525

CAMERA ARCHAEOLOGIA:
A MEDIA ARCHAEOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION INTO THE
CONTEMPORARY USE OF 19TH-CENTURY PHOTOGRAPHIC TECHNIQUES

In the age where digital has become the norm, the earliest methods of photographic
production started to provide peculiar and novel modes for the visual experience.
Although 19th-century photographic techniques are not central today, they manage to
hold a marginal share in the photographic discourse and practice. A small number of
contemporary photographers tend to go against the grain of digital culture by diverting to
chemical-based techniques without completely turning their backs on what digital
technologies have to offer. By undertaking a media archaeological approach, this research
investigates the motivations of those photographers. As a result of discourse analysis of
interviews with seven photographers, it is found that 19th-century photographic
techniques function as imaginary media which are conceived as compensatory methods
that make up for problems, deficiencies, and challenges in the current hegemonic
photographic technologies and practices. By combining desired features of chemical and
numeric approaches to photography, the lack of tangibility, do-it-yourself sensation,
experimentality, and subjectivity in digital technologies are attempted to be compensated.
Keywords: 19th-century photography, media archaeology, imaginary media,
post-digital break, antiquarian avant-garde
iii
ÖZET

Dijitalin standart haline geldiği çağda, en eski fotoğraf üretim yöntemleri, görsel
deneyim için özgün ve yeni yaklaşımlar sağlamaya başladı. 19. yüzyıl fotoğraf
teknikleri günümüzde merkezi olmasalar da, fotoğrafik söylem ve pratikte marjinal
bir paya sahip olmayı başarıyorlar. Az sayıda çağdaş fotoğrafçı, dijital teknolojilerin
sunduklarına tamamen sırt çevirmeden kimya bazlı tekniklere yönelerek dijital
kültürün tersi yönde hareket etme eğilimindeler. Medya arkeolojik bir yaklaşım
benimseyen bu araştırma, bu tür çağdaş fotoğrafçıların motivasyonlarını araştırıyor.
Yedi fotoğrafçıyla yapılan görüşmelerin söylem analizi sonucunda, 19. yüzyıl
fotoğraf tekniklerinin, günümüzün baskın fotoğraf teknolojileri ve pratiklerindeki
sorunları, eksiklikleri ve zorlukların yerini dolduran telafi edici yöntemler olarak
kullanılan birer hayali medya işlevi gördüğü ortaya çıkarılmıştır. Fotoğrafta kimyasal
ve sayısal yaklaşımların istenen özellikleri bir araya getirilerek, dijital
teknolojilerdeki elle tutulabilirlik, kendin yap hissi, deneysellik ve öznellik eksikliği
giderilmeye çalışılmaktadır.
Anahtar Kelimeler: 19. yüzyıl fotoğrafçılığı, medya arkeolojisi, hayali medya, dijital
sonrası kırılma, antik avangart
iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Prof. Andreas Treske for being an
open-minded, supportive, and unrestrictive supervisor. His attitude allowed me to
always find a way out from dead ends and ambiguous alleys which I kept finding
myself. His extensive knowledge and suggestions on the subject of media
archaeology as well as visual studies have helped me perceive photography from a
peculiar angle and made this thesis possible.
I would also like to thank Ayşe Nilden Aksoy, Aydın Berk Bilgin, Burcu Böcekler,
Tomáš Hetmánek, Ergül Karagözoğlu, Murat Sarıyar, and Kerim Suner for their
invaluable contributions to this research. They have been very generous with sharing
their knowledge on the subject of 19th-century photographic techniques as well as
their personal experiences. Their open-heartedness lies at the core of this research.
Further, I would like to thank Prof. Yasmine Nachabe Taan and Prof. Özgür Yaren for
accepting to be part of my thesis committee and for taking the time to provide
constructive feedback to make this research better.
v
I want to thank my sister, my mother, and my father for always trusting and
supporting me regardless of my decisions. If I am doing what I love today, it is
because of their continuous support.
Last but not least, I owe my deepest thanks to İdil. I cannot adequately describe how
lucky I am to have her always by my side. Her continuous intellectual and emotional
support has helped me dearly. Neither this thesis nor this two-year-long journey
would have been as pleasant without her charming existence.
vi
TABLE OF CONTENTS
ABSTRACT ………………………………………………………………………. iii
ÖZET ……………………………………………………………………………… iv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS …………………………………………………………v
TABLE OF CONTENTS …………………………………………………………. vii
LIST OF FIGURES ……………………………………………………………….. x
CHAPTER I: INTRODUCTION ………………………………………………….. 1
1.1. Purpose of the Research ………………………………………………. 1
1.2. Overview of Chapters ……………………………………………….... 3
CHAPTER II: LITERATURE REVIEW …………………………………………. 6
2.1. Breaks, Ruptures, and Discontinuities ……………………………….. 6
2.1.1. Photography as a Break from the Camera
Obscura Tradition ………………………………………………… 19
2.1.2. Photography’s Discontinuities: Resurfacings ……………… 22
2.1.2.1. Photography’s Antiquarian Avant-Garde,
Postdigital Artisanship, and Slow Photography ………….. 27
2.1.2.2. Contemporary Resurfacing of 19th Century
Photography ………………………………………………. 38
2.1.2.3. Contemporary Resurfacing of 20th Century
Photography ………………………………………………. 41
2.2. Media Archaeology ………………………………………………….. 43
2.2.1. Foundations of Media Archaeology ……………………….. 45
2.2.2. Coexistence and Non-linearity of Old and New …………… 50
2.2.3. Marginal, Failed, and Forgotten Media ……………………. 54
2.2.4. Imaginary Media …………………………………………... 59
vii
2.2.5. Experimental Media Archaeology ………………………… 70
CHAPTER III: METHODOLOGY ……………………………………………… 74
3.1. Method of Data Collection ………………………………………….. 74
3.1.1. Snowball Sampling ………………………………………... 74
3.1.2. Interviews …………………………………………………. 75
3.2. Method of Analysis: Discourse Analysis …………………………… 77
CHAPTER IV: 19th-CENTURY PHOTOGRAPHIC TECHNIQUES and
MODERN VARIATIONS ……………………………………………………….. 84
4.1. Pinhole ………………………………………………………………. 86
4.2. Silver-Based Techniques ……………………………………………. 88
4.2.1. Heliography & Daguerreotype …………………………… 88
4.2.2. Calotype & Salt Print ……………………………………... 89
4.2.3. Wet Plate Collodion ………………………………………. 93
4.2.4. Albumen Print …………………………………………….. 96
4.2.5. Silver Gelatin Dry Plate …………………………………... 96
4.3. Iron-Based Techniques ……………………………………………… 98
4.3.1. Cyanotype, Van Dyke Brown & Chrysotype ……………... 98
4.3.2. Breath Print ……………………………………………….. 103
4.3.3. Platinum & Palladium Print ………………………………. 103
4.4. Non-Silver and Non-Iron Techniques ………………………………. 104
4.4.1. Anthotype ………………………………………………… 104
4.4.2. Gum Bichromate …………………………………………. 105
4.4.3 Carbon & Oil Print ………………………………………... 107
4.5. Modern Variations ………………………………………………….. 109
4.5.1. Chlorophyll Print …………………………………………. 109
4.5.2. Lumen & Cyano-Lumen Print ……………………………. 109
4.5.3. Mordançage ………………………………………………. 112
4.5.4. Solargraphy ……………………………………………….. 113
4.5.5. Digital Negative …………………………………………... 113
CHAPTER V: PHOTOGRAPHERS in ACTION ………………………………. 115
5.1. Post-Digital Break: Intentions, Approaches, and Applications …….. 115
5.2. 19th-Century Photographic Techniques as Imaginary Media ……… 127
5.2.1. Compensation Machines …………………………………. 129
viii
5.2.2. Frustration Machines …………………………………….. 130
5.3. Rooted in the Past, Ramified in the Present ……………………….. 135
5.4. An Inside-Out View: Researcher as Experimenter ………………... 139
CHAPTER VI: CONCLUSION and DISCUSSION …………………………... 145
REFERENCES …………………………………………………………………. 151
APPENDICES ………………………………………………………………….. 158
Appendix A. First Interview Questions ………………………………… 158
Appendix B. Second Interview Questions ……………………………… 160
Appendix C. Photographer Profiles …………………………………….. 161
Appendix D. Photographers and 19th-Century Photographic
Techniques and Modern Variations They Use ………………………….. 165
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LIST OF FIGURES
1. Illustration of "Portable" Camera Obscura in
Athanasius Kircher's Ars Magna Lucis Et Umbrae, 1645 ………………… 9
2. David Hockney’s Camera Obscura Setup for Drawing,
from his book Secret Knowledge, 2001 …………………………………. 13
3. Examples of the Hole-in-the-Wall effect,
from David Hockney’s Secret Knowledge, 2001 ………………………… 14
4. Illustration of a Thaumatrope ……………………………………………. 16
5. Illustration of a Phenakistoscope ………………………………………… 16
6. A Zoetrope from 1805 in Leeds Industrial Museum …………………….. 17
7. Illustration of a Stereoscope ……………………………………………… 17
8. The Kodak Camera Advertisement from 1889 …………………………... 25
9. The Desk, 35mm Photo collage by David Hockney, 1984 ………………. 37
10. Elephans Photographicus Cartoon Published
in Punch Magazine, 20 June 1863 ……………………………………….. 58
11. Visualization of Siegfried Zielinski’s Imaginary Media Map …………… 63
12. Wilhelm Kühne’s Rabbit’s Eye Optograph, 1877 ……………………….. 82
13. Aydın Berk Bilgin’s Homemade Shoebox Pinhole Camera
Containing 25 Separate Slots for Exposure ……………………………… 87
14. Salt Print from Wet Plate Collodion Negative,
x
Nude with a Shell, 2017, Tomáš Hetmánek ……………………………… 91
15. Salt Print, from “Devinim” Series, 2017, Aydın Berk Bilgin ……………. 92
16. Wet Plate Collodion, Untitled, 2016, Tomáš Hetmánek …………………. 94
17. Wet Plate Collodion, Swindler, c. 2017, Murat Sarıyar ………………….. 95
18. Wet Plate Collodion Negative, Nusretiye Mosque,
2021, Kerim Suner ……………………………………………………….. 95
19. Gold Toned Albumen Print, Sebah & Joaillier,
2018, Kerim Suner ……………………………………………………….. 97
20. Cyanotype, from “Aile Hatırası” Series,
2018, Ayşe Nilden Aksoy ………………………………………………… 98
21. Cyanotype from Wet Plate Collodion Negative, Annunciation,
2017, Tomáš Hetmánek …………………………………………………... 99
22. Van Dyke Brown on Watercolor Paper, from the Series of “Acropolis of
Pergamon”, 2021, Burcu Böcekler ……………………………………… 101
23. Chrysotype, Corona, 2020, Ayşe Nilden Aksoy ………………………… 102
24. Anthotype from Vinegared Purple Cabbage, from “Yüzleşme” Series,
2016, Ayşe Nilden Aksoy ……………………………………………….. 105
25. Gum Bichromate over Cyanotype from Wet Plate Collodion Negative,
Untitled, 2017, Tomáš Hetmánek ……………………………………….. 106
26. Gum Bichromate with Black Pigment, from “Vernacular Photography”
Series, 2016, Burcu Böcekler
27. Oil Print, Fake Mate Number Unknown, c.2018, Murat Sarıyar ……….. 108
28. Chlorophyll Print, Kaybolan Çocukluğum, 2019, Ergül Karagözoğlu ……110
29. Wet Cyano-Lumen, from “Bakır Nehir” Series,
2021, Ayşe Nilden Aksoy ……………………………………………….. 111
xi
30. Mordançage from Silver Gelatin Print from Paper negative,
The Meeting, 2021, Tomáš Hetmánek …………………………………... 112
31. Solargraph, Gün İzi 2, Exposure Duration: 51 Days,
2021, Aydın Berk Bilgin ………………………………………………… 113
32. Kerim Suner in His Studio, Macro Photography with a
Large Format Camera with 2 Meters Bellows Width …………………… 118
33. Embroidered Silver Gelatin Print from Paper Negative, The Regret,
2020, Tomáš Hetmánek …………………………………………………. 120
34. Fake Mate in Aquarium, Image from Murat Sarıyar’s Studio, 2017 …… 127
35. Chard Anthotype from Digital Negative, Ramified,
2021, Alaz Okudan ……………………………………………………… 142
36. Turmeric Anthotype, Nature Morte, 2021, Alaz Okudan ………………. 143
37. Cyanotype, Landscape, 2018, Alaz Okudan ……………………………. 144
xii
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
1.1. Purpose of the Research
Photography was born as an experimental and hands-on medium in 1839 which
carried strong do-it-yourself connotations and artisanship characteristics. For about
50 years, with its various approaches and chemical-based techniques, it managed to
maintain a core handmade identity. However, in the late 19th-century, photography
entered what is called to be its coming-of-age period where its identity has drastically
changed both in terms of its practical use and discursive practice. Early photographic
processing techniques such as wet plate collodion and printing techniques albumen,
salt print, cyanotype, oil print, and many more were discarded due to their slow,
unreliable, and relatively complicated technical processes.
Starting with silver gelatin emulsion and the release of the Kodak Camera in 1888
with the advertisement slogan of “You press the button, we do the rest”, almost each
technical and commercial step since then has been made towards ensuring the
average user not to worry about the mechanics of the photographic process. The
1
photographer's profile has shapeshifted from the well-equipped craftsman into the
man on the street. Since then, apparatuses and tools that were used in photographic
image production have slowly turned into closed boxes by becoming increasingly
automatized, standardized, and software-driven. Even though technological
developments have allowed the average user to bypass sophisticated technical
processes by granting them the ability to create an image without having knowledge
about how the process works, the new ways of photographic production also started
to impose their own specific limitations and user behaviors. From a physical object,
the photograph is turned into binary data that is experienced through flat screens.
Instead of the photographer, software, automated presets and various embedded
features in contemporary photographic apparatuses started to determine what the
image is going to look like.
Throughout the years, 19th-century photographic techniques have made marginal
comebacks. Today, we are once again witnessing the resurfacing of 19th-century
photographic techniques, many of which fell into obscurity more than a century ago.
Around the world, a small but significant number of photographers are diverting to
19th-century techniques and discovering hybrid ways of visual production by
combining old techniques with contemporary ways of photographic production. By
focusing on these contemporary examples, this research questions why certain
contemporary photographers decide on using techniques from almost two centuries
ago. Interviews have been conducted with seven contemporary photographers from
Turkey who use 19th-century photographic techniques. Their individual discourses
and practices are put under investigation. By undertaking a media archaeological
2
approach, their specific intentions and understandings of photography are attempted
to be brought to daylight.
Revealing the contemporary roles and functions of 19th-century photographic
techniques can be helpful in order to understanding the current hegemonic structures
as well as resisting forces in the contemporary photographic context.
1.2. Overview of Chapters
Chapter 2: Literature Review consists of two main parts which form the theoretical
backbone of this research. In the first part Breaks, Ruptures, and Discontinuities
(2.1.), it is suggested that media discourses and practices should be discussed in
terms of their breaks, ruptures, and discontinuities rather than assuming an
uninterrupted continuity throughout history. By focusing on theoretical and artistic
remarks provided by Jonathan Crary (1990), Geoffrey Batchen (1997), and David
Hockney (2001) it is attempted to demonstrate how photography presented a
discursive and intellectual break from its technical predecessor camera obscura in
the 19th-century. Moreover, by focusing on later changes in what terms photography
was being discussed and practiced, it is also demonstrated that photographic history
contains its own discontinuities and multiplexed identities. Through the contributions
of Lyle Rexer (2001) and Jonathan Openshaw (2015), the contemporary resurfacing
of 19th-century photographic techniques is discussed as part of photography’s
discontinuous history.
The second part Media Archaeology (2.2.), discusses how the given research topic is
going to be approached both in theoretical and methodological terms. Media
3
archaeology is selected as the critical standpoint due to its framework which allows
for the investigation of marginal forces within the overall media environment which
are mostly obscured by hegemonic approaches, discourses, and practices. Works of
Jussi Parikka (2012), Siegfried Zielinski (2006), and Eric Kluitenberg (2006) on the
subjects of media archaeology and imaginary media provided significant
contributions. By using Foucauldian discourse analysis, it is discussed how the
investigation of contemporary resurfacing of 19th-century photographic techniques
would provide beneficial information about the media environment we are embedded
in.
Chapter 3: Methodology extends the Media Archaeology (2.2.) subchapter and offers
several examples of discourse analysis in photographic studies. In addition, this part
explains why snowball sampling is preferred as the sampling method and how the
data collection process is approached and interviews with photographers are
structured.
Chapter 4: 19th-Century Photographic Techniques and Modern Variations provides
basic historical and technical information about the 19th-century photographic
techniques that are mostly used by photographers who participated in the research.
Moreover, some contemporary techniques are included due to their strong ties with
the chemical-based tradition and do-it-yourself spirit of the 19th-century.
Chapter 5: Photographers in Action presents and discusses the information gathered
through interviews with seven contemporary photographers from Turkey. First of all,
each photographer is briefly introduced. Thereafter, their specific approaches and
4
intentions behind their decisions to use 19th-century photographic techniques are
discussed. Moreover, the contemporary resurfacing of 19th-century photographic
techniques is discussed in terms of their imaginary features which function as
compensatory machines as well as frustration machines.
Chapter 6: Conclusion and Discussion presents a recap of the findings of the
research and discusses further research possibilities.
5
CHAPTER II
LITERATURE REVIEW
2.1. Breaks, Ruptures, and Discontinuities
Throughout its history, photography's identity as a visual object, a social
phenomenon, and a technological tool was never a stable one. With the introduction
of each new technology and social condition, novel roles and uses were invented for
photography. Even in its early years, there were numerous photographic processing
and printing techniques with diverse characteristics which offered distinct ways for
image production. Such diversification never left photography but rather started to be
repressed by dominant techniques and commercial intentions. The term photography
should not be seen and used as a representative of a homogenous whole but rather as
an umbrella term that refers to the amalgamation of diverse social, discursive, and
technological ruptures, beginning at the turn of the 19th century and continuing
today.
Despite the complexity, diversity, and fluidity behind photography, there have always
been dominant techniques and social uses which suppressed their alternatives that in
turn resulting in a simplified and superficialized perception of photography. Critics
6
such as André Bazin (1960) and Peter Galassi (1981) attempted to trace
photography’s ontological roots back to the Western pictorial tradition because on the
surface, photography’s visuality seems to be faithful to linear perspective and
Renaissance-based perception. According to Bazin (1960, p. 7), plastic arts handed
over the burden of depicting reality to photography. In Bazin’s Ontology of the
Photographic Image, there is the assumption of uninterrupted continuity between the
Western tradition of plastic arts, photography, and at last cinema. In addition to
Bazin, Peter Galassi in Before Photography explains his objective as “to show that
photography was not a bastard left by science on the doorstep of art, but a legitimate
child of the Western pictorial tradition” (Galassi, 1981, p. 12). Bazin and Galassi’s
treatment of photography exemplifies a fundamental problem that seems to occur
more than often in media and specifically photographic discussions.
This deterministic approach assumes constant progression and change for the better.
Sorting events in a sequential, continuous, and deterministic order makes history
reading and inferring undeniably easier for the investigator. However, such an
approach has many substantial drawbacks. Most significantly, it becomes the
investigation of hegemonic structures within media culture. Since the structure of the
deterministic approach depends on historical continuity and causality, it tends to
focus on dominant media structures which seem to successively take place in the
course of history, leaving no room for discontinuities. Focusing on dominant media
for the sake of creating a sense of historical continuity and progression means ruling
out the significance of dead-ends, failures, and less visible alternatives. As Bazin and
Galassi did, assuming the 19th-century visual media as the undisturbed continuation
of the pictorial tradition has been a dominant approach in European visual culture for
7
a long time. According to Jonathan Crary (1990, p. 4), this is an approach that needs
to be abandoned. The visual culture has to be defined through variations, ruptures,
discontinuities, and co-existence rather than similarities, continuities, and
singularities (Crary, 1990, pp. 3-4, 13 & 31-32) which is also the approach that
should be used when it comes to understanding photography.
The emergence of photography coincides with a visual and cultural rupture in
history. Jonathan Crary offers an investigation into this rupture through its
protagonist, the observer. He defines the observer, or user if I should expand its
meaning for this research, as the "one who sees [and functions] within a prescribed
set of possibilities, one who is embedded in a system of conventions and limitations",
conventions referring to "irreducibly heterogeneous system of discursive, social,
technological, and institutional relations" (Crary, 1990, p. 6). Specific conventions of
each time period may give birth to new types of seeing, over time, some of which
could become more dominant than others. Crary suggests that the dominant mode of
seeing in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries was strongly related to the functioning
principles of camera obscura and the discourse that evolved around it.
Camera obscura (from Latin, meaning darkroom), as its name implies, is a dark
room that has a tiny hole on one of its walls. Through this tiny hole, the outside
scene, illuminated by sunlight, is projected onto the opposite wall inside the
darkroom, resulting in a bordered, upside-down reflection of the outer scene. By no
means the camera obscura was a newly introduced technology in the 16th-century.
Its optical properties became known in Ancient Greece by Aristotle (384-322 BC)
through his observations of nature and the functioning principles of camera obscura
8
were described by the Arabian scholar Alhazen (c.965-c.1040) in the 10th-century
(Gernsheim, 1982, p. 7). Even though it has already been a known technology, it
came to dominate vision much later in its existence when functioning principles of
camera obscura were started to be scrutinized and metaphorized to understand the
human vision itself.
Figure 1. Illustration of "Portable" Camera Obscura in Athanasius Kircher's Ars
Magna Lucis Et Umbrae, 1645.
Vilem Flusser's (2000) thoughts on the relationship between the technical tool and
information coincide with Crary's suggestion. According to Flusser, each tool
possesses different kinds of information at different rates due to its ability to
transform objects at various levels. In terms of Flusser's understanding of tools and
information, camera obscura becomes an intensely powerful tool when it comes to
informing their objects and subjects (Flusser, 2000, p. 23):
Tools in the usual sense tear objects from the natural world in order to bring them
to the place (produce them) where the human being is. In this process they change
the form of these objects: They imprint a new, intentional form onto them. They
9
'inform' them: The object acquires an unnatural, improbable form; it becomes
cultural. This production and information of natural objects is called 'work' and its
result is called 'a work'. Many works, such as apples, are admittedly produced, but
have hardly been informed; others, such as shoes, are strongly informed, they
have a form that is developed from animal skins (leather). Apple-producing
(-picking) scissors are tools that inform very little; shoe-producing needles are
tools that inform a lot.
The camera obscura receives an outside scene as its natural source and through the
help of a hole or an optical lens and a darkened room, it produces a highly informed
product. The camera transforms the natural object and gives it an unnatural and
improbable form. A three-dimensional world is translated into two dimensions.
Moreover, the scene inside the camera receives a frame that has clear-cut boundaries
unlike the scene outside. Through its transformation ability, the camera obscura
became a dominant tool for understanding vision prior to the 19th century.
