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SHADES OF LIGHT Based on text from the original book: Shades of Light: Photography and Australia 1839-1988 Gael Newton, 1988 Australian National Gallery   Chapter 1    Footnotes return to Chapter 1  | contents   The Cornwall Chronicle and Commercial and Aaricultural Reaister. The report described Fyfe's method of making photograms using an oxyhydrogen light source and phosphate of soda and silver dissolved in nitric acid. Fyfe experimented with red and yellow washes to mask the light and prevent his impressions darkening over. John Herschel's method of fixing using sodium hypo-sulphate, of March 1839, was only just being made known at the time of Dr Fyfe's demonstrations to the Society of Arts, Edinburgh (of which he was Vice-President) on 27 March, 10 and 17 April. See n.5 below. Fyfe is recognised as one of the inventors of photographic processes, including a method of making direct positives. His work had no lasting value, see Helmut Gernsheim, The Origins of Photography (London: Thames and Hudson, 1982), pp.60, 69. Figures cited in John Bach, A Maritime History of Australia (Sydney: Pan Books Australia, 1987), p.62. Australia was some 15,000 nautical miles from England. The article states that the Spectator had drawn its information in turn from the foreign correspondents of the Literary Gazette and the Athenaeum. This would have been one of the earliest reports on the daguerreotype published in England following public announcement of its discovery on 7 January 1839. See Dr Andrew Fyfe, 'On Photography', Transactions of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts, Edinburgh, vol.1 (1841): pp.319-30, 36-37 (appendix); Edinburgh New PhilosophicalJournal 26, no.53 (July 1839): pp:144-55; 'Miscellanies', Magazine of Science and School of Arts I (June 1839): p.71. A copy of the Edinburgh New Philosophical journal, held by the State Library of South Australia, belonged either to Dr Edward Stirling (1848-1919), or to his father who emigrated to South Australia in 1839, It would have been very difficult to experiment without access to the technical details published in the English journals. The population of Tasmania at this time was around 42,000, with some 20,000 people living in Hobart. About half of these were serving sentences or were exconvicts. Figures from the 1841 census cited by Ann Moyal, Scientists in Nineteenth Century Australia: A Documentary History (Sydney: Cassell, 1976), p.9, n.12. The Society was formed in 1837 as The Natural History Society of Van Diemen's Land and was generally known as The Tasmanian Society. For accounts of the role of these societies, see chs 4-5 in Michael E. Hore, 'Science and Scientific Association in Eastern Australia, 18201890'. Ph.D. diss., Australian National University, 1974, and Gillian Winter, "'For the Advancement of Science": The Roval Societv of Tasmania, 1843-19'85', 13.,~. Hons. thesis, History Department, University of Tasmania, 1972. L.A.M. [Louisa Anne Meredith], 'The Hon. Charles Meredith, late Colonial treasurer of Tasmania', Once a Month 4, no.3 (March 1886): p. 182. Few English people had even seen daguerreotypes by this date. A party of English scientists, including Sir John Robison (1778-1843), John Herschel and Sir Thomas MacDougall - Brisbane (17831860) (an ex-Governor of New South Wales 1821-50), visited Daguerre's studio in Paris in May, and their reports clarified the differences between the English and French processes. See Helmut and Alison Gernsheim, L.J.M. Daguerre, The History of the Diorama and the Daguerreotype, rev. edn (New York: Dover, 1968), p.88. Daguerreotypes were first imported in quantity by Antoine Claudet in September 1839. Robison's report on the daguerreotype was printed in the Edinburgh New Philosophical journal 26, no.53 (July 1839): pp. 157-7. For an account of Meredith, see Vivienne Rae Ellis, Louisa Anne Meredith: A Tigress in Exile (Sandy Bay, Tasmania: Blubberhead Press, 1979). Meredith used photographs in her publications in the 1860s and reputedly took up the medium herself (see ch. 5, p. 38, n. 10). Meredith found Sydneysiders uninterested in anything but 'wool, wool, wool'. See Vivienne Rae Ellis, op. cit., pp.73-4. The doldrums