HILL (U.K., 1802-1870)
and ADAMSON (U.K., 1821-1848)
From the form to functioning elements
The portrait
of the future Elisabeth Eastlake standing besides her seated mother is
prophetic. It is a calotype – or talbotype -, meaning that it is made
according to the first principle of the negative-positive process made public
by Talbot in 1839, and which he perfected the following year when he noted that
the negative could be developed and its exposure time - hence, its developing
time - could be reduced. This photograph required a painter, Hill, and a young
engineer, Adamson, thereby signalling the preponderant role played by the equipment
in the new discipline. Above all, the mother, the daughter, the drape, the
flowers, the leprous wall and their setup declare the rupture – in the
forties – with the construction of space and of the time imposed in the
western world for the past two and a half millenniums.
Let us briefly
remember the background. In around 500 BC, the Greek rational crafts had setup a
capture and construction of the environment through “forms”, or “wholes” made
up of “integral parts”, or elements that each directly referred to the whole they integrate,
and standing out on a background. The result is a “cosmos” (cosmetic
organization) as a vision of the universe. One that is so effortless that it
can be summed up in geometrical and anatomical microcosms, like a triumphant
human body. It is convenient to call this system - that reigned until the
European romanticism - WORLD 2. For, in what we call WORLD 1 – since the
origins – humankind had always understood and built its environment
through “vital elements”, meaning that it referred pulsatorily and agregatively to neighbouring elements
before indirectly
referring to fluid wholes confounding themselves with the background, which was
thereby not a real “background”. Alternatively, we should just like to note
that such practices were developed halfway between WORLD 1 and WORLD 2, in
Sumer in Egypt, in India, China, Japan, in pre-Columbian America, and in the middle
Ages in Europe.
Our photo
dated 1844 breaks with this, illustrating a new capture-construction that we
can refer to as WORLD 3. We no longer have a direct reference of “integral
parts” to “wholes” as we did in WORLD 2. The seated mother and standing
daughter create a sort of triangle, yet nothing refers to it directly. The trespass
of the curtain on the wall, like the receding matter of the wall and curtain
– escape a classical geometry and anatomy, even creating a sort of
un-form. These are not “vital” elements referring one to the other pulsatorily as in WORLD 1
either: the hood and the dress do not engender consecutive pulsations, nor do
the flowers with the flowery curtain, or any other elements of the wall and layered
curtain. We are dealing with a mainly heterogeneous whole of pieces and events,
and the one thing that we can say is that they work well together, that they trigger each other
mutually from near of far, just like the functioning elements of the machines and processes of
the new industry. We are therefore not surprised at the announcement or the
reflection of the first painters of the WORLD 3: Delacroix (he of the “tartes
aux pommes mal cuites” [apple tart] of later days), Courbet (the matierist whose L’homme
à la pipe dates from
the same year), Manet (who places his blacks independently from his contours)
before Degas’ conversion. A new outlook is born.
Not enough is being said. Because the WORLD 3
triggered by Hill and Adamson is a world of photographers, not painters. Their
calotypes result from the light going through the texture of the negative
paper, and their definition is so low that the image consists to end up in a
packet of dense shadows and blotches of dense lights, which contrast even more
massively that the developing time still requires between ten to twenty
seconds, causing a certain blur. On the other hand, these brutally contrasted
packets encroach on the hedges, which they fragment as a reference system. The
good old frame-index of western painting has become a limit-frame, one that we
can also refer to as frame-indice as it simply signals that the sensitive
surface of the plate ends there.
Hill and Adamson made a photographic
subject of these characteristics of photography of
their era. They used this jumble of blocks of shadows and blocks of light to
trigger a positive/negative equivalence, to generate a veritable
positive/negative flutter that will remain one of the great resources of photography,
and from which they will draw their own personal stained glass effect (AP, 35-43;
FS, 23-27). They accomplished this in an opened rhythmic sequence due to the jostling
of the index-frame (of painting) by the limit-frame or frame-indice (of photo),
boosting the capture-construction through functioning elements rather than
through “forms”.
This photographic subject led to themes. The
strongly contrasted guns and uniforms of the Cordon Highlanders at Edinburgh
Castle (**AF,38) were predestined. Or still, among
other places haunted by Walter Scott – Scottish like them – the St
Andrews cemetery where – by predestination – large light tombs were
opposed to large dark tombs at the same time as a high, solid tower and a
large, hollow curve (PN, 41).
