Few of those who seek a photographer's establishment to have their
portraits taken know at all into what a vast branch of commerce this
business of sun-picturing has grown. We took occasion lately to visit one
of the principal establishments in the country, that of Messrs. E. & H.T.
Anthony, in Broadway, New York. We had made the acquaintance of these
gentlemen through the remarkable instantaneous stereoscopic views
published by them, and of which we spoke in a former article in terms
which some might think extravagant. Our unsolicited commendation of these
marvellous pictures insured us a more than polite reception. Every detail
of the branches of the photographic business to which they are more
especially devoted was freely shown us, and "No Admittance" over the doors
of their inmost sanctuaries came to mean for us, "Walk in; you are
heartily welcome."
We should be glad to tell our readers of all that we saw in the two
establishments of theirs which we visited, but this would take the whole
space which we must distribute among several subdivisions of a subject
that offers many points of interest. We must confine ourselves to a few
glimpses and sketches.
* * * * *
The guests of the neighboring hotels, as they dally with their morning's
omelet, little imagine what varied uses come out of the shells which
furnished them their anticipatory repast of disappointed chickens. If they
had visited Mr. Anthony's upper rooms, they would have seen a row of young
women before certain broad, shallow pans filled with the glairy albumen
which once enveloped those potential fowls.
The one next us takes a large sheet of photographic paper, (a paper made
in Europe for this special purpose, very thin, smooth, and compact,) and
floats it evenly on the surface of the albumen. Presently she lifts it
very carefully by the turned-up corners and hangs it _bias_, as a
seamstress might say, that is, cornerwise, on a string, to dry. This
"albumenized" paper is sold most extensively to photographers, who find it
cheaper to buy than to prepare it. It keeps for a long time uninjured, and
is "sensitized" when wanted, as we shall see by-and-by.
The amount of photographic paper which is annually imported from France
and Germany has been estimated at fifteen thousand reams. Ten thousand
native partlets--
"_Sic vos non vobis nidificatis, aves_"--
cackle over the promise of their inchoate offspring, doomed to perish
unfeathered, before fate has decided whether they shall cluck or crow, for
the sole use of the minions of the sun and the feeders of the
caravanseras.
In another portion of the same establishment are great collections of the
chemical substances used in photography. To give an idea of the scale on
which these are required, we may state that the estimate of the annual
consumption of the precious metals for photographic purposes, in this
country, is set down at ten tons for silver and half a ton for gold. Vast
quantities of the hyposulphite of soda, which, we shall see, plays an
important part in the process of preparing the negative plate and
finishing the positive print, are also demanded.
In another building, provided with steam power, which performs much of the
labor, is carried on the great work of manufacturing photographic albums,
cases for portraits, parts of cameras, and of printing pictures from
negatives. Many of these branches of work are very interesting. The
luxurious album, embossed, clasped, gilded, resplendent as a tropical
butterfly, goes through as many transformations as a "purple emperor". It
begins a pasteboard larva, is swathed and pressed and glued into the
condition of a chrysalis, and at last alights on the centre table gorgeous
in gold and velvet, the perfect _imago_. The cases for portraits are made
in lengths, and cut up, somewhat as they say ships are built in Maine, a
mile at a time, to be afterwards sawed across so as to become sloops,
schooners, or such other sized craft as may happen to be wanted.
Each single process in the manufacture of elaborate products of skill
often times seems and is very simple. The workmen in large establishments,
where labor is greatly subdivided, become wonderfully adroit in doing a
fraction of something. They always remind us of the Chinese or the old
Egyptians. A young person who mounts photographs on cards all day long
confessed to having never, or almost never, seen a negative developed,
though standing at the time within a few feet of the dark closet where the
process was going on all day long. One forlorn individual will perhaps
pass his days in the single work of cleaning the glass plates for
negatives. Almost at his elbow is a toning bath, but he would think it a
good joke, if you asked him whether a picture had lain long enough in the
solution of gold or hyposulphite.
We always take a glance at the literature which is certain to adorn the
walls in the neighborhood of each operative's bench or place for work. Our
friends in the manufactory we are speaking of were not wanting in this
respect. One of the girls had pasted on the wall before her,
"_Kind words can never die._"
It would not have been easy to give her a harsh one after reading her
chosen maxim. "The Moment of Parting" was twice noticed. "The Haunted
Spring", "Dearest May", "The _Bony_ Boat", "Yankee Girls", "Yankee Ship
and Yankee Crew", "My Country, 'tis of thee", and--was there ever anybody
that ever broke up prose into lengths who would not look to see if there
were not a copy of some performance of his own on the wall he was
examining, if he were exploring the inner chamber of a freshly opened
pyramid?
We left the great manufacturing establishment of the Messrs. Anthony, more
than ever impressed with the vast accession of happiness which has come to
mankind through this art, which has spread itself as widely as
civilization. The photographer can procure every article needed for his
work at moderate cost and in quantities suited to his wants. His prices
have consequently come down to such a point that pauperism itself need
hardly shrink from the outlay required for a family portrait-gallery. The
"tin-types," as the small miniatures are called,--stanno-types would be
the proper name,--are furnished at the rate of _two cents_ each! A
portrait such as Isabey could not paint for a Marshal of France,--a
likeness such as Malbone could not make of a President's Lady, to be had
for two coppers,--a dozen _chefs d'oeuvre_ for a quarter of a dollar!
* * * * *
We had been for a long time meditating a devotion of a part of what is
left of our more or less youthful energies to acquiring practical
knowledge of the photographic art. The auspicious moment came at last, and
we entered ourselves as the temporary apprentice of Mr. J.W. Black of this
city, well known as a most skilful photographer and a friendly assistant
of beginners in the art.
We consider ourselves at this present time competent to set up a
photographic ambulance or to hang out a sign in any modest country town.