Many of the philosophers, scientists, and artists of the 17th and 18th-centuries
(generally, all of these identities were combined in one person) conducted their
optical studies through the use of a camera obscura. It was the dominant optical
apparatus of the time. As a hegemonic tool, Crary focuses on the camera obscura
and its imposition on the human body through which a certain mode of vision is
created. Camera obscura is a confined space that isolates its user and his/her vision
from the exterior and presents him/her an instantaneous, vivid, and sharp projection
of a cropped section of the exterior scene (Crary, 1990, p. 34). Using a camera
obscura means inevitable isolation from the exterior as well as the separation of
vision from the physical body of the observer - with camera obscura the vision is
presented as an extrinsic feature to the human body which can be rationalized and
10
objectivized (Crary, 1990, pp. 38-40). "The senses deceive; the reason corrects the
errors" (1910, p. 317) Crary cites Nietzsche. According to Crary, Nietzsche's
statement summarizes the main understanding that dominated the visual culture in
the 17th and 18th-centuries. The senses were unreliable, therefore, through the use of
camera obscura, a non-deceptive and objective vision could be created. The observer
inside the camera was not the primary subject who executed the act of vision. The
assignment was given to the camera which informed the observer through its cyclops
eye and two-dimensional projection. The observer's vision was regulated and
corrected by the functioning principles of the camera. Crary investigates the
assumption of objective and rational vision created by the camera obscura in the
writings of philosophers such as Isaac Newton, Denis Diderot, René Descartes, and
John Locke; and in the works of artists such as Johannes Vermeer and J. B. Chardin.
David Hockney, in his Secret Knowledge (2001), provides an investigation into the
use of optical tools in the works of old masters of painting. Hockney starts his
research by contrasting the general assumption that only a few old masters such as
Vermeer and Canaletto used optical tools such as camera obscura in their paintings.
He suggests that the use of optical tools was far more common and widespread than
assumed among painters throughout Europe (Hockney, 2001, p. 12). Hockney's
investigation aims to provide visual proof of the use of optics by looking into an
extensive body of European paintings from the 1100s to the 1800s. Moreover, he
suggests that it became possible to spot the wide use of optics in the works of old
masters due to the rise of digital technologies (Hockney, 2001, p. 13). Such
technologies brought in the ability to gather high-resolution reproductions together
11
for an uncanny eye that has the finesse to scrutinize them by combining the gaze of
an artist and a scientist.
Since the human eye and optics have different working principles, and information
about such divergence is at our disposal now, Hockney knows that the use of optics
in any painting would create side effects due to the involvement of a non-human
agent. He looks for distortions, halos, out-of-focus objects, multiple perspectives, and
vanishing points that would inevitably manifest themselves in the final painting if the
optical tools were involved in the process. As a result of his research, Hockney
manages to determine the initial data on the use of optics in European paintings
sometime between the late 1420s and early 1430s (Hockney, 2001, p. 67 & 71). He
does not settle by only gathering visual evidence from paintings but he also
experiments with optics and mirrors to gather his own practical evidence (Hockney,
2001, pp. 75-76). He sets up a special studio for reflecting the images of real-life
objects with the help of a concave lens. This lens helps him to reflect objects onto a
flat surface with vivid sharpness and lively colors. He suggests that similar tools
would also be at the disposal of painters from the 1400s because his drawing and
painting experiments with the concave lens show similar characteristics to those from
the 15th century.
Hockney comes up with a camera obscura-like setup in order to paint portraits. In
this setup, he situates himself in a dark room such as camera obscura. Instead of a
tiny hole, on the wall of the camera obscura, he puts up a window. Then, the subject
is placed in front of the window, under the bright sunlight. The subject's image is
projected onto the room's opposite wall by using a concave mirror which functions
12
very much like a lens (Hockney, 2001, p. 74). Through the use of this setup,
Hockney was only able to draw his subjects as much as the window's dimensions
allowed him to do. Therefore, he was only able to draw and paint his subjects from
the chest above. He names this specific side effect as the hole-in-the-wall. He
observes the same side effect in the paintings of old masters. He determines many
paintings which portray their subject as if they were seen through a window where
there is always a ledge at the bottom of the paintings (Hockney, 2001, pp. 80-81).
Figure 2. David Hockney’s Camera Obscura Setup for Drawing, from His Book
Secret Knowledge, 2001.
13
Figure 3. Examples of the Hole-in-the-Wall effect, from David Hockney’s Secret
Knowledge, 2001.
Hockney suggests that until optical technologies developed to a certain point and
chemical advancement ensured photography’s invention, painting tradition in Europe
sailed quite parallel to and intimately with the optics. However, he also establishes a
slow divergence between Western painting and optical technologies as we approach
the middle of the 19th century. Manet, Cezanne, and Van Gogh were the pioneers of
this break from the optics tradition. The break gained even higher momentum in the
20th century with Cubism and “modern art” (Hockney, 2001, p. 184-185).
While Crary investigated the camera obscura metaphor on human vision, Hockney
provided insights about its technical use in arts. Both of their contributions combine
to suggest that camera obscura was one of the most influential tools which shaped
the artistic practice as well as philosophical and intellectual discourses between the
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15th and 19th centuries. However, its influence lost its dominant power in the 19th
century with new scientific and technical findings.
In the light of the trending fields of physiology and psychology, the early 19th
century witnessed the emergence of a totally new way of understanding and
interpreting vision. According to this new understanding, the vision started to be seen
as the internal function of the human eye with all of its fuzziness and the result of the
brain's interpretation with all of its subjectivity. This new way of seeing suggested
that vision could not take place external to the human body but could only be internal
to it. Crary tracks the instances of this phenomenon in the writings of Johann
Wolfgang Goethe, Arthur Schopenhauer, Xavier Bichat, and Maine de Biran. In a
way, this new approach to understanding vision emerged as the offspring of
philosophy and human physiology. In the early 19th-century, works of philosophers,
scientists, artists, and entrepreneurs started to take human perception as the main
field of investigation. One of the most influential steps towards this new
understanding was the discovery of the afterimage phenomenon.
Visual apparatuses of the time started to be produced with the principles of
afterimage phenomenon and human perception in mind, abandoning the camera
obscura's non-human vision (Crary, 1990, p. 69). Following this change, tools such
as thaumatrope, zoetrope, phenakistoscope, and stereoscope were born. The
functioning principles of these tools, when compared to camera obscura, were
dependent on the human eye and its working principles. While stereoscope's
binocular vision allowed two-dimensional images to be perceived as
three-dimensional ones, thaumatrope, zoetrope and phenakistoscope created the
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illusion of movement by taking advantage of the afterimage phenomenon. Rather
than aiming to separate vision from the human body and turn it into an objective
entity, these new tools functioned as the manifestation of vision's inevitable
dependency on the human body, specifically on the human eye, brain, and the
perception which occurred through their cooperation.
Figure 4. Illustration of a Thaumatrope
Figure 5. Illustration of a Phenakistoscope
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Figure 6. A Zoetrope from 1805 in Leeds Industrial Museum
Figure 7. Illustration of a Stereoscope
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That is not to say with the new scientific findings the camera obscura-based
understanding of vision became obsolete once and for all. It persisted and co-existed
with new ways of seeing while only losing its dominant status over other visual
forms. In fact, Sarah Kofman’s Camera Obscura of Ideology (1998) is one of the
attempts which investigates the metaphor of camera obscura in the works of Karl
Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche. Even though the golden age of
camera obscura over vision had already come to an end, the intellectual
contributions of Marx, Freud, and Nietzsche were still making use of the metaphor
for expressing and understanding concepts such as ideology, consciousness, and
unconsciousness rather than vision. As the functioning principles of human vision
started to be tied with different tools and concepts, the camera obscura metaphor
gained alternative meanings.
Crary establishes camera obscura as the dominant tool which was highly practiced
and used as a metaphor in order to understand human vision prior to the
19th-century. Hockney backs Crary’s assumption by revealing the dominance of
camera obscura and other optical tools within the European painting tradition.
Moreover, they both determine their respective divergences from the camera obscura
tradition in the 19th-century. Both figures demonstrate examples of reading history
with its ruptures and discontinuities rather than trying to come up with a singular and
continuous narrative. I defend photography not as the direct descendent of earlier
modes of seeing and producing but rather as a break from them. The next section
presents my own attempt at spotting the divergence from the camera obscura
tradition with the emergence of photography.
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2.1.1. Photography as a Break from the Camera Obscura Tradition
Camera obscura has undeniable technological features which influenced the
invention of photography, nevertheless, camera obscura and photography, are
fundamentally built on distinct discourses and practices. With the invention of
photography, certain functioning principles of the camera obscura were passed down
to the photographic camera. The photographic camera accepts light through a single
opening which is generally occupied and controlled by the optical lens aperture. The
projection wall within the camera has been replaced by a light-sensitive surface in
the photography camera. In the basic sense, the photography camera is a
scaled-down version of the camera obscura which has a light-sensitive surface inside
instead of the observer's eye. Even though such technical features of the
photographic camera were inherited from the camera obscura, differences between
the two apparatuses when it comes to their impact on the way of seeing significantly
outweigh their similarities.
According to Friedrich Kittler (2011, p. 118), who offered a work of detailed
information on the history of optical tools and their cultural significance, the
relationship between previous optical tools such as camera obscura and lanterna
magica and photography was only on the technical level rather than on the discursive
level. Soon after we get past these initial technical similarities, divergences start to
occur between the two. At the core of their respective discourses, different
motivations lay. The image within camera obscura is inseparable from movement
and temporality (Crary, 1990, p. 34). Its main function is to receive images but it
lacks the ability to store them (Kittler, 2011, p. 118). Photographic discourse starts
with the desire to freeze the fleeing image within camera obscura. This means that
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photography begins at the moment camera obscura starts to feel inadequate. Before
photography, the only way to free the image from the camera was to use
non-mechanical ways of reproduction such as drawing, painting, etching, etc.
Therefore, the image which was able to leave the camera was always prone to human
intervention. Photography made it possible to create images that can exceed time and
space, as well as trivialize the human element. The previously fleeing image inside
the camera obscura became fixable on a surface with the help of another highly
informed tool.
The desire for photography should not be envisioned separately from the social,
economical, industrial, and cultural structure of late 18th and early 19th century
Europe. Photography's physical emergence in 1839 should be seen as a symptom of
the new way of seeing which established itself in the early 19th century: "To
understand the 'photography effect' in the nineteenth century, one must see it as a
crucial component of a new cultural economy of value and exchange, not as part of a
continuous history of visual representation." (Crary, 1990, p. 13). Geoffrey Batchen's
Burning with Desire (1997) presents an investigation into the origins of the
photographic discourse. Batchen reveals that even though photography was officially
introduced in 1839, the discourse of photography started to form even earlier, just
before the turn of the 19th century. In written historical documents, he tracks the
"regular discursive practice for which photography seems to be the desired object"
(Batchen 1997, p. 36). According to his findings, the idea of photography as the
"permanent fixation of the image created inside the camera obscura" was a consistent
idea and was available in the writings of more than twenty-four people (namely
proto-photographers) around Europe, spanning over seven countries, even before
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photography took its material form (Batchen, 1997, p. 35). Subsequently, Batchen
moves on to question the social conditions which incubated such desire to form in
that given time period in history.
Similar to Crary, Batchen establishes the acknowledgment of the subjectivity of
human vision as the precondition for photographic discourse to form at the turn of
the 19th century. Even though photographic discourse was tightly related to fixing
the fleeing image within camera obscura, it was not its primary intention to construct
facsimile objective representations of nature. The photographic discourse was
answering the need for subjective visual representations in everyday life as modern
thinking was replacing the classical ways of thinking.
Batchen's investigation into the origins of photography explicitly demonstrates why
the idea of photography came into the picture of visual culture. His research also
holds an implicit meaning. The photographic discourse demonstrated its desire in a
fairly stable and consistent manner at the beginning of the 19th century as the
permanent fixation of the ever-fleeing image inside the camera obscura. While this
shared desire itself, at first glance, may suggest an undisturbed discursive continuity
between camera obscura and photography, below the surface, it manifests the
disengagement of photography from the camera obscura tradition.
By its very nature, camera obscura is an apparatus inseparable from the observer. Its
functioning principles are based on the gaze of the observer at a given moment and
place. According to Jonathan Crary (1990, p. 136), what photography did was
abolishing the inseparability of observer and camera obscura. Imagining and
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desiring photography was the manifestation of the eagerness to break away from the
camera obscura-based vision rather than establishing photography as the direct
descendant of camera obscura.
The desire for photography and the inception of its technologies resulted in one of
many breaks that took place in visual culture. Moreover, throughout its more than
two hundred years old history, photography has seen many more ruptures within its
own multidimensional existence. This research, very much inspired by, but not
remained limited to, Crary, Hockney, and Batchen's attempt at writing alternative
histories of vision and technologies focuses on one of photography's latest ruptures:
the contemporary resurfacing of 19th century photographic techniques and practices
which operate under the shadow of hegemonic digital culture.
2.1.2. Photography’s Discontinuities: Resurfacings
Many breakpoints and discontinuities can be determined in photographic history.
One of the contemporary examples that stand out the most is the digital rupture
which completely reorganized, not only the photographic practice through its
introduction of new technologies, but our everyday perception and experience of our
surroundings - both in actual and virtual terms. However, the rupture that I am
interested in does not stand out or manifest itself as clearly and vividly as the digital
one. As digital culture started to establish itself and leave its mark on every aspect of
life in the recent decades, a marginal break started to take place.
For each type of media, whether they are visual, auditory, or tactual, digitalization
ensured the average user to not worry about the mechanics of the process. Digital
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technology and culture started to turn their objects into closed boxes with minimum
to no possibility of interference by their users. By the average user which consisted
of the majority, the elimination of sophisticated technical processes was welcomed
with open arms. Being able to possess the final product without needing to have total
knowledge about the process became a bliss for the average user. With such
developments, any person is entitled to become a photographer, a filmmaker, a sound
designer, an artist, etc. Under these circumstances, what happens to users who want
to worry about the mechanics of the process they are dealing with? What happens to
the ones who care about the process as much as the end product itself? Where do
they go? What do they do? Some of those users found the solution to their problem
by turning to the past.
Resurfacings can be seen in any part and aspect of life at any time in history. Our
contemporary share is to witness the resurfacing of analog technologies in the age of
increasing digitalization and virtualization. As media technologies started to present
themselves in new and supposedly improved forms, previous technologies fell out of
use, labeled as old, historical, alternative, or obsolete depending on the situation.
Now, in the age where digital has established itself as the favorite of the masses
among almost any media, we are witnessing the resurfacing of those that are called
"obsolete". Even though analog is not the central media technology today, it manages
to hold a marginal place in the media discourse and practice by attracting a relatively
smaller number of users. While examples of resurfacing analog tools, techniques,
and approaches can be seen in various branches of media, one of the most salient
resurfacing can be spotted in the field of photography. Although digital technologies
offer photographs that are less time-consuming to produce, cameras that are more
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automated, and social platforms that are easier to circulate photographs within, for
some contemporaries such affordances may seem not too fulfilling or can be
considered as undesirable features.
While most of the mentioned contemporary photographers prefer to work with
techniques, tools, and approaches from the 20th century such as shooting with silver
gelatin emulsion-based films, operating in conventional darkrooms, processing with
chemicals, and printing with enlargers, a much smaller number of photographers
reach back even further in time and attempt to rediscover what the earliest
photographic techniques have to offer, working with techniques prior to
photography’s dependency on mass-produced tools and materials. In a way, by using
19th-century photographic techniques, those photographers are going against the
grain of contemporary culture (Lovink, 2011, p. 8) and embracing a "slow
photography" approach.
It is not an arbitrary or a random decision to set apart 19th and 20th-century
photographic techniques. A specific technological development took place towards
the end of the 19th century which allows us to discriminate between the photographic
practices of these two centuries. In 1888, Eastman Kodak Company (which was
named Eastman Dry Plate and Film Company at the time) introduced its
groundbreaking technology, one of the most influential developments in the way a
photograph is being produced and consumed. This cutting-edge technology allowed
Eastman Kodak Company to preserve photographic surface in a flexible celluloid roll
form and fit in hundred ready-to-expose frames in a relatively small handheld
box-shaped camera. Moreover, it allowed production and distribution to take place
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quicker than it was ever before by creating non-fragile and lightweight photographic
surfaces.
Before the introduction of the Kodak Camera, after each exposure, the photographer
needed to take out the exposed glass plate, store it away from light, load an
unexposed plate into the camera, and repeat the process. The new tool allowed any
everyday person to shoot a hundred frames without needing to reload the camera.
With this new tool, any person on the street gained the power to become a
photographer even though they did not know anything about the technical processes
happening underneath the camera and behind the darkroom. Moreover, Kodak's
advertisement slogan made it clear what their technology was intended to be: "You
press the button – we do the rest". This new technology and its variations were to
dominate photographic production in the upcoming hundred and thirty years.
Figure 8. The Kodak Camera Advertisement from 1889.
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Its impact on everyday life shifted the role of the photographer from an artisan and a
technician who knew greatly about the mechanics of the process to an ordinary
person who did not have to know anything about the mechanics of the process. It
also changed the photograph's identity from an authentic and scarce object into an
everyday one. The photograph started to become an object of mass production.
Alongside many other accounts, Sarah Greenough (1989, p. 129) likens the time
frame from the 1880s to 1910s to photography's coming-of-age period during which
its identity drastically changed. 1888 holds a particularly important place within this
time frame. Therefore, it will be the date and moment where I will be making my
distinction. Even though it is possible to see earlier technical developments which
may have also led the way for the massification of photography, such as Richard
Leach Maddox's gelatin dry plate process which allowed photographers to travel
anywhere with predisposed ready-to-shoot plates, I believe marking 1888's Kodak
moment as the separating point seems appropriate for the purposes of this thesis.
Because the Kodak moment can be considered as the foremost deliberate act to
change and simplify the way photography is being practiced by the masses. It did not
only introduce a new technology but also intentionally used that technology to create
a specific consumer behavior. Kodak's premise of "You press the button – we do the
rest" is still the way most photographs are being produced today (Sturken, 2017).
People press the button on their smartphones, digital cameras, or whatever device
they use, and software, presets and various embedded features in such devices do the
rest for them.
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The Kodak moment resulted in the mass production of photographic goods and the
standardization of photographic practice and technologies. After the spurt of Kodak
and its look-alikes all around the world, 19th-century photographic techniques
managed to make several comebacks, of course on a micro-scale when compared to
the dominant practices of the times. In the next section, I will talk about the
19th-century resurfacing in the 20th-century by focusing on Lyle Rexer's concept of
Antiquarian Avant-Garde. Then, move on to the current resurfacing which I believe
diverges from the earlier resurfacing in terms of its underlying dynamics by focusing
on Jonathan Openshaw’s Postdigital Artisanship slow photography approach. Last of
all, I will discuss the resurfacing of 20th-century photographic techniques (silver
gelatin and instant photography) in the digital age. The main motivation and goal is
to expose the contrast between different types of resurfacing and to demonstrate why
the use of 19th-century photographic techniques in the 21st-century was chosen as
my main object of analysis.
2.1.2.1. Photography’s Antiquarian Avant-Garde, Post-Digital Artisanship, and
Slow Photography
In this section, techniques that are referred to as "the 19th-century photographic
techniques" are amongst the earliest photographic technologies and may be labeled
as "ancient" from the standpoint of the current digital culture. These are the
techniques that were mainly used before photographic practice started to depend on
mass production and were commercialized only to a certain extent. The 19th-century
techniques are exclusively chemical-based practices and the selection of chemicals
used in such practices varies between toxic ones such as mercury vapor, silver
nitrate, and cyanide; and harmless ones such as vegetation extracts. Moreover, they
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require intensive hand labor as well as a considerable amount of passion and
patience. To name a few, daguerreotype, calotype, wet plate collodion, salt print,
albumen, cyanotype, van dyke, platinum/palladium print, anthotype, carbon print,
gum bichromate, and oil print can be provided as examples of 19th-century
photographic processing and printing techniques (for detailed historical and technical
information about the 19th-century photographic techniques, see Chapter 4).
While some of the techniques named above had the leading photography processing
and printing technique status in their own respective time periods between 1830 and
1880s, at the end of the 19th-century, they all were on their way to sinking into
oblivion due to the rise of silver gelatin emulsion technology, increasing standards of
mass production and transformation of the user profiles. 19th-century photographic
techniques never gained their primary photographic status ever again. In fact, it
would be insubstantial to expect them to regain their power over the everyday
photographic practice. They were too slow, laborious, unpredictable, and sometimes
dangerous when compared to the increasing swiftness, practicality, and consistency
of modern days. Despite their initial downfall, they managed to make several
marginal spurts over the last century.
One of the substantial theoretical contributions to understanding the resurfacing of
19th-century photographic techniques comes from Lyle Rexer in his 2002 book The
Photography’s Antiquarian Avant-Garde. Rexer suggests (2002, pp. 13-14) that the
first resurfacing of 19th-century photographic techniques took place in the early
years of the 20th-century. Techniques were particularly used by the
Photo-Secessionists, led by Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Steichen, in order to
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emphasize photography's identity as a handmade and authentic artifact (Rexer, 2002,
p. 13-14):
The Photo-Secession proposed photography as a handmade process, linking
this essentially industrial mechanism with the arts-and-crafts movement of
the late 19th century. At least early on, the photograph was thoroughly
material, not necessarily a reproducible artifact, and almost any process that
emphasized handwork was admitted. The handmade quality of the
photograph offered the opportunity to add 'something of a man's soul' that
Baudelaire considered essential to a work of art… Photo-Secessionists
delighted in printing photographs in gum bichromate and bromoil.
Rexer names the movement of returning to old photographic techniques as the
antiquarian avant-garde (2002, p. 9) because of the experimental and unpredictable
characteristics of 19th-century photographic techniques. Moreover, Rexer suggests
that the first antiquarian avant-garde initiated by photo-secessionists surfaced as an
oppositional reaction to photography's changing commercial identity in the late
19th-century (Rexer, 2002, p. 14):
The first antiquarian avant-garde defined itself in opposition not to other arts
but to industrial photography, to narrow professionalization, standardization,
and technical progress, and especially to photography’s use as a mere
instrument by almost every sector of society, wherever images were presented
and consumed.
Early photo-secessionists attempted using 19th-century techniques as a way to
actualize their ideal of the photographic image as an art object. The latest
photographic technologies and practices of their time provided photographs that are
not crafted by hand but rather fabricated by machines. They found the solution to
their problem by returning to old techniques. Such techniques were diverse in their
practice and more open to outside intervention and transformation by their users.
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However, it did not take too long before what Lyle Rexer called technological
Darwinism rose to the occasion. Due to continuing massification and standardization
of photography, the first antiquarian avant-garde and its methods did not manage to
have a long life. Later representatives of the photo-secession movement started to put
more emphasis on the "clarity" of the image instead of the subjective contribution of
the photographer (Rexer, 2002, p. 17).
Even though, during the rest of the 20th-century, photography, as a high brow
medium, started to be discussed and practiced through definitive technical or
practical standards such as Ansel Adams' zone system 1 and Henri Cartier-Bresson's
decisive moment2; as a low brow medium, assumed the snap-shooting action and
fast-paced consumption as its main area of utilization throughout the 20th-century,
and the first antiquarian avant-garde did not seem to have a long life, the
19th-century photographic techniques did not vanish completely. They persisted in
the 20th-century and manifested themselves at certain intervals. In the 1960s and
towards the 70s, old photographic techniques started to be used by not only
photographers but any kind of artists to come up with interdisciplinary artworks such
as combining paintings with photographic emulsions, sewing different photographic
pieces together, etc. Such techniques have also become the manifestations of
experimentality, decay, and accident against standardization, permanence, and
predictability (Rexer, 2002, p. 22).
2 A term coined by Henri Cartier-Bresson in his book Images à la Sauvette (The Decisive
Moment) in 1952 in order to suggest the importance of the photographer’s instincts and
artistic vision in the photographic practice.
1 A photographic technique invented by Ansel Adams and Fred Archer in the late 1930s
which determines optimal film exposure and development values.
