19th Century Photography

and Fassena-were photographed by Joseph T. Zealy for Harvard professor and scientist Louis Agassiz. These visual representations were intended to support his theories about polygenesis. Agassiz believed that human beings were created as distinct types at different times and in different locales.

This essay gives a brief overview of the Armenian photographer Ohannes Kurkdjian's career during his sojourn in Eastern Armenia between 1877-1881 and later in Java Indonesia. The author contextualised Kurkdjian's oeuvre within the larger cross-cultural narratives of late-nineteenth century international studio photography, colonialist paradigms and emerging 'peripheral' modernities.

Die Universitätsbibliothek Basel besitzt ein prachtvolles Fotoalbum mit dem Titel "Vues de Brousse", das eine hohe Staatsauszeichnung von Sultan Abdülhamid II. erhielt. Es entstand um 1888 im berühmten osmanischen Fotostudio Sébah & Joaillier und enthält knapp einhundert Stadtansichten der ersten osmanischen Hauptstadt Bursa. Die Stadt, in der Nähe von Istanbul gelegen, war seit byzantinischer Zeit ein wichtiger Produzent von Rohseide. Es ist die Seide, die den Faden der Verflechtungsgeschichte zwischen Basel als Zentrum der Seidenbandindustrie und dem osmanischen Bursa aufnehmen lässt. Der vorliegende Band enthält sämtliche Fotos des Albums und beleuchtet seine Geschichte sowie die ökonomischen und kulturellen Austauschbeziehungen zwischen beiden Städten rund um die Seidenproduktion.

According to Victor Burgin, a portrait is not a simple depiction of a particular person, but rather a heterogeneous representation, which is understood as a complex semiotic construct, built on the basis of the plurality of codes. The proposed paper discusses American and European photographs representing the genre of the medical professional, which, in 19th and early 20th centuries were used by medical professionals to both convey the seriousness of medical studies and to assume professional identity. 
While the medical world long struggled to combat the negative depiction of the profession, which was already deeply ingrained in popular perception during the 18th and 19th centuries through professional publications that aimed to identify and isolate imposters in the medical field, only the creation of the medical occupational portrait genre provided medics with a more accessible and efficient visual tool in their efforts to uphold their reputation.
In the first section, the article examines photographs created between the1840s and 1900s, belonging to the formal professional portraiture genre. These photographs, usually taken at the photographic studio, depict doctors posing with books and charts, but also with skulls and skeletal parts, which puts them in striking contrast with modern medical professional portraits. The author demonstrates how, through the conventional displaying of cranium and other skeletal parts, early photographic medical portraiture both linked the images of medics to the painterly tradition of the professional portraiture and established the notion of modern medicine as a bold attempt to defeat death.
The second part of the article concentrates on photographs of dissections, including formal lecture photographs and candid images of small groups of students taken either by professional photographers or by the students themselves. Most of these pictures are dated between the 1880s and 1920s. The paper analyzes such aspects of dissection photographs as their composition, which establishes the students’ relationship with the cadaver, a variety of written information included in pictures, and the circulation these images. In addition, the paper discusses examples of photographic medical “gallows humor” in the context of changing attitudes towards human remains.

Monochrome photographs are now commonly referred to as being “in black and white,” but before photographing “in color” became common, from the mid-1930s, a vibrant chromatic culture existed in photography. Scholarly interest in print color as a cultural phenomenon, however, has been very limited and historicization of its vocabulary inexistent. This text addresses the disjunction between the colors of early photographs on paper and the way they are described today. It evaluates what colors “black-and-white” photographs actually were and how the photographic community engaged with the issue of print coloration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through a close analysis of the vocabulary used to describe and categorize color (or its perceived absence) in photography, print coloration and its lexicon emerge as meaningful, interdependent artifacts for understanding how individuals used an unprecedentedly mechanical image-making technique as a means of creation.

https://www.degruyter.com/view/title/552600

We now think of glass-based photography as cumbersome and fragile, but its invention circa 1850 inspired new and successful commercial products that exploited what were very desirable qualities. Leaving aside the well known glass negative, this article focuses on glass positives and on how creative entrepreneurs used them to capitalize on the transparency and precision glass favored in photography. I establish an early history of the photographic lantern slide and of the glass stereoview, showing how each associated photography with another spectacular form of entertainment to propose an immersive and captivating experience of the photographic image.

