Page 38 - Expanded Photography

Expanded Photography Bob Cotton 38/146
Nadar: Paris Catacombs 1861
Nadar was a very interesting man - an artist-photographer almost in the 20th century, modernist vein - combining the exploratory, experiment-based attitude of the scientist with the aesthetic-eye and be- lief in images of the artist. Imagine the sense of wonder evoked by these aerial images of Paris - or the photographs taken by means of Bunsen-battery and electric light bulbs of the Paris catacombs - the extensive underground network of tunnels, stone-mining pits, sewers and springs and rivers upon which Paris was built.
So expansions of photography included both new lighting equipment and new viewing technologies - Brewster’s Stereoscope and Duboscq’s Grimatiscope at first, then Muybridge’s Zoopraxiscope, and eventually the Gruber and Graves’ stereo Viewmaster (1939). I think that it was Fox Talbot who first suggested (in 1851) the idea of an electric-spark being a powerful source of illumination for making a photographic image - suggested it is surmised, by the way a lightning flash could ‘freeze’ the fall of raindrops in the night, but it wasn’t until the late 1920s and 1930s that commercial flash-bulbs were available - in the meantime chemicals were used to create ‘limelight’. Michael Archambault in his Peta-Pixel.com article A Brief History of the Camera Flash, From Explosive Powder to LED Lights writes: “Flash powder is a composition of metallic fuel and an oxidizer such as chlorate. When the mixture is ignited, it burns extremely quickly producing a bright flash that can be captured on film. Before being used for photography, flash powder was commonly used in theatrical productions and within fireworks — a practice we continue to this very day.”
Magnesium strips - ignited by an electric spark linked to the camera ’s shutter-switch - were in use by the 1890s - the magnesium strip could be cut to the length of the intended exposure time. So, photography was expanding into new spaces, bringing new spaces into the public eye and the pub- lic imagination...
https://strangeremains.com/2015/06/26/19th-century-pictures-of-workers-building-an-empire-of-death/#:~:text=Nadar%20also%20ex- perimented%20with%20artificial,bones%20in%20the%20Paris%20Catacombs.