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Not only were the techniques being alternatively used by various artists during those
years but also an alternative writing was underway. Descriptive and explanatory
books were being written about such processes and the historical figures behind them
(Rexer, 2002, p. 22), acknowledging not only successful firsts in history but also
recognizing failed pioneers and forgotten figures. The introduction of the first digital
photographic camera in the 1980s and the gradual shift from silver gelatin to digital
in the next two decades, brought the chemical tradition’s dominance in photography
to an end, therefore, cementing the alternative and marginal status of the
19th-century chemical-based photographic techniques.
Rexer's remarks on the issue, unfortunately, end at the turn of the century just a few
years short of the centralization of the internet in everyday life and the birth of online
video. The dynamics of the antiquarian avant-garde and its interplay with
photography have shape-shifted in the last two decades due to the exponential rise of
the internet and digitalization. Even though Rexer's theory of antiquarian avant-garde
falls short of catching the total essence of the contemporary digital culture, a more
recent critical remark on the subject of the craft movement in arts comes from
Jonathan Openshaw in his 2015 book Postdigital Artisans.
Openshaw suggests a return to analog techniques not only in photography but in
other forms of arts as well as fashion, design, and architecture. He formulates this
return not as an opposition to digital culture but as an attempt to hybridize the digital
realm with that of the physical. Postdigital does not refer to a moment that is
"after-digital" but rather a new phase in digital where it is completely entangled with
the way human beings perceive their environments and experience everyday
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situations. "We are all postdigital now" states Openshaw (2015, p. 5) "some of us
may feel it to a greater or lesser extent, but in our networked world, the logic of
algorithmic processing is the undercurrent to our existence". With the entanglement
of digital and everyday life, digital started to be evaluated with its drawbacks as
much as with its advantages rather than assuming it only as a helpful mode of
production and consumption. As much as digital technologies smoothed and cleared
away "undesirable" characteristics of the old technologies and tools, they also
imposed specific types of behavior by decreasing the elbowroom for their users.
Openshaw (2015, pp. 5-6) examples the role of digital screens:
For many of us, the digital screen has become a primary means of processing
visual information […] We have entered into extraordinarily intimate
relationships with screens […] Because they are useful, it’s easy to assume
they are only useful: mute tools that only respond to our needs. Digital
imagery has very specific conventions however, and imposes certain aesthetic
assumptions and limitations […] The touch screen has only accelerated this
process […] Compare this to the experience of using an iPhone. Here, touch
has been reduced to one thing: texture. And that texture is flat and cold as
glass.
Screens undertook the role of being the foremost representatives of the digital
democratization of information. While providing gateways for knowledge, they also
superficialized the experience of touching and seeing, and further decreased the
effectiveness of other senses.
As digital expanded and its undesirable effects came into sight, there have also been
attempts to compensate for what is missing in contemporary digital culture.
Openshaw’s postdigital artisans are the contemporary photographers, designers, and
artists who attempt to translate their respective fields from the cold and flat surfaces
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of digital screens to the physical world. That is not an attempt to break away from the
digital culture but to make it a more desirable working field. After all, “...[postdigital
artisans’] work is contemporary, and therefore postdigital. It’s forged in the
workshop but travels online, and is consumed by people fluent in both bytes and
atoms” (Openshaw, 2015, p. 9).
What is happening in the field of photography, in recent years, can be also explained
with the concept of postdigital artisanship. 19th-century photographic techniques do
not only favor the sense of vision but rather present immersive sensual experiences.
Since such techniques rely on hand labor, each process turns into intimate tactile
experiences. One needs to wet their hands with various chemicals (with necessary
precautions) each with its own distinct smell as well texture. Moreover, with the
wide variety of material characteristics such as glass, paper, tin, fluids, etc. the aural
aspects of the techniques also strongly manifest themselves.
One of the postdigital artisanal practices in photography manifests itself in the form
of digital negatives. This technique hybridizes digital technology with an analog one.
Digital negatives are monochromatic transparencies that are printed by the use of
inkjet or laser printers. They function the same way as 19th-century photographic
negatives. They are placed directly onto a light-sensitive surface and exposed to
sunlight (or UV light in an indoor space). When combined with 19th-century
photographic printing techniques, the digital negative method can provide quite
intriguing results. The user can claim a better control over the negative they are
creating as well as to achieve a specific texture and authentic look provided by the
specific 19th-century photographic printing technique.
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Another essential aspect of returning to material practices is pointed out as the need
and desire for slowing down the production and consumption pace. As digital culture
almost became synonymous with excessive production, instant circulation, and
consumption, or in the words of Tomáš Dvořák and Jussi Parikka (2021, p. 4),
"...often characterized in the apocalyptic terms of a deluge or avalanche, an explosion
or eruption, a tsunami or storm"; their analog counterparts started to shine out as
quiet and slow alternatives for the ever-accelerating media practices. Kim Knowles
(2016, p. 151) argues that returning to silver gelatin technology in photography and
celluloid technology in cinema demonstrates an attempt of slowing down the media
practice, very much like the slow food movement which took place in the food
sector.
Analog photographic techniques, especially the 19th-century ones, are strongly
interrelated with the concept of slowness. Due to their substantial autonomy from
mass production, they are innately slow techniques. Not only does the production of
photographic emulsions and surfaces take time but also finalization of the image
takes a couple of minutes to a few days after the photograph has been taken. The
slowness of the process becomes an important aspect for the photographer within the
overall photographic experience as much as obtaining the intended final image. The
slowness of 19th-century techniques requires photographers to invest more of their
time into their images. When combined with the tangibility of such processes, this
time investment, in return, provides an enhanced feeling of involvement and
intimacy for photographers towards their photographs. David Hockney's involvement
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with photography could help us understand the importance of slowness in any kind
of artistic practice.
Until the early 1980s, Hockney’s relationship with photography did not surpass the
status of being a serious hobby. He would buy cheap cameras and capture snaps of
friends and moments as commemoratives. However, He would not consider
photography as an artist’s medium. Hockney (1983) explains photography’s
weakness as follows:
Photographs didn’t really have life in the way a drawing or painting did. And
I realized it couldn’t because of what it is… [Photograph] is a fraction of a
second, frozen. So, the moment you’ve looked at it for even four seconds,
you are looking at it for more than the camera did… This is a terrible
weakness.
Of course, Hockney's photography definition comes from the dominant
utilization of the medium in the 1980s, that is the snap-shooting action.
Snap-shooting allowed anyone to create photographs without investing any time
in them. By contrasting this dominant understanding and use of photography,
Hockney attempted to create photographic compositions which required him to
invest more of his time when taking the photographs and arranging the
composition afterward. What he would do is to create photographic collages of
instances, moments, and people by conjoining multiple photographs, in a way he
would paint with photographs. He would shoot a couple of rolls of his intended
subject and drop them off at a 1-hour processing lab near him. After quickly
receiving his printed images, he would lay them on a flat surface, and almost like
solving a jigsaw puzzle, he would start joining different parts to each other in
order to create his overall composition.
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Hockney’s intentions coincide with that of Photo-Secessionists. Very much like
them, he is seeking photographs that would stand out as artifacts rather than
fabricated everyday objects. His main motivation is to create photographs that
can be looked at and discovered for a long time (Hockney, 1983):
You can’t look at most photos for more than, say, thirty seconds. It has
nothing to do with the subject matter. I first noticed this with erotic
photographs, trying to find them lively: you can’t. Life is precisely what they
don’t have —or rather, time, lived time. All you can do with most ordinary
photographs is stare at them—they stare back, blankly—and presently your
concentration begins to fade.
Hockney's joiners (what Hockney named his photographic collages as), unlike
snapshots, are able to present lasting experiences to their viewers. The viewer
does not only observe a photograph but also Hockney's complete creative
process. Every decision the photographer makes manifests itself in the final
image. The same goes for 19th-century photographic techniques. Each decision
made by the photographer or the accident that took place during the process
would demonstrate itself in the final image. Photographs would not only
represent the subject depicted in the image but also the experience of producing
that image itself.
Hockney was quite intrigued by the 19th century and earlier modes of visual
image production such as etching and lithography. He could have also taken the
road of using 19th-century photographic techniques in his quest to make
photography a lively medium. However, he decided to give snap-shooting
action, which according to Hockney transformed photography into an unlively
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medium, a dose of its own medicine. He desired an alternative to the traditional
storytelling of his own time, without refusing the technology but embracing it
and bending it for his own needs. His alternative was to tell stories with
composite images consisting of many images without imposed borders rather
than buckling under the single snapshot and its rectangular borders (Figure 1).
Figure 9. The Desk, 35mm Photo collage by David Hockney, 1984.
Returning to antiquarian avant-garde, artisanship, and slowness, there are many
ways to achieve such labels in photographic practice. Once mainstream can later
become antique or avant-garde. Such labels change relatively to the dominant
discourses and practices. Moreover, alternative practices may be congruent or
37
divergent in their intentions. The resurfacing of 19th-century photographic
techniques, in terms of their current avant-garde, artisanal and slow
characteristics, offers an invaluable space for critical discovery. In the next two
sections, I will briefly introduce contemporary resurfacing of 19th and
20th-century photographic techniques and discuss why 19th-century resurfacings
are chosen as the main object of analysis.
2.1.2.2. Contemporary Resurfacing of 19th Century Photography
As digital came to dominate media, it also democratized the distribution of
information. This democratization started with the transfer of print media to the
realm of the internet and picked up speed with the emergence of online video.
Circulation of information and the availability of knowledge on any subject
increased, as did the technical, practical, and aesthetic information about
19th-century photographic techniques. Despite the intellectual and practical efforts to
make alternative techniques visible between the 1960s and early 2000s, the
proliferation of these techniques arrived with the internet and its ever-developing
audio-visual components. Today, some of the most comprehensive sources on the
subject of 19th-century-based photographic techniques can be found on the
participative realm of the internet. Websites on the subject of 19th-century
photographic techniques and their variations such as Alternative Photography
(https://www.alternativephotography.com/), chemist and historical photography
enthusiast/practitioner Mike Ware’s alternative photography website
(https://www.mikeware.co.uk/) and France Scully Osterman and Mark Osterman’s
website on historic photographic processes (http://www.collodion.org/) provide
extensive historical and technical corpora on the matter. While YouTube contains a
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sheer amount of how-to-do videos and provides visual aid, many blogs, Facebook
groups, and Instagram accounts are also being used as platforms for exchanging user
experiences. Moreover, Quinn Jacobson uses YouTube as a live streaming platform
for discussing the essential 19th-century photographic techniques with his guests
under the name of "Studio Q Show Live".
The internet of today probably offers more publicly available sources on the subject
of 19th-century photography than the sum of previous print and visual media. Even
photographers who do not intentionally seek to discover what 19th-century
photographic techniques have to offer, through algorithms could be suggested online
videos, posts, or articles on the subject. In fact, Kerim Suner, the founder of
studio.1851 in Istanbul (1851 referring to the year wet plate collodion was introduced
by Frederick Scott Archer) and one of the photographers that I conducted interviews
with, recalls his relationship with photography, prior to his introduction with the 19th
century photographic techniques, only as a "serious hobby". After coming across a
Youtube video by the wet plate collodionist Ian Ruhter in 2014, Suner decided to
attend one of Ruhter's workshops in the United States. "Everything clicked into place
when I met wet plate collodion", says Suner and also adds that he did not previously
think about using 19th-century photographic techniques before coming across Ian
Ruhter's video on YouTube. Today, he is one of the photographers who use
19th-century photographic techniques with the utmost dedication in Turkey.
What also arrived with the digitalization of information is the problem of tangibility
and authenticity. Not only knowledge was transferred to the virtual realm but also
any tangible object started to find itself behind the cold and flat surface of screens. A
39
variety of physical textures were reduced to a single one. Moreover, as Walter
Benjamin (1935) suggested almost a hundred years ago, mechanical means of
reproduction caused a loss in the aura of the art objects. What is left from the aura of
the art object in the 20th-century was almost completely consumed by the internet of
the 21st century. In recent years, to compensate for the loss of authenticity, digital
culture came up with a concept called a Non-Fungible Token (NFT) which virtually
accredits a label of authenticity to objects that cannot be held or touched. Even
though digital culture, with its subtle wit, created an illusion of -still a limitedauthenticity
for its virtual objects, the need to touch and feel diverse textures persists.
Whether the contemporary use of 19th-century techniques is labeled as
photography's antiquarian avant-garde, postdigital artisanship, or considered under
slow photography movement, the use of such techniques in the immersive
atmosphere of the digital culture requires a specific and renewed attention with its
thread and thrum. In fact, there seems to be an increasing number of academic and
practical research conducted on the issue. Artists/researchers such as Kristof
Vrancken (2020) and Nilden Aksoy (2021) undertake plant-based photography
printing methods originating from the 19th-century such as anthotype, chlorophyll,
and lumen print as their investigation and artistic expression fields. Vrancken uses
anthotypes, a process that uses plant extractions as its light-sensitive solution to make
photographic prints, as a way to attract attention to social and environmental issues
and also reflect on the contemporary media context. Likewise, Aksoy, in her master's
thesis, explores the contemporary artistic use of plant-based photographic techniques.
On the other hand, Serdar Bilici (2022), who is currently conducting his doctoral
research, attempts to catalog the current situation of the antiquarian avant-garde
movement in contemporary Turkish photography.
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2.1.2.3. Resurfacing of 20th Century Photography
What is mentioned in this section under the name "20th-century photographic
techniques" refers to the silver gelatin emulsion-based and instant photography.
Silver gelatin emulsion technology ended the diversity among photographic
techniques and started the era of brand diversity. After Kodak's emergence, success,
and growth in the USA, other firms followed its lead around the world: Agfa in
Belgium and Germany, Ilford in the United Kingdom, Foma in Czechia, Fujifilm in
Japan, and many more firms in many corners of the world throughout the 20th
century.
Silver gelatin photography, without much challenge, persisted as the primary
photographic technology of the 20th century until its fall against digital in recent
decades. Photographic roll film production steadily decreased while many brands
decided to discontinue their trademark films such as Kodak's Kodachrome 64
(produced from 1935 to 2009) due to shrinking market share. Photography labs
stopped processing films because of the unbalance between incomes and expenses. It
became even more difficult and expensive if not impossible to get your film rolls
processed. Even when a photographer decided to process his/her own films with
necessary chemicals, there was again the barrier of no-available goods because each
aspect of the silver gelatin photography was dependent on mass production and
fabrication. Once the companies who produced silver gelatin photographic materials
stopped their assembly lines, there was not much chance for photographers but to
stop their photographic practice with such processes and turn to other alternatives
such as digital.
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Very much like the example of discontinuity between camera obscura and
photography, a photographic break took place with the introduction of silver gelatin
technology and Kodak’s standardization of that technology. Even though
photography was still chemical-based in the 20th century, its dominant identity
shifted in a way that its dependency on mass production became an inherent feature
of it. With digital photography, we can also establish a break from the chemical
tradition where chemicals were replaced by digits which dearly affected the material
disposition of the photographic work and transformed it into a virtual being.
However, this break did not cause much of a change in photography’s dependency on
the production line. Dominant photographic practice stayed inseparable from mass
production as it did in the 20th century.
As the silver gelatin photography market shrank and digital photography started to
become the norm, gelatin emulsion films started to make a quick comeback. The
comeback was so quick it may be a false attempt to call it a comeback. Rather, it
could be described as a fluctuation in its use. The digital age has seen the rise of the
Lomography movement and #filmisnotdead hashtags on social media. Silver gelatin
film use has become a “hip” movement within digital culture. This movement
generally included snap-shooting action and depending on the labor force of others
for the rest of the photographic production (sending films to processing labs), and
creating images specifically for online circulation (Šimůnek, 2021, p. 144) rather
than favoring hands-on experience (scanning negatives rather than printing them).
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Resurfacing of silver gelatin films in the 21st-century presents an example of a
pseudo-break from digital culture. Essentially, what it does is the appropriation of
20th-century darkroom photography to contemporary standards rather than using
them as a platform for discovery. Of course, it is a crude distinction when referring to
such resurfacings as a pseudo-break. There are photographers who push silver gelatin
technology to its undiscovered limits by combining it with digital technologies. Such
attempts also require critical attention. What is suggested is that 19th-century
photographic techniques, in terms of their relative independence from mass
production, intimacy with the do-it-yourself approach, and openness to
experimentality and personalization provide a far more profound field of
investigation when viewed from contemporary photographic culture.
2.2. Media Archaeology
Media archaeology can most productively be read as an alternative to the dominant
writing of media history, whose implicit construction of a unitary narrative of
progress—the idea that the course of technological development over time in and of itself
equals progress, the predominant orientation regarding the realized and successful media
forms and apparatuses—tends to marginalize the significance of failed projects, the shards
of media history, and to exclude the role of the phantasmatic in media culture.
(Kluitenberg, 2011, p. 51)
Media archaeology holds an essential place for this research. In so much that, it gives
its name to the thesis title. Soon after I decided to do my research on the
contemporary use of 19th-century photographic techniques, I found myself at an
important crossroad. I also had to decide from which critical perspective I was going
43
to investigate and try to make sense of my selected topic. There were several reasons
behind my decision to organize my research as a media archaeological one. First of
all, when dealing with concepts such as old and new; and past and present, it
becomes a tricky task to come up with a proper critical perspective. I needed a
framework that would break the assumed hierarchical order between past and
present. Rather than seeing new as the inevitable and old as its raison d'être, media
archaeology provides a way for me to investigate photography as a medium not with
a consistent characteristic throughout a single historical line but as a medium with
diverse characteristics ramifying into multiple historical lines.
Furthermore, as it was diverted from the investigation of current hegemonic powers
in photography such as digital photography and popular trends that are strongly
connected to it (for example snap-shooting action, instant production, etc.) and
steered towards marginalized practices such as chemical-based photography with a
strong do-it-yourself approach and slow production pace, the research needed a
theoretical framework which would acknowledge the importance and value of
marginal practices within the overall media practice, a framework which would not
only attempt to investigate materially successful and practically dominant media but
also investigate and direct the necessary attention to the forgotten, failed and
imagined media as essential parts of media environment and practice.
Upcoming sub-chapters present my attempt to draw an overall framework for media
archaeology and how it answers my research needs. I begin with the theoretical
foundations of media archaeology and then move on to explain how it approaches
history as a non-hierarchical process where old and new co-exist and constantly
44
influence each other rather than a unidirectional line of constant improvement in
which each new technological introduction is seen as an improvement over previous
one. Moreover, I will discuss the significance of marginal, failed, and forgotten
media practices and apparatuses within the overall media context as much as
hegemonic ones. What I will talk about next is the media's imaginary features and
how such features play essential roles over the actual media practices and over the
possibilities of thinking about alternative media timelines. Then, I will end my
remarks on media archaeology with a subchapter about experimental media
archaeology and how it has been suggested as an essential aspect of the
archaeological investigation.
2.2.1. Foundations of Media Archaeology
“Discontent with “canonized” narratives of media culture and history may be the clearest
common driving force [of media archaeology]” (Huhtamo & Parikka, 2011, p. 3)
The roots of media archaeology go in various directions. Even before the term media
archaeology was coined, research and criticism which shared common interests and
aims with the contemporary understanding of media archaeology were existent.
When tracing the foundations of media archeology, as Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi
Parikka (2011, p. 2) put it, "concentrating solely on cases where the words media
archaeology have been explicitly enounced would have been too limiting."
Therefore, to look for its foundations one should turn to the first half of the 20th
century. Media archaeological approach nourished from the theoretical and
methodological writings of earlier critics who did not use the term archaeology such
45
as Walter Benjamin, Sigfried Giedion, Ernst Robert Curtius, Aby Warburg, Dolf
Sternberger, and Marshall McLuhan as well as more recent writers who embraced the
name archaeology such as Siegfried Zielinski, Thomas Elsaesser, Friedrich Kittler,
Anne Friedberg, Tom Gunning, Lev Manovich, Laurent Mannoni and others
(Huhtamo & Parikka, 2011, p. 2). On the other hand, one distinct figure
fundamentally influenced the methodology of media archaeology and coined the
name archaeology in this regard.
Methodological foundations of media archaeology have been laid in the works of
Michel Foucault. Foucault used archaeology as a research method in many of his
works and explained its methodological use in his book The Archaeology of
Knowledge (in French: L’archéologie du savoir, 1969). Foucault suggests that (1972,
p. 32) any discursive formation can be examined in order to "excavate" and make
visible the social conditions that allow certain objects to materially form at a given
time and place. In order to understand the living conditions of an object, one should
look at the discursive formations situated around that object because discourse
precedes its object. What Foucault suggests is that an object can only come into life
when the discursive practice stabilizes at a given time and place. Therefore,
discursive formation about a given subject contains the answer to the question 'why'
that object exists. Existing conditions of an object should be searched in the
statements of those who are involved with such objects or practices. Foucault’s use
of archaeology as a methodology was highly motivated by writing
“counter-histories”. His investigation of such counter-histories involved “histories of
women, perversions, madness…” (Parikka, 2012, p. 6). Today, media archaeological
46
research, very much like Foucault, is interested in writing counter-histories of media
practices, apparatuses, and environments.
One of the media critics who conducted Foucauldian archaeology on the subject of
media apparatuses was Friedrich Kittler. Kittler used archaeology as a tool to
excavate and determine ruptures in the history of optical media. He was interested in
understanding the reasons behind the emergence of certain groundbreaking optical
media such as camera obscura, lanterna magica, photography, and film in the
Western world. Kittler studied such media technologies through the investigation of
writings of many critical philosophical figures from the Western world (Kittler,
2011). Even though Kittler conducts historical research on media, he puts more
emphasis on the discontinuities between different media tools which are traditionally
conceived as succeeding apparatuses on a single continuous line (see Photography as
a Break from the Camera Obscura Tradition chapter).
Another important figure who conducted media archaeology studies was Jonathan
Crary. Even though Crary did not label his approach as media archaeology, his aims
and methods coincided greatly with that of media archaeology. In his book
Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century
(1990), Crary attempted to write a counter-history of vision in the Western world.
Unlike many accounts which have considered the 19th-century modern vision as the
undisturbed continuation of earlier modes of seeing, Crary suggested that the
dominant way of seeing has seen a rupture and was replaced by a novel mode of
seeing some time in the early 19th century due to changes in discursive practices and
their related technical apparatuses. In his book, Crary moves on to scrutinize this
47
rupture through the investigation of camera obscura and against more modern
apparatuses such as thaumatrope, zoetrope, phenakistoscope, and stereoscope. He
goes over the writings of many critical thinkers who used the functioning principles
of camera obscura as a metaphor to understand and explain the functioning
principles of human vision and thinking. Crary argues that the rupture has emerged in
the discourse of vision due to new scientific findings. Among such findings was the
discovery of the afterimage phenomenon. While the discourse of vision was
dominated by the camera obscura metaphor in the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries,
due to the afterimage phenomenon and its related apparatuses (thaumatrope,
zoetrope, and phenakistoscope) which sprouted in the early 19th century, started to
exhibit totally newer functioning principles for vision than the camera obscura
(Crary, 1990, pp. 104-105):
Beginning in the mid-1820s, the experimental study of afterimages led to the
invention of a number of related optical devices and techniques. Initially, they
were for purposes of scientific observation but were quickly converted into
forms of popular entertainment. Linking them all was the notion that
perception was not instantaneous, and the notion of a disjunction between eye
and object. Research on afterimages had suggested that some form of
blending or fusion occurred when sensations were perceived in quick
succession, and thus the duration involved in seeing allowed its modification
and control.
While Crary was in pursuit of writing an alternative history of vision, he did not
attempt to realize it by focusing on marginal ways of seeing and apparatuses. He
specifically focused on dominant ways of seeing and their related apparatuses. Even
though Crary believed in the importance of writing about the marginal forces, he also
thought that the first step should be the writing of dominant ones. Investigating the
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marginal practices would only make sense in relation to their counterparts (Crary,
1990, p. 7):
What is not addressed in this study are the marginal and local forms by which
dominant practices of vision were resisted, deflected, or imperfectly
constituted. The history of such oppositional moments needs to be written,
but it only becomes legible against the more hegemonic set of discourses and
practices in which vision took shape.