Slide projection spectacularly transformed pocket-sized glass photographs into unprecedentedly large, luminous images full of minutia as never experienced before. The contemplation of glass views in a stereoscope, back-lit and magnified by the device’s lenses, pulled the viewer into a three-dimensional scene that was more detailed than anything seen on paper. In the experience of both media, the physical support of the image became invisible, with only luminescence and shadow remaining. Photography as “writing with light” had never been so materially rendered. Glass stereoviews were the object of a thriving industry starting in the 1850s and lantern slides soon followed, with commercial ties developing between them thanks to their shared technical underpinnings and format.

Keywords: lantern slides, projection, stereoscopy, photography on glass, innovation in photography, glass albumen process.

Mots clés: projection, plaque de projection, diapositive sur verre, stéréoscopie, innovation en photographie, photographie sur verre, albumine sur verre.

Ars Orientalis is a peer-reviewed annual volume of scholarly articles on the art and archaeology of Asia, the ancient Near East, and the Islamic world. It is published jointly by the Freer and Sackler Galleries and the University of Michigan Department of History of Art. Fostering a broad range of topics and approaches through themed issues, the journal is intended for scholars in diverse fields. Ars Orientalis provides a forum for new scholarship, with a particular interest in work that redefines and crosses boundaries, both spatial and temporal. Authors are asked to follow The Chicago Manual of Style, 16th edition.

This account of Felice Beato (1834-1909) aims to present a diverse photographer, who, working under very challenging situations, developed technical and artistic skills that provide clear evidence of the shifts and trends in Beato’s personal innovations.  Additionally, the goal is to prove Beato to have been an industrious business man catering to a political and cultural need that shaped his images.  Over the course of his professional career of about fifty years, Beato’s style paralleled the evolution of mid-19th century.

In ihren bisherigen Ausrichtungen hat die Fotohistoriografie dem Begriff "Serie" nicht den Stellenwert eingeräumt, der ihm gebührt. Zu oft hat man in der Fotogeschichte herausgehobene und entkontextualisierte Meisterwerke untersucht, anstatt sich der Masse der Bilder gewidmet, die das Medium Fotografie so kennzeichnet. Um die Produktion und Rezeption von Fotografien im vorigen Jahrhundert adäquat zu beschreiben, ist der Serienbegriff jedoch unverzichtbar.
Zwei Nuancen scheinen im Begriff "Serie" auf: zum einen die Fügung gleichartiger Dinge zu einem größeren Ganzen, zum anderen die Anordnung in einer Reihenfolge. Als erster Systematisierungsversuch werden in diesem Artikel drei unterschiedliche, jedoch strukturell verbundene Anwendungsbereiche dieses Begriffs dargelegt: 1. Die Fabrikation als Serie, welche die Popularisierung des Mediums ermöglicht, indem sie Fotografie vom teuren Einzelstück zum erschwinglichen Industrieprodukt macht. 2. Die Vermarktung als Serie, welche die nun massenhaft produzierten Fotografien nicht als Einzelstück, sondern als Sammlung vertreibt, was am Beispiel des Lieferungswerks ausführlich dargestellt wird. 3. Die Präsentation und Rezeption als Serie, also die Sequenzierung von Fotografien, um zeitliche Abläufe darzustellen. In diesem Sinne stellt die Serialität eine Antwort auf die Fragmentierung im 19. Jahrhundert im allgemeinen und im Medium Fotografie im besonderen dar. Der Begriff "Serie" ermöglicht nicht nur diese einzelnen Phänomene in ihrer Bandbreite zu erfassen, sondern sie darüber hinaus im Zusammenhang zu sehen.