of Sydney scientific society, which held no meetings from January 1839 to October 1841, is covered in Michael E. Hore, op. cit., and Ronald Strahan, 'Rare and Curious Specimens': An Illustrated History of the Australian Museum 182 7-19 77 (Sydney: Australian Museum, 1979). Conrad Martens, Notes on Painting, A Commonplace Book, 1835-1856, Mitchell Library ms. 142, pp. 16-19. The recipe is undated; the following entry is dated 5 August 1840. Mr Bird's stopping solution is mentioned, probably referring to that of botanist Dr Golding Bird (1814-1854), whose photogenic drawing of a fern was reproduced as a woodcutfacsimile in The Mirror of Literature, Amusement and Instruction 33, no.945 (20 April 1839). Photogenic drawings, presumably Scottish, were presented to the Sydney Mechanics' Institute School of Arts Library in 1841. See Annual Report 1841, Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW Sydney. Minutes of the Society, Van Diemen's Land, 3 March 1841-14 March 1842. Royal Society of TasmaniaArchives, University of Tasmania, RS Ms. coil. 147. N.J.B. Plomley, 'The Tasmanian Journal of Natural Science', Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania, vol.103 (1969), pp.13-15, gives dates for the first five numbers beginning in August 1841. However, Lady Jane Franklin's correspondence reveals that the first number was in production by 28 April 1840. See George Mackaness, ed., Some Private Correspondence of Sir John and Lady Franklin, Part one (Sydney: privately published, 1977), p.97. Richardson's letter of 5 February could hardly have reached Hobart in such a short time. Thejoumal was perhaps delayed, and the letters from him and Buckland's of September added. The third number was in production by February 1841. See George Mackaness, op. cit., p. 111. 'Daguerreotype', The Tasmanian Journal ofNaturalScienceAgriculture, Statistics etc 1, no. 1, pp.71-2, from bound ed of volsI-3, 1842-49, ed. R.C. Gunn (Hobart: James Barnard, 1849). It had not yet been realised that electricity and light were both forms of electro-magnetic radiation. See Peter Mason, The Light Fantastic (Melbourne: Penguin, 1981). A search of the archives of the Royal Society of Tasmania, (successor to the Tasmanian Society from c. 1843) and those of the Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, has failed to locate either the original letters to Franklin or the lbbetson prints (or local copies lithographed from them). lbbetson is mentioned in Helmut Gernsheim, op. cit., p.72 as an independent inventor of photograph. Scott Polar Research Institute, archive ms. 248/252/2. Received by Sir John Franklin, I I August 1842, transcription by the author held by the Australian National Gallery Library. Herschel's letter is held by the Wellcome Institute of the History of Medicine, London. As details of the daguerreotype had not yet been published, Herschel suggested that Daguerre's instructions could be sealed until after the expedition departed three weeks hence. See R. Derek Wood, 'The Daguerreotype Patent, the British Government and the Royal Society', History of Photography 4, no.1 (January 1980): p.53, n.3, p.59. The Ross Expedition to the Antarctic - an outcome of Humboldt's call for a global network of geomagnetic recording stations - left Britain on 10 September after details of the daguerreotype were published. Humboldt also recommended the application of photography. See Cosmos, vol 2 pp.456-7. Ann Moyal's 'A Bright and Savage Land': Scientists in Colonial Australia (Sydney: Collins, 1986) provides a general picture of the role of the Antipodes in nineteenth-century scientific research. For the importance of correspondence networks, see also her Scientists in Nineteenth Century Australia: A Documentary History, op. cit. Quoted in H.P.J. Arnold, William Henry Fox Talbot: Pioneer of Photography and Man of Science (London: Hutchinson, 1977), p.118. Talbot was evidently not keen on this proposed use for his invention. See R. Derek Wood, op. cit., p. 59. The application of photogenic drawing to natural history was suggested by Talbot's earliest photograms of feathers and plants. A greater incentive came with the development of the calotype or talbotype positive-negative process in 1841 and the