Even though media archaeology's "rootedness", at first glance, may suggest a
well-established and clear-cut framework, it is barely the situation. In contrast, there
is no fixed or agreed theoretical or methodological framework for media archaeology
(Huhtamo & Parikka, 2011, p. 2). However, in the last twenty years or so, there have
been independent and sometimes collective attempts that tried to come up with
"relatively" structured frameworks for media archaeology. Among those attempts are
Siegfried Zielinski's Deep Time of Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and
Seeing by Technical Means (2006a), Eric Kluitenberg’s (Ed.) Book of Imaginary
Media: Excavating the Dream of the Ultimate Communication Medium (2006), Erkki
Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka’s (Eds.) Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications,
and Implications (2011) and Jussi Parikka’s What is Media Archaeology? (2012)
should be given as main examples.
It should be kept in mind that media archaeology is a highly subjective field. While
aforementioned names and texts may behave as initiators and provide frameworks
for research to a certain extent, media archaeological research is always influenced
by the way the researcher tends to perceive events, interpret practices, evaluate
apparatuses, and draw lines between certain incidents or break the presupposed
connections. Media archaeology can be seen as the personal and alternative writing
49
of the past and present due to the researcher's non-excludable subjectivity. As
Jonathan Crary (1990, p. 7) puts it:
How one periodizes and where one locates ruptures or denies them are all
political choices that determine the construction of the present. Whether one
excludes or foregrounds certain events and processes at the expense of others
affects the intelligibility of the contemporary functioning of power in which
we ourselves are enmeshed. Such choices affect whether the shape of the
present seems "natural" or whether its historically fabricated and densely
sedimented makeup is made evident.
Therefore, this research should not be seen as a step-by-step execution of previously
proposed frameworks. It gets its influence from my own perception and
interpretation of events, discourses, and apparatuses as much as it follows the
directions and suggestions coming from the writings of many media theorists.
Whether under the name of media archaeology or not, much research and criticism
have been made throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. What I included and briefly
discussed in this section and in the upcoming ones only represent a tiny fraction of
that corpus. This subchapter should be merely seen as a media archaeological
introduction which serves as a starting point for what I am trying to achieve in this
thesis rather than as a complete history of media archaeology - which I doubt is
possible to provide one anyway.
2.2.2. Coexistence and Non-linearity of Old and New
This subchapter should start with the discussion of the relativity of what we call new
and what we call old. Often, media history is perceived as a linear timeline where the
past contains archaic media tools, practices, and discourses while the present
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constantly produces superior tools, practices, and discourses to the past. According to
this view, the labeling of objects, practices, and discourses as old or new depends on
their position upon a unidirectional timeline. In this timeline, media which come into
being after existing ones are labeled as new, while previously new media become old
with the arrival of the latest new media. With the arrival of each new, status of olds
and news constantly change. Olds and news are labeled as old and new in relation to
their respective positions to each other within a given timeline. This labeling process
also builds up a perception of a hierarchy between olds and news.
Let us imagine an experiment through which we ask a question to someone who lives
in the year 2022. This person never used or experienced a photographic technique
that depends on chemical reactions but takes many photographs with his/her
smartphone on a day-to-day basis. We show that person a video which demonstrates
a 19th-century processing technique -let us say, the wet plate collodion techniqueand
ask that person to label the photographic technique that he/she just saw either as
new or old. However, before receiving the answer, we provide another information to
our participant. We tell him/her that this technique was invented in 1851 and was one
of the earliest photographic processing techniques. Even though our participant never
experienced the technique itself, we would rightfully expect him/her to label it as old
based on its date of invention.
According to this scenario, labels of new and old exist independently from the user’s
own experience. This unidirectional perspective (this way of labeling will be
mentioned as “unidirectional” from this point on) is probably the most common way
that is used to label objects, tools, practices, places, discourses, etc. Even though
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someone has never used a certain tool, been to a certain place, or practiced a certain
act, that person can still label that specific instance by assessing its overall position
within a timeline. A unidirectional perspective creates a common ground for
interpersonal communication to take place. It provides seemingly objective
information that almost anyone can agree with. However, that information is quite
superficial. It lacks subjective nuances when discussing what to call new and what to
call old.
Now, think about an alternative scenario in which we provide a wet plate collodion
workshop to our participant and let him/her experience the technique by
himself/herself. Then we ask the same question, however, this time without
providing the information about the technique’s year of the invention. For someone
who only experienced photography in its digital form, surely, this experience would
be new. Freely from the relative position of “things” in time, the personal experience
of “things” by each individual would also affect their novelty status. In the first
scenario, the participant uses a collective experience that took place in the past as
his/her reference point by ignoring his/her individual experience. On the other hand,
in the second scenario, the individual experience becomes the primary determinant.
Subjective experience and perspective of the user would play an essential role during
the labeling process of olds and news. How should the researcher approach the
concepts of new and old when there is a complexity beneath seemingly such simple
terms? What kind of critical position should the researcher take when faced with
such a situation?
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When dealing with concepts such as past and present; and old and new, should the
media researcher start his/her investigation from the past by embracing the critical
perspective of a historian or from the present by assuming the role of an analyst of
digital culture is one of the primary questions that Jussi Parikka (2012, p. 5) asks in
his book What is Media Archaeology? Parikka ideally prefers neither due to their
innate drawbacks. Reading old media through the eyes of a traditional historian could
lead to seeing events in linear progression very much like what we witness in the
unidirectional perspective. Moreover, historical investigation tends to attach
importance to practices that have prevailed, apparatuses that have succeeded, while
ignoring the things that have failed, fell into disuse, forgotten, and things that
“could-have-happened”. On the other hand, taking present media as a departure point
as a digital culture analyst would do, could lead us to perceive previous media
environments and tools as simple stepping stones for achieving the current media
environment.
At this point, the archaeological approach in media studies comes up as an
alternative. Media archaeology embraces history as a bidirectional process and
disregards the assumptions of linear progression and constant improvement. Rather
than seeing the past and the present as separate entities that come one after another
and constructing a hierarchy between the two, a media archaeologist, by
acknowledging the complexity which arrives with his/her decision, starts his/her
investigation neither from the past nor present but from where they intertwine,
mingle and mash (Parikka, 2012, p. 5). In other words, a media archaeological
research's point of departure should be an instance or a moment where past and
present; and old and new co-exist. While doing that, media archaeology also
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investigates alternative pasts and futures; and imagines alternative histories where
things could have happened differently than they already are (Parikka 2012, 13).
Resurfacing of 19th-century photographic techniques in the 21st century provides a
contemporary moment that functions as a point of junction for olds and news, and
pasts and presents of photography. Photographic techniques that are labeled as old
according to the unidirectional perspective assume the status of new when
experienced by contemporary photographers. Moreover, we witness the co-existence
and interaction of chemical and digital photography with each other. Resurfacing of
19th century photographic technologies in the digitally dominated world, therefore,
the unavoidable interaction of the old and the new technologies calls for media
archaeological research.
2.2.3. Marginal, Failed, and Forgotten Media
Another important aspect that characterizes media archaeology is its attempts to
write counter-histories by focusing on marginalized, failed, and forgotten media
apparatuses, practices, and discourses. While traditional history reading tends to
highlight successful, dominant, and persistent media, it would mean only
illuminating a single face of a multifaçaded structure. History consists more of
marginal, failed, and forgotten components than prevailing ones. Alternative routes
and dead-ends have always existed in media history but could only manage to attract
substantial critical attention in the late 20th century (Parikka, 2012, p. 167):
Failure has been at the core of media archaeology, which has been keen to
question the newness of new media by looking at alternative histories,
forgotten paths, and sidekicks of media history. This kind of research and
artistic practice emerged in the early days of digital culture hype during the
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1990s. Now, failure needs to be recognized as part of wider networks, which
ideally can also be part of the media archaeological agenda.
Even though roots of media archaeology have been scattered around the 20th
century, according to Erkki Huhtamo (2018, p. 18), one of the earliest
counter-historical readings of photography, conformably with Parikka’s suggestion,
only came at the end of the 20th century from the British scholar Bill Jay (1940 -
2009) in his book Cyanide and Spirits: An Inside-Out View of Early Photography
(1991). Huhtamo (2012, p. 20) suggests that:
Researching only the 'sunny side' of photographic culture is not enough and
can be misleading. The history of photography should not be configured as an
encomium of its achievements—it is equally important to pay attention to
failures, embarrassments, controversies, injustices, and outright catastrophes.
According to Huhtamo, Jay challenges established discourses of photography by
providing systematic writing of neglected histories of photography. For example,
while the rise of amateur photography in the late 19th century is generally presented
as an easily accepted and smoothly transitioned notion in many historical accounts,
Jay illuminates alternative stories within the history of photography by focusing on
subjects such as backstreet operators and prison portraiture. He dissects the practice
of everyday photography in the early years of photography to reveal its problems,
disturbances, unseen uses, and failures it faced rather than solely demonstrating its
successes. Jay suggests that while the profession of being a wet-plate photographer,
which required a slow and controlled process, in the 1850s, 1860s, and 1870s was
mostly respected, with the introduction of newer and faster techniques and
equipment such as dry plates and hand-held cameras, the respectable role assumed by
the wet-plate photographer quickly diminished (Jay, 1991, p. 221).
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Previously, photography (especially portrait photography) had to operate within the
framework of personal consent due to its long exposure times and bulky equipment.
However, with the decrease in exposure times and equipment weights, the public
became vulnerable to being photographed without their consent. Due to increasing
personal privacy issues and mass-amateurization of photography at the end of the
19th century, the respectable studio photographer left his place to the elusive amateur
photographer (Jay, 1991, p. 222).
Similar discussions related to privacy hold important positions in contemporary
culture due to the rise of smartphone photography (Huhtamo, 2018, p. 19) as well as
the rise of non-human components of photography (CCTV cameras, satellites,
drones, etc.). Privacy has become a prominent subject of discussion in recent years
with the unreliable actions taken by social media platforms. Even the photographs
stored in the smartphone itself face the risk of finding themselves on the internet. The
protection of personal data has become one of the most emphasized notions in the
digital culture. Due to this increase in the importance attached to privacy, it may
seem like a contemporary concern. However, Huhtamo’s media archaeological
investigation into the history of photography shows that privacy-related concerns
were already existent as a social consequence even in the early years of this
newly-coined medium.
In this way, media archaeology is also capable of proving the fluidity of labels such
as new and old. Very much inspired by Jay, Huhtamo sets sail to 19th-century history
and focuses on a specific cartoon published in the British satirical magazine Punch in
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1863. In this cartoon, photographers of the time -with their cameras- are depicted as
wild four-legged creatures. Huhtamo (2018, 21) describes the cartoon as follows:
The Elephans Photographicus has four legs (the front pair much skinnier than
the rear pair), protruding horns, an amorphous body with skin resembling a
blanket thrown over something, and a single staring eye. This fantasy is based
on the familiar figure of the photographer, who in those days had to use a
tripod and operate under a hood to frame the view and to avoid accidentally
exposing the sensitized plate.
Huhtamo seeks Elephans Photographicus' conditions of existence in the prominent
discursive practices of the time. Among those discourses, he focuses on arguments
that formed around evolutionary biology (Darwin published his book On the Origin
of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859) four years prior to the cartoon) and
the ones about mechanical production where humans and machines form a joint
entity. According to Huhtamo, even though photographic technologies of the time
did not demonstrate profound resemblances to the mechanical production systems
such as assembly lines and automated tools, it did not take too long for
contemporaries to notice and acknowledge the collaboration between the
photographer and the camera. Combined with the discursive practice of evolutionary
biology, Elephans Photographicus is seen not only as a collaboration of human and
machine but as a brand new life form, an evolved one. As a result of his excavation
attempt, Huhtamo (2018, 28). links his findings to the seemingly the more recent
concept of cyborg:
The cyborg topos gained inspiration from photographic practices but did not
remain limited to their sphere. As other devices appeared, they soon merged
with the human body as well … The human with a machine head has become
an even broader topos tradition. The Internet contains arrays of pictures of
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radio heads, camera heads, telephone heads, television heads, computer
heads, and any imaginable variant.
Huhtamo's archaeological attempt shows that the roots of a concept (cyborg) that is
assumed to be strongly tied to the social, political, and cultural components of the
20th century can be actually found in the 19th century and alternatively connected to
the early photographic practice. Such an attempt also challenges the way we label
"things" as new and old. Even though the cyborg concept shows higher relevance in
the media environment today, its discursive origins started to form much earlier than
it started to gain critical attention. Nonetheless, cyborg discourse was still marginal
in the 19th century, however, Huhtamo's focus on this marginal concept allows us to
consider and evaluate photography in a wider critical investigation field.
Figure 10. Elephans Photographicus Cartoon Published in Punch Magazine, 20
June 1863.
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19th-century photographic techniques are resurfacing and sometimes forming hybrid
forms for photography by converging and combining with more recent visual
technologies. As much as chemical-based photography is making a comeback, it still
possesses a very tiny share in the contemporary photographic practice and should be
considered marginal. However, that is not to say that they should be seen as
insignificant deviations in contemporary photographic practice and culture. They
require specific critical attention as much as dominant ones.
2.2.4. Imaginary Media
Very much like media archaeology itself, the borders of the term imaginary media
are blurry and statements provided to come up with a definition are multiplexed.
That being said, it is possible to draw a general framework for imaginary media by
evaluating various critical accounts. In 2004, De Balie Center for Culture and
Politics in Amsterdam organized a festival/symposium called An Archaeology of
Imaginary Media which brought a number of speakers from interdisciplinary fields
in order to talk about their understanding of the term "imaginary media". Among
those speakers, there were media theorists Siegfried Zielinski and Erkki Huhtamo,
sociologist Klaus Theweleit, artist Zoe Beloff, science-fiction author Bruce Sterling,
as well as Eric Kluitenberg who was the head of the media and technology program
at De Balie Center at the time. Their contributions to the symposium varied from
providing possible categorizations for imaginary media, investigating imaginary
aspects of the old media technologies, focusing on media failures, and offering
imagined scenarios for future media technologies. In 2006, talks provided in the
symposium took the form of a book with additional texts and revisions under the
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name of The Book of Imaginary Media: Excavating the Dream of the Ultimate
Communication Medium.
Beginning my attempt to draw a framework for imaginary media from The Book of
Imaginary Media seems appropriate since it brings various perspectives together and
provides an opportunity for an interdisciplinary point of view to emerge. In the first
sentence of his introductory chapter to The Book of Imaginary Media, Eric
Kluitenberg (2006, p. 8) states that "...all media are partly real and partly imagined.
Without either actual or imaginary characteristics, media cannot function". With this
sentence, Kluitenberg makes a strong statement that implies imaginary media are not
things that exist outside our actual media sphere but rather innate structures within
them. This idea consistently resonates throughout the whole book. Borders of
imaginary media are indistinct. Imagined and actual media are not polar opposites on
a linear scale that can be easily distinguished from each other. They are interlocked
and need each other in order to exist. According to Kluitenberg (2006, p. 8), actual
media's identity cannot be separated from imaginary features because the user's
rational and irrational beliefs and expectations are always projected into those actual
media technologies. "Imaginary media mediate impossible desires" (Kluitenberg,
2011, p. 48) and this is especially true for communication media, Kluitenberg
suggests that there is a “sacred capacity” attributed to communication media
technologies which are expected to help us overcome flaws and problems
encountered in human communication (Kluitenberg, 2006, p. 8). However, this is
barely the situation when it comes to the actual media environment (Kluitenberg,
2006, pp. 8-9):
When tracing the lineages of imaginary media, one of the recurrent ideas
uncovered is that somehow these machines would be able to compensate for
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the inherent flaws and deficiencies of interpersonal communication. The
devices then become compensatory machines. They become sites onto which
various types of irrational desires are projected. It would seem rather obvious
that the machines in themselves cannot live up to the promise that they would
somehow, as if by magic (as a true ‘deus ex machina’!), be able to resolve the
age-old problems of human communication and relationships. Through this
pre-programmed failure, imaginary media also become machines of
frustration.
Media has imaginary features because of humanity's continuous sense of
dissatisfaction with its current state and the idea of "it could always be better than
what it is". Kluitenberg suggests that imaginary media often come into existence as
"compensatory machines" but eventually turn into "machines of frustration". They
are imagined in order to make up for problems, deficiencies, and challenges of the
era's communication methods and technologies. However, each medium arrives with
its own deficiencies and drawbacks. It does not take too long before they start to
frustrate their imaginers. When imaginary media are seen as machines of frustration,
the sub-heading of the book Excavating the Dream of the Ultimate Communication
Medium starts to reveal its true meaning. There cannot be such a thing as the ultimate
communication medium, however, history is full of dreamers who imagined and tried
to come up with one. Therefore, as mentioned in earlier sections, media archaeology
should not prioritize the investigation of media technologies and their technical
properties but rather investigate the human desire behind each actual and imaginary
media. Imaginary media are not just about material successes or failures but about
the human desire to come up with alternative modes of existence for media
(Kluitenberg, 2006, p. 9).
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While agreeing on the blurry distinction between actual and imaginary media,
Siegfried Zielinski (2006b, pp. 29-30) goes one step further than Kluitenberg and
comes up with a categorization for imaginary media which Kluitenberg abstained
from providing:
1. Untimely media / apparatus / machines. Media devised or designed either
much too late or much too early. Realized in technical and media practice
either centuries before or centuries after being invented.
2. Conceptual media / apparatus / machines. Artifacts that were only ever
sketched as models or drafted as concrete ideas on paper, but never actually
built.
3. Impossible media / apparatus / machines. Imaginary media in the true sense,
by which I mean hermetic and hermeneutic machines, that is machines that
signify something but where the design or sketch makes clear that they cannot
actually be built, and whose implied meanings nonetheless have an impact on
the factual world of media.
According to Zielinski's proposed categorization of imaginary media, there are two
axes that play important roles when identifying such media: materialization and time.
On one axis, media technologies can be differentiated in terms of their physical
property and material functioning in real life which does not affect their imaginary
status; and on the other axis, such media technologies can be materialized or desired
either much too early or much too late relative to their point of invention. Zielinski's
categorization can be seen as a template provided to media archaeologists in their
(and in his own) quest to seek and make sense of imaginary media. While Zielinski
offers a way to categorize imaginary media, just like Kluitenberg, he does not
suggest a clear-cut distinction between actual and imaginary media. On the contrary,
he acknowledges the fluidity and transitivity between fantasy and reality (Zielinski,
2006a, p. 29).
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According to Zielinski’s categorization, the contemporary use of 19th-century
photographic techniques seems to fall under untimely media that is -once againrealized
in technical and practical terms after their initial invention. As discussed in
sub-chapter Coexistence and Non-linearity of Old and New, such untimely media,
even though they bear connotations of antiquity and outdatedness according to the
unidirectional way of thinking, when put into experimental practice, they provide
experiences that can be labeled as anything except outdated and antique. They favor
interaction with their users as well as other forms of media, both old and new, which
turns them into media technologies without any unforeseeable limits. This
unlimitedness creates an open space for constant imagination.
Figure 11. Visualization of Siegfried Zielinski’s Imaginary Media Map
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“It would be spectacular if we could come up with new [photographic] techniques”
Nilden Aksoy (2021) states and continues:
While I was in Portugal with the Erasmus exchange program, we were
practicing alternative photographic techniques intensely and almost all of my
classmates were imagining inventing a new photographic technique. Of
course, in the end, many of them diverted to digital and those dreams did not
manage to leave the classroom. However, I believe anyone who became
interested in such techniques had similar dreams at one point: Doing
something that has been never done before, creating a unique image.
Aksoy is one of the photographers with whom I conducted interviews with who
specifically focuses on plant-based hybrid photographic techniques in her work. Her
remarks on the issue of producing novel techniques can be seen as an attestation
towards 19th-century photographic techniques and their encouragement of
imagination.
Science fiction author Bruce Sterling provides an incredible historical instance that
can be shown as an example of what Zielinski calls media ahead of its time. In this
instance, Sterling travels more than a hundred years back in time and provides
information about an almost legendary musical invention that enabled to
mass-communicate electronic music (Sterling, 2006, p. 68):
Thaddeus Cahill and his brothers constructed the Telharmonium, a massive
musical instrument, plus electrical generating plant, plus musical distribution
system. The Telharmonium was designed to provide electronic music to a
mass audience using telephone lines. Cahill placed the first of his five US
patents in 1895. He completed three Telharmonium instruments, including the
commercial models in 1906 and 1911. Dazzled industrial investors sank
millions of dollars into Telharmonic music services. By 1907 Cahill was
successfully piping live electronic music into Manhattan restaurants.
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The early development and process of Telharmonium was a success and it seemed
like a prevailing mass communication medium for a while. However, soon after the
drawbacks of the Telharmonium became clear. First of all, Telharmonium was
massive. While the first version weighed 7 tons, the following versions weighed
more than 200 tons. It required too much effort to physically transport it. In the age
where human practice and culture were becoming highly characterized by swiftness,
Telharmonium was too bulky. Another drawback of Telharmonium was that it was
too powerful. Due to the excessive electrical current running through telephone
wires, electronic music was polluting the regular phone conversations. Telephone
users started to complain about this inconvenience. In addition to technical
drawbacks, economical problems of the time period were added (such as the Panic of
1907). Investors and subscribers started to abandon Telharmonium (Williston, n.d.).
In late 1914, the New York Telharmonic Company declared bankruptcy. Thaddeus
Cahill's brother Arthur T. Cahill tried to find a home for the last remaining prototype
of the instrument but was not successful. After being sold for scrap in the 1950s,
Telharmonium materially vanished from the surface of the Earth.
"Did the Telharmonium die for its own inherent inadequacies - or was it killed off
before its time?" asks Sterling (2006, p. 69). Whether it was Telharmonium's own
drawbacks that cost its life or the social, cultural, and economical structure which did
not allow Telharmonium to survive, it is clear that Telharmonium was an untimely
medium, a medium that arrived way too early. Since the 1950s, synthesizers and
electronic music apparatuses have become increasingly popular. However, as the
precursor of synthesizer technologies and electronic music, the Telharmonium could
not survive. When discussed in Kluitenberg's terms, telharmonium provides an
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example of a compensatory machine that quickly turned into a machine of frustration
due to its innate drawbacks as well as its disharmony with the technical infrastructure
of its time.
Bruce Sterling’s understanding of imaginary media is also rooted in time-wise
discussions but unlike Zielinski’s wide categorization, Sterling specifically focuses
on what he calls “the dead media”. New technologies are greeted with great
enthusiasm and interest while old technologies are pushed to the corner with the
feeling of embarrassment as if they are the archaic versions of the current
technologies that we have to urgently discard. Sterling opposes this predominant
assumption of linear progression and constant improvement, very much in line with
Kluitenberg’s approach: new media are not always exact replacements or developed
and sophisticated versions of the old ones and they arrive with their own problems
(Sterling, 2006, p. 63):
People have many folk mythologies about technological development. The
foremost myth is an ideology of unbroken progress. This is often called the
‘Whig Theory of History’. In this Whig theory of history, every event in the
past had a simple explanation. All the complicated activity in the past existed
in order to create us. We, you and I, the people of the present day, are the
proper measure of all things. We are the crown of creation. Our time, this
time, is the best time ever. Our technologies are the best ever, because all
previous efforts were hasting, unworthy versions of the fine things we use
ourselves. They were primitive, not yet fully developed. If certain amusing
mistakes were made in the past, that are no longer present for us to use, then
they were blind alleys that were best abandoned. They failed because the past
was insufficiently like us, the present.