We should, no doubt, over-time and under-tone, and otherwise wrong the
countenances of some of our sitters; but we should get the knack in a week
or two, and if Baron Wenzel owned to having spoiled a hat-full of eyes
before he had fairly learned how to operate for cataract, we need not
think too much of libelling a few village physiognomies before considering
ourselves fit to take the minister and his deacons. After years of
practice there is always something to learn, but every one is surprised to
find how little time is required for the acquisition of skill enough to
make a passable negative and print a tolerable picture. We could not help
learning, with the aid that was afforded us by Mr. Black and his
assistants, who were all so very courteous and pleasant, that, as a token
of gratitude, we offered to take photographs of any of them who would sit
to us for that purpose. Every stage of the process, from preparing a plate
to mounting a finished sun-print, we have taught our hands to perform, and
can therefore speak with a certain authority to those who wish to learn
the way of working with the sunbeam.
Notwithstanding the fact that the process of making a photographic picture
is detailed in a great many books,--nay, although we have given a brief
account of the principal stages of it in one of our former articles, we
are going to take the reader into the sanctuary of the art with us, and
ask him to assist, in the French sense of the word, while we make a
photograph,--say, rather, while the mysterious forces which we place in
condition to act work that miracle for us.
We are in a room lighted through a roof of ground glass, its walls covered
with blue paper to avoid reflection. A camera mounted on an adjustable
stand is before us. We will fasten this picture, which we are going to
copy, against the wall. Now we will place the camera opposite to it, and
bring it into focus so as to give a clear image on the square of ground
glass in the interior of the instrument. If the image is too large, we
push the camera back; if too small, push it up towards the picture and
focus again. The image is wrong side up, as we see; but if we take the
trouble to reverse the picture we are copying, it will appear in its
proper position in the camera. Having got an image of the right size, and
perfectly sharp, we will prepare a sensitive plate, which shall be placed
exactly where the ground glass now is, so that this same image shall be
printed on it.
For this purpose we must quit the warm precincts of the cheerful day, and
go into the narrow den where the deeds of darkness are done. Its
dimensions are of the smallest, and its aspect of the rudest. A feeble
yellow flame from a gas-light is all that illuminates it. All round us are
troughs and bottles and water-pipes, and ill-conditioned utensils of
various kinds. Everything is blackened with nitrate of silver; every form
of spot, of streak, of splash, of spatter, of stain, is to be seen upon
the floor, the walls, the shelves, the vessels. Leave all linen behind
you, ye who enter here, or at least protect it at every exposed point.
Cover your hands in gauntlets of India-rubber, if you would not utter Lady
Macbeth's soliloque over them when they come to the light of day. Defend
the nether garments with overalls, such as plain artisans are wont to
wear. Button the ancient coat over the candid shirt-front, and hold up the
retracted wristbands by elastic bands around the shirt-sleeve above the
elbow. Conscience and nitrate of silver are telltales that never forget
any tampering with them, and the broader the light the darker their
record. Now to our work.
Here is a square of crown glass three-fourths as large as a page of the
"Atlantic Monthly," if you happen to know that periodical. Let us brush it
carefully, that its surface may be free from dust. Now we take hold of it
by the upper left-hand corner and pour some of this thin syrup-like fluid
upon it, inclining the plate gently from side to side, so that it may
spread evenly over the surface, and let the superfluous fluid drain back
from the right hand upper corner into the bottle. We keep the plate
rocking from side to side, so as to prevent the fluid running in lines, as
it has a tendency to do. The neglect of this precaution is evident in some
otherwise excellent photographs; we notice it, for instance, in Frith's
Abou Simbel, No. 1, the magnificent rock-temple façade. In less than a
minute the syrupy fluid has dried, and appears like a film of transparent
varnish on the glass plate. We now place it on a flat double hook of gutta
percha and lower it gently into the nitrate-of-silver bath. As it must
remain there three or four minutes, we will pass away the time in
explaining what has been already done.
The syrupy fluid was _iodized collodion_. This is made by dissolving
gun-cotton in ether with alcohol, and adding some iodide of ammonium. When
a thin layer of this fluid is poured on the glass plate, the ether and
alcohol evaporate very speedily, and leave a closely adherent film of
organic matter derived from the cotton, and containing the iodide of
ammonium. We have plunged this into the bath, which contains chiefly
nitrate of silver, but also some iodide of silver,--knowing that a
decomposition will take place, in consequence of which the iodide of
ammonium will become changed to the iodide of silver, which will now fill
the pores of the collodion film. The iodide of silver is eminently
sensitive to light. The use of the collodion is to furnish a delicate,
homogeneous, adhesive, colorless layer in which the iodide may be
deposited. Its organic nature may favor the action of light upon the
iodide of silver.
While we have been talking and waiting, the process just described has
been going on, and we are now ready to take the glass plate out of the
nitrate-of-silver bath. It is wholly changed in aspect. The film has
become in appearance like a boiled white of egg, so that the glass
produces rather the effect of porcelain, as we look at it. Open no door
now! Let in no glimpse of day, or the charm is broken in an instant! No
Sultana was ever veiled from the light of heaven as this milky tablet we
hold must be. But we must carry it to the camera which stands waiting for
it in the blaze of high noon. To do this we first carefully place it in
this narrow case, called a _shield_, where it lies safe in utter darkness.
We now carry it to the camera, and, having removed the ground glass on
which the camera-picture had been brought to an exact focus, we drop the
shield containing the sensitive plate into the groove the glass occupied.
Then we pull out a slide, as the blanket is taken from a horse before he
starts. There is nothing now but to remove the brass cap from the lens.
That is giving the word Go! It is a tremulous moment for the beginner.
