WEBVTT - Invention Playlist: The Camera, Part 2 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:09.400 Welcome to Invention, a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, everybody, 0:00:09.400 --> 0:00:12.239 welcome to Invention. My name is Robert Land, and I'm 0:00:12.320 --> 0:00:15.319 Joe McCormick, and we're back today to discuss a little 0:00:15.320 --> 0:00:18.760 bit more in the history of photography, the invention of 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:22.800 the first identifiable photographs. Now we've already done sort of 0:00:22.840 --> 0:00:25.320 a couple of episodes on this subject. We just had 0:00:25.360 --> 0:00:28.560 a whole episode about the camera obscura, the the idea 0:00:28.640 --> 0:00:32.880 that a closed, darkened chamber with a pinhole aperture will 0:00:32.920 --> 0:00:35.920 project images from the outside world on a on a 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:39.479 darkened wall, upside down and inverted, and how this has 0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:42.919 been used in say, the history of art, and how 0:00:42.920 --> 0:00:45.120 it was discovered. But then in the last episode we 0:00:45.159 --> 0:00:50.040 started talking about the precursors to modern photography. So we 0:00:50.080 --> 0:00:54.000 talked about Johann Heinrich Schultz and silver nitrate, his discovery 0:00:54.040 --> 0:00:57.440 about how silver nitrate darkens when exposed to light. We 0:00:57.480 --> 0:01:01.400 talked about Tom Wedgewood, the dream Boy, and Humphrey Davy 0:01:01.440 --> 0:01:04.640 and their experiments with what came to be called photograms 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:08.480 or shadow grams, also based on silver nitrate. And we 0:01:08.520 --> 0:01:14.560 talked about Joseph Nissafgnieps and heliography, which involved like put 0:01:14.640 --> 0:01:17.240 putting like bitumen on a on a plate and then 0:01:17.280 --> 0:01:19.520 exposing it to light and then washing off the parts 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:21.960 that hadn't hardened. And so I guess we should remember 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:26.360 where this technology was where it was left after Tom 0:01:26.360 --> 0:01:29.600 Wedgwood and Humphrey Davy's shadow grams. We we had figured 0:01:29.640 --> 0:01:32.560 out that you can cote, say a piece of leather 0:01:32.800 --> 0:01:35.600 or piece of glass or something any kind of surface 0:01:35.640 --> 0:01:40.120 with silver nitrate based solution and fix images or silhouettes 0:01:40.640 --> 0:01:43.520 onto the surface with light. But the problem was they 0:01:43.560 --> 0:01:46.600 couldn't figure out how to fix this image so that 0:01:46.680 --> 0:01:49.880 it was durable when exposed to more light. They needed 0:01:49.880 --> 0:01:53.880 a way of preventing additional exposure to light from corrupting 0:01:53.960 --> 0:01:58.640 the original image. So I'm really enjoying this exploration into photography, uh, 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:01.520 in part because it's just so much more to it 0:02:01.600 --> 0:02:05.640 than I initially realized. It's huge. Yeah, and I felt 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:08.040 like I had like a pretty good grasp of the 0:02:08.120 --> 0:02:11.240 history of photography and the invention of photography. Um, but 0:02:11.280 --> 0:02:14.000 when you when you start digging into it and uh 0:02:14.280 --> 0:02:19.280 and really stopping to consider this this weird almost alchemical 0:02:19.560 --> 0:02:23.519 process of early photography. Um, you know, it's so easy 0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:25.840 to take take it for granted nowadays, with our our 0:02:25.919 --> 0:02:30.240 instant digital imagery, that is just h and it's just 0:02:30.320 --> 0:02:32.400 like magic, and we don't think about it. We've become 0:02:32.440 --> 0:02:35.040 immune to the magic. We've we've become immune to it. 0:02:35.080 --> 0:02:37.200 And I think it's really helpful to to take it 0:02:37.800 --> 0:02:41.799 apart and look back at how we made these advancements. Yeah, 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:44.720 and of course, remember you make that comparison to alchemy. 