Hill and Adamson furent sans doute confortés dans
Hill and
Adamson’s visual options were probably comforted by the English portrait
tradition à la
Reynolds, and by former English romantic landscapes, in particular Constable
who already cultivated the hazy frame. On the other hand, Hill attended the
Free Church of Scotland, whose Puritanism ratified in advance the photonic
imprints of photography, which were virtually direct works of Nature (one of
Talbot’s books is titled The Pencil of Nature), hence of God in the Anglo-Saxon tradition,
more than the intentional signs that are borne from a painter’s hand.
Particularly since these photonicaly obtained indices showed the light shining
from the shadows (On the art of fixing a shadow is the subtitle of Talbot’s 1839 discovery statement),
and were sufficiently frustrating to evoke a divine transcendence. Hill clearly
states in 1848: “The rough and unequal texture throughout the paper is the main
cause of the Calotype failing in details (…) and this is the very life of it”.
From which he draws an allegation of transcendence: “They look like the
imperfect work of man and not the very much diminished work of God”. We will
often come across this note of stupor and marvel that accompanies the party
that is a photographic subject.
The fact that Elisabeth Eastlake – who
was then still Elisabeth Rigby -, the wife of the Director of the National Gallery
presiding the Photographic Society of London (future Royal Photographic Society),
completes the historical strength of the portrait. Stimulated by the
extraordinary theoretical turmoil of her circle, she writes a remarkable text
in 1857: Photography. The latter goes to the
sociological essence of the new medium: “for a mere shilling, the last servant
can now get his image in the farthest village in the countryside, just like
Rothschild’s fiancée (abridged text)”, and its cosmological essence: “Now, a great
primitive agent (light) has entered our service, we can foresee how extensively
it will contribute to unraveling the threads of other secrets of nature’s
science”.
Here – like so many other instances
later on – the portrayed exists on both sides of the camera. Elsewhere,
we will see that Hill and Adamson asked many other women to dress in lace and
flowered dresses that exalted their photographical subject (AP, 39, 40).
However, future theoretician Elisabeth must have understood well the reason
behind this request. We imagine her choosing theoretically – not only
coquettishly – her triple cascade dress, her askew pose sending the flux
of fabric towards an eccentric destination thwarting the index-frame to the
profit of the indice-frame), the shaky tapestry and the leper on the walls
(every photo is texture before being structure), the mother’s cape and bonnet pursuing
the positive/negative flutter and the stained glass effect.
Seeing the Cultural Revolution implied by
photography in the 1840’s, we could ask ourselves if it did not trigger the
entire WORLD 3. However, let us not forget that, at the same period,
electricity replaces the progressive actions of the ancient techniques by the
brisk triggering of its commutators. That the machines of information –
also triggering – begin to complete energy machines. That mathematicians
envisage non-Euclidian geometries, or through a point taken out of a straight
line one is able to lead an infinity of parallels to this straight line
(Loatchevski), or, to the contrary, none (Riemann). That Richard Wagner
dissolves the classical tonality in the chromatic that was the resonant absolutism
of the “form”. That, at the great fear of Karl Marx - romantic aesthetician -
human activity changes nature by the passage of factory manufacture. Instead of
remaining “concrete” - hence establishing a pulsatory (“agregatory”) correspondence in WORLD 1 naïve
crafts, then globalizing (“formal”) in the rational craft of WORLD 2 - the
“work” had become “abstract”, accounting fragments of matter with fragments of
gesture in the non contiguous functioning of WORLD 3. We evoked the parallel
revolution of painters higher.
Photography was hence the privileged operator
and witness of a radical mutation of topography, cybernetic, logic and semiotic,
among other operators of an entire historical moment in consonance with it,
just as Nadar will confirm.
Henri Van Lier
A photographic history of photography
in Les Cahiers de la Photographie, 1992
List of abbreviations of common references:
PN: Photography until Now, Museum of Modem Art.
AP: The Art of Photography, Yale University Press.
FS: On the Art of Fixing a Shadow, Art Institute of Chicago.
The acronyms (*), (**), (***) refer to
the first, second, and third illustration of the chapters, respectively. Thus,
the reference (*** AP, 417) must be interpreted as: “This refers to the third
illustration of the chapter, and you will find a better reproduction, or a
different one, with the necessary technical specifications, in The Art of
Photography listed under
number 417”.