As we lift the brass cap, we begin to count seconds,--by a watch, if we
are naturally unrhythmical,--by the pulsations in our souls, if we have an
intellectual pendulum and escapement. Most persons can keep tolerably even
time with a second-hand while it is traversing its circle. The light is
pretty good at this time, and we count only as far as thirty, when we
cover the lens again with the cap. Then we replace the slide in the
shield, draw this out of the camera, and carry it back into the shadowy
realm where Cocytus flows in black nitrate of silver and Acheron stagnates
in the pool of hyposulphite, and invisible ghosts, trooping down from the
world of day, cross a Styx of dissolved sulphate of iron, and appear
before the Rhadamanthus of that lurid Hades.
Such a ghost we hold imprisoned in the shield we have just brought from
the camera. We open it and find our milky-surfaced glass plate looking
exactly as it did when we placed it in the shield. No eye, no microscope,
can detect a trace of change in the white film that is spread over it. And
yet there is a potential image in it,--a latent soul, which will presently
appear before its judge. This is the Stygian stream,--this solution of
proto-sulphate of iron, with which we will presently flood the white
surface.
We pour on the solution. There is no change at first; the fluid flows over
the whole surface as harmless and as useless as if it were water. What if
there were no picture there? Stop! what is that change of color beginning
at this edge, and spreading as a blush spreads over a girl's cheek? It is
a border, like that round the picture, and then dawns the outline of a
head, and now the eyes come out from the blank as stars from the empty
sky, and the lineaments define themselves, plainly enough, yet in a
strange aspect,--for where there was light in the picture we have shadow,
and where there was shadow we have light. But while we look it seems to
fade again, as if it would disappear. Have no fear of that; it is only
deepening its shadows. Now we place it under the running water which we
have always at hand. We hold it up before the dull-red gas-light, and then
we see that every line of the original and the artist's name are
reproduced as sharply as if the fairies had engraved them for us. The
picture is perfect of its kind, only it seems to want a little more force.
That we can easily get by the simple process called "intensifying" or
"redeveloping." We mix a solution of nitrate of silver and of pyro-gallic
acid in about equal quantities, and pour it upon the pictured film and
back again into the vessel, repeating this with the same portion of fluid
several times. Presently the fluid grows brownish, and at the same time
the whole picture gains the depth of shadow in its darker parts which we
desire. Again we place it under the running water. When it is well washed,
we plunge it into this bath of hyposulphite of soda, which removes all the
iodide of silver, leaving only the dark metal impregnating the film. After
it has remained there a few minutes, we take it out and wash it again as
before under the running stream of water. Then we dry it, and when it is
dry, pour varnish over it, dry that, and it is done. This is a
_negative_,--not a true picture, but a reversed picture, which puts
darkness for light and light for darkness. From this we can take true
pictures, or _positives_.
Let us now proceed to take one of these pictures. In a small room, lighted
by a few rays which filter through a yellow curtain, a youth has been
employed all the morning in developing the sensitive conscience of certain
sheets of paper, which came to him from the manufacturer already glazed by
having been floated upon the white of eggs and carefully dried, as
previously described. This "albumenized" paper the youth lays gently and
skilfully upon the surface of a solution of nitrate of silver. When it has
floated there a few minutes, he lifts it, lets it drain, and hangs it by
one corner to dry. This "sensitized" paper is served fresh every morning,
as it loses its delicacy by keeping.
We take a piece of this paper of the proper size, and lay it on the
varnished or pictured side of the negative, which is itself laid in a
wooden frame, like a picture-frame. Then we place a thick piece of cloth
on the paper. Then we lay a hinged wooden back on the cloth, and by means
of two brass springs press all close together,--the wooden back against
the cloth, the cloth against the paper, the paper against the negative. We
turn the frame over and see that the plain side of the glass negative is
clean. And now we step out upon the roof of the house into the bright
sunshine, and lay the frame, with the glass uppermost, in the full blaze
of light. For a very little while we can see the paper darkening through
the negative, but presently it clouds so much that its further changes
cannot be recognized. When we think it has darkened nearly enough, we turn
it over, open a part of the hinged back, turn down first a portion of the
thick cloth, and then enough of the paper to see something of the forming
picture. If not printed dark enough as yet, we turn back to their places
successively the picture, the cloth, the opened part of the frame, and lay
it again in the sun. It is just like cooking: the sun is the fire, and the
picture is the cake; when it is browned exactly to the right point, we
take it off the fire. A photograph-printer will have fifty or more
pictures printing at once, and he keeps going up and down the line,
opening the frames to look and see how they are getting on. As fast as
they are done, he turns them over, back to the sun, and the cooking
process stops at once.
The pictures which have just been printed in the sunshine are of a
peculiar purple tint, and still sensitive to the light, which will first
"flatten them out," and finally darken the whole paper, if they are
exposed to it before the series of processes which "fixes" and "tones"
them. They are kept shady, therefore, until a batch is ready to go down to
the toning room.
When they reach that part of the establishment, the first thing that is
done with them is to throw them face down upon the surface of a salt bath.
Their purple changes at once to a dull red. They are then washed in clean
water for a few minutes, and after that laid, face up, in a solution of
chloride of gold with a salt of soda. Here they must lie for some minutes
at least; for the change, which we can watch by the scanty daylight
admitted, goes on slowly. Gradually they turn to a darker shade; the
reddish tint becomes lilac, purple, brown, of somewhat different tints in
different cases. When the process seems to have gone far enough, the
picture is thrown into a bath containing hyposulphite of soda, which
dissolves the superfluous, unstable compounds, and rapidly clears up the
lighter portions of the picture. On being removed from this, it is
thoroughly washed, dried, and mounted, by pasting it with starch or
dextrine to a card of the proper size.
The reader who has followed the details of the process may like to know
what are the common difficulties the beginner meets with.
The first is in coating the glass with collodion. It takes some practice
to learn to do this neatly and uniformly.
The second is in timing the immersion in the nitrate-of-silver bath. This
is easily overcome; the glass may be examined by the feeble lamp-light at
the end of two or three minutes, and if the surface looks streaky,
replunged in the bath for a minute or two more, or until the surface looks
smooth.
