Exhibition Nuclei

Photographic Panorama

The exploration of a two-dimensional record that successfully captured the full range of the angle of human vision had already been attempted through painting, or through the famous diorama of the inventor of the daguerreotype, Jacques Louis Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851). However, the public announcement of the invention of the daguerreotype and the calotype in 1839 was immediately followed by optical and mechanical developments for the application of these processes to the panoramic view. During the second half of the 19th century, four main axes were established for the exploration of devices that could be used to obtain photographic panoramas: the all-round picture taken through just one lens and in just one shot; the panoramas produced through the juxtaposition of several images; those obtained with movable lenses that already made it possible to obtain coverage of a 150º angle of view, from 1845 onwards, and finally the panoptic panoramas, allowing for a 360º angle of view, from 1890 onwards. Various photographers and researchers accumulated experiences and results, such as Noël Marie Lerebours (1807-1873), the inventor of the Megascope, the first device for taking panoramas in daguerreotype, and Jules Damoizeau, who, in 1890, developed the Cyclograph, the first device with a mechanical rotation and which can be included in the proto-history of the cinema. [E.T.]

Artistic Photography – landscape and portrait

As a subsidiary development of painting and its various genres, artistic photography was largely shaped by its formal and aesthetic inspiration. Although, throughout the second half of the 19th century, the expression of photography in Portugal was associated with industrial exhibitions or with national representations at the great international exhibitions, it is also certain that its artistic possibilities were defended in magazines and at separate exhibitions, as well as by a group of photographers whose artistic and social importance was recognised by the Portuguese society of that time and even internationally. This was the case, for example, with João Baptista Ribeiro, Wenceslau Cifka, Francesco Rocchini, Augusto Bobone, Carlos Relvas, Arnaldo da Fonseca and Emílio Biel, among others, who, through both commercial and amateur means of dissemination, established themselves as the defenders of a photographic artistic expression. Photography was also to be seen on display at some of the exhibitions promoted both by the Society for the Promotion of Fine Art and by the Porto Artistic Centre, and it was in Porto that one was to find much greater photographic activity associated with art exhibitions. Despite its increasing affirmation throughout the second half of the 19th century, it was only in 1886 that it proved possible to hold an International Exhibition of Photography, at the Palácio de Cristal, in Porto, which brought together the work of the first great generation of Portuguese photographers. [E.T.]

Photography and fine art

Although the relationship between photography and fine art in the 19th century has not yet been given the due attention that it deserves, it seems clear that photography was much better received by 19th-century artists than by their successors, at least until the second half of the 20th century. The friendships and affinities between painters, sculptors and photographers seem to have been decisive in creating an atmosphere of receptivity towards a technology that, in its early days, was considered by many to represent the “death of painting”. The cases of João Baptista Ribeiro (1790-1868), Wenceslau Cifka (1811-1883) and later Alfredo Keil (1850-1907) are the ones that are best documented from this point of view, and these artists even expressed their relationship with photography in practices that they combined with their artistic production. Francisco Metrass (1825-1861), disappointed with painting and with his limited artistic success began to explore the possibilities of the daguerreotype, setting up a studio in Cais do Sodré. Others also combined their interests with photography, although there are few actual documentary references to this fact, as was the case with José Ferreira Chaves (1838-1899), whose personal collection included photographs by Carlos Relvas dedicated to the painter, and even Veloso Salgado (1864-1945), who began his career as an apprentice lithographer. [E.T.]

The photography of events

One of the “programmes” of photography that had the greatest impact at the end of the 19th century and in the first decades of the 20th century was the recording and documentation of public and private events. For the first few decades of its invention, the long exposure times, arising from slow shutters, as well as equally slow chemical solutions, prevented photography from being of much use in the coverage of human events that included movement. But, from the 1860s onwards, the photographing of public festivities, public and private social events, celebrations and political events was systematically accompanied by both amateur and professional photographers. In the 19th century, photographers such as Cunha Morais, Augusto Bobone, Carlos Relvas, João Camacho and Aurélio da Paz dos Reis, are just some of the names of those who covered such different events as bullfights, big game hunting in Africa, a trip to the beach, an outing of King Carlos I and Queen Amélia, a lunch of important public figures, the preparations for the wedding of King Luís I, or a fair in Rossio. Besides photography, the production of stereoscopes of events also contributed to the intensification of a culture centred on establishing “contact” with the event through the consumption of images. [M.M.]

Photography and its scientific and typographic applications

In his book The Pencil of Nature (1844), William Henry Fox Talbot described the versatile vocation of photography, showing, one by one, its multiple uses, ranging from the photography of architecture to the portrait, the photographing of documents and the reproduction of works of art. As exposure times decreased, so the scope for the use of photography extended into the fields of Medicine and Anthropology, making it possible to photograph clinical cases, human types and communities. Portuguese photography was not left out of this multiple experience of photography and its use in the photographing of documents, in medicine and in scientific, geographical and anthropological exhibitions began to develop very early on, allowing for the dissemination of results and observations, both at conferences and in publications. An example of a photographer who worked in this field was José Júlio Bettencourt Rodrigues (1843-1893), a chemist and a precursor in Portugal of the application of photography to science, namely the studies that he undertook at the Photographic Department of the Directorate-General of Geodesic, Topographical, Hydrographical and Geological Works in Portugal. The various examples of photomechanical processes that he presented at successive International Exhibitions in Paris, where he received several awards, stand as evidence of his pioneering activities, especially the use of such processes in the preparation of maps. [M.M.]

Heritage photography

The first albums to be produced in France with prints made from daguerreotypes were the Excursions Daguerriennes (1840-42) of Noel Paymal Lerebours, a French publisher and typographer. These albums portrayed the French architectural heritage (cathedrals, monuments), as well as monuments from all over Europe and the Mediterranean. In Portugal, the pioneers of photography also embarked on an identical mission. From the first daguerreotypes made in Coimbra and Porto to images made using other processes (albumin, salted paper, collodion), amateur and professional photographers were constantly engaged in making an inventory of the Portuguese heritage. Carlos Relvas album of the Convento do Lorvão or “Ornamental Art” (1883) and Joaquim Possidónio da Silva’s Revista Pittoresca e Descriptiva (1861-63) show how photography’s particular archival and memorial vocation rapidly became one of the most widely disseminated means of recording the national heritage, in a century when Archaeology was establishing itself as a worldwide discipline and when History was placing itself at the centre of political and philosophical concerns. The 19th century placed Photography in parallel with the Monument as tools for the construction of a future memory, consequently resulting in a valuable work of record-taking and inventorying. [M.M]

The Photographic Portrait

The portrait was one of the most significant and popular genres in photography. In fact, photography was to carve out its own place in the representative tradition of painting, which at first led to its importing the traditional genres (portrait, landscape, still life) despite the technical questions associated with the need for a slow exposure time, which required lengthy poses and made this a complex practice. Consequently, a mechanism was invented that could hold the head of the portrayed subject in place and prevent its movement. At the same time, socio-cultural factors greatly increased the demand for the photographic portrait. These factors were linked to the profound changes taking place in terms of the greater recognition of the importance of the individual, centred on social distinction and the affirmation of one’s cultural identity in a society caught in the throes of constant economic and political change. Because of its mechanical nature, photography made it possible to associate the realism of the image with a series of conventions provided by the studio setting, the composition and the pose that could be used as a kind of idealised mirror. In Portugal, studios such as those of Augusto Bobone and Emílio Biel, and later Arnaldo da Fonseca, were just some of the places that produced large collections of portraits, not just of public figures, but also of common citizens. [M.M.]