“Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants” —Louis Brandeis, U.S. Supreme Court Justice, 1913

This Brandeis quote is widely cited today as referring to the benefits of openness and transparency-especially as it pertains to keeping democracy vital and thriving.

So what does this have to do with a blog dedicated to preserving, promoting and riffing on the history of artistic photography?

Well, unfortunately, not much at all. That is, if only we were to think of photography as a truthful medium- something that accurately records for posterity what is placed before it or “seen” by the camera. That evidence would be from an impartial machine, and honesty might prevail. But as we traverse the second decade of the 21st Century, technology is taking a brutal hammer to what our once (believing) eyes took for fact. The sunlight of truthfulness has gotten a bit dim of late, yielding, inevitably, to “progress”. Of course, arguments could be made that photography has lied ever since the invention of the medium. Longtime readers of this blog might remember how I wrote about unscrupulous “photographers” operating in the mid 19th century who would trick people into believing the camera itself could mesmerize them. Today, as of October 2024, when I first spotted it, the updated version of mesmerization is now done courtesy of AI. (artificial intelligence) Here’s an Orwellian example of that in what I will call the Ebay photographic caption from Hell that should help put things in perspective:

“This vintage photograph captures a momentous occasion in Yellowstone National Park in 1892. The image depicts a family who was taken by a tripod rigged. The photograph is in sepia tone and has a size of H18 3/10 cm x W21 5/10 cm. The image is produced using a photographic technique and features the Richardsons family. This collectible item is perfect for photography enthusiasts and collectors alike.“

So far, kinda good, other than the “tripod rigged” mention and the fact no one really speaks of common snapshots of Victorians chilling in nature as a “momentous occasion”. It would soon become apparent that our new friend AI was hard at work to really sell this photo. The caption continues:

“The Richardson Family was off on an expedition and there were no cell phones and there was no one out there and there were no Rangers and there were no Rescuers and nobody could save them if they where to call out and that’s what it was like in those days and they put their lives in front of nature and they didn’t think ahead of time to prepare if any natural occurrences would come along with bears and mountain lions.”

So yeah. What could possibly go wrong in our brave new world? I say bring on the sunlight. And lots of it. Call out the fakes. Push back. We here at PhotoSeed are big fans of transparency. Who wants to collect a “vintage” photograph with that kind of back story or an obvious fake of great, great grandma or grandad run through an AI filter? Well someone of course, and that’s cool too- whatever floats your boat and all that. But I digress.

Sunlight- as a kind of invisible chemical medium- was everything to the existence of early photography. Similar to AI today in that enabling it is just a few clicks on a computer keyboard, and may remain a mystery to unsuspecting viewers, people did not understand what a photograph  was or how they were made in the earliest version of the medium. Sunlight provided that answer, or at least a reasoning. The ever-present Sun overhead provided the means for these early efforts. In the 1830s, the Englishman William Henry Fox Talbot, a botanist among other passions, experimented by recording the shapes of things like leaves and lace, contact printing these on sheets of chemically altered writing paper. The results were known as “photogenic drawings”, or drawings produced by light. It’s no wonder promotion of early photography involved the iconography of our friend the Sun.

Talbot’s Calotype process, patented in 1841 with earlier iterations being the basis for his groundbreaking positive-negative process of 1839, would be referred by him and other practitioners as “Sun Pictures”, or Talbotypes. The editors of London’s Art Union Journal exclaimed in June 1846, while presenting an original example of one of his Sun Pictures (see example above) that:

“It will be remembered that we have from time to time called attention to these truly wonderful representations, in our notices of Mr. Talbot’s work, “The Pencil of Nature.” By the public these “sun-pictures” are still misapprehended-still “misnomered;” we shall accordingly, in this notice, show what they are not, and endeavour to explain what they are, as it is yet far from generally accepted that they result from the action of light alone, and are not produced by some leger-de-main [slight of hand] of Art.”

The article continues and even gives the chemical formula for making sensitized Calotype paper that could be exposed in a camera obscura. (1.) Terminology developed rapidly from here. To differentiate in the public discourse from a painting or drawing made by hand, these new “photographs” would hence be referred to as being “From Nature.” The one constant of this wondrous invention was the Sun overhead. It alone was responsible for even making photography and photographs exist in the first place.

In the exhibition catalogue “The Last Decade” published in 1984 by George Eastman House, the symbolism of Sun imagery is discussed as part of an 1899 nude study by Belgian photographer Charles Fondu:“Fondu’s woman, combination of femme fatale and omnipotent angelic female, is profiled against the sun. Like the sunflower, the sun was a popular symbol with art photography clubs. It represented photography’s necessary light as well as the inspiration, power and renewal associated with otherworldly presence.” (p.4)

As a graphic device, the image of a Sun would be a great promoter for photographic achievement, and was common in print even through the first decade of the 20th Century. 