The third is in getting an exact focus in the camera, which wants good
eyes, or strong glasses for poor ones.
The fourth is in timing the exposure. This is the most delicate of all the
processes. Experience alone can teach the time required with different
objects in different lights. Here are four card-portraits from a negative
taken from one of Barry's crayon-pictures, illustrating an experiment
which will prove very useful to the beginner. The negative of No. 1 was
exposed only two seconds. The young lady's face is very dusky on a very
dusky ground. The lights have hardly come out at all. No. 2 was exposed
five seconds. Undertimed, but much cleared up. No. 3 was exposed fifteen
seconds, about the proper time. It is the best of the series, but the
negative ought to have been intensified. It looks as if Miss E.V. had
washed her face since the five-seconds picture was taken. No. 4 was
exposed sixty seconds, that is to say, three or four times too long. It
has a curious resemblance to No. 1, but is less dusky. The contrasts of
light and shade which gave life to No. 3 have disappeared, and the face
looks as if a second application of soap would improve it. A few trials of
this kind will teach the eye to recognize the appearances of under- and
over-exposure, so that, if the first negative proves to have been too long
or too short a time in the camera, the proper period of exposure for the
next may be pretty easily determined.
The printing from the negative is less difficult, because we can examine
the picture as often as we choose; but it may be well to undertime and
overtime some pictures, for the sake of a lesson like that taught by the
series of pictures from the four negatives.
The only other point likely to prove difficult is the toning in the gold
bath. As the picture can be watched, however, a very little practice will
enable us to recognize the shade which indicates that this part of the
process is finished.
* * * * *
We have copied a picture, but we can take a portrait from Nature just as
easily, except for a little more trouble in adjusting the position and
managing the light. So easy is it to reproduce the faces that we love to
look upon; so simple is that marvellous work by which we preserve the
first smile of infancy and the last look of age: the most precious gift
Art ever bestowed upon love and friendship!
It will be observed that the glass plate, covered with its film of
collodion, was removed directly from the nitrate-of-silver bath to the
camera, so as to be exposed to its image while still wet. It is obvious
that this process is one that can hardly be performed conveniently at a
distance from the artist's place of work. Solutions of nitrate of silver
are not carried about and decanted into baths and back again into bottles
without tracking their path on persons and things. The _photophobia_ of
the "sensitized" plate, of course, requires a dark apartment of some kind:
commonly a folding tent is made to answer the purpose in photographic
excursions. It becomes, therefore, a serious matter to transport all that
is required to make a negative according to the method described. It has
consequently been a great desideratum to find some way of preparing a
sensitive plate which could be dried and laid away, retaining its
sensitive quality for days or weeks until wanted. The artist would then
have to take with him nothing but his camera and his dry sensitive plates.
After exposing these in the camera, they would be kept in dark boxes until
he was ready to develop them at leisure on returning to his _atelier_.
Many "dry methods" have been contrived, of which the _tannin process_ is
in most favor. The plate, after being "sensitized" and washed, is plunged
in a bath containing ten grains of tannin to an ounce of water. It is then
dried, and may be kept for a long time without losing its sensitive
quality. It is placed dry in the camera, and developed by wetting it and
then pouring over it a mixture of pyrogallic acid and the solution of
nitrate of silver. Amateurs find this the best way for taking scenery, and
produce admirable pictures by it, as we shall mention by-and-by.
* * * * *
In our former articles we have spoken principally of stereoscopic
pictures. These are still our chief favorites for scenery, for
architectural objects, for almost everything but portraits,--and even
these last acquire a reality in the stereoscope which they can get in no
other way. In this third photographic excursion we must only touch briefly
upon the stereograph. Yet we have something to add to what we said before
on this topic.
One of the most interesting accessions to our collection is a series of
twelve views, on glass, of scenes and objects in California, sent us with
unprovoked liberality by the artist, Mr. Watkins. As specimens of art they
are admirable, and some of the subjects are among the most interesting to
be found in the whole realm of Nature. Thus, the great tree, the "Grizzly
Giant," of Mariposa, is shown in two admirable views; the mighty precipice
of El Capitan, more than three thousand feet in precipitous height,--the
three conical hill-tops of Yo Semite, taken, not as they soar into the
atmosphere, but as they are reflected in the calm waters below,--these and
others are shown, clear, yet soft, vigorous in the foreground, delicately
distinct in the distance, in a perfection of art which compares with the
finest European work.
The "London Stereoscopic Company" has produced some very beautiful paper
stereographs, very dear, but worth their cost, of the Great Exhibition.
There is one view, which we are fortunate enough to possess, that is a
marvel of living detail,--one of the series showing the opening
ceremonies. The picture gives principally the musicians. By careful
counting, we find there are _six hundred faces to the square inch_ in the
more crowded portion of the scene which the view embraces,--a part
occupied by the female singers. These singers are all clad in white, and
packed with great compression of crinoline,--if that, indeed, were worn on
the occasion. Mere points as their faces seem to the naked eye, the
stereoscope, and still more a strong magnifier, shows them with their
mouths all open as they join in the chorus, and with such distinctness
that some of them might readily be recognized by those familiar with their
aspect. This, it is to be remembered, is not a reduced stereograph for the
microscope, but a common one, taken as we see them taken constantly.
We find in the same series several very good views of Gibson's famous
colored "Venus," a lady with a pleasant face and a very pretty pair of
shoulders. But the grand "Cleopatra" of our countryman, Mr. Story, of
which we have heard so much, was not to be had,--why not we cannot say,
for a stereograph of it would have had an immense success in America, and
doubtless everywhere.
