Flash, bang, wallop, what a photograph

They were just still photos but they were the marvel of their age. David Behrens revisits the earliest images of photography itself.

IT IS perhaps no surprise that some of the earliest images in the photographic archive concern photography itself. It was not just a case of self-indulgence, for “instant pictures” were the marvel of the age.

For the first photographers, “instant” meant as long as it took to take the glass plates into the darkroom and expose them to the necessary chemicals. Nevertheless, as early as 1928 – long before the Polaroid camera was invented – a photographer called Sydney Garbutt had set himself up as the “while you wait man” in Trafalgar Square.

At around the same time, the Scottish photographer and inventor Alex Stewart was marketing the first commercially produced flashbulb, and the Chief Constable of Lancaster was issuing his roadside patrols with enormous box cameras made of wood and leather to try to catch out dangerous drivers.

Photography had already come a long way since the first enthusiasts took to the great outdoors – it was too dark inside – only to disappear under their black camera hoods while they adjusted the lens. They were following in the footsteps of the Dorset scientist William Fox Talbot, who invented the system of photography which endured until the digital age and which is preferred by some photographers even today. An artist as well as an innovator, his images of mid-19th century Britain are among the earliest in existence and constitute a unique historical record.

Less well-known is his contemporary, Anna Atkins, one of the earliest female photographers, who produced the first book that used photos for illustrations. Meanwhile, Julia Margaret Cameron was taking some of the first portraits, with a list of “sitters” that would have made even Lord Snowdon jealous. Charles Darwin and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, were just two of them.

PICTURE: HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES. CAMERAS AT THE READY: A woman adjusts her camera as a man takes a photograph of two men in the woods, early 1900s.

PICTURE: JOHN THOMSON/GETTY IMAGES. SNAPSHOT OF HISTORY: A street photographer in 1877 at work on Clapham Common, London, with a mobile booth. Originally published in ‘Street Life in London’ by John Thomson and Adolphe Smith.

PICTURES: FOX PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES. HOLD IT THERE: Top, a naval photographer, circa 1936, taking the picture of a fellow sailor playing the tuba, during preparations for Navy Week in Portsmouth; above, a photographic technician placing glass negatives in a developing solution inside a darkroom at the Fox photo library circa 1935.

PICTURES: GETTY IMAGES MASTER OF INVENTION: English physicist and pioneer of photography William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877); a young photographer capturing a kiss on camera at a children’s party at Alexandra Palace, London, in 1926; a professional photographer consults with clients in his studio, circa 1860; a female photographer taking portraits on Southend beach in June 1905.