The old media die because the new does not leave the old an area of functioning. In
the media environment, the fittest survive. With each step, the new becomes more
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and more bound to industrialization and commercialization, and the medium which
fits better to commercial intentions kills the old as "industrial policy" calls Sterling
and continues "It's not enough to create the new for the sake of improvement, the old
must be actively annihilated" (Sterling, 2006, p. 62). Due to increasing commercial
motivations and intentions, the new media technologies integrate unsustainable
problems into modern-day social practice in exchange for higher economic profit.
For instance, digital storage media is quite problematic when it comes to archiving
and preserving information in the long term. Digital storage technologies are also
subject to degeneration. They are fragile and subject to deterioration in the short
term, unlike material media which could withstand degeneration in long term with
relatively smaller preservation effort than digital media (Sterling, 2006, p. 60).
In The Dead Media Project manifesto (n.d.), Sterling suggests that the dead media
are not just media killed by commercialization but also media disappeared from the
media discourse due to functioning failures, hideous mistakes, problematic features,
and for any other reason that we can imagine. To think and study imaginary media is
not so different for Bruce Sterling to think and study dead media. Because to study
dead media means learning from past mistakes, desires, and intentions; and
imagining alternative pasts and futures for media technologies and practices.
In The Deep Time of Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by
Technical Means (2006), Siegfried Zielinski too opposes the presupposition of linear
progression from primitive to complex; and an uninterrupted evolution from
under-developed to well-developed. The dominant media do not gain their dominant
status deterministically but rather fortuitously. In the course of history, circumstances
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could have, by chance, favored alternative media technologies rather than the
currently dominant ones. According to Zielinski "the current state of the art does not
necessarily represent the best possible state" (Zielinski, 2006a, p. 7). Moreover, the
history of media does not constitute a homogeneous and consistent whole but rather
perceived as one due to mainstream reading of media. The critical reading of
communication media should not be realized by looking into "obligatory trends,
master media, and imperative vanishing points" (Zielinski, 2006a, p. 7) but rather by
making inquiries about divergences and fractions. Obsolete, defunct, abandoned, and
dead dreams and technologies which are "left out of the discourse of media studies"
(Zielinski, 2006a, p. 9) should also be the in the focus. This way, the media theorist
can discover individual variations and the diversity which is hidden beneath the deep
time of media. This kind of attempt is what Zielinski names the “media
(an)archaeology”, which is the archaeology of singularities, diversions, varieties,
dead-ends, and underrated media. Such media discoveries, in turn, can reveal human
intentions hidden behind them and alternate our way of reading media pasts,
presents, and futures.
An attempt to draw an overall framework for imaginary media comes from Jussi
Parikka (2012). According to Parikka, archaeology of imaginary media often means
working with forgotten media technologies that are now perceived as new and
interesting. Parikka draws particular attention to working and experimenting with
forgotten media technologies because such interaction between the user and the
technology can result in an active criticism and evaluation of imaginary and actual
media technologies and environments (Parikka, 2012, p. 43). However, Parikka also
warns that the media archaeologist should resist being seduced by the quirkiness and
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interestingness of the media object (2012, 65 & 144) and rather seek answers to the
essential questions of the archaeology of imaginary media (Parikka, 2012, p. 47):
What can be imagined, and under what historical, social and political
conditions? What are the conditions for the media imaginaries of the modern
mind and contemporary culture, and, on the other hand, how do imaginaries
condition the way we see actual technologies?
Similarly, Erkki Huhtamo (2018, p. 17) suggests that a media archaeologist's job is to
pay close attention to the context surrounding the investigated media. Any media
take their power from the social, economic, and ideological context in which they are
embedded. An archaeological approach to media studies can benefit from the media
products however it should not prioritize objects over their contextual roles.
As it is seen by the manifold and multi-layered approaches used when discussing the
term imaginary media, it is a concept that is in a state of constant flux, a term that
does not have fixed boundaries. At times, it requires dealing with human aspirations
rather than actual objects and at other times, it necessitates experimenting with
tangible products. Its area of functioning embraces physically impossible media, as
well as media materialized. It is also in an intimate relationship with the
aforementioned concepts of new, old, marginal, failed, and forgotten.
The body of work mentioned above is, in no sense, representative of the complete
corpus of the archaeology of imaginary media. Nonetheless, they provide an
alternative and multifaceted understanding of how to look at media environments,
practices, and technologies. Further, they provide a framework (even though it is an
obscure one) to apply to photographic media for the purposes of this research.
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2.2.5. Experimental Media Archaeology
So far, media archaeology is primarily identified as the investigation of human desire
and the context in which certain media tools, practices, and discourses are embedded.
Going back to Foucauldian foundations of media archaeology, much of this
investigation process is done through the examination of language which is
encountered in historical documents that helps the researcher to establish connections
or ruptures between social practices, technical tools, and discursive practices
(Foucault, 1972, p. 27). However, the boundaries of modern media archaeology are
wider than Foucauldian archaeology. According to the more recent understanding of
media archaeology, not only the discourses become the object of analysis but also the
media practice itself.
If an “old” technology is here and still being discovered by users there is no reason
why it would not be considered “new”. The reason why certain things are labeled as
“old” while others as “new” is because of our inclination to see history as a
unidirectional line (Fickers & van den Oever 2020, pp. 58-59). According to this
inclination, the past contains the old and the present contains the new. However, the
present can also be home to the old. In fact, depending on the situation, the old could
be newer than the new itself. In a world where digital is the norm, people would
eventually become desensitized to it (Fickers & van den Oever 2020, p. 64). It is the
inevitable ending for any dominant/frequent stimulus. Sooner or later, what people
experience the most starts to lose its initial effect. It becomes a regular part of
everyday life and loses its ability to create sensual experiences as before.
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According to Andreas Fickers and Annie van den Oever (2020, pp. 66-67), historical
re-enactments (working and experimenting with old media technologies) would help
the user (and also the researcher) to gain valuable insights about the media
technologies that are being used or investigated. When conducted in an experimental
manner, media archaeology has the ability to uncover the “tacit knowledge” that is
inherent in any media technology. An imaginary medium could start off as a
collection of stabilized discourses but if perchance it finds itself a material form,
practicing that medium and experiencing what its materiality has to offer could prove
to be more useful than treating that medium solely as a display object. Conformably
with Fickers and van den Oever, Jussi Parikka (2012, p. 14) emphasizes the need for
physical spaces for media archaeology to take: “I propose as acute a need for concept
labs, where we twist, experiment and open up concepts, as in circuit bending”.
As John Ellis and Nick Hall (2020, 1) put it, exploring physical encounters between
humans and media tools is necessary because media technologies and their apparatus
are becoming increasingly intrinsic parts of everyday life. In order to do that they
offer an approach that requires not only dealing with written documents, conducting
brainstorming sessions, and making observations but also putting hands in productive
action. They name it the "hands-on" approach (Ellis & Hall 2020, p. 1).
In recent years, there are researchers/artists who started to use re-enactments and
hands-on approaches as tools to incorporate themselves into the media archaeology
process. Bilici (2013), Önen (2018), and Vrancken (2020) can be provided as
examples of researchers/artists who use 19th-century photographic techniques as a
fresh way to explore social and environmental issues and also reflect against the
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contemporary media context. While Naz Önen addresses the plastic waste problem in
the maritime environment with cyanotype prints, Kristof Vrancken turns to
plant-based photographic techniques and focuses on sustainable photography.
Moreover, Serdar Bilici constructs an analogy toward visual uniqueness between
albinism and 19th-century photographic printing techniques such as cyanotype, Van
Dyke Brown, and salt print.
Such experimental media archaeology projects do not always remain limited to using
old technologies. They can also involve attempts to come up with hybrid techniques
by combining certain features of old and new technologies such as Jonathan
Openshaw's (2015) concept of postdigital artisanship. Openshaw offers a new profile
for contemporary researchers/artists (for detailed information see Photography's
Antiquarian Avant-Garde, Postdigital Artisanship, and Slow Photography chapter).
Kristof Vrancken, who identifies himself as a postdigital artisan, explains the
motivation behind such an approach as follows: “[Postdigital artisans] are looking for
something that digital technology cannot offer, namely tactility and authenticity: the
feel of the material, the experience, the magical moment when craftsmanship and
non-reproducibility develops something unique.” (Vrancken 2019, p. 91).
Experimental media archaeology exceeds individual attempts and also presents itself
in the form of institutional initiatives to promote postdigital artisanship, hands-on
media archaeology approaches, and re-enactments (or whatever name it is given to
such approaches by others). Bilkent University's Media Archaeology Lab, Humboldt
University's Media Archaeological Fundus, and the University of Groningen's Film
Archive & Research Laboratory can be provided as a few examples of such
institutional attempts.
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In the light of experimental media archaeology approaches and their importance, I
have no intention to ignore the implications of the physical properties of
19th-century photographic techniques. Such techniques are not historical “things”
that existed in the past anymore but rather up-to-date practices embedded in
contemporary culture. Unlike conceptual and impossible media proposed by
Zielinski, the 19th-century photographic techniques are untimely media technologies
that found themselves tangible forms in the current operative field of photography.
Therefore, they require practical attention as much as they demand the inquisition of
discourses. While my primary intention, as a researcher, is to understand the
motivations and intentions of photographers who use 19th-century photographic
techniques, I will also discuss my own experience with such techniques in order to
develop a view from the inside of the investigated sphere rather than only assuming
the role of a mere outside observer.
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CHAPTER III
METHODOLOGY
3.1. Method of Data Collection
The intention and scope of this thesis direct me towards conducting a qualitative
investigation rather than a quantitative one. The exact number of contemporary
photographers who use 19th-century techniques in the world and in Turkey is
uncertain and also quite difficult to determine, however, it is safe to say that the
number is proportionally very small within the complete sphere of photographic
practice. While it would be academically illuminating to know the exact population
size, for the specific intentions of this research, such uncertainty does not present a
disruptive issue.
3.1.1. Snowball Sampling
Snowball or chain referral sampling is a sampling method generally used for
recruiting participants who are difficult or rare to find within the overall population.
For the purposes of an idiographic research such as this one, a small sample size
ranging between 3-16 are considered to be sufficient (Robinson, 2013, p. 29). In the
specific case of this research, contemporary photographers who use 19th-century
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techniques are quite rare in Turkey. In the light of this information, the sample size
was determined as between 6-8 photographers.
Initially, two photographers that I knew their work from social media were invited to
the research. Consequently, as a result of the referral chain, a seven photographer
sample was formed.
3.1.2. Interviews
The decision of conducting a qualitative investigation led to interviews.
Photographers were also asked whether they would know any other photographers
who use 19th-century techniques and would be suitable for the purposes of the
research. Each new photographer was asked to recommend a couple of names that
came to their mind. When the photographer pool reached a total of eleven names, the
referral chain turned into a loop. At that point, almost every photographer was
referring to an already suggested name. In addition to the first two photographers,
nine other photographers were invited to participate in the research. Out of nine,
seven of them returned the invitation, and out of those seven, five of them
participated in interviews. Since the research is shaped around the question of “why
people do what they do?”, conducting interviews presented the seemingly best
possible method for collecting detailed information from participants. However,
there was no previous set of structured questions available to use for this research.
Therefore, two separate interview sessions decided to be conducted with each
photographer. First interviews were designed as conversation sessions with
open-ended questions. While there were constant questions directed to each
photographer (see appendix 1), there were also photographer-specific questions about
their works, practices, and statements.
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Upon completing the first interviews with each photographer, a quite illuminating set
of information was gathered. The obtained information then was used as a pathfinder
for coming up with the second interview questions. Answers provided for the first
interview questions helped to determine what kind of concepts and terms required
more attention. Moreover, with the help of Photowork: Forty Photographers on
Process and Practice (Wolf, 2019), a set of semi-structured questions were formed.
The book presented interviews with forty contemporary photographers about their
photographic processes and practices. While photographers included in the book did
not specifically work with 19th-century techniques, the questions directed to them
were aimed at understanding their specific photographic practices. A set of twelve
questions were directed to each photographer. In the light of the first interviews and
questions provided by Photowork, the second set of questions was formed (see
appendix 2).
Submission for permission for human research has been made to Bilkent University’s
Ethics Committee (appendix 3). It was decided that the research did not present any
ethical, physical, or psychological risk factors for the participants. Moreover,
participants were thoroughly informed about the aims and intentions of the research
before moving on to interviews. The safety and personal privacy of participants were
insured through informed consent forms and their personal information was collected
with their permission.
Interviews were conducted online via Zoom and recorded with the permission of
participants. Each session has been transcribed into a text and sent to its participant
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for confirmation in order to ensure that the integrity and meaning of each interview
stayed intact during the transcription process. Four male and three female
photographers participated in the research.
3.2. Method of Analysis: Discourse Analysis
In its essence, the aim of this research is to understand the intentions and motivations
of photographers by looking closely at their first-hand statements about their
practices. Discourse analysis provides one of the essential methods of analysis when
the aim is to conduct an in-depth analysis of texts, visuals, or verbal statements. As
stated in the previous chapter, discourse analysis is tightly connected to Michel
Foucault’s work and his emphasis on the power dynamics between hegemonic and
resisting forces. In the sense Foucault’s use of the term, discourse refers to a specific
use of language which carries the power to constitute knowledge. The photographers
who use 19th-century techniques produce specific discourses about themselves, their
practices, and the characteristics of the community they belong to. Investigating the
discourse they produce can reveal their motivations and intentions, as well as help us
discover wider and more contemporary implications behind the current photographic
discourse.
Most of the qualitative research formed around the subject of photography and that
of the 19th-century focuses on discursive formations that can be spotted either in
written documents, physical practices, or photographs themselves. In addition to the
previously mentioned works of Jonathan Crary (1990), Bill Jay (1991), Geoffrey
Batchen (1997), and Erkki Huhtamo (2018), further examples that seek to find
photographic discursive formations can be provided.
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Inspired by the works of Mary Warner Marien (1997) and Geoffrey Batchen (1997)
towards discovering the origins of the photographic discourse, Sigrid Lien (2005)
attempts to trace the earlier signs of a photographic discourse in the 19th-century
Norwegian literature scene. Lien examines two fictional literary works, a story and a
theater play from the 19th-century titled respectively as The Daguerreotype (1841)
and The Wild Duck (1884). The Daguerreotype illustrates the quest of a
painter-turned-photographer in his attempts to find the love of his life in the early
years of photography. The story concludes with a happy ending, The Wild Duck, on
the other hand, tells the tragic story of a studio photographer. The story ends with the
death of the photographer’s daughter.
In addition to the two main literary works, Lien conducts her investigation through
the use of texts provided by Norwegian intellectuals, critics, and artists of the
19th-century. According to Lien, both literary works implement the photographer
protagonists in their storylines influenced by the emerging discussions of the time.
Durien, the protagonist in The Daguerreotype, turns to photography because of his
discontent with painting when he constantly fails at his attempts to paint the picture
of the girl he likes. Photography helps Durien to encapsulate the real beauty of his
beloved. Similar to Durien’s situation, in its early years, photography was considered
the best possible way for capturing impressions from real life. On the other hand, the
idea of “photography as the capturer of reality” was being challenged by critics in the
late 19th-century. Photography started to be seen as a medium that bears more than it
reveals at first sight, such as an unconscious part of the human mind. According to
Lien (2005, p. 91), Hjalmar Ekdal, the protagonist in The Wild Duck, represents the
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dichotomy between the photograph’s visible and invisible dimensions. The storyline
consists of many interpersonal affairs and conspiracy among friends and family of
Hjalmar, however, he is unable to see any of it which eventually leads to the death of
his daughter.
Lien’s research demonstrates that history and fiction are interwoven parts in which
influences of each other can be traced. Moreover, the article provides a helpful
example on how discourse analysis can be utilized by using literary works as objects
of analysis. On the other hand, Rosalind Krauss (1986) presents an alternative
analysis of a photographic discourse by using visuals as her main object of analysis
as well as making use of written documents. Krauss starts by comparing two images.
First of these images is a photograph created by the 19th-century photographer
Timothy O’Sullivan in 1867, portraying the stiff rock formations emerging from the
Pyramid Lake in Nevada. The second image is the lithographic reproduction of
Sullivan’s original photograph, created for Clarence King’s Systematic Geology
survey in 1878.
Krauss suggests that (1986, pp. 80-81), besides minor visual disparities between two
images, the main divergence takes place at the discursive level. They diverge from
each other in terms of the information and knowledge they bear. While the lithograph
belongs to the discourse of empirical science and topography, the photograph is
rooted in the aesthetic discourse and is tightly related to the exhibition space. While
Krauss confidently suggests that O’Sullivan’s photograph belongs to the aesthetic
discourse and to the exhibition space, she does not abstain from asking the question
“Did O’Sullivan in his own day […] construct his work for the aesthetic discourse
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and the exhibition space?” (Kraus, 1986, p. 81). In her analysis, Krauss is highly
conscious that at the time she wrote her work, photography was already an
established artistic medium that was mainly discussed in terms of aesthetics, while its
status as an art object was in dispute when O’Sullivan produced his photographs.
By laying aside the retrospective history writing, Krauss moves on to investigate how
O’Sullivan’s photographs found themselves to be produced and consumed in the
1860s and 1870s. It is demonstrated that similar to many of his contemporaries,
O’Sullivan stated his main intention as to create views. Krauss suggests that the term
viewing in the context of the 19th-century is closely related to the stereoscopic vision
which enables viewers to experience a sense of depth by looking into a pair of
two-dimensional photographs placed side by side. Most of O’Sullivan’s photographs
were created and composed with the intention of producing stereoscopes which were
also commonly referred to as views, rather than exhibiting them in the space of the
aesthetic discourse (Krauss, 1986, p. 83).
Stereoscopy was one of the leading markets for photographic production and the
term view was dominantly used in photographic practice. Even when photographers
like O’Sullivan intentionally tried to enter spaces of exhibition, they were still
referring to their photographs as views. According to Krauss (1986, p. 84), using
such a term meant taking away the photographer’s authorial claim over the image.
Stereoscopes were commonly printed without the name of their photographers but
rather with the name of the company that produced them, e.g. London Stereoscopic
Company. Therefore, the sense of subjectivity in the art object which arrives with the
involvement of the artist was being eliminated and views were presented as objective
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representations of real-life scenes. Consequently, Krauss suggests that, even though
the O’Sullivan photograph seems to be the part of the aesthetic discourse when
viewed retrospectively, it becomes clear that it used to belong to a completely
different discursive formation when its own contextual factors were put into
consideration.
Krauss’ work demonstrates that objects, practices, and discourses they belong to are
not set in stone but rather fluid structures constantly shifting depending on time
periods and contexts. The researcher’s critical position when conducting a discourse
analysis can very well affect the outcome of the research. Therefore, the researcher
should carefully frame his/her position in terms of time and context-related settings.
Another attempt toward understanding early photographic discourses comes from
Monica Bravo (2018). Bravo compares photography with optography which is a
biochemical process that takes place in the eye. According to the findings of the
German scientist Franz Boll in 1876, the mammalian eye consisted of a pigment
called rhodopsin which is synthesized in the absence of light and was bleached out
when it was put into contact with light rays. In 1877, the German physiologist
Wilhelm Kühne (1837-1900), inspired by Boll’s findings, began to experiment with
rabbits in order to closely examine the pigment. Kühne placed a rabbit in a dark
room until rhodopsin was synthesized and then placed the rabbit in front of a bright
window in order to expose the scene into the rabbit’s eye. He then decapitated the
rabbit, removed its eye, subtracted the retina, and fixed it in an alum solution. Kühne
found out that the last image the rabbit had seen before its death was clearly
preserved in the retina. He named the process optography (Bravo, 2018, p. 61).
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Figure 12. Wilhelm Kühne’s Rabbit’s Eye Optograph, 1877.
Kühne’s treatment of optography was highly correlated with that of photographic
principles. He resembled the retina to a photographic plate which constantly renewed
itself with a fresh exposure. In addition to Kühne’s analogy, optographs were
colloquially referred to as “natural photographs” (Bravo, 2018, p. 63) which firmly
tied two discourses to each other. According to Bravo, the late 19th-century
photographic discourse was under a significant alteration. While photographs were
previously considered indexical referents, with new technical developments such as
Wilhelm Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays, Étienne-Jules Marey’s chronophotography,
and Eadweard Muybridge’s split-second photographs of a galloping horse,
photography’s ability to create images beyond the human eye can see on its own was
acknowledged (Bravo, 2018, p. 68).
Bravo positions the optographic discourse right next to this newly emerging
discourse of photography. In 1880, Wilhelm Kühne went one step further and
managed to conduct another optographic experiment with a human subject. Kühne
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repeated his optographic process with the eye of Gustav Erhard Reif, who was a
convict sentenced to death by guillotine. With his new experiment, Kühne failed to
repeat his earlier successful optographic rendering. The obtained image did not
reveal a real-life scene but only an incomprehensible abstract figure. Despite
Kühne’s unsuccessful attempt toward a human optograph, the notion of the human
eye being the counterpart of a photographic camera and the optographic discourse
remained in circulation for over four decades (Bravo, 2018, p. 62). Optographs were
used both as physical examples and imaginary metaphors when the photography’s
indexicality was put into discussion.
Very much like Rosalind Krauss’ work, Bravo’s article demonstrates that
photographic discourse cannot be thought of without its specific time period and
surrounding discourses. Overall, all aforementioned examples show that discourse
analysis can be a helpful tool when the objective is to investigate photography’s
changing discourses. While early photography and its discourses are investigated and
found to be connected with certain concepts such as indexicality, empirical science,
or aesthetics depending on the critical standpoint, we do not know why early
photographic techniques are resurfacing today. By undertaking a media
archaeological approach and conducting a discourse analysis, one of many faces of
the contemporary photographic discourse can be illuminated.
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CHAPTER IV
19th-CENTURY PHOTOGRAPHIC TECHNIQUES and
MODERN VARIATIONS
The 19th century alone offers us a never-ending field of discovery and a playground
for history and media-related research. It consists plenty of photographic processing
and printing techniques as well as many intellectually interesting figures and
historical achievements. While some of the 19th-century techniques are lost today
due to forgotten chemical formulations or failures during the course of history, some
are still being practiced, either staying faithful to their original recipes or transformed
into more contemporary versions with newer chemical additions and technical
approaches. It would be an overly ambitious task to write a complete history of the
19th-century photographic techniques on my part. Moreover, it is not the main focus
of this thesis. Many photography practitioners and historians executed such attempts
and offered invaluable sources already. One of the essential books on this subject
comes from Christopher James under the name of The Book of Alternative
Photographic Processes (2015).
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What I am going to do in this chapter is to give a brief historical background and
technical information about the 19th-century photographic techniques while keeping
my framework mostly within the borders of techniques that are mentioned and used
by the contemporary photographers I have conducted interviews with.
In advance of writing this chapter, I spent a good deal of time on how to approach
and handle the techniques that I am going to write about. During the interviews,
names of more than twenty photographic techniques came up. While most of the
mentioned techniques were already being used by the photographers, a few of these
techniques were desired to be used in the near future. Even with brief information,
presenting more than twenty 19th century photographic techniques and their modern
variations one after another seemed inadequate and somewhat chaotic. In order to
ease the reader’s reading experience and my writing performance, I decided to
categorize the techniques.
There is, of course, not a single way of categorizing these techniques. I started with
the pinhole technique which forms the foundation for each camera technology. By
following the general standard among alternative photography communities, I took
the path of categorizing the techniques according to the main chemical components
involved in each process. Silver and iron being the two most used elements, formed
the next two categories. The techniques that were left out of the silver and iron
categories did not seem to share a common chemical element, therefore, they were
placed under the umbrella category of non-silver and non-iron techniques. The last
category consisted of techniques that cannot be solely attributed to the 19th century
however their intellectual origins can be found in the 19th century’s chemical-based
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and experimentally driven aura. Therefore, they were collected under the category of
modern variations deriving from the first four categories.
