Page 44 - Expanded Media & the MediaPlex

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William Henry Fox Talbot: An Oak Tree in Winter (Lacock) 1842-43
Spurred by Daguerre’s announcement of his Daguerreotype process in January 1839, Fox Talbot published his half-decade-long investigations into photography in February - a month later. Daguerre’s celebrated invention was a positive-reversal process - you made a positive exposure on a sensitised copper-plate - it gave very sharp-focussed images. Fox Talbot’s process used a sensitised paper negative from which any number of positive photographic prints could be made. Although less-sharp than Daguerreotypes, Talbot’s Calotypes could be reproduced easily, and many artists preferred the more ‘painterly’ qualities of the Calotype. It was Talbot’s basic idea that eventually won out - although daguerreotypes continued to be valued - and made - for the rest of the century. Talbot’s process was modified significantly by F. Scott Archer (the Wet-Collodion Process, 1851), who used glass-plate negatives coated with a photo-sensitive collodion mixture, and achieved a sharpness similar to the daguerreotype. By the late 19th century, a transparent and flexible celluloid-based film substrate was replacing glass, and by 1900 cameras were sold pre- loaded with 100-frame roll of film. An Oak Tree in Winter is a calotype negative/positive salted-paper print.
“In 1833, frustrated by his own lack of skill as a draftsman, Talbot began experimenting with the possibility of creating accurate images of the world through mechanical and chemical means. By 1835 he had produced his first camera negative, and soon realised that a positive image could subsequently be obtained by further printing. These investigations were put to one side until 1839, when he was shocked to learn that the French painter Louis Daguerre had succeeded in creating the photographic process which became known as the daguerreotype.”: British Library (https://www.bl.uk/ collection-items/invention-of-photography)
So, with Wedgwood, Humphry Davy, Niepce, Herschel, Fox-Talbot and others inventing and establishing the technics of photography, slowly the armoury of this revolutionary medium expanded - in new forms of content, impacting upon traditional media - especially at first the art of portraiture. In this intensely entrepreneurial age the key expansions of photography were not long in following - in micro-photography, blue-prints, scientific visual records, artistic reference, as a compositing tool, as mono-prints, in the wet collodion process, pictorial visiting cards, family albums, flash photography, aerial photography, half-tone reproduction, criminal and social records, photo-ID systems, social commentary, photographic post-cards, colour photography, national and global ethnographic records, society portraiture, motion-capture, moving pictures, cinematography, fashion photography, celebrity photography, action photography, modernist and avant-garde photography, stroboscopic lighting, photomontage, abstract photography, exhibition-design, immersive photography, commercial colour photography... Bob Cotton: Expanded Photography e- book 2020)