One of the oldest, and surely the most obsessive, topics in the history of photography is the relationship between art and photography. In the past, efforts were made to prove that artists had used photographic models, the aim at the time being to ennoble the medium of photography. The 'influence' it exerted on art was to turn photography itself into an art. In contrast to this theoretically unreflective and unfruitful practice, an approach will be outlined here which shifts the focus of attention to the fundamentally historcial conditions that made the encounter between the two media possible in the first place.
Even though Muybridge's photograph series were not primarily intended as models for artists, they were bound to unleash a fierce debate among representatives of a painting bent on exact reproduction of physical reality. The supporters of traditional artistic representation lost no time in raising doubts about the veracity of Muybridge's photographs. However, once the authenticity of the photographs had been proven by (re-)animation, the question that was then raised was how painting should deal with a reality that was simultaneously visible and invisible. The ensuing discussion was characterised by two equally positivstic positions: the one position, taken by Muybridge, declared flatly that any representation that did not correspond to the instantaneous photographs was simply false, thus arguing in favour of an objective modus of painting free of conventions; the other position rejected instantaneous photography because it did not comply with what the human eye was capable of grasping of a swift movement and demanded that representation be in accordance with the physiology of perception. Photography became involved in this debate not via the aesthetic influence it exercised, but via a questioning of the epistmological character of painting. Only on the periphery could voices be heard that granted art the right to represent reality according to its own laws, above and beyond what was either sensually perceptible or knowable.

The increasing interest in media history within the academic world has not yet resulted in an intensive examination of the relationship between photography and communications media. This article seeks to begin to address this lacuna by examining photography's insertion into the so-called revolution of communication in middle-nineteenth-century America. The first section of the present study links photography to the introduction of telegraphy, the development of the railway and the expansion of the postal system. The second section examines aspects of the reception of photography in nineteenth-century America and argues this is related to improvements in communication and transportation technologies. The conclusion calls for a broader consideration of the links between the history of photography and the history of media.

Mezi nejznámější fotografie v českých sbírkách patří bezesporu tzv. Kynžvartská daguerrotypie – vyobrazení zátiší, které obdržel kníže Klemens von Metternich-Winneburg darem od Louise J. M. Daguerra v létě 1839. Méně známé jsou však další daguerrotypické inkunábule a prameny k počátkům dějin fotografie u nás, které se dochovaly ve stejné sbírce na kynžvartském zámku. Cílem příspěvku je jednak přiblížit tento pozoruhodný konvolut daguerrotypií, jeho skladbu, historii a místo, jež zaujímá v kontextu zámecké sbírky, jednak upozornit na úlohu Klemense Metternicha jakožto podporovatele prvních daguerrotypistů a jednoho z vůbec prvních sběratelů fotografie. / Undoubtedly, one of the best-known photographs in Czech collections is the so-called “Kynžvart Daguerreotype” –
a presentation piece depicting a still life, which was given by Louis J. M. Daguerre to Clemens von Metternich-Winneburg in summer 1839. However, there are other daguerreotype incunabula and written documents preserved in the very same collection at the Kynžvart castle, which are of similar importance and relevance to the local history of photography. Unlike the first one, they remain rather unknown. The article aims to elucidate this remarkable series of very early daguerreotypes, their history and their place in the context of an aristocratic collection. By doing so, the essay draws attention to Clemens Metternich as a patron of pioneer daguerreotypists and as one of the first collectors of photographs.

By collecting a series of mostly unsigned and undated ‘panorama’ views of Port Said, taken broadly from the inauguration of the Suez Canal in 1869 to well into the twentieth century, we were able to study the progress of building construction in this town. As a result we have managed to date approximately, but securely, all of them. One such view was firmly placed by us in the time slot of ‘Early 1872’. This stood out for its technical affinities, its lighting, sharpness and symmetry. We began a trail to identify its photographer by locating copies in two major institutions (J. Paul Getty Museum and Griffith Institute). It appeared that the first was following a previous opinion attributing the photograph to famous Francis Frith, since it is included in an album published by the Frith Company and assumed to date to ‘1865’. The second reckoned that the photographer may have been Antonio Beato or Wilhelm Hammerschmidt (without discounting others), since it is included in a private album which carries photographs by them and represents a journey dated to late 1871/early 1872.  The first opinion set us to re-examine the context of the Frith Company’s albums, the second, which agreed with our chronology, to analyse the Suez Canal part of a Victorian journey to Egypt by one Emma Scott.  The result of this trail was to identify the real photographer of the Port Said ‘panorama’ as being Frank Mason Good, and at the same time discover further relative photographs belonging to him.  Our conclusion was verified by matching the specific photographs to those listed in a part of a catalogue of the Frith Company attributed to Good, examples of which exist in another major institution (Victoria and Albert Museum).  A brief history of photography in the Suez Canal is provided here together with a brief biography of Good.