The London Stereoscopic Company has also furnished us with views of Paris,
many of them instantaneous, far in advance of the earlier ones of Parisian
origin. Our darling little church of St. Etienne du Mont, for instance,
with its staircase and screen of stone embroidery, its carved oaken pulpit
borne on the back of a carved oaken Samson, its old monuments, its stained
windows, is brought back to us in all its minute detail as we remember it
in many a visit made on our way back from the morning's work at La Pitié
to the late breakfast at the Café Procope. Some of the instantaneous views
are of great perfection, and carry us as fairly upon the Boulevards as Mr.
Anthony transports us to Broadway. With the exception of this series, we
have found very few new stereoscopic pictures in the market for the last
year or two. This is not so much owing to the increased expense of
importing foreign views as to the greater popularity _of card-portraits_,
which, as everybody knows, have become the social currency, the
sentimental "green-backs" of civilization, within a very recent period.
We, who have exhausted our terms of admiration in describing the
stereoscopic picture, will not quarrel with the common taste which prefers
the card-portrait. The last is the cheapest, the most portable, requires
no machine to look at it with, can be seen by several persons at the same
time,--in short, has all the popular elements. Many care little for the
wonders of the world brought before their eyes by the stereoscope; all
love to see the faces of their friends. Jonathan does not think a great
deal of the Venus of Milo, but falls into raptures over a card-portrait of
his Jerusha. So far from finding fault with him, we rejoice rather that
his affections and those of average mortality are better developed than
their taste; and lost as we sometimes are in contemplation of the shadowy
masks of ugliness which hang in the frames of the photographers, as the
skins of beasts are stretched upon tanners' fences, we still feel
grateful, when we remember the days of itinerant portrait-painters, that
the indignities of Nature are no longer intensified by the outrages of
Art.
The sitters who throng the photographer's establishment are a curious
study. They are of all ages, from the babe in arms to the old wrinkled
patriarchs and dames whose smiles have as many furrows as an ancient elm
has rings that count its summers. The sun is a Rembrandt in his way, and
loves to track all the lines in these old splintered faces. A photograph
of one of them is like one of those fossilized sea-beaches where the
raindrops have left their marks, and the shellfish the grooves in which
they crawled, and the wading birds the divergent lines of their
foot-prints,--tears, cares, griefs, once vanishing as impressions from the
sand, now fixed as the vestiges in the sand-stone.
Attitudes, dresses, features, hands, feet, betray the social grade of the
candidates for portraiture. The picture tells no lie about them. There is
no use in their putting on airs; the make-believe gentleman and lady
cannot look like the genuine article. Mediocrity shows itself for what it
is worth, no matter what temporary name it may have acquired. Ill-temper
cannot hide itself under the simper of assumed amiability. The
querulousness of incompetent complaining natures confesses itself almost
as much as in the tones of the voice. The anxiety which strives to smooth
its forehead cannot get rid of the telltale furrow. The weakness which
belongs to the infirm of purpose and vacuous of thought is hardly to be
disguised, even though the moustache is allowed to hide _the centre of
expression_.
All parts of a face doubtless have their fixed relations to each other and
to the character of the person to whom the face belongs. But there is one
feature, and especially one part of that feature, which more than any
other facial sign reveals the nature of the individual. The feature is
_the mouth_, and the portion of it referred to is _the corner_. A circle
of half an inch radius, having its centre at the junction of the two lips
will include the chief focus of expression.
This will be easily understood, if we reflect that here is the point where
more muscles of expression converge than at any other. From above comes
the elevator of the angle of the mouth; from the region of the cheek-bone
slant downwards the two _zygomatics_, which carry the angle outwards and
upwards; from behind comes the _buccinator_, or trumpeter's muscle, which
simply widens the mouth by drawing the corners straight outward; from
below, the depressor of the angle; not to add a seventh, sometimes well
marked,--the "laughing muscle" of Santorini. Within the narrow circle
where these muscles meet the ring of muscular fibres surrounding the mouth
the battles of the soul record their varying fortunes and results. This is
the "_noeud vital_"--to borrow Flourens's expression with reference to a
nervous centre,--the _vital knot_ of expression. Here we may read the
victories and defeats, the force, the weakness, the hardness, the
sweetness of a character. Here is the nest of that feeble fowl,
self-consciousness, whose brood strays at large over all the features.
If you wish to see the very look your friend wore when his portrait was
taken, let not the finishing artist's pencil intrude within the circle of
the vital knot of expression.
We have learned many curious facts from photographic portraits which we
were slow to learn from faces. One is the great number of aspects
belonging to each countenance with which we are familiar. Sometimes, in
looking at a portrait, it seems to us that this is just the face we know,
and that it is always thus. But again another view shows us a wholly
different aspect, and yet as absolutely characteristic as the first; and a
third and a fourth convince us that our friend was not one, but many, in
outward appearance, as in the mental and emotional shapes by which his
inner nature made itself known to us.
Another point which must have struck everybody who has studied
photographic portraits is the family likeness that shows itself throughout
a whole wide connection. We notice it more readily than in life, from the
fact that we bring many of these family-portraits together and study them
more at our ease. There is something in the face that corresponds to
_tone_ in the voice,--recognizable, not capable of description; and this
kind of resemblance in the faces of kindred we may observe, though the
features are unlike. But the features themselves are wonderfully tenacious
of their old patterns. The Prince of Wales is getting to look like George
III. We noticed it when he was in this country; we see it more plainly in
his recent photographs. Governor Endicott's features have come straight
down to some of his descendants in the present day. There is a dimpled
chin which runs through one family connection we have studied, and a
certain form of lip which belongs to another. As our _cheval de bataille_
stands ready saddled and bridled for us just now, we must indulge
ourselves in mounting him for a brief excursion. This is a story we have
told so often that we should begin to doubt it but for the fact that we
have before us the written statement of the person who was its subject.
