HF The History of Photography 600pág

2 5 8 The collodion period
Pis 124, 125
13rewster also suggested the use of stereoscopic photographs for book illustration,
this idea was first put into practice in l 8 58 by the Astronomer Royal for Scotland.20
In the same year a lending library for stereoscopic slides began operating in
London. For an annual subscription of one guinea slides could be borrowed and
exchanged as often as required.21
With increasing popularity, a lowering of taste set in; the stereoscope became the
poor man's picture gallery. Comics and even mildly suggestive scenes appeared in the
shops, along with love scenes, sets illustrating 'Married life and its pleasures', 'High
Life and Low Life', and crinoline jokes. Pictures of social activities of the upper classes
had the same function as some present-day Hollywood films-to give a glimpse of
luxurious living to those farthest removed from it. Although the great majority of
these domestic scenes had to be staged (instantaneous photographs of such social
events only became possible with the advent of the 'Ermanox' camera in 1925 in
conjunction with fast panchromatic plates), their value as social documents is in no
way diminished since they are contemporary and made for a public which would
have been critical of anything but a true-to-life picture.
For a rather tasteless novelty-'ghost' pictures, which ten years later developed into
'spirit photography' -Brewster must bear the responsibility.
For the purpose of amusement the photographer might carry us even into the
realms of the supernatural. His art enables him to give a spiritual appearance to one
or more of his figures, and to exhibit them as 'thin air' amid the solid realities of
the stereoscopic picture. While a party is engaged with their whist or their gossip,
a female figure appears in the midst of them, with all the attributes of the supernatural.
Her form is transparent, every object or person beyond her being seen in
shadowy but distinct outline.22
The trick was quite simply performed by letting the 'ghost' appear, suitably draped
in a white sheet, for a part of the exposure only. The idea occurred to Brewster, he
relates,23 after seeing a calotype by Hill and Adamson of York Minster ( l 844) in
"'·hich a boy had seated himself during part of the exposure on one of the steps near
tl1e doorway, appearing transparent in the print. 'The value and application of this
fact did not at first present itself to me, but after I had contrived the lenticular stereoscope
I saw that such transparent pictures might be used for various purposes.'
In 1862 the Stereoscopic Company paid £1,500 for the exclusive right to take
photographs of the International Exhibition, and this task also fell to William
England, who recorded the complete history of the exhibition from the opening
ceremony to the dismantling. During that time (six months) the Company sold
nearly 300,000 stereoscopic slides, besides many thousand carte-de-visite portraits
made from England's negatives. The consumption of chemicals and other materials
amounted to 70 reams of paper (1 ream=480 sheets), 200 gallons of albumen (made
from 32,000 eggs), 2,400 oz. of nitrate of silver, 35 oz. of pure gold (made into
chloride of gold for toning), 25 cwt. of fixing salt.24- This was for the production of
positive prints only, 95 per cent. of which were stereoscopic slides. In 1862 the instrument
reached the zenith of its popularity, which declined with the craze for the cartede-visite.
In the late l 86os there was a general falling off of interest in photography,
and in the l 87os and early l 88os photography went through a lean period.
Attracted by the simplicity of dry plates, roll-films, and small hand cameras, a
large number of people found in photography a new hobby, and an amateur mowment
on a hitherto undreamed of scale began after the introduction of the Kodak i11
l 888. Almost simultaneously began a revival of stereoscopic photography, which