Matte collodion photographs were the dominant medium used by commercial portrait photographers at the turn of the century. These prints usually display a black neutral tone and have a matte surface and an excellent stability. For this reason, they have often been mistakenly identified as platinum prints. The tonality of matte collodion prints can also vary from purple to brown. This article will examine the possible. factors responsible for these differences in tone. A brief history of printing processes will be given, followed by a description of the matte collodion process and the different toning protocols described in photographic treatises and journals of the period. Results of elemental analysis will also be discussed.

On the premises of the permanent display of the Collection of South, Southeast and Central Asian Art as part of the Asian Art Museum, the current exhibition "Kashmir in 19th Century Photography" presents an unprecedented survey of photographic prints from the 1860s to the early 20 th century. The selection of these views, mostly consisting of albumen prints as well as early woodburytypes or carbon prints, was arranged mainly by the director of the said section of the Museum of Asian Art, Raffael Dedo Gadebusch. As with Gadebusch's previous exhibitions of early photographs of India, the display surprises the visitor with a well-balanced choice of landscapes, gardens, monuments and people in such a way that Arcadia might be discovered against the background of some of the highest mountains this world has to offer. Within these picturesque landscapes and lavishly laid out gardens the visitor in the days of yore was able to meet globally speaking and if we believe a few contemporary reportssome of the most fascinating women.

El plano final del filme El piano (The Piano, Jane Campion, 1993) desen-cadena una imagen terriblemente poética que empatiza con la imaginación más íntima de la protagonista. Sumergido bajo las profundidades oceánicas reposa un piano destartalado. Atado a él se mecen tendiendo hacia la superficie los abultados ropajes victorianos de ella, encubriendo su cuerpo presuntamente inerte que se balancea en vertical. Cada uno de los elementos de la última imagen permite observar la complejidad de un relato cinematográfico que repiensa la época y la imagen de la mujer victoriana desde una perspectiva contemporánea, sin eximirla de sus contradicciones. A lo largo del devenir fílmico emergen referentes pictóricos, fotográficos, que permiten desentrañar qué tradiciones estéticas arman la obra cinematográfica dirigida por Jane Campion. En este texto proponemos rescatar los visuales de entre esos referentes —pues los musicales, cuya importancia alcanza a dar título a la obra, merecerían un escrito en sí mismos— y observar cómo el tratamiento del atuendo, la gestualidad y los objetos victorianos rebasa la función de componer una puesta en escena realista respecto a una determinada época para alcanzar una mirada crítica y compleja sobre ella. Todo ello vehiculado, además, desde el tormento de dos figuras femeninas que desmienten la naturalidad tanto del ideal de mujer-ángel, tan caro a la era victoriana, como el de femme fatale cuya representación iconográfica experimenta toda una revolución en el convulso, claroscuro, inagotable y poliédrico siglo XIX.

At the very end of the “long 19th century”, between 22 March and 1 April 1910, the University of Vienna organized its first study trip to the eastern Adriatic coast, with Dalmatia as its main focal point. Although this trip has been partially discussed in previous studies, among the still unpublished material remains a large album of photographs taken during the trip, preserved in the Archives of the University of Vienna. The trip was organized at the incentive of the then rector of the Viennese University Heinrich Swoboda, and included a total of 300 participants. The fact that precisely the eastern coast of the Adriatic was chosen as the trip’s destination can, at least partially, be explained through political circumstances. In the growingly unstable political situation on the Balkans, the Austrian government viewed the trip (as well as many other events such as the Adria-Ausstellung held in Vienna in 1913) as a possibility to demonstrate their interest in coastal provinces. Photographs reveal that the trip’s destination was the entire Austrian coast, from Aquileia and Grado in the north, Poreč and Pula in Istria, all the way to Dubrovnik and Boka Kotorska in the south, as well as the inland town of Mostar. Most of the trip was dedicated to Dalmatia (Trogir, Split, Dubrovnik, Kotor, Vis, Lokrum). It prompted the publication of an edited volume with essays by key art historians (such as Max Dvořak and Josef Strzygowski) and other scholars active at the University of Vienna in that period. Photographs in the album represent a precious testimony of the state of numerous Dalmatian monuments at the beginning of the 20th century, but also of the interventions and restorations then in progress. The aim of the paper is to focus on the political background of the organization of this trip, its participants, as well as the contents of the album itself.