His professor, who did not know his name or anything about him, stopped
him one day after lecture and asked him if he was not a relation of
Mr. ----, a person of some note in Essex County.--Not that he had ever
heard of.--The professor thought he must be,--would he inquire?--Two or
three days afterwards, having made inquiries at his home in Middlesex
County, he reported that an elder member of the family informed him that
Mr. ----'s great-grandfather on his mother's side and his own
great-grandfather on his father's side were own cousins. The whole class
of facts, of which this seems to us too singular an instance to be lost,
is forcing itself into notice, with new strength of evidence, through the
galleries of photographic family-portraits which are making everywhere.
In the course of a certain number of years there will have been developed
some new physiognomical results, which will prove of extreme interest to
the physiologist and the moralist. They will take time; for, to bring some
of them out fully, a generation must be followed from its cradle to its
grave.
The first is a precise study of the effects of age upon the features. Many
series of portraits taken at short intervals through life, studied
carefully side by side, will probably show to some acute observer that
Nature is very exact in the tallies that mark the years of human life.
The second is to result from a course of investigations which we would
rather indicate than follow out; for, if the student of it did not fear
the fate of Phalaris,--that he should find himself condemned as
unlifeworthy upon the basis of his own observations,--he would very
certainly become the object of eternal hatred to the proprietors of all
the semi-organizations which he felt obliged to condemn. It consists in
the study of the laws of physical degeneration,--the stages and
manifestations of the process by which Nature dismantles the complete and
typical human organism, until it becomes too bad for her own sufferance,
and she kills it off before the advent of the reproductive period, that it
may not permanently depress her average of vital force by taking part in
the life of the race. There are many signs that fall far short of the
marks of cretinism,--yet just as plain as that is to the _visus
eruditus_,--which one meets every hour of the day in every circle of
society. Many of these are partial arrests of development. We do not care
to mention all which we think may be recognized, but there is one which we
need not hesitate to speak of from the fact that it is so exceedingly
common.
The vertical part of the lower jaw is short, and the angle of the jaw is
obtuse, in infancy. When the physical development is complete, the lower
jaw, which, as the active partner in the business of mastication, must be
developed in proportion to the vigor of the nutritive apparatus, comes
down by a rapid growth which gives the straight-cut posterior line and the
bold right angle so familiar to us in the portraits of pugilists,
exaggerated by the caricaturists in their portraits of fighting men, and
noticeable in well-developed persons of all classes. But in imperfectly
grown adults the jaw retains the infantile character,--the short vertical
portion necessarily implying the obtuse angle. The upper jaw at the same
time fails to expand laterally: in vigorous organisms it spreads out
boldly, and the teeth stand square and with space enough; whereas in
subvitalized persons it remains narrow, as in the child, so that the large
front teeth are crowded, or slanted forward, or thrown out of line. This
want of lateral expansion is frequently seen in the jaws, upper and lower,
of the American, and has been considered a common cause of caries of the
teeth.
A third series of results will relate to the effect of character in
moulding the features. Go through a "rogues' gallery" and observe what the
faces of the most hardened villains have in common. All these villanous
looks have been shaped out of the unmeaning lineaments of infancy. The
police-officers know well enough the expression of habitual crime. Now, if
all this series of faces had been carefully studied in photographs from
the days of innocence to those of confirmed guilt, there is no doubt that
a keen eye might recognize, we will not say the first evil volition in the
change it wrought upon the face, nor each successive stage in the downward
process of the falling nature, but epochs and eras, with differential
marks, as palpable perhaps as those which separate the aspects of the
successive decades of life. And what is far pleasanter, when the character
of a neglected and vitiated child is raised by wise culture, the converse
change will be found--nay, has been found--to record itself unmistakably
upon the faithful page of the countenance; so that charitable institutions
have learned that their strongest appeal lies in the request, "Look on
this picture, and on that,"--the lawless boy at his entrance, and the
decent youth at his dismissal.
The field of photography is extending itself to embrace subjects of
strange and sometimes of fearful interest. We have referred in a former
article to a stereograph in a friend's collection showing the bodies of
the slain heaped up for burial after the Battle of Malignano. We have now
before us a series of photographs showing the field of Antietam and the
surrounding country, as they appeared after the great battle of the 17th
of September. These terrible mementos of one of the most sanguinary
conflicts of the war we owe to the enterprise of Mr. Brady of New York. We
ourselves were on the field upon the Sunday following the Wednesday when
the battle took place. It is not, however, for us to bear witness to the
fidelity of views which the truthful sunbeam has delineated in all their
dread reality. The photographs bear witness to the accuracy of some of our
own sketches in a paper published in the December number of this magazine.
The "ditch" is figured, still encumbered with the dead, and strewed, as we
saw it and the neighboring fields, with fragments and tatters. The
"colonel's gray horse" is given in another picture just as we saw him
lying.
Let him who wishes to know what war is look at this series of
illustrations. These wrecks of manhood thrown together in careless heaps
or ranged in ghastly rows for burial were alive but yesterday. How dear to
their little circles far away most of them!--how little cared for here by
the tired party whose office it is to consign them to the earth! An
officer may here and there be recognized; but for the rest--if enemies,
they will be counted, and that is all. "80 Rebels are buried in this hole"
was one of the epitaphs we read and recorded. Many people would not look
through this series. Many, having seen it and dreamed of its horrors,
would lock it up in some secret drawer, that it might not thrill or revolt
those whose soul sickens at such sights. It was so nearly like visiting
the battlefield to look over these views, that all the emotions excited by
the actual sight of the stained and sordid scene, strewed with rags and
wrecks, came back to us, and we buried them in the recesses of our cabinet
as we would have buried the mutilated remains of the dead they too vividly
represented. Yet war and battles should have truth for their delineator.
It is well enough for some Baron Gros or Horace Vernet to please an
imperial master with fanciful portraits of what they are supposed to be.