Some of the techniques that I am going to talk about in this chapter dominated
photographic practice and discourse during their respective time periods while others
always remained as marginal practices. Nowadays, almost each of these techniques
continues their existence as marginal ones.
4.1. Pinhole
A pinhole is a simple technique that is used to capture images on photographic
surfaces. It works with the principles of camera obscura and presents one of the
primary technical influences over photographic cameras. Even though cameraless
alternative photographic techniques exist, most photographic exposures, one way or
the other, rely on the working principles of the pinhole. In its simplest form, through
the use of a small opening in a dark box, an outer scene is projected and exposed
onto a sensitive surface placed inside the box without the need for a camera lens.
Unlike the rest of the techniques that I am going to mention further in this chapter, a
pinhole is neither a processing nor a printing technique but rather a means of
exposure. Pinhole is quite flexible in its use and open to being mixed and matched
with various types of photographic techniques. Therefore, it offers an extensive field
for experimentation.
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Figure 13. Aydın Berk Bilgin’s Homemade Shoebox Pinhole Camera Containing 25
Separate Slots for Exposure
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4.2. Silver-Based Techniques
4.2.1. Heliography & Daguerreotype
The Daguerreotype was the first officially introduced photographic process. Its
inventor, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851) showed a great example of
self-reliance and named the process after his own. Daguerre was a well-known figure
in the Paris art scene (Siegel, 2017, p. 19). Before he officially introduced his
photographic invention in the French Academy of Sciences in the late summer of
1839, he was already famous for his Diorama theater in which large-scale
surrounding paintings are turned into visual immersive experiences through the use
of lighting tricks.
Daguerre started his experiments on permanently fixing the fleeing image inside the
camera obscura sometime around the early 1820s. He was using silver chloride and
phosphorus in his experiments, however, was unable to come up with a desired fixed
image (Gernsheim, 1982, p. 37). In early 1826, Daguerre happened to hear about
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (1765-1833) and his experiments on the same endeavor.
Niépce was way ahead of Daguerre and had already managed to fix images on stone
and glass with a photographic process he named Heliography (from the Greek,
meaning “sun writing”). Niépce’s first “attempts at true photography, with a camera”
can be traced as far as 1816 (Gernsheim, 1982, p. 29). After achieving satisfactory
results by the means of his photographic technique, Niépce decided to take a step
further and wanted to pursue his research further in Britain in 1827. However, he
could not manage to attract the attention of the Royal Society circles, the King, and
the Society of Arts (Marbot, 1987, p. 17; Gernsheim, 1982, p. 36).
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Niépce, who returned empty-handed to France, had arranged several meetings with
Daguerre and later stayed in touch with him. Their relationship turned into a
professional partnership on 14 December 1829 with the signing of a legal agreement
(Marbot, 1987, p. 17). However, with the early death of Niépce in 1833, Daguerre
was left with complete knowledge of Niépce’s photographic process. By adding up to
materials used by Niépce such as silvered copper plates and iodine, with a touch of
fortune and lots of experimenting, Daguerre came up with a different process. In this
process, he subjected a silvered copper plate to iodine vapor in order to sensitize it to
light. Later, he transferred the sensitized plate into the camera. After the exposure, he
developed the sensitized plate in mercury vapor. To fix the image, he immersed the
developed plate into a hot solution of common salt or a solution of sodium
thiosulfate. Finally, he would tone the fixed image with gold chloride (Gernsheim,
1982, p. 42-43; Library of Congress).
Daguerre’s process yielded positives meaning that each image was authentic and
could not be reproduced. Even though the Daguerreotype dominated the
photography market for about twelve years, many attempts have been made in order
to compensate for this innate shortcoming. With the introduction of the wet plate
collodion process in 1851, the Daguerreotype quickly fell into disuse.
4.2.2. Calotype & Salted Paper
Around the same time Daguerre was working on his project, on the other side of the
English Channel or la Manche, William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) was
experimenting with his respective photographic technique. Talbot’s initial desire for
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photography came after his unsuccessful drawing attempts by using a camera lucida
(Gernsheim, 1982, p. 53). Talbot started his experiments in early 1834. By applying
solutions of sodium chloride and silver nitrate on a paper surface, he acquired silver
chloride-coated papers and realized these papers were being blackened under
sunlight (Gernsheim, 1982, p. 53-54). He was able to create negatives straight out of
the camera with this process without needing an additional development process. He
named this process photogenic drawing. However, this process had a drawback. In
order to yield a properly exposed negative, the sensitive surface needed at least an
hour of exposure to sunlight.
By 1841, Talbot was already working on an alternative improved process. For this
process, he would apply solutions of silver nitrate and potassium iodide onto the
surface of a paper in order to form silver iodide. Then, he would apply solutions of
gallic acid and silver nitrate on top of the earlier applied coats to make the surface
even more sensitive. After exposing the sensitized surface with a camera, he would
end up with a latent image which required a development process. During this
development process, he would use gallo-nitrate of silver solution and the final
negative would be fixed with the use of potassium bromide solution (Gernsheim,
1982, p. 60). Talbot's new process yielded faster results than his earlier photogenic
drawings requiring only a couple of minutes. It was also made possible to reproduce
images from the initial negative. He named this process Calotype (from Greek,
meaning “beautiful impression”).
Even though Calotype compensated for Daguerreotype’s unreproducible nature, it
did not manage to completely replace Daguerreotype. Each process was offering
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something else to its users/customers. While Daguerreotype was the superior
technique in terms of yielding a more detailed final image, Calotype had the upper
hand when it came to the matter of reproducibility. Nonetheless, both techniques
co-existed during the infancy of photography.
Figure 14. Salt Print from Wet Plate Collodion Negative, Nude with a Shell, 2017,
Tomáš Hetmánek
Talbot, in addition to his Calotype process, also came up with a printing technique
with invaluable aid from Sir John Frederick William Herschel (1792-1871). The
principles of the salted paper technique were quite similar to Talbot’s photogenic
drawings, with the exception of having the knowledge of how to fix the
ever-developing image on the surface of the paper. Herschel introduced Talbot to the
sodium hyposulphite of soda as a fixing agent in 1941 which he actually discovered
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almost twenty years prior (James, 2009, p. 41). With the intellectual collaboration of
these two figures, one of the earliest methods of photography printing became
available.
Figure 15. Salt Print, from “Devinim” Series, 2017, Aydın Berk Bilgin
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4.2.3. Wet Plate Collodion
In 1851, a sculptor named Frederick Scott Archer (1813-1857) came up with a
photographic processing technique called the wet plate collodion which ended the
hegemonic status of the Daguerreotype and Calotype (Newhall, 1982, p. 59). Wet
plate Collodion combined Daguerreotype’s fine quality with Calotype’s reproducible
nature, moreover, it was the fastest processing method up to date. Archer started his
experiments with collodion (solution of nitrocellulose in ether and alcohol) in 1848.
In order to create a light sensitized surface, Archer combined collodion and
potassium iodide and coated a glass plate with this iodized collodion. After, he
immersed the glass plate into a silver nitrate solution and exposed the sensitized plate
while it was still wet, hence the name wet plate collodion. Then Archer developed
the exposed glass plate with a solution of pyrogallic acid and fixed the image with
sodium thiosulfate (Gernsheim, 1988, p. 10; James, 2009, p. 481).
The wet plate collodion process required sensitization, exposure, development, and
fixing the image within a period of a couple of minutes. Therefore, it did not allow
for creating prefabricated plates. When wet collodion photographers wanted to
photograph outdoor scenes or work under daylight, they needed to carry their
chemicals, camera equipment, and darkrooms in the form of tents around with them.
While the wet plate collodion process produced negatives on glass allowing for
reproduction, it was also used for creating positives on glass with an alternative
approach, namely Ambrotype (from the Greek, meaning “immortal picture”). An
ambrotype is created by underexposing a wet plate collodion plate. Then the
underexposed glass plate is viewed against a black background, resulting in a
positive image.
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The wet plate collodion process dominated the next twenty-to-thirty years of
photographic production and consumption until its hegemonic rule came to an end
with the new photographic breakthrough.
Figure 16. Wet Plate Collodion, Untitled, 2016, Tomáš Hetmánek
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Figure 17. Wet Plate Collodion, Swindler, c. 2017, Murat Sarıyar
Figure 18. Wet Plate Collodion Negative, Nusretiye Mosque, 2021, Kerim Suner
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4.2.4. Albumen Print
A cousin of Nicéphore Niépce, Claude Felix Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor
(1805-1879), came up with the albumen processing technique. He started
experimenting with sensitizing and fixing an image on top of a glass surface in the
1840s. Niépce de Saint-Victor found out that egg white (albumen) was a successful
ingredient for coating glass plates when using potassium iodide instead of starch. His
experiments were carried out a few steps forward by Louis Désirée Blanquart-Evrard
(1802-1872) in 1849. While Niépce de Saint-Victor’s albumen process was
motivated by creating negatives on glass, Blanquart-Evrard applied albumen on
paper in order to achieve albumenized positive paper, a way to substitute salted
papers. With Gustave Le Gray’s (1820-1884) introduction of toning albumen prints
with gold chloride in 1852, albumen printing was combined with wet plate
collodion’s sharp glass negatives and became the most preferred method for
producing prints for almost a half-century (Gernsheim, 1988, p. 9). In so much that,
demand for albumen resulted in a boom in the production and the use of eggs both in
Europe and in the USA.
4.2.5. Silver Gelatine Dry Plate
Dr. Richard Leach Maddox (1816-1902) came up with the idea of using gelatin as a
binding agent which contained silver bromide. Later developments and additions
were made by J. Johnston, Richard Kennett, and C. E. Bennett. By 1880, silver
gelatin dry plates were being commercially produced and consumed (James, 2009, p.
495; Gernsheim, 1988, p. 254). It was a step towards the massification and
amateurization of photography because it allowed pre-made and lighter photographic
plates to be distributed anywhere and purchased by anyone around the world.
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Maddox’s gelatin emulsion technology laid the foundation for the modern silver
gelatin emulsion technology which was to become the most dominant photographic
processing and printing technology until the end of the 20th century.
Figure 19. Gold Toned Albumen Print, Sebah & Joaillier, 2018, Kerim Suner
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4.3. Iron-Based Techniques
4.3.1. Cyanotype, Van Dyke Brown & Chrysotype
Silver-based photographic techniques sprouted and quickly started to create a
photographic market in the early years of photography. In 1842, Sir John Frederick
William Herschel (1792-1871) came up with three non-silver photographic processes
(James, 2015, p. 252). Instead of silver, he started to use iron as the main ingredient.
In just a year, Herschel introduced three photographic printing techniques namely
cyanotype, argentotype which led the way to Van Dyke Brown, and chrysotype all
being the members of the siderotype (from Greek, meaning “iron impression”)
family, a term coined by Herschel himself.
Figure 20. Cyanotype, from “Aile Hatırası” Series, 2018, Ayşe Nilden Aksoy
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Figure 21. Cyanotype from Wet Plate Collodion Negative, Anunciation, 2017,
Tomáš Hetmánek
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In his cyanotype process, Herschel managed to yield photographic prints in a unique
color - that is the Prussian blue. Cyanotype was used mainly as a photographic
printing technique. Being the common characteristic of almost all 19th-century
photographic printing techniques, cyanotype too was a contact printing technique.
Herschel’s original recipe for cyanotype consisted of two solutions. The first solution
consisted of ferric ammonium citrate and the second one consisted of potassium
ferricyanide. Two solutions were mixed and applied to a surface in order to sensitize
them (James, 2015, p. 167). Then the sensitized surfaces were exposed to sunlight.
Negatives were required in order to print positive images. Exposure times varied
from a few seconds to a couple of minutes depending on the weather conditions.
Upon completion of the exposure, the plates were washed with water in order to
desensitize the surface and produce the final blue-tinted print.
Today, various recipes for producing cyanotype prints exist. According to the desire
of the user, additional ingredients such as oxalic acid and ammonium dichromate can
be supplemented into solutions, and the proportions of ingredients can be changed.
However, in essence, the process itself almost remains the same since Herschel’s
introduction.
Van Dyke Brown is another iron-based contact printing technique introduced by John
Herschel in 1842 however was patented in 1889 by Arndt & Troost. The process
coined the name Van Dyke Brown in the early 20th-century due to its ability to create
earth-toned prints very much similar to the color palette used by Flemish painter
Antoon van Dyck (1599-1641). Similar to the cyanotype process, Van Dyke Brown
required mixing of several solutions in order to create a sensitizer. From different
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sources, it is possible to find different recipes for Van Dyke Brown. While
Christopher James offers (2015, p. 605) a three solution recipe, Luca Bendandi offers
(2020, p 146) a two-part recipe. In its essence, the recipes convey similar results that
are black, sepia, and brown tinted images. The main ingredients are ferric ammonium
citrate, citric acid, silver nitrate, and tartaric acid.
Figure 22. Van Dyke Brown on Watercolor Paper, from the Series of “Acropolis of
Pergamon”, 2021, Burcu Böcekler
Impressively but not surprisingly another iron-based technique was introduced by
Herschel in 1842. Unlike the cyanotype and Van Dyke Brown, the chrysotype (from
Greek, meaning “gold impression”) technique made use of a noble metal such as
gold in addition to silver during the process. Moreover, the chrysotype process did
not manage to implement itself into photographic practice due to chemical and
cost-related problems (Ware, 2009, p. 2). In 1987, more than a hundred years after its
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invention, Mike Ware (1939) introduced an improved version of the technique under
the name of the new chrysotype (James, 2015, p. 254). According to Ware’s modern
recipe following ingredients are used: 3,3'-thiodipropanoic acid, sodium gold
chloride, chloroauric acid, ferric ammonium oxalate, sodium carbonate, sodium
hydrogen carbonate, and tween 20 (James, 2015, p. 256-257).
Figure 23. Chrysotype, Corona, 2020, Ayşe Nilden Aksoy
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4.3.2. Breath Print
There is very little information to be found on the breath printing process. It was
introduced by Herschel in 1843 and was part of the siderotype family. In order to
create the sensitizer, a silver nitrate and ferro-tartaric acid solution was produced.
Sediment left after the chemical reaction was applied to a paper surface and exposed
under sunlight by using a negative. The latent image on the exposed paper would be
made clear by breathing or applying water vapor to it (James, 2015, p. 570-571).
4.3.3. Platinum & Palladium Print
Many names have been involved in the development process of platinum and
palladium printing processes. Adolph Ferdinand Gehlen (1775-1815), Heinrich
Gustav Magnus (1802-1870), Johann Wolfgang Döbereiner (1780-1849), John
Herschel, Robert Hunt (1807-1887), C. J. Burnett and William Willis (1841-1923)
have respectively made observations, experimentations, and chemical developments
from the early 19th-century until the end of the century in order to perfect this
process (Hafey & Shillea, 1979, p. 3-7; James, 2015, p. 300-303).
Platinum and palladium are sister noble metals and they both offer the possibility of
creating a photographic sensitizer when combined with iron. While platinum print
uses ferric oxalate, potassium chloride, and potassium chloroplatinate solutions;
palladium print uses ferric oxalate, potassium chloride, and sodium chloropalladite
solutions (James, 2015, p. 309).
Among iron-based photographic techniques, platinum and palladium have been two
of the most commercialized photographic printing techniques. At the end of the 19th
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century, platinum and palladium papers started to be mass-produced and in the early
decades of the 20th century, they were highly consumed by users (James, 2015, p.
303).
4.4. Non-Silver & Non-Iron Techniques
4.4.1. Anthotype
Anthotype (from Greek, meaning “flower impression”) is a plant-based,
environment-friendly, and maybe the least chemically complicated photographic
printing technique. The invention of the anthotype process is attributed to Mary
Somerville (1780-1872) and John Herschel’s joint efforts. In the anthotype process,
plant petals, leaves, roots, or fruits are crushed and diluted with alcohol in order to
create a sensitizer. Then the sensitizer is applied to a paper surface. Anthotype is a
contact printing process, however, unlike most of the contact printing techniques,
prints are made with positive transparencies instead of negative ones. The main
characteristic of the anthotype process is its need for excessive exposure to sunlight.
Depending on the plant characteristic, it may take hours, days, or even months to
properly expose an image. Another characteristic that sets anthotype apart from other
photographic techniques is its inability to be permanently fixed. Anthotype prints
tend to fade over time. Such temporariness tends to place anthotype at the center of
attention among contemporary artists.
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Figure 24. Anthotype from Vinegared Purple Cabbage, from “Yüzleşme” Series,
2016, Ayşe Nilden Aksoy
4.4.2. Gum Bichromate
The gum bichromate technique can be seen as a collaboration between photography
and painting. It was introduced by Scottish inventor Mungo Ponton (1801-1880) in
1839 when he discovered the light sensitivity of potassium dichromate. The process
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was gradually enhanced by others. In the age of monochromatic photography, gum
bichromate offered a way to create multi-colored prints. In order to achieve gum
bichromate prints, first, the paper is sized with gelatin solution. Then gum arabic and
potassium dichromate solutions are combined in certain proportions with the addition
of watercolor or dry pigments to create sensitizer. The sensitizer is applied to the
paper surface and the paper is exposed to UV light with proper negatives. The
process is repeated with different pigments until the desired outcome is achieved
(Bendandi, 2020, pp. 170-172).
Figure 25. Gum Bichromate over Cyanotype from Wet Plate Collodion Negative,
Untitled, 2017, Tomáš Hetmánek.
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Figure 26. Gum Bichromate with Black Pigment, from “Vernacular Photography”
Series, 2016, Burcu Böcekler.
4.4.3. Carbon & Oil Print
The carbon printing is similar to the gum bichromate process in terms of its use of
potassium dichromate. Alphonse Louis Poitevin (1819-1882) is credited as the
inventor of the process among many others who are inspired by Mungo Ponton’s
earlier findings (James, 2015, p. 582). First of all, the carbon tissue (a temporary
surface for the image to be exposed) is sensitized with potassium dichromate
solution. The tissue is exposed to UV light. Then, the exposed carbon tissue is mated
with the intended final surface (generally being gelatin-sized paper) under cold
water. Then the mated carbon tissue and paper is developed under warm water and
the carbon tissue is peeled off to reveal the final image (James, 2015, pp. 585-592).
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Oil print is also built upon the light-sensitive characteristic of potassium dichromate
but only became a proper technique in 1904 thanks to G.E.H. Rawlins. In this
process, potassium dichromate is used in order to create a sensitizer. The sensitizer is
applied to gelatin-coated paper and exposed. The exposed paper is washed under
cold water. Unexposed gelatin soaks up the water. Finally, oil-based pigments are
applied to the paper surface. While water-soaked gelatin parts push oil pigments
away, water-free parts accept the pigments, resulting in illustration-like images
(Pigment Printing Processes, n.d.).
Figure 27. Oil Print, Fake Mate Number Unknown, c.2018, Murat Sarıyar
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4.5. Modern Variations
4.5.1. Chlorophyll Print
Chlorophyll print can be seen as the contemporary grandchild of the anthotype
process. In 2002, Binh Danh (1977), a photography student from Stanford University
started to print images on plant leaves. The process itself is fairly simple but requires
a great amount of patience and delicacy. Unlike any other photographic technique,
chlorophyll printing does not require an artificial sensitizer. It uses the natural
chlorophyll pigments in plant leaves as a way to contact print images on them by
using positive transparencies. British photography duo Heather Ackroyd (1959) and
Dan Harvey (1959) are other examples who experiment with printing images on
plant leaves, grass, etc.
4.5.2. Lumen & Cyano-Lumen Print
Lumen and cyano-lumen printing processes are among cameraless techniques and
they are pretty straightforward. A black and white silver gelatin photographic paper
is put in contact with various objects, generally plant leaves, flowers, etc., and
exposed to UV light. The exposed paper is developed with necessary black and white
developers. Even though the process mostly relies on mass-produced photographic
papers, it does not require a darkroom or following a fixed set of instructions. The
silver gelatin paper can be coated with cyanotype emulsion in order to create an
experimental hybrid process, namely cyano-lumen printing.
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Figure 28. Chlorophyll Print, Kaybolan Çocukluğum, 2019, Ergül Karagözoğlu
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Figure 29. Wet Cyano-Lumen, from “Bakır Nehir” Series, 2021, Ayşe Nilden Aksoy
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4.5.3. Mordançage
Mordançage is another experimental technique that makes use of silver gelatin
photographic papers. Jean-Pierre Sudre (1921-1997) came up with the process in the
1960s by following the footsteps of the earlier bleach-etch technique introduced by
Franz Paul Liesegang (1873-1949) (Bendandi, 2020, p. 210). In the process, an
already printed black and white photograph is first washed inside a copper(II)
chloride, hydrogen peroxide, and glacial acetic acid solution and then washed with
water. At this point, exposed areas on the paper start to lift from the surface. The
photograph is redeveloped and once again moved and bleached in the mordançage
solution. The image is redeveloped again and then washed. The intended form can be
given to the lifted-up emulsion parts resulting in a unique end product.
Figure 30. Mordançage from Silver Gelatin Print from Paper Negative, The Meeting,
2021, Tomáš Hetmánek
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4.5.4. Solargraphy
Solargraphy is a hybrid technique that couples analog and digital. A pinhole camera,
black and white photographic paper, and a digital scanner is needed for the process.
The photographic paper is loaded into the pinhole camera and then the camera is
placed outdoors. The exposure can take days, weeks, months, or even years. The
sensitized surface captures the trajectory of the sun. After the desired exposure is
achieved, the paper is transferred to a digital scanner and the negative image is
turned into a positive one.
Figure 31. Solargraph, Gün İzi 2, Exposure Duration: 51 Days, 2021, Aydın Berk
Bilgin
4.5.5. Digital Negative
As its name indicates, digital negatives (or positives) are modern equivalents of
negatives created with historical techniques. With this method, digital images can be
transferred into transparent papers either as negatives or positives and later used in
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various 19th-century printing techniques. Digital negatives allow contemporary
photographers to claim more control over their negatives. Moreover, it provides a
way to combine 19th-century printing techniques with digital photography.
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CHAPTER V
PHOTOGRAPHERS in ACTION
5.1. Post-Digital Break: Intentions, Approaches, and Applications
Discourse analysis over interviews revealed that the 21st-century resurfacing of
19th-century photographic techniques demonstrates a marginal but significant
post-digital break in the photographic discourse and practice. This post-digital break,
in the words of Jonathan Openshaw, does not refer to a situation that is against the
digital but rather suggests a condition that resembles a melting pot for digital and its
alternative methods. One of the alternatives, in this case, is the use of chemical-based
19th-century photographic techniques. The break occurs due to unprecedented
contemporary understandings and approaches of photographers toward the
19th-century techniques. Just as human thinking and rationale were influenced by
apparatuses such as camera obscura, thaumatrope, zoetrope, phenakistoscope,
stereoscope, and the early photography in their respective time periods,
contemporary human thinking is now highly influenced by digital apparatuses and
their functioning principles. As to bend Jonathan Openshaw’s analogy, it is safe to
say that the contemporary human does not only consist of atoms anymore but
comprises partly of bytes. This digital imprint is constantly manifested in the
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statements of photographers. As a result, their approach to 19th-century photographic
techniques takes a unique post-digital form, distinct from the earlier examples of the
antique avant-garde.
Under the influence of this post-digital break, interviews showed that contemporary
photographers share certain similarities with regard to their intentions, approaches,
and applications of 19th-century photographic techniques. With that being said, they
also described a set of diverse individual motivations, intentions, and applications
which are not shared by other members of the research sample. This sub-chapter is
organized as a way to report the evidence in support of the post-digital break in
photography by means of presenting common and divergent discursive practices used
and approaches embraced by the photographers.