Amélie Nádherná, roz. Kleinová 70. léta 19. století Albuminový papír, č. kat. 112 Josef Kunzfeld Městské divadlo 80. léta 19. století Platinotypie, č. kat. 14 Josef Kunzfeld Novostavba nadačního domu Valentina Falkensteinera na Kapucínském náměstí, kolem 1905 Platinotypie, kat. 25 Josef Kunzfeld Kapucínské náměstí 90. léta 19. století Platinotypie, č. kat. 24

Surviving portraits of early Chinese settlers in Malacca and Penang are testimony to the existence of a tradition of image making in the older colonial constructs, of which are antecedents of Singapore.  The first were descendants of Chinese sea-faring merchants who settled in the Nanyang colonies such as Batavia (Jakarta) and Penang and Malacca, where some of the earliest portraits still survive. The Straits Chinese did not only established themselves in the Straits Settlements but also in many parts of the archipelago where they were equally as prominent and firmly established. Hence, Colonial Singapore and the Straits Settlements cannot be talked about separate from other Straits Chinese communities from other colonies. The paintings and photographs in the NUS Museum Straits Chinese Collection and the Peranakan Museum’s Straits Chinese Chinese portrait collections has formed most of the content of this study.  As these are the first of these types of pictures to be studied and seen rigorously, this study is limited to portraits of the early Chinese residents in Singapore and the older colonial settlements such as Malacca, Penang and Java. Although there is to be found, some portraits of Arabs, Chettiars, Malays and Europeans, they will not be included in the scope of this study. The Chinese, being the most populous of the groups, have provided for the bulk of surviving examples of portraits were produced by Chinese artists as well as portraits depicting the Chinese.

This early period of artistic production that warrants requisite attention and should be situated at the very threshold of early modernities in Singapore’s History of Art. A revision of this historiography is therefore deservedly requisite. In addition, the development of artistic practices in Singapore have undeniably inextricable connections to the artistic practices in her neighboring countries, hence must be articulated not by national narratives nor circumscribed by national borders. These recent discoveries of early pictures germane to this study will therefore be a pioneering attempt at establishing a new framework for Singapore’s History of Art.

This puplication is based on my graduate thesis "The person in the picture: The Urban Portrait photography in Greece in the 19th century" and investigates the origins, the development and the dissemination of photographic portrait in the Greek society of the 19th century. The document is structured in five distict sections that examine sequentially: the advent of both the photographic profession and portraiture in Greece in the period 1839-1856, the prime of Greek photography from 1856 to 1888, as depicted in the two main cities of Greece at that time, Athens and Hermoupolis -Syros, the structure and types of photography-related businesses, complementary themes, such as the activity of women in the field of photography and the impact of the portrait photography in the urban layer of Greek society, as well as the integration of portraiture with the wider, urban-like ideology of the 19th century.