0:02:44.800 --> 0:02:48.560 But Isaac Newton almost explicitly made that comparison. And remember 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:51.600 he talked about that it was a part of nature, 0:02:51.639 --> 0:02:56.720 that that nature loves transmutation, you know, this terminology transmutation, 0:02:56.800 --> 0:02:59.839 like the transmutation of lead into gold, which of course 0:02:59.880 --> 0:03:02.320 the alchemists wanted to do but I couldn't find a 0:03:02.360 --> 0:03:05.440 way to do and ultimately was a fool's errand because 0:03:05.480 --> 0:03:08.400 they didn't understand things about nuclear chemistry, and you know 0:03:08.639 --> 0:03:11.120 why that couldn't happen. But even though he's wrong in 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:14.000 his kind of alchemy based leaning is Isaac Newton does 0:03:14.040 --> 0:03:16.280 make this comparison in the realm of light. He says 0:03:16.320 --> 0:03:20.120 that light may well want to be transmuted into bodies 0:03:20.160 --> 0:03:24.320 by nature might want to be transmuted into material changes 0:03:24.360 --> 0:03:26.960 in substances you can hold in your hand. And of 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:30.919 course this is exactly the chemistry behind what would become photography, 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:35.480 light causing changes in substance. Yeah, and you know, one 0:03:35.480 --> 0:03:38.040 of the things about the invention of photography too, I 0:03:38.040 --> 0:03:41.440 think it's a great it's a great model for invention 0:03:41.920 --> 0:03:46.000 to consider past inventions we've discussed and future inventions, um, 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:48.320 particularly when it comes to certain questions, and one of 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:50.920 the big questions that we've we've loved to ask in 0:03:50.960 --> 0:03:55.360 regards to invention is why now, why not earlier? Why 0:03:55.440 --> 0:03:58.760 was any given invention? Why did it come to fruition 0:03:58.840 --> 0:04:01.800 at this particular time time and not an earlier time? 0:04:02.600 --> 0:04:05.600 And indeed, there have been there's been some consideration on 0:04:05.640 --> 0:04:10.440 this regarding Schultz's silver nitrate discoveries and why photography didn't 0:04:10.480 --> 0:04:13.520 take off in the early seventeen hundreds. And granted we're 0:04:13.520 --> 0:04:15.600 not talking about a huge lapse here. This is one 0:04:15.600 --> 0:04:18.520 of those situations where a technology comes around, it's forgotten 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:22.320 for centuries or millennia. But but but it has led 0:04:22.320 --> 0:04:24.160 many people to wonder, like, you know, why is there 0:04:24.240 --> 0:04:27.520 this gap? Um? And uh, I when I was looking 0:04:27.520 --> 0:04:30.200 into this I found a wonderful arts in society. That's 0:04:30.240 --> 0:04:34.560 the website um story titled why wasn't Photography invented Earlier? 0:04:35.160 --> 0:04:38.160 By Philip mccott. I think I'm pronouncing that correctly. It's 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:41.200 a h MC C O U A T. If you 0:04:41.240 --> 0:04:44.040 want to look look up this paper. But the author 0:04:44.080 --> 0:04:47.200 points out that this question was pondered in the highly 0:04:47.240 --> 0:04:52.080 influential History of Photography by the Gersheims uh quote. The 0:04:52.120 --> 0:04:56.200 circumstance that photography was not invented earlier remains the greatest 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:59.880 mystery in its history. I don't I mean, that's always 0:04:59.880 --> 0:05:02.800 a fun question to ask, but I don't know if 0:05:02.839 --> 0:05:07.040 it's always as piercing a question as the people asking 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:12.120 it think it is, because technology always seems obvious looking back. 0:05:12.240 --> 0:05:15.359 But I don't know. I mean, why wasn't the wheel 0:05:15.440 --> 0:05:18.120 invented earlier? We talked about this in the Wheel episode. 