Even though they are diverse in their specific motives, each photographer mentioned
at least a dissatisfaction or a distance towards the certain aspects of current
hegemonic technologies and methods of visual image production as well as their
desire for alternative modes of visual production. The distance they put between their
photographic practice and the hegemonic methods and technologies are at different
levels for each photographer. This variety mainly emerges due to a diverse range of
individual understandings of and approaches towards photography. To illustrate, for
Kerim Suner, using 19th-century photographic techniques means re-instituting the
human factor which has been gradually swept away from the act of photography.
Increasing automation, mechanization, and standardization in every aspect of life is
one of the essential driving forces which directed Kerim Suner to devote himself to
wet plate collodion and other 19th-century photographic techniques:
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There is a constant effort to remove humans from any process. I am
uncomfortable with this. In photography as well, the human is no longer involved
in the process. Most of the job is done by computers, software, and algorithms. I
hope and dream that productions and creations that involve the human touch will
see the value and many people will move in that direction. Otherwise, the world
will be so dull. Everything will be the same and standardized. [...] My aim is to
demonstrate the value of the handcraft it deserves. I try to advocate for the further
involvement of humans in every aspect of life.”
However, that is not to say that Suner or any other photographer in the research
sample seeks a complete disengagement from contemporary means. As much as
Suner prefers to produce photographs with 19th-century techniques, from time to
time, he takes advantage of digital means in order to better manage his photographic
process. Producing a single negative with the wet plate collodion process, printing
the photograph with one of its contemporary printing techniques such as albumen or
salt print, and finalizing the image by applying varnish or asphalt is a long and
challenging process. According to Suner, the process is too tedious and the achieved
negatives can be quite delicate and tender. During this longsome process, things
could go wrong and the image can be damaged. Emphasizing the part “when it is
necessary”, at times, Suner resorts to digital methods. He converts his ambrotype,
which is the collodion negative viewed against a black background resulting in a
positive image, into a digital negative. By digitally photographing the ambrotype,
reversing it into a negative image with the help of a computer, and printing the digital
negative onto a transparency, Suner obtains what he calls a “semi-digital negative”.
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Figure 32. Kerim Suner in His Studio, Macro Photography with a Large Format
Camera with 2 Meters Bellows Width
While resorting to digital means is not ideal for Suner, he sees no problem
integrating them into his production process. In fact, this perspective of Suner arises
as a result of the synthesis of his embeddedness in digital culture and his knowledge
of the history of photography. Suner does not only practice historical techniques but
also studies historical documents and manuals. One of the anecdotes Suner expressed
was on the subject of 19th-century photography studios and how his counterparts
practiced photography back in the day. Established studios in the 19th-century were
not initiatives that were run by individuals but rather enterprises that housed many
workers specializing in diverse subjects such as developing, toning, painting, etc.
“Studios had painters in their staff”, Suner mentioned, “because chemical-based
processing techniques such as collodion and silver gelatin consisted of solutions
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which are not equally sensitive to all colors of the spectrum”. This caused a
particular exposing challenge for the 19th-century landscape photographers. When
the photograph is exposed for the landscape, the sky was captured as an overexposed
white plain. For this reason, studios had painters who were assigned to paint clouds
over the negatives or to retouch any imperfections. This anecdote shows that even in
its early years, photography made use of diverse techniques and was being
hybridized with other media. According to Suner, his use of digital means is not so
different from the use of painting in the photographic process. The only difference is
that his approach is post-digital.
Similar understandings of and approaches toward the 19th-century photographic
techniques are present in the discourses and practices of each photographer in the
research sample. Aydın Berk Bilgin, whose photographic practice benefits both from
analog and digital methods, suggests that there are no rules set in stone for
photographic production, therefore any technique can be mixed and mashed with
other techniques and can be used when necessary. With similar attitudes, none of the
photographers in the research sample are approaching their respective techniques in a
conservative manner, as if they were living and producing photographs in the
19th-century. Using digital negatives or digital editing are among the most resorted
ways of benefiting from digital technologies. Embroidering, bleaching, and cutting
are other techniques that are used by Tomáš Hetmánek to alter his photographs.
“Photography is not the reflection of a real object” states Hetmánek, “it is my
reflection”. Therefore, any manipulation that comes from the photographer is just the
manifestation which in the end represents the individual and artistic vision of the
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photographer. 19th-century photographic techniques are not historical or old
techniques, they are just techniques that are available among many others for him to
use during his process of achieving the desired visual outcome:
“I don’t see them [19th-century techniques] as historical techniques. For me, they
are just techniques, I don’t care much about the historical aspect. I use old lenses
because I like the image they provide. Not for any other reason. I don’t have a
romantic perspective on this matter. Of course, I like the aesthetic look of brass,
wood, and varnished cameras and lenses but at the end of the day, I would prefer a
cheaper CNC cut plywood camera if it provides the same function. I do not think
of them as historical, I do not want to, I am afraid to think of them this way.
Because I don’t want to be an escapist. I want to be here and now, I want to be
contemporary [...] Old technologies offer me things no other technique can offer
and this is an unbelievably modern situation for me.”
Figure 33. Embroidered Silver Gelatin Print from Paper Negative, The Regret, 2020,
Tomáš Hetmánek
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Very much like Kerim Suner, Tomáš Hetmánek too believes that human touch and
sensation have been getting lost in every aspect of life mostly due to technological
changes. For Hetmánek, resorting to chemical-based photography is one of many
ways of restoring the missing human element in everyday life:
“It is better to call them [19th-century techniques] alternatives because we have
alternatives. Not just in photography, in many aspects of life, there is antique
revival and return of the handcraft. I think we have lost many feelings and
experiences which once belonged to humans. Nobody knows what it feels like not
to eat for a week. We don’t know what it was like to have a fear of death in a
world where there are no antibiotics or waterproof fabrics.”
Using 19th-century photographic techniques is tightly related to the notions of
personal experience, individualizing, and customizing the process. Statements that
indicate the existence of these concepts are frequently encountered during the
interviews. “To make things with my hand”, “to have a tactile experience”, “to add
things from myself to the photograph”, “to create unique outcomes”, and “to achieve
a broader area of freedom” are among the provided statements when the
photographers asked why they prefer to work with 19th-century photographic
techniques.
This emergent do-it-yourself spirit is mostly motivated by deficiencies or restrictions
partaking in the contemporary technical and visual culture. Burcu Böcekler suggests
that techniques such as cyanotype, van dyke brown, and gum bichromate provide
extensive areas of freedom and possibilities for their users. Such techniques give
their users infinite possibilities for visual production. Due to the experimental nature
and fluid structures of these techniques, they are open to improvised approaches.
Variability of chemical proportions, surface types, weather conditions, and individual
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human touch are always at play in these processes. Therefore, no process nor image
can be the exact replica of the other. In this regard, with the utilization of
19th-century techniques, the photographer gains more intervention chances to the
process rather than being completely driven by apparatuses and strict technical
processes.
Technological apparatuses that we use today are increasingly turning into closed
boxes. They impose their own strict ways of utilization and user behavior. Moreover,
using tools apart from their intended purposes is becoming increasingly difficult for
users. This standardization in tools and in turn human behavior is one of the main
reasons why some contemporary users/photographers are seeking ways for circuit
bending, or in this specific case, chemical bending. For most 19th-century
photographic techniques, the requirements and procedures are quite loose and can be
altered according to the specific intentions of the user. Moreover, when 19th-century
photographic techniques are combined with other methods such as digital
manipulation, painting, clipping, bleaching, etc. the degree of freedom that the user
gains becomes almost immeasurable.
In relation to the extensive area of freedom acquired through the use of 19th-century
techniques, there are recurring keywords encountered during the interviews. As
much as these techniques allow their users to create unique and exclusive images, the
uniqueness and exclusiveness of the image do not always come from the user.
“Accidentality”, “coincidence”, and “serendipity” are among the keywords which are
also constantly verbalized by photographers. Behind Ergül Karagözoğlu’s decision to
divert to 19th-century photographic techniques, her dissatisfaction with the
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uniformity and commonness of the images that are produced with digital methods
lies. According to Karagözoğlu, 19th-century techniques introduce serendipity to the
process which is responsible for the uniqueness and intimacy of the images as much
as the photographer itself:
“The process is under my control but at some point, it slips through my fingers.
The process is not completely out-of-control or you do not leave it to chance.
However, it is under your control until a certain point, after which you can only
guess what is going to happen. You are working with materials that you know but
the outcome can still surprise you. Instead of doing the same thing over and over
again, you feel as if you are doing something different each time.”
According to this point of view, images come into being as the joint effort of the
photographer and the technique. In a similar manner, coincidence and accidentality
are what Tomáš Hetmánek is seeking after. “I would like to create an area of
uncontrollability” states Hetmánek and within this area of uncontrollability, he
prefers to practice photography. Mordançage and paper negatives allow Hetmánek to
balance accidentality and controllability. While the photographer can dictate most of
the process when using these techniques, there are always small variations that
manifest themselves which are beyond the control of the photographer.
For Nilden Aksoy, using plant-based photographic techniques such as anthotype,
chlorophyll, and lumen print are ways to become acquainted and cooperate with
nature. Aksoy explains her orientation toward the plant-based techniques as a result
of her feeling of restriction with the digital methods. While digital methods only
appealed to her sense of vision, she suggests, plant-based techniques allowed her to
construct sensory experiences that are unparalleled by the digital. This new way of
production provided her with tactile sensations. Having a hands-on approach,
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working with plants both in their solid and liquid forms, and creating physical
objects are primary examples of the mentioned tactile sensations. Moreover, what
made the plant-based photographic process a collaboration between Aksoy and
nature is the fact that most of the images Aksoy produces go beyond her control.
Anthotype process is highly dependent on the characteristics of the plants that are
used, and weather conditions such as humidity, sun, etc. According to Aksoy, the
photographer cannot claim total control over the process but can only be a worker
with the labor he/she provides. Besides, due to anthotype’s unfixable nature, from the
moment they are created, images start their constant change and move towards their
inevitable decay. Aksoy draws attention to the resemblance between the
characteristics of the anthotype process and with that of nature and human nature. In
the course of life, nothing stays still, everything is in constant change, even in
opposition to one’s desire.
Despite her feeling of restriction with digital, just like her contemporaries, Aksoy
does not completely break away from digital technologies. In fact, she does not
intend to do so. She believes that digital means have their own benefits and uses that
can complement chemical-based techniques depending on the situation. For example,
she suggests that digital reproductions of plant-based images can be used as a way to
document the image before it disappears. Subsequently, the original and the
reproduction can be presented together to demonstrate the impact of time over the
photograph.
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These photographers are called contemporary for a reason. “I don’t want to be an
escapist” states Hetmánek and manifests his intention as not to turn his back on the
present. In fact, this sentence summarizes the intentions and approaches of all
photographers in the research sample. They do not intend to escape from the present
to another century, but rather they strive to resist the limited movement area imposed
on the users by the current hegemonic technologies and to express their own visual
desires by taking advantage of the current technologies as well as other ones
available from any time in history.
Unsurprisingly, this resistance starts with the internet. For the majority of the
participants, the internet is the primary platform where they had their first encounter,
either intentionally or unintentionally, with one of the 19th-century photographic
techniques. Moreover, for all of them, the internet or social media are the foremost
platforms where they acquire technical information about the processes they are
using, exchange ideas with others, and troubleshoot. It is unsurprising because
almost all information today is obtained through the archives of the internet or from
the virtual communities of social media platforms. Especially, during the Covid-19
pandemic and lockdowns that arrived with it, the internet has become the only way
for staying in touch with the community. Kerim Suner mentioned that during the
lockdown he managed to attend an online daguerreotype workshop by Eastman
Museum. Moreover, Tomáš Hetmánek used Instagram as a platform to organize live
conversations with fellow photographers under the name of Chemical Talks
(Kimyasal Muhabbetler). Others also drew attention to the connective ability of the
internet and social media platforms.
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For Murat Sarıyar, the post-digital break occurs in a different form. Initially, a
graphic designer and a sculptor, Sarıyar used to make 3D modeled sculptures by
using digital software. Then, he would proceed to virtually illuminate and compose
photographs of his sculptures. The complete process would take place inside a
computer. When Sarıyar was introduced to wet plate collodion and oil print, his
earlier practice of 3D modeling and virtual photography left its place to
photographing actual hand-made sculptures with the 19th-century techniques. Sarıyar
explained his motivation to use 19th-century photographic techniques as a result of
the aesthetic qualities they offer. Oil print allowed Sarıyar to create images that have
illustration-like characteristics:
I wish I could paint but I couldn’t. Doing things that I can shape with my hands,
that I can move around, and that I shape with light was easier for me. I made the
sculptures for this reason. In fact, I made photographs because I couldn’t paint. It
proceeded to a point where I made sculptures and created an illustrative aura by
photographing them [...] Behind my decisions, there was always an aesthetic
concern. I turned to alternative techniques because of their aesthetic qualities.
Stains that you get on the edges of the image when you make collodion with large
format cameras and lenses with wide apertures; and the grainy texture of the oil
print were among my preferred aesthetic features. These are choices people
make.”
Compensation property of 19th-century photographic techniques for other types of
media that is unavailable to the user for any reason is another point that requires
critical attention. In Sarıyar’s case, such techniques are used in order to compose
images that have illustrative quality, for others, they are employed for different
intentions. However, as distinct as photographers are with their intentions, they are
mainly motivated by compensating for things that are unavailable to them in the
current hegemonic media environment. Therefore, the hybridization of analog and
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digital technologies or completely diverting into alternative techniques should be
seen as attempts by users towards compensating for the drawbacks and deficits of
hegemonic media as well as the lack of ability of users for certain types of media.
Figure 34. Fake Mate in Aquarium, Image from Murat Sarıyar’s Studio, 2017
5.2. 19th-Century Photographic Techniques as Imaginary Media
In the light of obtained information through the analysis of interviews, it is argued
that the contemporary use of 19th-century photographic techniques are exemplary of
imaginary media practice. At first glance, the use of such techniques may seem like
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longing for the past, however, when discourses and practices of photographers are
examined closely, it can be seen that beneath the surface, the 19th-century
photographic techniques and their hybridization with contemporary methods provide
experimental playgrounds for imagining alternatives for photographic practice rather
than being an escape route from the contemporary digital culture. For contemporary
photographers who use 19th-century techniques, these techniques are not used as the
only ways of production nor do photographers completely cut their ties from the
digital culture in which they are willingly or unwillingly embedded.
By looking at definitions and descriptions of imaginary media provided by Eric
Kluitenberg and Siegfried Zielinski, it becomes a more structured and well-framed
task to interpret the contemporary use of 19th-century photographic techniques as
imaginary media. Against all industrial and commercial odds, 19th-century
photographic techniques resisted total annihilation by new technologies and the
industry. They still have properties that make them valuable in the eyes of certain
contemporary photographers. Now they lead a modest life outside of their own time,
finding themselves safe corners to survive but also not refraining from provoking
hegemonic media practices. When Kluitenberg and Zielinski’s understandings of
imaginary media are followed, it becomes an easier task to position 19th-century
photographic techniques in the framework of imaginary media. In the light of
Zielinski’s categorization of imaginary media, such techniques, without a doubt, fall
under the crown of untimely machines. They are wanted and sought after, even
though in a niche caliber, even 150-or-so years after their initial emergence.
Moreover, they are constantly transformed and individualized by their
users/imaginers. More importantly, as Kluitenberg suggests, 19th-century
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photographic techniques carry the characteristics of compensatory machines. They
are resurfaced as tools to fill in the gaps of lack of user gratification which are
present in the current digital photographic practices.
5.2.1. Compensation Machines
“Anything in art is a possibility, a limited possibility” is a sentence provided by
Tomáš Hetmánek which highlights an essential point when understanding
19th-century photographic techniques as compensation machines. Indeed, any
practice that requires the use of certain apparatuses, whether it is defined as art or
not, remains restricted to a frame of possibilities. At times, the frame is wider and the
people functioning within have more options; at other times the frame is narrower
and people cannot choose to function differently than the specific way that is
imposed by the apparatus even if they want to. This is also true in photography.
Despite the creative vision of the photographer, the process is always limited to the
elbow room determined by the apparatus and materials that are involved in the
process.
In digital photography, cameras are closed boxes that are decorated with software
and programs which allow their users to choose from a predetermined set of options.
Moreover, the results mostly carry out their existence behind the flat screen, at a
physical distance from their viewers. Using 19th-century photographic techniques
and hybridizing them with digital is an attempt towards compensating for the
relatively narrow elbow room. This way, the photographic practice is moved out of
the control of software and beneath the flat screens. The three-dimensional
photographic object starts to share the same physical realm with its user. The
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removal of the intermediary agents opens up the frame of possibilities. Human touch
as well as senses other than vision get involved in the process.
According to Murat Sarıyar, photography is an interactive practice, however, the
computer screen (or any other screen in this matter) isolates its user by putting a
distance between the image and the observer. Therefore, the increasing tangibility of
photography would compensate for the physical interactivity that is missing in the
hegemonic apparatuses and practices. This would also mean restoring the missing
human element emphasized by many of the photographers.
However, as it is stressed by Eric Kluitenberg, being compensatory machines
represent only a single façade of the overall process for imaginary media.
Contemporary use of 19th-century photographic techniques may compensate for
certain problems that arrive with the digital culture, however, no media is
problem-free. While compensating or expecting to compensate for some issues, each
medium and its surroundings present their own problematic aspects.
5.2.2. Frustration Machines
It is challenging to suggest that the contemporary use of 19th-century photographic
techniques quickly loses their compensatory characteristics. They do not start to
frustrate their users in a short span of time. This is mostly due to the extensive area
of freedom they provide for their users. There are always circuit and
chemical-bending options when dealing with and hybridizing such techniques which
in turn makes it quite difficult not to get around problems. However, that is not to say
such techniques are free of frustration. In fact, they make their users face various
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unsettling obstacles and problems along the way. Among those are issues related to
health, aesthetics, environment, money, politics, and culture.
Compensation machines turn into frustration machines, Kluitenberg informs us,
because no medium is perfect, and eventually, user expectations exceed the
capabilities of the actual media apparatuses. A case in point is the risk that certain
chemicals pose to human health. Due to their nature, most silver-based photographic
processes contain chemicals and reactions which release toxic fumes that could be
fatal to inhale. Therefore, they require well-ventilated and well-equipped workshops.
However, the safety precautions are not always easy to fulfill in households where
many photographers in fact try to conduct their darkroom activities. Each
photographer in the research sample indicated their concerns with the dangerousness
of the techniques. While the health concerns restrained some of them from working
with techniques such as wet plate collodion, some of them decided to go the distance
and employed the technique by taking necessary precautions.
Among the wet plate collodion users Kerim Suner, Murat Sarıyar, and Tomáš
Hetmánek, only Kerim Suner continues to produce collodion images. Sarıyar and
Hetmánek mentioned health concerns as one of many reasons behind their decision
to quit the collodion after several years of practice. While other photographers are
also aware of the risk these techniques pose for humans, some are more concerned
about their harmful impact of them on nature. Nilden Aksoy and Burcu Böcekler
mentioned the harm that is caused by the improper disposal of chemical waste. Once
again, it requires well-equipped darkrooms and workshops as well as an extensive
amount of care by the photographer to properly dispose of the chemical wastes. The
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abovementioned restrictive characteristics of certain 19th-century photographic
techniques are or at least should be the concern of anyone who works with such
harmful chemicals. On the other hand, there are also frustrative characteristics of
19th-century photographic techniques that originate from region-specific social,
cultural, political, and economic factors and cannot be generalized at the global level.
During the interviews, each photographer was asked about the challenges and
conveniences they faced when using 19th-century photographic techniques in
Turkey. The answers were multiplexed and tightly related to the local political,
economical, and cultural contexts and discourses.
From the beginning of 2015 to the end of 2016, Turkey has experienced twenty-one
bombed suicide attacks in its many cities, including its capital Ankara and its most
populous city İstanbul. As a result, more than 360 civilians and law enforcement
officers were killed and more than 2000 people were wounded. Throughout these
two years and in the aftermath of the attacks, almost every aspect of everyday
practice in Turkey has seen substantial disturbances. Besides the fact that anxiety of a
potential explosion heightened and the idea of death became an everyday notion,
there have also been indirect consequences of these tragic events.
Tomáš Hetmánek and Aydın Berk Bilgin stated the increasing difficulty and trouble
in buying chemicals that have toxic and explosive characteristics following 2016.
When attempting to buy such chemicals, such as cyanide, they were confronted with
suspicion and doubt. Moreover, according to these photographers, such attempts also
carried the risk of ending up on a blacklist. Aydın Berk Bilgin who places handmade
pinhole cameras in public places for long periods of time to create solargraphs told
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the story of one of his pinhole cameras being destructed by the police due to
suspicion of being a bomb. He was later called to the police station to give a
statement about his intentions. Photographers indicated their frustration with the
challenges they faced emerging due to Turkey’s socio-political background as well as
the obscurity of their photographic practice within the overall community.
Other photographers in the sample also described a sense of alienation and
incomprehensibility. “Even among photographers” stated Nilden Aksoy “many
people think the photograph is something that the digital camera makes. They cannot
imagine how it can be physically created.” Similar statements were made by each
photographer in order to highlight the problems they faced during their photographic
practices. Aydın Berk Bilgin stated that many times he faced the reaction “Why did
you even bother? You could have done this in photoshop.” According to Tomáš
Hetmánek, the majority of the photographic community surrender to their
apparatuses and let the cameras direct the process:
I am using a camera but if you leave the task completely to the camera, then it is
the camera that makes the photograph, not me. You always see this kind of
surrender. People always ask about your camera. They would also say that you
cannot do certain things with this camera etc. But nobody is asking a cook about
his pans or pots or what kind of flame he uses. You can cook a delicious meal with
an aluminum pan, it doesn’t have to be made out of steel. What matters is the
outcome. I would like to cook precisely as I want. I don’t just want to throw
ingredients inside a pot and wait for the outcome. Cooking that meal is my duty.
This dichotomy between the understandings and approaches of the majority and
minority towards photography seems to be another frustrative point. However,
frustration does not only derive from not being understood by others. By providing
examples from alternative photography festivals organized in European countries,
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Aksoy also mentions the lack of organized and sustained community as well as the
hardship of communication between alternative and experimental photographers in
Turkey which makes it difficult for them to group with people with shared intentions
and approaches. She suggests that such photographers usually end up conducting
isolated practices in Turkey. Finally, there is a monetary issue. Value drop in Turkish
currency in recent years made it increasingly difficult to buy the necessary materials
and equipment as well as to import them.
Alongside their compensatory characteristics, it is clear that there are also inevitable
global and local frustrative features when 19th-century photographic techniques are
put into contemporary use. As Kluitenberg suggests, there is not a single
communication medium that is problem-free. Whether 19th-century photographic
techniques are considered successful in compensating for deficiencies in
contemporary photographic understanding and satisfying user expectations or not,
their use and critical investigation still provide valuable experimentation grounds for
the photographic scholarship. The existing talks and practices around such untimely
machines offer us a way to re-construct what photography is and what it will become
in the near future. In a world where digital has established itself as the norm,
practices that go against its grain, transform its ways of utilization, and create
ruptures in its supposedly undisputed existence can help us critically evaluate and
re-consider its stature as the inevitable norm. Current digital photographic cultures
and practices do not represent the ultimate positions within the history of
photography. Even if they are forgotten, discarded, marginalized, or abandoned there
were alternatives once which were not simple rudimentary steps in the
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ever-developing course of technologies but rather possibilities that had potential to
open up to alternative futures.
