Photo News from
July/August 2008 Issue
by Jerry O'Neil

Turning over a new (old) leaf in the photo history books

Nearly all histories of photography make much of the year 1839—Beaumont Newhall’s seminal book, in fact, is titled History of Photography: From 1839 to the Present. And there’s a good deal of justification for recognizing that year.

In January 7, 1839, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre announced his daguerreotype photographic process in France, though he didn’t make details available until that August. Meanwhile, in England, on January 25, 1839, William Henry Fox Talbot displayed pictures made with his negative/positive process to the Royal Institution in London, and on January 31 he presented a paper to the Royal Society, in which he described his process as “photogenic drawing.”

The year 1839 also saw the introduction of the very word “photography,” coined from the Greek words for “light” and “writing.” Sir John Herschel deserves credit for popularizing the word, which he used in a lecture before the Royal Society on March 14, 1839— though it turns out a Berlin astronomer named Johann von Maedler had actually used “photography” a few weeks earlier. (After all, back in those days every scientist had to know Latin and Greek.)

But as early as the 1790s, experimen­ters—including Thomas Wedgwood (of the Wedgwood china family), James Watt (of steam engine fame), and Sir Humphry Davy (an inventor and chemist who discovered several chemical elements)—were all able to produce photogenic drawings (photograms). They did it by contact-printing objects such as leaves and keys onto paper treated with chemicals to make it light-sensitive (or by using an adapted camera obscura). Contemporary accounts describe Wedgwood’s experiments making what he called “solar pictures” using paper coated with a silver nitrate solution. Sir Humphry Davy described Wedgwood’s experiments in an 1802 article for a scientific-society journal, titling it “An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings upon Glass, and of Making Profiles, by the Agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver.”

Sadly, there was no known way to “fix” these photogenic images, so if exposed to light they would have ­darkened into uselessness over the years. (It was Herschel who later invented sodium thiosulphate fixer.) And photographic historians have believed that’s why there are no known surviving Wedgwood, Watt, or Davy images.

Or are there? That’s the question raised by a dark-red photogram of a leaf that the Sotheby’s auction house was preparing to sell as part of the Quillan Collection, assembled for an investment firm named the Quillan Company. For many years the image was attributed to Talbot, with the date assumed as being 1839. Sotheby’s contacted Larry J. Schaaf of Baltimore, regarded as the world’s leading Talbot expert, to ask what he could say about the print for the auction catalog. Schaaf was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “I got back to them and said, ‘Well, the first thing I would say is that this was not made by Talbot.’”

The Leaf had been part of an album compiled by Henry Bright, a resident of Bristol, whose family was part of a group of scientists and inventors active in that city in the late 1700s. The album included six photogenic drawings, and these have been known to photo historians at least since 1984, when they were first auctioned by Sotheby’s. Back then, The Leaf sold for the paltry sum of $776. Other photogenic drawings from the same album are owned by New York City’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, but there was so little information about the images that research into their origins didn’t seem worthwhile. “In most cases we just don’t have any place even to get started,” Schaaf told the Times. However, there is one clue: the letter W inscribed on a corner of The Leaf— meaning Wedgwood? or Watt?

When asked whether unfixed images made in Wedgwood’s day could have survived until today if they had been protected from much exposure to light, Schaaf said yes. “No examples of ­Wedgwood’s work have yet been identified in any collection, so if these six eventually prove to be by him, they may be the only survivors of this seminal idea.”

That means The Leaf could be worth a fortune. Denise Bethel, director of Sotheby’s photograph department, said “When we thought it was [made by] Talbot, we gave it a $100,000–150,000 estimate. Now with this other possibility… it’s certainly far more valuable.” Because of the discovery, Sotheby’s and the Quillan Company decided to postpone the sale of the print until it has been thoroughly examined and tested. They removed The Leaf from their April 7 auction, but even without it, the remaining prints from the Quillan Collection sold for almost $9 million.

Jill Quasha, the photo-historian and dealer who bought The Leaf in 1989 for the Collection, told the Times that it was too early to say precisely how the image would be tested. Likely tests would determine the age of the paper and the chemical makeup of both the paper and any chemicals coated on it. “I think it has to be done quickly and efficiently and with the least amount of damage to the photograph,” Quasha told the Times, and she hopes the re­search can be completed within six months so the print can again be put up for auction. (The Met and the Getty Museum plan to ­perform scientific analysis and further research on their images as well.)

320 GB of photos in the palm of your hand

WD, the prominent hard-drive manufacturer originally named Western Digital, has in­tro­duced a color­ful addition to the ho-hum black original version of its portable My Passport Essential portable hard drives—now there’s a choice of 10 bright colors for these palm-sized USB drives. They don’t need a separate power supply because they’re powered by the USB connection to your laptop or desktop computer. (WD says, “An optional cable is available for the few computers that limit bus power.”)