0:05:18.160 --> 0:05:21.320 We we don't know the answer. Maybe one answer as given. 0:05:21.560 --> 0:05:24.240 I think it was the hypothesis of Richard Bullet in 0:05:24.279 --> 0:05:26.600 that book we talked about was that the wheel just 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:30.640 wasn't really necessary until you had certain very specific types 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:35.120 of transportation scenarios. His his hypothesis is that that would 0:05:35.120 --> 0:05:37.479 be copper mining. This is you know, the wheel showed 0:05:37.520 --> 0:05:40.559 up there, because it's a scenario where a wheel makes 0:05:40.600 --> 0:05:43.800 a huge difference compared to say a normal pack animal 0:05:43.880 --> 0:05:46.080 that would have been used for thousands of years before that. 0:05:46.680 --> 0:05:48.440 But on like stuff to blow your mind. We've also 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:52.120 asked questions about basic electrical technologies. Why didn't the ancient 0:05:52.360 --> 0:05:57.119 Romans have friction generators or capacitors. They could have had those. 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:00.840 There's nothing stopping them from having these objects. They just 0:06:01.279 --> 0:06:03.800 never really did it or not that we know of 0:06:03.880 --> 0:06:05.919 for sure. And so a lot of times it's just 0:06:05.960 --> 0:06:08.640 hard to come up with a satisfactory explanation. But I 0:06:08.680 --> 0:06:11.560 think we should we should also question ourselves here and 0:06:11.640 --> 0:06:14.799 question the assumptions we're making when we ask that question 0:06:14.880 --> 0:06:18.480 with with with like an accusatory tone. Yeah. And and 0:06:18.680 --> 0:06:21.080 mccatt does a great job of sort of tackling this 0:06:21.160 --> 0:06:23.520 on two fronts. So, so first of all, he sort 0:06:23.520 --> 0:06:26.080 of he he looks at some of the the counter 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:29.600 evidence to this whole mystery, right, and he points out 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:33.479 that Schultz's discoveries were probably not as widespread as some 0:06:33.640 --> 0:06:37.360 historians may have interpreted, uh, and that the man's presentation 0:06:37.400 --> 0:06:41.479 to the Imperial Academy in Nuremberg went quote largely unnoticed, 0:06:41.640 --> 0:06:44.600 and it is work wouldn't see actual publication go after 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:47.320 his death, and his work was very likely difficult to 0:06:47.360 --> 0:06:52.040 access and not considered of much value at the time. Quote. Furthermore, 0:06:52.080 --> 0:06:54.839 those who actually were familiar with it were more likely 0:06:54.880 --> 0:06:57.839 to have come across it in popular books on amusing 0:06:57.920 --> 0:07:02.120 parlor tricks rather than in scientific journals. Yeah, like, try 0:07:02.160 --> 0:07:05.640 to forget photography exists and pretend you just don't know 0:07:05.680 --> 0:07:08.839 that this is even possible. Somebody demonstrates to you that 0:07:08.920 --> 0:07:12.800 a bottle holding a slurry of silver nitrate, you can 0:07:12.840 --> 0:07:15.000 make letters in the side of the bottle with a 0:07:15.040 --> 0:07:18.320 stencil by exposing those areas to light, and then you 0:07:18.360 --> 0:07:22.360 shake the bottle and they go away. Do you immediately conclude, Ah, 