to pass through. Thanks to him, a projection of an image appeared on the opposite wall, which the artists of that time “modified” and obtained beautiful drawings.
The image on the walls was upside down, but that didn't make it any less beautiful. This phenomenon was discovered by an Arab scientist from Basra named Algazen. He had been observing light rays for a long time, and the phenomenon of a camera obscura was first noticed by him on the darkened white wall of his tent. The scientist used it to observe the darkening of the sun: even then they understood that looking at the sun directly is very dangerous.
First photo: background and successful attempts.
The main premise is Johann Heinrich Schulz's proof in 1725 that it is light, not heat, that causes silver salt to turn dark. He did this by accident: trying to create a luminous substance, he mixed chalk with nitric acid, and with a small proportion of dissolved silver. He noticed that under the influence of sunlight the white solution darkened.
This prompted the scientist to do another experiment: he tried to obtain an image of letters and numbers by cutting them out on paper and applying them to the illuminated side of the vessel. He received the image, but he didn’t even have any thoughts about saving it. Based on the work of Schultz, the scientist Grotthus established that the absorption and emission of light occurs under the influence of temperature.
Later, in 1822, the world's first image was obtained, more or less familiar to modern man. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce received it, but the frame he received was not properly preserved. Because of this, he continued to work with great diligence and received an 1826 full-length shot called “View from a Window.” It was he who went down in history as the first full-fledged photograph, although it was still far from the quality we are used to.
The use of metals is a significant simplification of the process.
A few years later, in 1839, another Frenchman, Louis-Jacques Daguerre, published new material for taking photographs: copper plates coated with silver. After this, the plate was doused with iodine vapor, which created a layer of photosensitive silver iodide. It was he who was key to future photography.
After processing, the layer was exposed for 30 minutes in a room illuminated by sunlight. Next, the plate was taken to a dark room and treated with mercury vapor, and the frame was fixed using table salt. It is Daguerre who is considered to be the creator of the first more or less high-quality photograph. Although this method was far from “mere mortals,” it was already significantly simpler than the first.
Color photography is a breakthrough of its time.
Many people think that color photography only appeared with the creation of film cameras. This is not true at all. The year of creation of the first color photograph is considered to be 1861, it was then that James Maxwell received the image, later called the “Tartan Ribbon”. To create it, we used the three-color photography method or the color separation method, whichever you prefer.
To obtain this frame, three cameras were used, each of which was equipped with a special filter that made up the primary colors: red, green and blue. As a result, we got three images that were combined into one, but such a process could not be called simple and fast. To simplify it, vigorous research was carried out on photosensitive materials.
The first step towards simplification was the identification of sensitizers. They were discovered by Hermann Vogel, a scientist from Germany. After some time, he managed to obtain a layer sensitive to the green color spectrum. Later, his student Adolf Mithe created sensitizers that were sensitive to three primary colors: red, green and blue. He demonstrated his discovery in 1902 at a Berlin scientific conference along with the first color projector.
One of the first photochemist scientists in Russia, Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, a student of Mite, developed a sensitizer more sensitive to the red-orange spectrum, which allowed him to surpass his teacher. He also managed to reduce the shutter speed, managed to make the photographs more widespread, that is, he created all the possibilities for reproducing photographs. Based on the inventions of these scientists, special photographic plates were created, which, despite their shortcomings, were extremely in demand among ordinary consumers.
Instant photography is another step towards speeding up the process.
In general, the year of appearance of this type of photography is considered to be 1923, when a patent for the creation of an “instant camera” was recorded. Such a device was of little use; the combination of a camera and a darkroom was extremely cumbersome and did not greatly reduce the time it took to obtain a frame. Understanding of the problem came a little later. It consisted in the inconvenience of the process of obtaining a finished negative.
It was in the 30s that complex light-sensitive elements first appeared, making it possible to obtain ready-made positive images. Their development was initially carried out by Agfa, and the guys from Polaroid started working on them en masse. The company's first cameras made it possible to receive instant photographs immediately after taking a frame.
A little later, similar ideas were tried to be implemented in the USSR. The photo sets “Moment” and “Photon” were created here, but they did not find popularity. The main reason is the lack of unique light-sensitive films for obtaining positive images. It was the principle laid down by these devices that became one of the key and most popular at the end of the 20th century. beginning of XXI century, especially in Europe.
Digital photography is a sharp leap in the development of the industry.
This type of photography really began quite recently - in 1981. The Japanese can safely be considered the founders: Sony showed the first device in which the matrix replaced photographic film. Everyone knows how a digital camera differs from a film camera, right? Yes, it could not be called a high-quality digital camera in the modern sense, but the first step was obvious.
Subsequently, many companies developed a similar concept, but the first digital device, as they are accustomed to seeing it, was created by Kodak. The camera began to be mass-produced in 1990, and it almost immediately became super popular.
In 1991, Kodak and Nikon released the Kodak DSC100 professional digital SLR camera based on the Nikon F3 camera. This device weighed 5 kilograms.
It is worth noting that with the advent of digital technologies, the scope of application of photography has become more extensive.
Modern cameras, as a rule, are divided into several categories: professional, amateur and mobile. In general, they differ from each other only in matrix size, optics and processing algorithms. Due to the small number of differences, the line between amateur and mobile cameras is gradually blurring.
Application of photography
Back in the middle of the last century, it was difficult to imagine that clear images in newspapers and magazines would become a mandatory attribute. The photography boom became especially pronounced with the advent of digital cameras. Yes, many will say that film cameras were better and more popular, but it was digital technology that made it possible to rid the photo industry of problems such as running out of film or overlapping frames.
Moreover, modern photography is going through extremely interesting changes. If earlier, for example, to get a passport photo you had to stand in a long line, take a photo and wait a few more days before printing it, but now it’s enough to just take a photo of yourself against a white background with certain requirements on your phone and print the photos on special paper.
Art photography has also made great strides forward. Previously, it was difficult to get a highly detailed shot of a mountain landscape; it was difficult to crop unnecessary elements or make high-quality photo processing. Now even mobile photographers who are ready without special problems compete with pocket digital cameras. Of course, smartphones cannot compete with full-fledged cameras such as the Canon 5D, but this is a topic for another discussion.
Digital SLR for a beginner 2.0- for NIKON connoisseurs.
My first MIRROR- for CANON connoisseurs.
So, dear reader, now you know a little more about the history of photography. I hope you find this material useful. If this is so, then why not subscribe to blog updates and tell your friends about it? Moreover, there is still a lot of interesting materials waiting for you that will allow you to become more literate in matters of photography. Good luck and thank you for your attention.
Sincerely yours, Timur Mustaev.
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