The drives come in capacities up to 320 GB, which WD says is enough for up to 91,000 photos or 80,000 MP3 songs, depending on file sizes. (Even with professional-quality photo files of 32 MB each, it’ll hold 10,000 or so.)

The drives are truly palm-sized, smaller than a pocket day planner (remember those?), only a hair over 9⁄16 inches/15 mm thick, and weighing less than 5 ounces/0.18 kg. They come equipped with WD Sync software to easily synchronize files between your PC and My Passport drive, and with 128-bit encryption to protect your data. The drives also contain Google software—Google Desktop Search to find files on the drive, Picasa photo organizer, and the Google Toolbar search bar for Web searches.

And the prices are reasonable—from $180 for the 320 GB model, down to $120 for the 160 GB. There’s also a 250 GB model for $150.

At this point, the software is ­Windows-only, though the drive works with Macs. There’s more info at www.westerndigital.com/en/products/ products.asp?DriveID=391.

In memoriam:
Alfred L. DeBat Photographer, writer, editor, friend

Alfred Louis DeBat, as Al was formally known, died March 30 at age 76, after a lengthy battle with cancer. He was a lifelong photographer, writer, and editor, at one point editor-in-chief of this magazine when it was named Darkroom & Creative Camera Techniques.

Al was a mensch, a good friend to many people in the field of publishing and ­photography. Kim Brady, an Atlanta-based photo writer and editor, said DeBat “was a great ­editor, photographer, and teacher. Many who worked alongside Al considered him both a close friend and mentor.”

He first became fascinated with photography at age 12, when he took over his family’s folding Kodak camera. After high school he attended Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees while pursuing his interest in photography.

Al served in the U.S. Army in Germany, but probably a more significant experience was his round-the-world trip in 1959. He trekked through Cambodian jungles to Angkor Wat and made his way across Afghan­istan and the Middle East. He discovered he loved travel and photographing the places he visited, and remained a globe-trotter all his life. He kept a large wall map in his Chicago-area home with pushpins showing the places he’d been—he’d visited 175 countries in all.

Al was editor-in-chief of several prominent imaging publications, including Professional Photographer (published by the Professional Photographers Association of America), Photomethods, and Digital Imaging Digest.

He was fascinated with the latest in photo technology. “Al saw the future of digital long before most of the photo industry even acknowledged that the technology existed,” Brady said.

Al was previously divorced and is survived by his companion of 25 years, Marla Kalbhen, as well as by his daughter, Avril DeBat, his brother, Donald DeBat, and sister, Dorothy Galbraith, as well as two nieces, three nephews, and seven great-nieces and great-nephews. A public memorial celebration is planned for the summer.

SHORT TAKES

If you want to see what a 16-billion pixel photo looks like— just visit www.haltadefinizione.com/en/, where they’re displaying a 16-gigapixel copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s wonderful mural The Last Supper. A high-tech Italian firm named Hal9000 took nine hours to shoot the picture, making 1,677 exposures of 12 megapixels each, using a robot-aimed, robot-controlled Nikon D2X digital SLR and later stitching together the images by computer. The Web site lets you view the whole mural or zoom in to any segment. You can even view a small area of your choice at full life-size, though so much magnification shows only the details of the cracks in the paint.

From digital to low-tech—Now you can take those high-rez HD videos you’ve been shooting and have them made into a… flipbook?! Yep, one of those little handheld gizmos—basically a stack of frame-grabs printed from your video—that shows the movie when you flip through it. Just the thing for that video of your baby’s first steps. Current price per flipbook is $7.99, marked down from the usual $8.99, but there may also be a membership fee. Just choose your video, go to www.motionbox.com to select the cover art, and wait a few days to get your flipbook(s).

So you think your 12 MP digicam is hot stuff?—Prepare to be humbled by the LSST (Large Synoptic Survey Telescope) that will be built in northern Chile: It will include a 3,200-megapixel digital camera—yes, 3.2 gigpixels. The 8.4-meter (27.6 feet) telescope will have three large mirrors and three refractive lenses. That 3,200 MP digital camera will capture and download up to 30 terabytes of image data per night. (1 terabyte = 1,000 GB or 1,000,000 MB.) The goal is making deep space exploration available to Web users. The giant ‘scope is funded in part by a $10 million gift from former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates and $20 million from Charles Simonyi, a former Microsoft executive who last year became a private-citizen-astronaut, reaching orbit aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft. It’s scheduled to begin operating in 2014. n