0:07:22.400 --> 0:07:25.680 I can fix images of the natural world. I'm not 0:07:25.760 --> 0:07:28.280 so sure that's obvious to people who do not have 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:31.960 our photography adult brains. But to be clear, we're talking 0:07:32.000 --> 0:07:35.440 about a hundred years or so. Still, that's a considerable 0:07:35.480 --> 0:07:39.040 chunk of time. Right. So Schultze's experiments with silver nitrate 0:07:39.080 --> 0:07:41.360 darkening and a bottle that was in the seventeen teens, 0:07:41.400 --> 0:07:44.640 like seventeen seventeen, and then we had Tom Wedgewood and 0:07:44.720 --> 0:07:48.920 Humphrey Davy around the turn of the eighteen hundreds. Uh, 0:07:48.920 --> 0:07:51.960 and we're gonna get to today Henry Fox Talbot and 0:07:52.040 --> 0:07:54.880 Louis de Gare, who come up with what's really definitely 0:07:55.320 --> 0:07:58.960 something that counts as photography around the eighteen thirties, towards 0:07:58.960 --> 0:08:01.960 the end of the eighteen thirty. Now, another important to 0:08:02.000 --> 0:08:04.480 effect that mccau points out here is that, of course 0:08:04.520 --> 0:08:07.280 you have to have uh, some other key and advancements 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:11.520 come along in chemistry to make photography, the further evolution 0:08:11.560 --> 0:08:15.040 of of photography really possible exactly. I mean, because as 0:08:15.040 --> 0:08:17.600 we're going to see, like Dagarin Talbot's processes are more 0:08:17.680 --> 0:08:21.520 chemically complicated than what these earlier people were trying to do. Right, 0:08:21.560 --> 0:08:25.080 So specifically you need the isolation and production of both 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:29.400 iodine and bromine. But in addition to all of this, uh. 0:08:29.520 --> 0:08:32.600 Mccau does a good job too of ruminating on the 0:08:32.720 --> 0:08:36.120 role of hindsight in all of these matters. It's easy 0:08:36.200 --> 0:08:39.079 for us to say, why didn't someone think of that earlier? 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:41.760 Like here are the pieces uh, And he points to 0:08:41.840 --> 0:08:46.000 a particular study on hindsight bias. Um. This one was 0:08:46.120 --> 0:08:51.280 a one by a Mandel patently non obvious empirical demonstration 0:08:51.400 --> 0:08:56.079 that the hindsight bias renders patent decisions irrational from Ohio 0:08:56.160 --> 0:08:59.680 State Law Journal in two in twenty in two thousand six. Okay, 0:08:59.679 --> 0:09:02.360 so what Mandel find here? Well, so the key takeaways 0:09:02.360 --> 0:09:05.320 from this are seventy of people who have been told 0:09:05.360 --> 0:09:08.360 that a solution had actually been found considered that this 0:09:08.440 --> 0:09:12.520 solution would have been obvious. Twenty percent of people who 0:09:12.559 --> 0:09:15.000 had not been told that a solution had been found 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:17.360 felt that the solution would be obvious, and this held 0:09:17.400 --> 0:09:20.199 true even when subjects were warned against the dangers of 0:09:20.320 --> 0:09:24.520 hindsight bias. Okay, so just telling somebody people have already 0:09:24.559 --> 0:09:27.400 figured out X, even if maybe it's something they didn't 0:09:27.400 --> 0:09:30.960 already know about, makes it seem obvious to them exactly 0:09:31.000 --> 0:09:34.200 and interestingly enough, I think this this, Uh, this falls 0:09:34.200 --> 0:09:36.840 in a little bit with the potential dangers of narrative thinking, 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:39.800 which we recently discussed on our other podcast, Stuff to 0:09:39.800 --> 0:09:43.120 Blow Your Mind. Um. It seems that when we learn 0:09:43.240 --> 0:09:47.160 of an outcome, such as something from the history of invention, 0:09:47.760 --> 0:09:51.520 we incorporate that ending into the story of the events, 