The honest sunshine
"Is Nature's sternest painter, yet the best";
and that gives us, even without the crimson coloring which flows over the
recent picture, some conception of what a repulsive, brutal, sickening,
hideous thing it is, this dashing together of two frantic mobs to which we
give the name of armies. The end to be attained justifies the means, we
are willing to believe; but the sight of these pictures is a commentary on
civilization such as a savage might well triumph to show its missionaries.
Yet through such martyrdom must come our redemption. War Is the surgery of
crime. Bad as it is in itself, it always implies that something worse has
gone before. Where is the American, worthy of his privileges, who does not
now recognize the fact, if never until now, that the disease of our nation
was organic, not functional, calling for the knife, and not for washes and
anodynes?
It is a relief to soar away from the contemplation of these sad scenes and
fly in the balloon which carried Messrs. King and Black in their aërial
photographic excursion. Our townsman, Dr. John Jeffries, as is well
recollected, was one of the first to tempt the perilous heights of the
atmosphere, and the first who ever performed a journey through the air of
any considerable extent. We believe this attempt of our younger townsmen
to be the earliest in which the aëronaut has sought to work the two
miracles at once, of rising against the force of gravity, and picturing
the face of the earth beneath him without brush or pencil.
One of their photographs is lying before us. Boston, as the eagle and the
wild goose see it, is a very different object from the same place as the
solid citizen looks up at its eaves and chimneys. The Old South and
Trinity Church are two landmarks not to be mistaken. Washington Street
slants across the picture as a narrow cleft. Milk Street winds as if the
cowpath which gave it a name had been followed by the builders of its
commercial palaces. Windows, chimneys, and skylights attract the eye in
the central parts of the view, exquisitely defined, bewildering in
numbers. Towards the circumference it grows darker, becoming clouded and
confused, and at one end a black expanse of waveless water is whitened by
the nebulous outline of flitting sails. As a first attempt it is on the
whole a remarkable success; but its greatest interest is in showing what
we may hope to see accomplished in the same direction.
While the aëronaut is looking at our planet from the vault of heaven where
he hangs suspended, and seizing the image of the scene beneath him as he
flies, the astronomer is causing the heavenly bodies to print their images
on the sensitive sheet he spreads under the rays concentrated by his
telescope. We have formerly taken occasion to speak of the wonderful
stereoscopic figures of the moon taken by Mr. De la Rue in England, by Mr.
Rutherford and by Mr. Whipple in this country. To these most successful
experiments must be added that of Dr. Henry Draper, who has constructed a
reflecting telescope, with the largest silver reflector in the world,
except that of the Imperial Observatory at Paris, for the special purpose
of celestial photography. The reflectors made by Dr. Draper "will show
Debilissima quadruple, and easily bring out the companion of Sirius or the
sixth star in the trapezium of Orion." In taking photographs from these
mirrors, a movement of the sensitive plate of only one-hundredth of an
inch will render the image perceptibly less sharp. It was this accuracy of
convergence of the light which led Dr. Draper to prefer the mirror to the
achromatic lens. He has taken almost all the daily phases of the moon,
from the sixth to the twenty-seventh day, using mostly some of Mr.
Anthony's quick collodion, and has repeatedly obtained the full moon by
means of it in _one-third of a second_.
In the last "Annual of Scientific Discovery" are interesting notices of
photographs of the sun, showing the spots on his disk, of Jupiter with his
belts, and Saturn with his ring.
While the astronomer has been reducing the heavenly bodies to the
dimensions of his stereoscopic slide, the anatomist has been lifting the
invisible by the aid of his microscope into palpable dimensions, to remain
permanently recorded in the handwriting of the sun himself. Eighteen years
ago, M. Donné published in Paris a series of plates executed after figures
obtained by the process of Daguerre. These, which we have long employed in
teaching, give some pretty good views of various organic elements, but do
not attempt to reproduce any of the tissues. Professor O.N. Rood, of Troy,
has sent us some most interesting photographs, showing the markings of
infusoria enormously magnified and perfectly defined. In a stereograph
sent us by the same gentleman the epithelium scales from mucous membrane
are shown floating or half-submerged in fluid,--a very curious effect,
requiring the double image to produce it. Of all the microphotographs we
have seen, those made by Dr. John Dean, of Boston, from his own sections
of the spinal cord, are the most remarkable for the light they throw on
the minute structure of the body. The sections made by Dr. Dean are in
themselves very beautiful specimens, and have formed the basis of a
communication to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in which many
new observations have been added to our knowledge of this most complicated
structure. But figures drawn from images seen in the field of the
microscope have too often been known to borrow a good deal from the
imagination of the beholder. Some objects are so complex that they defy
the most cunning hand to render them with all their features. When the
enlarged image is suffered to delineate itself, as in Dr. Dean's views of
the _medulla oblongata_, there is no room to question the exactness of the
portraiture, and the distant student is able to form his own opinion as
well as the original observer. These later achievements of Dr. Dean have
excited much attention here and in Europe, and point to a new epoch of
anatomical and physiological delineation.
The reversed method of microscopic photography is that which gives
portraits and documents in little. The best specimen of this kind we have
obtained is another of those miracles which recall the wonders of Arabian
fiction. On a slip of glass, three inches long by one broad, is a circle
of thinner glass, as large as a ten-cent piece. In the centre of this is a
speck, as if a fly had stepped there without scraping his foot before
setting it down. On putting this under a microscope magnifying fifty
diameters there come into view the Declaration of Independence in full, in
a clear, bold type, every name signed in fac-simile; the arms of all the
States, easily made out, and well finished; with good portraits of all the
Presidents, down to a recent date. Any person familiar with the faces of
the Presidents would recognize any one of these portraits in a moment.