Note: This is the CfP to the first of a series of annual conferences under the same title that we continue to organize in St. Petersburg. Please contact me if you want to know more about the next conference; don't use the email addresses noted in the CfP but the contact option here at academia. For the programs of this year's conference and those of past years please check the conference website at http://after-post.photography

The Exposition Universelle of 1867 was the second of its kind to be held in Paris and was the largest to date. In 1867 the French Second Empire’s “social” doctrine staged industry and labor not only as economic values but as cultural facts, envisioned in socio-ethnographic terms if not as forms of spectacle. The United States was only a second-tier player; however, for the U.S. organizers the Paris Exposition was a crucial opportunity for the country as it just emerged from the Civil War and entered Reconstruction. This paper seeks to identify aesthetic concerns and, more generally, an ambition to seduce the gaze of French and international viewers through the general organization and specific displays of the American exhibition, concentrating on exhibits offered by the Western states and territories. Images and objects from this region—particularly between the Rocky Mountains and California—played a significant, if perhaps unexpected, role in shaping a new aesthetic identity that potentially extended to the entire US exhibition. The display of Western photographs inaugurated a trend that pushed geographical imageries, especially of so-called new lands, into greater visibility. The Paris Exposition of 1867 seems to have been a pivotal moment in the use of geographical imageries, and their ability to link economic and aesthetic values. In the context of this Exposition western photography, natural specimens and material culture of the post-Civil War era contributed to renovating the French and European view of America—substituting specific objects and pictures for an abstract idea and creating, for the first time perhaps, a strong aesthetic appeal for American pictures that were no longer the clichés understood by the phrase “American images.”

Cinema was born in a visual culture where stereoscopy played a crucial role. In this paper, we will discuss how stereoscopy and cinema derived from a common programme caused by photography that brought images and life closer, boosting an unseen period of mergers and experiments in the history of the image. The project of moving images was also a stereoscopic project. To animate the images in relief was one of the main challenges of the realism desired by nineteenth-century visual culture. In particular, I will reflect on the stereoscopic photography by Aurélio da Paz dos Reis, his cinematic experiments, the major discourses that followed and the ‘archive fever’ that hit it. Furthermore, I will consider the specificities of stereoscopy as a personal, as opposed to communal, medium and technique. I also argue that if the nineteenth-century stereo visual culture has anticipated our current personal media age, the unstable presence of stereoscopy in the twentieth-century mass media culture becomes an understandable and inevitable phenomenon.

Pieza del tercer trimestre de 2016 dedicada a la fotografía realizada por Jean Laurent en 1868 "Gobierno provional". La autora del texto, Carolina Miguel, analiza la vida y obra del fotógrafo francés Jean Laurent, con especial atención a la obra "Gobierno provisional" y los hechos históricos que la rodearon.

Jean Paul Milliet (1844-1918)

Painter, Traveller and Collector of Photographs in Nineteenth-century Italy

Jean Paul Milliet, a young student of the École des Beaux Arts in Paris, arrived in Florence for the first time in August 1866. It was the only stop on a training visit that led him to compete with the great masters of the Florentine fifteenth century. Subsequently, the painter undertook a sort of Grand tour of the so-called ‘Bel Paese’ (i.e. Italy) in full autonomy. It allowed him to explore the 'places' of masterpieces learned by the famous book ‘The Lifes’ of Vasari (Le Vite di Vasari), such as Giotto's frescoes in Padua, Luini's works in Milan and then again Florence, in Orvieto and in Rome. Visual training through engraved prints, training trips, the contemplation of the ancient masters of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the creation of an iconographic collection rich in photographic reproductions of works of art are various types of experience lived by Paul that mark a figure that is both universal and hybrid at the time. It allows, albeit in the analysis of the private affair, to outline a very significant case study of those cultural exchanges between Italy and France that were peculiar in the second half of the nineteenth century.

The lecutre will be held in the Sainsbury Lecture Theatre of the British School at Rome. The talk will also take place via Zoom and requires advance registration. For registration use the following link: https://www.bsr.ac.uk/?p=32477

The lecture reports on the current research of the project Robert Turnbull Macpherson and his photographic vedute of Rome in comparison to works of other photographers in his time for which Wilfried E. Keil has been awarded a Senior Fellowship of the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art / Yale University to spend three months at the British School at Rome.

„În decursul timpului, o fotografie, asemenea oricãrui artefact, devine din ce în ce mai îndepãrtatã de contextul sãu inițial. Subiectul, fie uman sau nu, dispare pentru totdeauna; fotograful se stinge, cei care l-au cunoscut se risipesc și ei; iar în final totul rãmâne învãluit de un sentiment straniu și o profundã melancolie”.