publication of Talbot's Pencil of Nature (1844), which attempted to demonstrate the feasibility of the process for mass reproduction. A major difficulty here was the fact that images were subject to fading. John Davis (1815-1877), artist and naturalist on the expedition, made or commissioned some cyanotypes in 1848 from seaweeds collected on the voyage. See Larry J. Schaaf, Sun Gardens: Victorian Photographs by Anna Atkins (New York: Aperture, 1985, organised by Hans P. Kraus Jr.), p.45. The members of the Expedition also visited Sydney in October 1841, upon their return from the Antarctic. The daguerreotype had already been demonstrated in Sydney in May (see ch. 2). Daguerreotype portraits were evidently made during the Antipodean scientific voyage (1837-40) of J.S.C. Dumont D'Urville (1790-1842). An advertisement for the folio of anthropological subjects accompanying D'Urville's publication, Voyage au Pole Sud, 23 vols (Paris: Gide, 6diteur, 1841-55), refers to such photographic sources for the illustrations. Portraiture at this early date seems highly unlikely. Indeed, any photography represented an achievement, as the expedition would have to acquire information, skills and materials en route. Advertisement quoted by Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific 1768-1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1960), p.255. 1 am grateful to Lech Paskowski for information on Strzelecki's movements and contact with Europe. Strzelecki had arrived in Melbourne by 1 June 1840. Russell later recorded that Strzelecki: 'first brought information of the discovery of photographic impressions and told me all that was then known of the methods as practised by Daguerr6 [sic] on silvered plates of copper. Kilburn (who I fancy is the London Kilburn) took up the idea at that time'. 'Biographical Notes on 9 Persons, mostly surveyors and explorers'. Ms. (photocopy) held by the Mitchell Library, Ar. 79. The reference to Douglas T. Kilburn (q.v.), a brother of London photographer William E. Kilburn (w. 1846-60s), and who opened a studio in Melbourne in 1847, dates Russell's reference to after 1846-47. Strzelecki was in regular correspondence with a friend in France and could have received news of the daguerreotype in Sydney or Melbourne. Extract of a letter from Strzelecki to Sir John Franklin, in response to receiving the first number of the Tasmanian journal, quoted by Lady Jane Franklin in her journal, vol. 1, August to 5 October 1841, pp.153-4, ms.248, Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge, microfilm copy Mitchell Library FM4/725. Lady Franklin had met Strzelecki in Sydney in 1839. See George Mackaness, op. cit., part 2, p.57 (Letter 39, 5 September 1842). The Franklins' distress at Sir John's recall to London may have precluded portrait sessions. Lady Jane had commissioned a number of portraits whilst in Tasmania, including a set of Aboriginals drawn by Thomas Bock in 1838. See Eve Buscombe, Artists in Early Australia and their Portraits (Sydney: Eureka Research, 1979), pp.9, 16-17. Sir John was photographed in 1845 aboard ship prior to the departure of his ill-fated expedition (1845-48) to the Arctic. A daguerreotype apparatus was evidently carried on this expedition but all members perished by 1848, and no evidence of the first attempt to photograph the Arctic has survived. See Graham Smith, "'Dr Harry Goodsir", by Dr Adamson of St Andrews', History of Photography 10, no.3 Uuly-September 1986): pp.229-36. R.C. Gunn (1805-1881), civil servant and amateur botanist, did suggest in 1849 to Sir William Hooker (1785-1865), Director of the Royal Gardens at Kew, that photography of Australian trees might assist the latter's publication on Colonial flora. See T.E. Burns and J.R. Skemp, Van Diemen's Land Correspondents, 1827-1849 (Launceston: Records of the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, 1961), letter 165, p.121. Gunn collected botanical specimens for William Hooker and his son Joseph, with whom he became friendly during the visit to Tasmania of the Ross Expedition. The long hiatus before there was any attempt to apply photography may reflect the incompatibility of the medium with diagrammatic botanical illustration.   return to Chapter 1  | contents