Still another application of photography, becoming every day more and more
familiar to the public, is that which produces enlarged portraits, even
life-size ones, from the old daguerreotype or more recent photographic
miniature. As we have seen this process, a closet is arranged as a
camera-obscura, and the enlarged image is thrown down through a lens above
on a sheet of sensitive paper placed on a table capable of being easily
elevated or depressed. The image, weakened by diffusion over so large a
space, prints itself slowly, but at last comes out with a clearness which
is surprising,--a fact which is parallel to what is observed in the
stereoscopticon, where a picture of a few square inches in size is
"extended" or diluted so as to cover some hundreds of square feet, and yet
preserves its sharpness to a degree which seems incredible.
The copying of documents to be used as evidence is another most important
application of photography. No scribe, however skilful, could reproduce
such a paper as we saw submitted to our fellow-workman in Mr. Black's
establishment the other day. It contained perhaps a hundred names and
marks, but smeared, spotted, soiled, rubbed, and showing every awkward
shape of penmanship that a miscellaneous collection of half-educated
persons could furnish. No one, on looking at the photographic copy, could
doubt that it was a genuine reproduction of a real list of signatures; and
when half a dozen such copies, all just alike, were shown, the conviction
became a certainty that all had a common origin. This copy was made with a
_Harrison's globe lens_ of sixteen inches' focal length, and was a very
sharp and accurate duplicate of the original. It is claimed for this new
American invention that it is "quite ahead of anything European"; and the
certificates from the United States Coast-Survey Office go far towards
sustaining its pretensions.
Some of our readers are aware that photographic operations are not
confined to the delineation of material objects. There are certain
establishments in which, for an extra consideration, (on account of the
_difficilis ascensus_, or other long journey they have to take,) the
spirits of the departed appear in the same picture which gives the
surviving friends. The actinic influence of a ghost on a sensitive plate
is not so strong as might be desired; but considering that spirits are so
nearly immaterial, that the stars, as Ossian tells us, can be seen through
their vaporous outlines, the effect is perhaps as good as ought to be
expected.
Mrs. Brown, for instance, has lost her infant, and wishes to have its
spirit-portrait taken with her own. A special sitting is granted, and a
special fee is paid. In due time the photograph is ready, and, sure
enough, there is the misty image of an infant in the background, or, it
may be, across the mother's lap. Whether the original of the image was a
month or a year old, whether it belonged to Mrs. Brown or Mrs. Jones or
Mrs. Robinson, King Solomon, who could point out so sagaciously the
parentage of unauthenticated babies, would be puzzled to guess. But it is
enough for the poor mother, whose eyes are blinded with tears, that she
sees a print of drapery like an infant's dress, and a rounded something,
like a foggy dumpling, which will stand for a face: she accepts the
spirit-portrait as a revelation from the world of shadows. Those who have
seen shapes in the clouds, or remember Hamlet and Polonius, or who have
noticed how readily untaught eyes see a portrait of parent, spouse, or
child in almost any daub intended for the same, will understand how easily
the weak people who resort to these places are deluded.
There are various ways of producing the spirit-photographs. One of the
easiest is this. First procure a bereaved subject with a mind "sensitized"
by long immersion in credulity. Find out the age, sex, and whatever else
you can, about his or her departed relative. Select from your numerous
negatives one that corresponds to the late lamented as nearly as may be.
Prepare a sensitive plate. Now place the negative against it and hold it
up close to your gas-lamp, which may be turned up pretty high. In this way
you get a foggy copy of the negative in one part of the sensitive plate,
which you can then place in the camera and take your flesh-and-blood
sitter's portrait upon it in the usual way. An appropriate background for
these pictures is a view of the asylum for feeble-minded persons, the
group of buildings at Somerville, and possibly, if the penitentiary could
be introduced, the hint would be salutary.
The number of amateur artists in photography is continually increasing.
The interest we ourselves have taken in some results of photographic art
has brought us under a weight of obligation to many of them which we can
hardly expect to discharge. Some of the friends in our immediate
neighborhood have sent us photographs of their own making which for
clearness and purity of tone compare favorably with the best professional
work. Among our more distant correspondents there are two so widely known
to photographers that we need not hesitate to name them: Mr. Coleman
Sellers of Philadelphia and Mr. S. Wager Hull of New York. Many beautiful
specimens of photographic art have been sent us by these gentlemen,--among
others, some exquisite views of Sunnyside and of the scene of Ichabod
Crane's adventures. Mr. Hull has also furnished us with a full account of
the dry process, as followed by him, and from which he brings out results
hardly surpassed by any method.
A photographic intimacy between two persons who never saw each other's
faces (that is, in Nature's original positive, the principal use of which,
after all, is to furnish negatives from which portraits may be taken) is a
new form of friendship. After an introduction by means of a few views of
scenery or other impersonal objects, with a letter or two of explanation,
the artist sends his own presentment, not in the stiff shape of a
purchased _carte de visite_, but as seen in his own study or parlor,
surrounded by the domestic accidents which so add to the individuality of
the student or the artist. You see him at his desk or table with his books
and stereoscopes round him; you notice the lamp by which he reads,--the
objects lying about; you guess his condition, whether married or single;
you divine his tastes, apart from that which he has in common with
yourself. By-and-by, as he warms towards you, he sends you the picture of
what lies next to his heart,--a lovely boy, for instance, such as laughs
upon us in the delicious portrait on which we are now looking, or an old
homestead, fragrant with all the roses of his dead summers, caught in one
of Nature's loving moments, with the sunshine gilding it like the light of
his own memory. And so these shadows have made him with his outer and his
inner life a reality for you; and but for his voice, which you have never
heard, you know him better than hundreds who call him by name, as they
meet him year after year, and reckon him among their familiar
acquaintances.
* * * * *
To all these friends of ours, those whom we have named, and not less those
whom we have silently remembered, we send our grateful acknowledgments.
They have never allowed the interest we have long taken in the miraculous
art of photography to slacken. Though not one of them may learn anything
from this simple account we have given, they will perhaps allow that it
has a certain value for less instructed readers, in consequence of its
numerous and rich omissions of much which, however valuable, is not at
first indispensable.
* * * * *