0:09:51.600 --> 0:09:55.160 and therefore the end becomes seemingly inevitable. Oh, this is 0:09:55.160 --> 0:09:57.200 always a part of narrative. Like when you're in the 0:09:57.240 --> 0:09:59.800 middle of a movie, you're thinking, how's it going to end? 0:10:00.040 --> 0:10:01.560 But then when you get to the end, you're like, 0:10:01.600 --> 0:10:03.600 that was obvious. Of course it had to end that way. 0:10:03.640 --> 0:10:06.280 Of course they were going to invent photography, right. But 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:09.120 his Macca points out, you know, some people have have 0:10:09.240 --> 0:10:13.480 certainly disagreed on the inevitable nature of photography. Author Cee Clark, 0:10:13.559 --> 0:10:16.240 for instance, who in addition to writing science fiction, wrote 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:18.520 a lot about science and the history of science, and 0:10:18.559 --> 0:10:22.079 he considered photography to be one of the sixteen most 0:10:22.240 --> 0:10:26.600 une unexpected inventions. Oh no, I'm this has got me thinking, 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:29.680 what are the most unexpected inventions we've covered on the 0:10:29.679 --> 0:10:32.240 show so far? X rays have got to be one 0:10:32.280 --> 0:10:34.840 of them, right, that's just out of the blue, no idea. 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:38.760 X rays is definitely on that list, along with nuclear energy, 0:10:38.920 --> 0:10:43.199 radio lasers, and carbon dating, uh, and of course some others. 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:46.200 Those are the ones that he highlights in covering Clark's work. 0:10:46.240 --> 0:10:48.240 But uh. He says that one of the key things 0:10:48.320 --> 0:10:50.840 is that a lot of the the entries on Clark's 0:10:50.840 --> 0:10:54.400 list are our inventions that span different disciplines. And again, 0:10:54.559 --> 0:10:57.400 I think to all the things coming together in photography. 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:01.000 You have the arts with painting, and you have optics, 0:11:01.320 --> 0:11:04.559 and then you have this, uh, this chemical aspect of 0:11:04.600 --> 0:11:07.120 the whole scenario as well. Oh yeah, I mean, much 0:11:07.160 --> 0:11:11.199 like carbon dating that covers so many different disciplines. I mean, 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:14.720 so that's going to be like physics and nuclear chemistry 0:11:14.800 --> 0:11:20.199 and geology and atmospheric science and archaeology. I think those 0:11:20.240 --> 0:11:23.520 really are also the most exciting kinds of inventions, the 0:11:23.559 --> 0:11:27.880 ones that are not just a an advance in a 0:11:28.160 --> 0:11:33.120 clearly defined discipline, but something that yeah, draws from many 0:11:33.160 --> 0:11:36.800 different sources. Absolutely. All right, on that note, we're going 0:11:36.840 --> 0:11:38.680 to take our first break. But when we come back, 0:11:39.280 --> 0:11:42.599 we are going to get into the next step in 0:11:42.640 --> 0:11:45.480 the evolution of photography. We're gonna be talking about the 0:11:45.559 --> 0:11:53.760 de Guero type. Alright, we're back, So it is time 0:11:54.120 --> 0:11:56.880 to meet one of the major characters in the history 0:11:56.880 --> 0:12:01.040 of photography, maybe the most important character, Louis gere So. 0:12:01.240 --> 0:12:03.640 The last episode we did ended with a discussion of 0:12:03.960 --> 0:12:09.280 Joseph Nissa Fourgnieps and his heliography method which involved using 0:12:09.360 --> 0:12:13.240 various kinds of resin, like originally bitumen and lavender oil 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:16.640 that would harden when exposed to light, and then the 0:12:16.800 --> 0:12:20.520 unhardened resin could be washed away and this would allow 0:12:20.640 --> 0:12:23.840 hardened patterns of resin to form