- William T. Vollmann în dialog cu Joel-Peter Witkin, 1994, NY Times.

Reprezintã într-adevãr fotografia o modalitate verosimilã de a rememora trecutul? Întrebarea necesitã în primul rând definirea a ceea ce înțelegem prin „memorie” cât și despre actul memorial în sine, deoarece existã multe tipuri de memorie și mai multe modalitãți de rememorare. Existã chiar și un tip de memorie numitã „fotograficã”, o rechemare exactã și conștientã a evenimentelor trecute, fie ele scene vizuale sau textuale. Câteva întrebãri pertinente ar putea face referiri la cum sunt utilizate aceste construcþii vizuale pentru a reconcilia efemeritatea cu pierderea și la cum s-au modificat aceste reconcilieri în timp, prin evoluția tehnologicã și în mod expres înainte și dupã revoluția fotograficã, precum și evidențierea legãturii epistemologice a fotografiei cu efemeritatea existenței umane.
Însã imaginile din prezentul album nu disemineazã ceea ce privește amintirea detaliatã a aspectului fiziologic, ci mai mult reflectã actul extins de amintire, sau despre starea de reverie pe care o genereazã acestea. Pentru noi astãzi, aceste imagini din secolul al XIX-lea ar putea chiar sã evoce un alt tip de memorie-nostalgie, implicând astfel un sentiment „cald și ilogic” cãtre dimensiunea trecutului. Un fel de „tristețe plãcutã”, actul care implicã nostalgia a fost considerat chiar o nevrozã în secolele anterioare și se credea cã reprezintã un simptom patologic manifestat de o augmentare a creierului.
Am început sã analizez, contrar opiniei, faptul cã o fotografie nu accentueazã memoria involuntarã-imediatã, ci mai degrabã o înlocuiește cu imagini-artistice, coerente, informative. Pentru a induce aceastã experiențã senzorialã, o fotografie trebuie transpusã din trecut – din momentul inițial al creației – , în prezent, cât mai aproape de lumea receptorului; dintr-o imagine perceputã de la distanțã, într-un schimb particular transmis emoțional, care are încã capacitatea de a perfora satisfacția experienþelor cotidiene, afectându-ne chiar și acum, în prezent.
Rãsfoind o revistã ilustratã în perioada studenției, o imagine mi-a atras atenția. Și pentru cã raporturile noastre cu lumea depind în mare parte de imaginile pe care ni le constituim referitor la ea, cât și de configurațiile obiective din care aceasta este alcãtuitã, am continuat sã cercetez atât originile imaginii, cât și informații referitoare la subiectul reprezentat. Se pare cã am fost „invitat” sã privesc îndelungat aceastã imagine despre care am aflat cã a derivat din coexistența a douã elemente discontinue, însã eterogene, – în sensul cã aparținea deja unei lumi cu reguli structurale și în același timp prezentului care era în discordanțã cu aceste elemente. Aceastã experiențã m-a inclus într-un alt tip de dualitate fotograficã, una despre care tocmai am devenit conștient.

                                          În acel moment am întâlnit și numele Hutterer...
Autorul, 2019

The astonishing scene-of-the-crime photographs taken at the turn of the 19th century for the Paris Police Prefecture by French criminologist Alphonse Bertillon, considered through the medium of Eugenia Parry’s “Crime Album Stories, Paris 1886-1902”.

This essay looks into the very beginnings of paper photography in the Austrian Empire. It focuses on two salted paper portraits of two most iconic figures of the Slovak National Revival in the mid-19th century, Ľudovít Štúr and Jozef M. Hurban. Created around 1849 by Anastas Jovanović, a Serbian photographer and lithographer based in Vienna, both portraits are the earliest paper photographs today preserved in Slovak collections. The article elucidates not only the salted paper prints’ authorship, origin, ownership and material characteristics, but also the notion of reproduction and circulation of images during the revolutionary years of 1848 and 1849 and by the advent of photography on paper in Central Europe at the same time. Special attention is paid to social and cultural contacts between Slovaks and Serbs around 1848 as a key factor to the photographs’ production.