I hope you enjoy these examples of artistic photographs from nature, and have included a few of my own as modern comparisons. The contrast deliberate, my very own version of “Sun & Shade”: “Butterfly Wings” was taken in the “Sunshine State” while “Condemned” hails from the depths of an upstate New York Winter.

Even in our current digital age, the Sun, giver of all life, continues to make photography possible by giving complex machines the illumination necessary to record our everyday existences and its many hues, shapes and wonders. But it’s a layered argument, the Sun being symbolic as well. Take my last photograph in this post. It’s the winter of 1983 (2.) and my assignment for The Daily Orange student newspaper was to photograph the final residents of the old Winchell Hall dormitory on campus, soon to face the wrecking ball. A snowstorm, as was common on a Syracuse winter day back then, was in full force. Stage directing the scene from across the street while somehow convincing the students to  all climb out onto their respective room balconies was actually the easy part. What I didn’t anticipate were all the smiles that erupted, the finger pointing and general merriment the act of taking the photograph brought about. Sure, the old building was coming down to be replaced by a bright new shiny object, but these students had been forever immortalized in a photograph. And a truthful one at that: an unmanipulated moment where their futures were truly bright, and one where future dreams would surely include many bright tomorrows.

1. Excerpt: The Talbotype. ⎯  Sun Pictures. The Art Union Journal, June 1, 1846 pp. 143-44.

2. I may have actually photographed this scene in mid January, 1984. From the SU archives: “While in the process of being demolished to make room for the building of Schine Student Center, a fire, possibly arson, swept through Winchell in early February 1984 and hastened the venerable structure’s end. in early 1984.” Read more about the history of Winchell Hall.

When evaluating the chiaroscuro masterpiece Campo San Margherita by James Craig Annan, a striking vertical composition taken in 1894 during his visit to the Campo San Margherita piazza in Venice-an outdoor market and tourist destination still popular today- the idea of Modernism, a decidedly 20th Century school as applied to the photographic arts, should be taken seriously considering the intent and evidence posed by this finished work.

Documentary, cubist in form and radically pictorial for its time, this slice of life study showing the interaction of a market vendor and customer can be dissected for compositional posterity with the intent a post-mortem of sorts by this reviewer is reason enough when re-considering the historical record of early photographic aesthetics.

First off, Scotsman Annan was a master engraver and pioneer of the hand-pulled photogravure, an intaglio process similar to etching, but with the matrix of a photographic negative “from life” doing the stand-in for the artists brush or pencil. With this control afforded, the photographic results transferred to a copper plate could be altered at will depending on artistic intent, giving Annan the ability to subtly control and change aspects of his composition after he took the initial exposure by camera.

Arbitrarily beginning at the bottom of the frame, a subtle flow begins to develop reaching near the top of this composition. Here we see the Campo San Margherita title, with letters spanning the entire width of the vertical composition placed in its own compartmentalized box serving as anchor to the entire work.

From here, the eye travels upwards. With an engraver’s burin, Annan deliberately alters a portion of highlighted marketplace cobblestones to a shaded version- the result being complimentary, contrasting diagonals now taking residence within the dead-zone of space created by his decision to present the work as an extreme vertical composition from the outset.

This in turn brings us to the very center of the frame. Without reading too much into it, the scale itself is the perfect symbol for what Annan achieves in this area we are most interested in visually. Holding it out while weighing a marketplace purchase for his customer opposite, the vendor’s action gives credibility to the idea a kind of balance has been created and achieved at the very center of the frame, especially after she conveniently stoops to his same level while contemplating the purchase.

The rest of the frame serving as backdrop to this drama in the middle compliments everything else within in, but with a twist. Instead of a purely static presentation of a lone moment occurring in the marketplace, the hat-wearing gentleman walking directly behind the vendor preparing to bust out of the frame gives a refreshing jolt to the work. Annan’s inclusion of this other action reminds us the marketplace bustles with life.

Finally, the central part of the background: a large shaded alleyway dividing two separate buildings anchoring the entire left and right margins of the frame, neatly compliments the balance of the two windows seen behind the man wearing the hat. Here, the area of the arched window frame in the top left of the composition reaches upwards to its natural conclusion: another area of naturally shaded discoloration similar in tone and effect Annan manipulated for the bottom third of the frame.

But this is just one opinion, albeit from someone who has spent a lifetime constructing and deconstructing photographs. Hopefully, this insight into one singular example of Annan’s art might give others the chance to see his motives and intent for what they are: a strong example of photographic Modernism ahead of his time.

David Spencer-