the basis of a 0:12:23.920 --> 0:12:28.080 heliograph inside a camera box. And you could probably argue 0:12:28.200 --> 0:12:31.600 that this did in some sense constitute photography as we 0:12:31.679 --> 0:12:34.840 understand it. But the exposures took a really long time. 0:12:34.920 --> 0:12:37.720 You might have to expose them for hours or even days, 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:40.560 and the resin was just not the best medium for 0:12:40.640 --> 0:12:45.440 recording images. But this process becomes important mainly because of 0:12:45.600 --> 0:12:48.800 the way that Nieps ended up partnering with this guy 0:12:48.880 --> 0:12:51.880 named Louis de Gere, and they worked together for several years, 0:12:51.880 --> 0:12:54.439 I think, beginning in eighteen twenty nine, right, and then 0:12:54.720 --> 0:12:58.000 Nips died in eighteen thirty three at the age of 0:12:58.040 --> 0:13:01.200 sixty eight. Uh So, really a lot of what we're 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:03.360 talking about today is like where did you go from there? 0:13:03.480 --> 0:13:08.559 Like Nips passes his discoveries off to the gear and 0:13:08.600 --> 0:13:12.080 then and then what comes of that? Is it callous 0:13:12.120 --> 0:13:14.800 of me that I'm just imagining? When when Yepps died, 0:13:14.880 --> 0:13:19.280 he made a sound and that sound was nieps. I 0:13:19.320 --> 0:13:21.400 don't know, maybe that's not even funny. I don't know 0:13:21.400 --> 0:13:25.240 why my brain goes to there um, but but it's 0:13:25.240 --> 0:13:27.160 still It is important to note that they did work 0:13:27.240 --> 0:13:30.600 together for for several years there, so it wasn't just like, 0:13:30.880 --> 0:13:32.600 you know, he met and met this guy and then 0:13:32.600 --> 0:13:34.560 he died and then the new guy took off with 0:13:34.600 --> 0:13:37.640 it like they they were working together on this, but 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:41.640 they they didn't find a solution during NIPS life. Right, 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:44.560 So let's let's discuss the gere a little bit. So 0:13:44.880 --> 0:13:48.040 his his name was Louise Jacques Monde de Gear and 0:13:48.080 --> 0:13:51.160 he was born in sevent seven, and he was he 0:13:51.240 --> 0:13:54.440 was primarily you could say, an artist of various kinds. 0:13:54.440 --> 0:13:57.920 He was sort of an artist entrepreneur. He was a painter. 0:13:58.280 --> 0:14:00.760 What else did he do? Oh, he was a printmaker 0:14:00.800 --> 0:14:04.360 and prior to the all this photography jazz, his biggest 0:14:04.360 --> 0:14:08.680 success came through the medium of diorama. Now, this is 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:10.559 an interesting thing. This is gonna be a little bit 0:14:10.600 --> 0:14:13.920 different than what you probably think of when you think diorama, 0:14:13.960 --> 0:14:15.920 because what I think of is I think of going 0:14:15.920 --> 0:14:18.560 to a museum and seeing a lot of cool dioramas 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:23.040 or increasingly working on elementary school dioramas with my son. 0:14:23.160 --> 0:14:26.040 You know, it's gluesome dinosaurs in there. Let's let's get 0:14:26.080 --> 0:14:29.000 some some cardboard plants in the back of that shoebox. 0:14:29.120 --> 0:14:31.280 And uh, let's let's get an a on this puppy. 