The journey from non-permanent to permanent photographs is pretty fascinating and full of trial and error. It all started with early pioneers like Thomas Wedgwood and Humphry Davy. They tried to capture images using light-sensitive materials, but they faced a big problem: their images wouldn’t last. Wedgwood used paper or white leather coated with silver nitrate and managed to capture silhouettes of objects. The downside? These images would darken completely if left in the light for too long. It was a step forward, but they needed a way to fix the images.

Then came Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, who made a huge leap in the 1820s. He figured out a way to create the first permanent photograph using a process he called heliography, which means “sun writing.” Niépce used a polished pewter plate coated with bitumen of Judea, a substance that hardens when exposed to light. He placed the plate in a camera obscura and exposed it to light for about eight hours. The bright areas of the image hardened, while the darker areas stayed soft. After the exposure, he washed the plate with a mixture of oil of lavender and white petroleum, which removed the unhardened bitumen and left behind a permanent image etched into the pewter. This resulted in “View from the Window at Le Gras,” the first permanent photograph.

Louis Daguerre was another key figure who built on Niépce’s work. He teamed up with Niépce for a while, and after Niépce’s death, Daguerre continued to refine the process. In 1839, Daguerre introduced the daguerreotype, which became the first commercially successful photographic process. His method involved coating a copper plate with silver and treating it with iodine vapor to make it light-sensitive. After exposing the plate to light in a camera, Daguerre developed the image using mercury vapor and fixed it with a salt solution. This process produced highly detailed, permanent images that quickly gained popularity.

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Around the same time, in England, William Henry Fox Talbot was developing his own method called the calotype, or talbotype. Talbot’s process involved coating paper with silver chloride, which darkened when exposed to light. After exposure, he developed the paper in a solution of gallic acid and silver nitrate, creating a negative image. This negative could be used to make multiple positive prints by placing it against another sheet of light-sensitive paper and exposing it to light. The calotype was significant because it introduced the concept of negatives and positives, which became the foundation for modern photography.

Prompted By Joelcy Kay (Editor) “on-permanent photographs“ ChatGPT4.0