5.3. Rooted in the Past, Ramified in the Present
Contemporary use of 19th-century photographic techniques are rooted in the past, yet
they also branch out to fresh directions under the influence of contemporary culture.
21st-century discourses which help resurface the 19th-century photographic
techniques and re-construct the meaning of such techniques show both similarities
and differences when compared to earlier photographic discourses.
Historically, the essential function of each photographic process is to come up with
fixed and reproducible images. For this reason, the 19th-century is full of personages
who aimed to “perfect” this image-fixing process. “Obstacles” such as
temporariness, irreproducibility, slowness, and complicatedness of each technique
were resolved by a new one in the 19th-century. However, with contemporary
utilization, 19th-century techniques have gained some unique functions. In fact, these
functions are not intrinsic features of these techniques but rather later functions
assigned to them by the users. Today, the challenge in photography is not to capture
and fix the image as it was in the 19th-century. The challenge is to rescue the image
from its confined spaces. From the viewpoint of our contemporary culture, the
19th-century techniques do not present obstacles that need to be surmounted. On the
contrary, they carry a strong do-it-yourself spirit and offer an increased radius of
movement for their users and create a common ground where photographers can
physically interact with their images.
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It is clear that the aesthetic discourse has always situated itself right next to the
photographic practice. The need for a distinct visual language is existent in the
statements of each photographer in the research sample. However, within the practice
of each photographer, the aesthetic discourse manifests itself in different intensities.
Once the works of early masters of photography such as the Scottish duo David
Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson were resembled by critics to the works of those
great masters such as Rembrandt, today we see the close tie between the aesthetic
understanding of painting and chemical-based photography in Murat Sarıyar’s
practice. As different as photography and painting are in their practice, the end
results seem to converge in the aesthetic discourse specifically when photography is
employed with aesthetic intentions. While Murat Sarıyar builds his practice
particularly around the aesthetic discourse, for other photographers, the aesthetic
value of the photograph follows the functions of the process.
As Burcu Böcekler suggests, the process of creating images with 19th-century
photographic techniques carries emancipatory characteristics which are as essential
as the aesthetic qualities they offer. This perspective shares similarities with that of
the early antiquarian avant-garde because for them the process of hand-making was
an important aspect that allowed the photograph to become an intimate object.
Another similarity with the first antiquarian avant-garde is the oppositional reaction
to the increasing massification and standardization. For photo-secessionists, mass
amateurization and mere technical use of photography caused them to turn towards
19th-century techniques. With contemporary photographers, the use of 19th-century
photographic techniques also demonstrates an oppositional reaction to the increasing
automation and standardization in 21st-century photography. Moreover, it is also
136
clear that, for some photographers such as Kerim Suner and Tomáš Hetmánek, the
dissatisfaction is not only oriented towards the hegemonic photographic practices
and discourses but also each superficialized aspect of the human experience on earth.
They act through photography because they have earlier ties with various forms of
photography.
Contemporary oppositional movement does not refuse hegemonic modes of
photography, on the contrary, it embraces them in order to make their marginal
practice more available and prominent. Almost in a Hockney-esque manner, they
bend the dominant uses of contemporary technologies, hybridize them with
19th-century photographic techniques, and create a space of subjective reflection in
order to make the photograph more of their own. This also means that not only does
19th-century techniques compensate for the shortcomings of contemporary
techniques but the process is a reciprocal one.
Another keyword that echoes both in the 19th-century and in the 21st-century
photographic discussions is “nature”. The keyword carries a similar meaning up until
a certain point and from that point on, it starts to gain divergent meanings for
photographers from these two centuries. In the introductory remarks of William
Henry Fox Talbot’s prominent book The Pencil of Nature, photographs were referred
to as images “impressed by Nature’s hand”. Only when the photographer understands
and respects the laws of nature, can he get closer to achieving perfect photographs.
Laying aside the discussion of whether it is possible to achieve “perfect”
photographs or not, it is clear that one of photography’s many identities was
137
perceived as a collaboration between the laws of Nature and the photographer in the
19th-century. Nilden Aksoy too suggests a collaboration with nature in her practice.
Talbot and Aksoy both agree that nature presents obstacles that the photographer
cannot overcome, but can only work with. However, they soon start to diverge in
their specific motives behind this proposed collaboration. For Talbot, the harmonious
collaboration with nature leads to perfect images. For Aksoy, on the other hand,
achieving a perfect image is not the goal of this collaboration. This is also true for
Ergül Karagözoğlu. Ungovernability of these techniques gives them their edge,
which is the experimental identity that can create unexpected results. In addition to
their experimental nature, Aksoy’s emphasis on collaboration with nature comes
from the possibility of exclusively working with natural materials that come from the
earth and slowly return to earth in processes such as anthotype and chlorophyll print
as well as printing images on plantable seed papers.
As a final remark, an interesting metaphor emerges from Kerim Suner’s statements.
For one of his current projects, Suner photographs both historical and contemporary
landmarks of Istanbul. He named the project “Istanbul Through the Eyes of the Past”.
In Suner’s project, 19th-century photographic techniques and equipment reclaim the
identity of the “eye of the past”. Moreover, Suner suggests that by photographing the
Istanbul of today, such techniques offer their photographers and audience a glimpse
of what could have been to embrace a gaze that belongs to another century.
According to Suner, even if the depicted scene or person is familiar and well-known,
it gains an unfamiliar characteristic when captured with wet plate collodion and
delivers an uncanny feeling to its viewer. Almost as if they gain a ghostly property.
138
Unfamiliar characteristics of the wet plate collodion and uncanny feeling once were
the norms for the 19th-century everyday person. People would perceive someone or
somewhere they did not see through these ghostly images. Today, the 19th-century
vision and perception induced by wet plate collodion are long forgotten (!) and
replaced by crystal clear digital color images. The eye of the past metaphor is
intriguing because once again the issue of vision comes into play and mates with a
mechanical way of visual production. More interestingly, it proposes a gateway to an
alternative type of visual perception from another point in time.
Discourses and practices regarding the contemporary use of 19th-century techniques
resemble those of earlier discourses from the history of photography but are not
always congruent or limited to. It is visible that as the general photographic context
changes, discourses that form around certain practices shed their old skins and start
developing novel meanings and identities. Moreover, compensatory features which
arrive with these new identities may outweigh their frustrative characteristics or they
can be turned into desirable features when combined with contemporary techniques
and approaches.
5.4. An Inside Out View: Researcher as Experimenter
As it was discussed earlier under the title of “Experimental Media Archaeology”,
being an outside observer does not always provide the best possible critical
perspective for the researcher. On occasions, the researcher also needs to physically
participate in the process they are investigating in order to uncover the implicit
knowledge that is masked to the outside observing eye. By undertaking an
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experimental approach, I experienced some of the mentioned 19th-century
photographic techniques myself. Nonetheless, this experimentation process remained
limited to two techniques and several modern variations. Therefore, this subchapter
only represents a tiny fraction of the available corpus and should be approached as a
subjective experience to a certain type of hands-on production.
First of all, I had the chance to attend a workshop in 2018 and experiment with
cyanotype. In addition to that, due to its easy accessibility, I explored the anthotype
process during the course of this research in the summer of 2021. While both
techniques had some technical similarities, each process provided distinct
experiences. Both of these techniques are mainly used for printing. Therefore, I used
digital negatives as well as various objects in order to print images. While the
preparation process of cyanotype was slightly more complicated than anthotype, the
printing process was a lot less challenging.
The difference originates from the main materials used for each process. Cyanotype
is an iron-based inorganic process while anthotype is a plant-based organic process.
For this reason, cyanotype requires significantly less sunlight/exposure time than
anthotype to properly print an image. To exemplify the huge gap between the two, I
should mention how much time I spent on average for both exposure processes. I
tried to print my cyanotype images in March in Ankara which had partially cloudy
weather at the time. In these conditions, the average exposure time was around 5-10
minutes. On the other hand, I printed my anthotype images in July in Antalya where I
had excess to sheer amount of sunlight without any clouds blocking the UV light
from reaching the image surface. Even in these conditions, the average exposure time
140
with two of the most light-sensitive plants, such as turmeric and chard, was around
8-10 hours. On top of that, anthotype images still had latent looks to them while
cyanotypes provided quite sharp and clear images. Moreover, it is clear that the end
product of cyanotype is a lot more durable against external factors while anthotype is
quite vulnerable to them. Even today, cyanotypes look as vivid as they were first
printed four years ago, while anthotypes are already fading away not even after a
year since they were printed.
Despite anthotype’s infeasibility towards creating an enduring image, the process did
not feel infertile at all. If there is a true homemade and self-sufficient photographic
process, it is definitely the anthotype process. Any plant petals, leaves, or roots that
are available in nature can be used as the basis of the light-sensitive solution required
for the process. There is a satisfactory feeling in using organic and easily accessible
materials, transforming them into light-sensitive solutions, and finally being able to
create light-sensitive surfaces by only using household equipment and materials.
Interacting with each material and the sense of having my fingerprint marking each
step of the process made it an invaluable experience. In the age where everything that
we use and consume is offered to us as already processed and transformed objects,
anthotype provides a pretty straightforward but equally effective experience for
deconstructing the everyday norms we are accustomed to.
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Figure 35. Chard Anthotype from Digital Negative, Ramified, 2021, Alaz Okudan
142
Figure 36. Turmeric Anthotype, Nature Morte, 2021, Alaz Okudan
Cyanotype, on the other hand, had different implications. Because of its use of
processed chemicals and part-dependence in industrial production, it does not
strongly possess characteristics such as self-sufficiency. However, because of its
143
relatively quick nature, it offers a higher control over the final image as well as better
practical ground for experimentality. Its swiftness provides opportunities for an
effective trial-and-error process and making quick adjustments for obtaining the
desired outcome.
Figure 37. Cyanotype, Landscape, 2018, Alaz Okudan
Overall, anthotype distinguished itself as a process-driven technique while cyanotype
as a goal-driven one while they both carried strong do-it-yourself characteristics.
With that being said, certain aspects of my experience and elicitations seem to be in
harmony with that of photographers in the research sample while certain other
aspects do not resemble each other at all. This is surely not a surprise. As diverse as
19th-century photographic techniques are in their characteristics, their denotations
also become multifaçated with the experience of each individual photographer.
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CHAPTER VI
CONCLUSION and DISCUSSION
The camera is a medium is what I suddenly realized, it’s neither an art, a
technique, a craft, nor a hobby—it’s a tool. It’s an extraordinary drawing tool. It’s as
if I, like most ordinary photographers, had previously been taking part in some
long-established culture in which pencils were used only for making dots—there’s
an obvious sense of liberation that comes when you realize you can make lines.
(David Hockney)
The history of photography is full of discontinuities, breaks, and disruptions that
constantly transformed the practice of photography and the identity of its object.
Diverse technological, practical, and intellectual approaches to photography resulted
in the emergence of a wide set of distinct photographic techniques. Despite this
diversity, certain techniques and uses that were aimed at the masses and favored by
industrialization and commercialization dominated the photographic practice by
suppressing alternative approaches. This domination resulted in a simplified and
superficialized writing and understanding of what photographic practice is and its
object are.
145
By undertaking a media archaeological approach, this research approached
19th-century photographic techniques not as ancient techniques which were primitive
predecessors of contemporary photographic technologies that only functioned as
simple stepping-stones, but rather as one of many options in photographic production
that have the potential to offer different experiences and outcomes to their users.
19th-century photographic techniques should not be simply labeled as historical
techniques but seen as techniques that non-hierarchically co-exist with any other
technique from the history of photography, even if they attract marginal attention.
Camera Archaeologia demonstrated that photography is currently experiencing a
post-digital break. As for indicators of this break, we are witnessing the emergence
of not only the 19th-century photographic techniques but also the emergence of
never-seen understandings, approaches, and configurations. The hybridization of
numeric and chemical means opens up new fields for practice and discovery.
Jonathan Openshaw’s term the “digital native” fits very well with contemporary
photographers who work with 19th-century photographic techniques. They are by
chance digital and by choice analog. They cannot choose the media environment they
were born and live in, however, they have a chance to alter how they are going to
practice photography by choosing alternative methods rather than simply using what
is provided for the masses.
The post-digital break is motivated by the limiting nature of the current hegemonic
media tools and practices, as well as their inability to satisfy certain needs of their
users. Among these needs are to experience a do-it-yourself sensation, to work with
146
tangible objects, to restore human touch, to gain a distinctive aesthetic look, to create
a sphere of uncertainty as well as to gain a wider area of freedom. Of course, these
motivations are not shared by each photographer. Subjective intentions are strongly
manifested and approaches are presented. For each photographer, certain motivations
were pointed out more powerfully while others are either less pronounced or even
completely absent from their statements. Even in a small research sample of seven
participants, the number of diverse motivations suggests that 19th-century
photographic techniques appear distinct in their characteristics and capabilities for
each user. They offer a diverse range of possibilities depending on the intention of
their users.
Nevertheless, it does not mean that the motivations of the photographers cannot be
collected under one roof. Despite all this diversity, each photographer in the research
sample uses 19th-century photographic techniques in order to compensate for certain
things that are not completely present for them in the current photographic practice.
The subjectivity of dissatisfaction is noteworthy because not all photographers feel
the same satisfaction or dissatisfaction towards certain aspects of media discourses,
apparatuses, and practices. Dissatisfaction that each photographer carries, be it
aesthetic, technical, or practical, is not a shared experience of each individual who
resides in digital culture. This subjectivity in turn changes the role each user appoints
to their preferred 19th-century photographic technique. By using chemical-based
photographic methods and hybridizing them with digital ones, contemporary
photographers try to come up with their own compensatory machines for what seems
to be lacking for them in the current photographic culture.
147
While assigning certain roles and compensatory characteristics to 19th-century
photographic techniques, statements of contemporary photographers demonstrate a
significant divergence from earlier discourses of the 19th-century. As much as
contemporary use of such techniques suggests strong historical ties to the
19th-century, discourses which help them resurface in the 21st-century are quite
distinct from the 19th-century. While in the 19th-century, photography was in a
constant process of being stripped off from its supposed weaknesses such as
temporariness, irreproducibility, slowness, and technical complicatedness.
Abolishment of these characteristics is what helped photography become a mass
medium and what in the end made 19th-century photographic techniques fall into
disuse.
Today, contemporary photographers divert to chemical-based techniques by
embracing their previously assumed weaknesses and attaining new meanings to
them. In the contemporary context, disappearing photographs become a metaphor for
the evanescence of living beings. Unpredictability and inconsistency become
initiators of experimentality. Working with tangible materials starts to restore lost
human feelings and senses. The contrasting position in which the digital culture
places itself can be seen as the primary reason why contemporary photographers turn
out to perceive 19th-century photographic techniques as a field for discovering novel
meaning and experiences. The current photographic culture is dominated by swift
apparatuses and standardized processes, as well as virtual photographs that only exist
in clouds or digital storage spaces, and circulate at the speed of light. There are many
possibilities they provide for their users, however, chemical-based techniques offer
things they cannot seem to provide for some contemporary users.
148
As for the unique contribution of this research, there are a couple of points to
mention. The 21st-century resurfacing of 19th-century photographic techniques is
highly encountered in European and North-American contexts and most of the
technical, artistic, and academic information available on the internet comes from
these geographical contexts. However, as it was presented in this research, local
political, economical, and social components play important roles over how these
techniques are being approached and practiced. What Camera Archaeologia does is
to draw a framework of motivations that are experienced by contemporary
photographers without disregarding the local factors. Even though 19th-century
photographic techniques are resurfacing and they are being artistically practiced by a
number of photographers in Turkey, the academic research aspect of such resurfacing
is still understudied. Camera Archaeologia is believed to illuminate a glocal
fragment of an immense research field.
This research also provides a new look into the contemporary use of 19th-century
photographic techniques by undertaking a media archaeological approach. Even
though media archaeology has been an emerging field in the last decade and there
have been attempts to do media archaeological investigation of photography, this
specific topic has not been investigated from this specific critical perspective.
Therefore, it introduces a new investigation field for media archaeology and applies a
fresh critical framework to the subject of contemporary resurfacing of 19th-century
photographic techniques.
149
All that being said, Camera Archaeologia is not the sole example in its attempt.
There is an emerging trend in Turkey that consists of researchers with various
degrees and specific interests who put more emphasis on the academic research
aspect of 19th-century photographic techniques and their contemporary use.
For further research directions, Camera Archaeologia can offer a starting point. By
investigating different local contexts and factors, a comparative study can be
conducted. In order to discover the dynamics of the relationship between marginal
and hegemonic photographic practices and local socio-political factors, a similar
study may be conducted in a different cultural context. Such an attempt would
provide more information about the global and local characteristics of motivations
that contemporary photographers carry while diverting to 19th-century photographic
techniques.
One of the blindsides of this research may be its sole focus on what photographers
say about their photographic practices rather than what their photographs have to say
about them. While photographers carry certain perceived identities about their
intentions, understandings, and practices and they have a great potential to convey
such information through verbal statements, their photographic works can provide
further information that is absent in their verbal input. It was a strategic decision to
work with first-hand verbal statements rather than visual statements. Therefore,
future media archaeological research that takes photographs as its main object of
analysis has the possibility of revealing further information on the subject.
150
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APPENDICES
Appendix A. First Interview Questions
1. How and when did your involvement with photography start?
2. How and when did your involvement with 19th-century photographic
techniques start?
3. Which 19th-century photographic technique did you use first?
4. Which techniques did you use afterward?
5. Are there any techniques you stopped using? If so, why did you stop?
6. What aroused your interest in those photographic techniques?
7. How purist are you when it comes to using 19th-century techniques? Is it
possible to be a purist when using such techniques?
8. Terms such as alternative and experimental photography are also being used
by some photographers in order to define 19th-century photographic
techniques. What do these terms mean to you?
9. What do you think are the advantages and disadvantages of using
19th-century photographic techniques in Turkey? How was your own
experience?
10. People who use 19th-century photographic techniques seem not to stick to
one specific technique but try to discover many of them. What do you think is
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the reason for that? What is your motivation and intention when dealing with
multiple 19th-century photographic techniques?
11. Just like many aspects of our lives, photography is also increasingly digitized.
However, as an alternative approach, we also see the resurfacing of analog
and chemical-based techniques. Where do you think photographic practice is
going? What do you think would be the role of 19th-century photographic
techniques in the future?
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Appendix B. Second Interview Questions
1. What comes first for you: the idea for a project, individual photographs that
suggest a concept, or the photographic technique that you plan to use?
2. Do you have what you might call a “photographic style”? How do they
function in relation to your preferred photographic technique(s)?
3. Where would you say your practice falls on a continuum between completely
intuitive and pre-planned acts?
4. Do you think there is a necessity for a workshop when dealing with
19th-century photographic techniques?
5. How do you know when an individual photograph or a body of work is
finished?
6. Do you think certain 19th-century photographic techniques favor particular
end products such as an exhibition or a book?
7. Is there a photographer who inspires you with his/her practice and
photographs? Why?
8. Do you think social media and the internet are influential in your
photographic practice? If so, in which way?
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Appendix C. Photographer Profiles
Following brief photographer profiles are created by combining the information
acquired through interviews and self-definitions found on the personal websites of
each photographer. They should be seen as a pre-introduction before presenting the
main results obtained from the interviews. The names are presented in the same order
the interviews were conducted.
Kerim Suner
Kerim Suner is an Istanbul-based photographer and the founder of 1851.studio where
he extensively works with historical photographic processes such as wet plate
collodion, albumen print, salt print as well as silver gelatin dry plate, platinum/
palladium, and collodion chloride. He began to use historical photographic processes
with wet plate collodion in 2014. Suner is a former computer engineer.
Kerim Suner’s website: https://kerim.suner.photography/
Tomáš Hetmánek
Tomáš Hetmánek is an Istanbul-based self-taught photographer and a historical
photographic processes educator. Among Hetmánek’s preferred photographic
techniques there are wet plate collodion, salt print, paper negative, van dyke brown,
cyanotype, gum bichromate, oil print, and mordançage. He also combines his
photographs with drawing, painting, bleaching, and cut-up techniques to create
hybrid images. He began to use historical photographic processes in 2016 with his
introduction of the wet plate collodion process. Hetmánek is also a member of the
jazz manouche band Flapper Swing.
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Tomáš Hetmánek’s website: https://tomasHetmánek.com/
Aydın Berk Bilgin
Aydın Berk Bilgin is an Istanbul-based visual artist and an academician who works
with alternative photographic printing processes. Among the techniques he had used,
there are pinhole, salt print, solargraphy, paper negative, and wet plate collodion.
Bilgin completed his bachelor’s and master’s degree in photography by focusing on
the application of alternative photographic techniques and pinhole photography
respectively. He has been working with chemical-based and hands-on techniques
since the early 2000s.
Aydın Berk Bilgin’s website: https://www.aydinberkbilgin.com/
Murat Sarıyar
Murat Sarıyar is an Istanbul-based sculptor/photographer who extensively worked
with historical techniques such as wet plate collodion, oil print, paper negative,
cyanotype, and van dyke brown. Sarıyar started to work with historical photographic
processes with wet plate collodion in 2012. In recent years, he decided not to
continue his photographic practice.
Murat Sarıyar’s website: https://www.muratsariyar.com/
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Ayşe Nilden Aksoy
Ayşe Nilden Aksoy is an Istanbul-based experimental photographer who works with
hands-on techniques such as anthotype, cyanotype, powder process, chlorophyll
print, cyano-lumen, and chrysotype. Aksoy completed her bachelor’s and master’s
degrees in photography. In her master’s thesis, she focused on
plant-based/non-chemical photographic printing techniques and their contemporary
applications and implications. Aksoy has been using hands-on photographic
techniques since the early 2010s.
Ayşe Nilden Aksoy’s website: http://nildenaksoy.com/wpx/
Ergül Karagözoğlu
Ergül Karagözoğlu is a Bodrum-based experimental photograph ewr ho works with
techniques such as cyanotype, anthotype, chlorophyll print, gum bichromate, van
dyke brown, lumen print, and salt print. She completed her bachelor’s degree in
photography and is currently pursuing her master’s degree by writing a thesis on the
subject of accidentality and serendipity in 19th-century photographic techniques.
Karagözoğlu started to work with hands-on photographşc techniques when she
learned the cyanotype process in 2014.
Ergül Karagözoğlsu ’website: http://www.elykara.com/
Burcu Böcekler
Burcu Böcekler is an Istanbul-based photographer and academician who works with
historical photographic techniques such as cyanotype, van dyke
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brown, gum bichromate, and photogram. She is one of the instructors of the Old
Techniques in Photography course at Yıldız Technical University where she teaches
the mentioned techniques as well as traditional darkroom techniques. Böcekler’s
research is situated at the intersection of history and practice of photography.
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Appendix D. Photographers and 19th-Century Photographic Techniques and
Modern Variations They Use
Photographer Processing Printing
Kerim Suner Wet Plate Collodion
Silver Gelatin Dry Plate
Salt Print
Platinum / Palladium
Collodion Chloride
Albumen
Tomas Hetmanek Wet Plate Collodion Paper Negative
Salt Print
Cyanotype
Gum Bichromate
Silver Gelatin
Berk Bilgin Wet Plate Collodion Salt Print
Paper Negative
Solargraphy
Transfer Print
Murat Sarıyar Wet Plate Collodion Paper Negative
Cyanotype
Oil Print
Van Dyke Brown
Nilden Aksoy Cyanotype
Anthotype
Cyanolumen
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Chrysotype
Chlorophyll Print
Ergül Karagözoğlu Cyanotype
Anthotype
Chlorophyll Print
Gum Bichromate
Van Dyke Brown
Burcu Böcekler Cyanotype
Van Dyke Brown
Gum Bichromate
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