Alexander Gardner

Alexander Gardner ( 1821 – 1882 )

Scottish and american photographer known for his images of the civil war in U.S.A, and especially for his portraits of President Lincoln.

He is also known for his photos of the execution of the convicted in the conspiracy for the assassination of President Lincoln.

After the end of the war he was portraying americans indians for a while, a little later he retired from photography.

Lincoln portraits

War photographs

Execution conspirators from Lincoln death photographs

american indian

Julia Margaret Cameron

Julia Margaret Cameron ( 1815 – 1879 )

There is some controversy with this english photographer about her peculiar style. While some  say that her style was wanted others say that she had technical shortcomings, but the fact is that thanks these peculiarities wanted or not, his works have a very unique blur  which gives them a poetic look.

She is considered one of the very first pictorialist photographers in the late nineteenth century. Her work was a great inspiration for the pre-Raphaelites painters.

She used inappropriate lens for the plates that she chose, because of that we often find spots and scratches on his works.

It is thought that she learned  of Gustave Rejlander and Lewis Carroll her technique at first.

My first success: Julie

I Wait

A study of the Cenci

Sadness

Beatrice

The echo

Virgina Wolf

Julia Jackson

Black Women

Madona

Sir John Herschel

Oscar Gustav Rejlander

Oscar Gustav Rejlander ( 1813 – 1875 )

 

He was swedish but he lived in England. It is considered by many people how as the father of photomontage and manipulation in photography.

He was one of the pioneers in artistic photography. He performed his works in the studio with a lot of props and focused his photographs in allegory, myth and history.  

He made sketches and later he retouched the negatives, in many cases no one noticed the retouching.

He didn´t pursue realism but an ideal according to preset rules, ideals and moral for the conservative people of the time.

Photomontages

Portraits of young girls

Portrait of baron Hallan Tenyson

Homeless boy

Kate Dore with artificial frame

Charles Dodgson

Nude: part of composition two ways of life

Two ways of life

André Adolphe Eugéne Disdéri

 

André Adolphe Eugène Disdéri ( 1819 – 1889 )

 

French, he was the first truly commercial photographer. He preferred making money to  get artistic quality.

He used props to show the profession and full-length portraits to can show them. For example he photographed the writers surrounded by books, the painters surrounded by theirs brushes and easels...

His appearance just ruining many of his colleagues, he invented a new technique better and cheaper. In one plate he took several photographs of his customers in different poses.

 

Portraits

His photographs much cheaper enabled customers to write them with their data and distribute them as business cards.

Visit card

He was also one of the pioneers in the nude and erotic photography.



Erotic photography

 

 

Nude photography

 

 

 

 

Gustave Le Gray

Gustave Le Gray ( 1820 -1884 ):

He was a french painter who became photographer. He began as a portraitist but due to the success of Disderi and the limitations of the daguerreotype he had to switch to landscapes and travel photography.

He saw the photography as art.

His photos of seascape had great sucess, he used a combination of 2 negatives, he impressed the sky and the waves separately and then he blended both with great harmony. 

He is considered a pioneer of instant photography. His excellent and refined technique allowed him to capture in one shot with great precision the sky and the sea.

Ships leaving Harbor

Mediterranean Sea

Lighthouse

The Great Wave

Castle reflecting in the water

Pont Carrousel

Palermo

Palermo

Train station

Felix-Gaspar Tournachon Nadar

Felix Gaspar Tornachon Nadar ( 1820 – 1910 ):

French photographer, he was one of the first portraitist. Like Le Gray he was more interested in art than in making money, for that reason both of them had economic problems.

He refused to retouching the color in his portraits and also renounce to use props. The gesture and the light are the main elements.

He  made portraits of many celebrities of the time.

Sarah Bernhardt

Gustave Doré

George Sand

Eugene Delacroix

Alexander Dumas

Jules Verne

Auguste Rodin

Charles Baudelaire

Emile Zola

Selfportrait

He made the first aerial photographs in histoty.

He was also the first to use artificial light, it was in the catacombs of Paris.