0:14:31.320 --> 0:14:34.440 It's always a shoebox. You cut one wall out or 0:14:34.480 --> 0:14:35.920 you just turn it on its side, I guess, and 0:14:35.960 --> 0:14:39.480 remove the lid. I was doing it all wrong anyway. Yeah, 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:41.600 but yeah, you put some action figures in there, you 0:14:41.640 --> 0:14:44.120 do some coloring, but no, this is a little bit different, 0:14:44.160 --> 0:14:47.280 though it's a similar kind of concept. It is creating 0:14:47.560 --> 0:14:51.560 a static image or scene that is a spectacle that 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:55.720 simulates realism and draws attention. So the diorama, which will 0:14:55.760 --> 0:14:58.760 explain in a minute, began around eighteen twenty one, but 0:14:58.800 --> 0:15:01.960 before this to gear training as an artist and a painter, 0:15:02.320 --> 0:15:04.520 and one of the things that Degare worked on was 0:15:04.680 --> 0:15:09.280 the panorama, which was a type of public spectacle in 0:15:09.320 --> 0:15:12.640 the early eighteen hundreds, I think, going back to good 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:17.040 Bit before then, involving three hundred and sixty degree paintings 0:15:17.080 --> 0:15:20.040 inside an enclosed space, so there'd be like a cylinder 0:15:20.040 --> 0:15:23.320 shaped room you go and sit inside, and then you 0:15:23.360 --> 0:15:27.880 could simulate a whole environment by viewing this three hundred 0:15:27.920 --> 0:15:31.200 and sixty degree painting from the inside with attempts to 0:15:31.240 --> 0:15:33.800 capture as much realism as possible, like they would even 0:15:33.880 --> 0:15:37.760 they had all these methods for recreating perspective accurately, And 0:15:37.800 --> 0:15:42.000 so you could be in Paris maybe, but go inside 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:44.960 a room that looked like the city of Edinburgh and 0:15:44.960 --> 0:15:46.880 and you know, look around and it would be like 0:15:47.000 --> 0:15:51.920 being there. For any of our Atlanta based listeners, it's 0:15:51.960 --> 0:15:53.640 been to Atlanta. I know where you're going with this. 0:15:54.040 --> 0:15:58.280 You're probably thinking of Cyclorama, which is not about motorcycles. 0:15:59.120 --> 0:16:03.760 It sounds potentially sounds more exciting than it is was uh, 0:16:03.800 --> 0:16:05.800 And I say that because I'm not really sure about 0:16:05.800 --> 0:16:08.680 its current status. It was located in its own building 0:16:08.720 --> 0:16:11.560 next to Zoo Atlanta, and it is either in the 0:16:11.600 --> 0:16:16.440 process of being moved or has moved to a new location. Uh. 0:16:16.640 --> 0:16:19.160 So whenever you listen to this episode, look it up 0:16:19.280 --> 0:16:21.120 and uh and see if you can find out where 0:16:21.120 --> 0:16:23.400 it is. But the the idea of Cyclorama was that 0:16:23.480 --> 0:16:26.440 it was uh if you visited it, you know, on 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:29.440 a school trip or what have you. It was this 0:16:29.600 --> 0:16:34.640 Civil war painting that was uh, that was you that 0:16:34.720 --> 0:16:37.000 went all the way around the walls of this circular room. 0:16:37.720 --> 0:16:41.360 And they also had some like three D elements coming 0:16:41.400 --> 0:16:42.880 out in front of it to sort of give it 0:16:42.920 --> 0:16:45.640 this sense of depth. And then you would also be 0:16:45.760 --> 0:16:49.000 seated in this uh, this kind of stadium seating that 0:16:49.080 --> 0:16:51.960 would uh, that would revolve so that you could see 0:16:51.960 --> 0:16:55.160 all of the painting while music played and so forth. Yeah, 0:16:55.200 --> 0:16:58.360 so try to simulate being in a place, right it 0:16:58.400 --> 0:17:01.360 was it was going for realism and way and this 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:04.320 is pretty much the same principle as the kind of 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:08.720 panoramas that the Gear worked on as a painter. But 0:17:08.800 --> 0:17:12.120 in the early eighteen twenties, Digere went into this new 0:17:12.200 --> 0:17:14.480 type of project as a as an artist and a 0:17:14.560 --> 0:17:18.840 proprietor um that was known as the diorama. And the 0:17:18.880 --> 0:17:21.840 diorama was not exactly like the panorama. It wasn't a 0:17:22.359 --> 0:17:25.280 you know, circular thing that that went all around you, 0:17:25.600 --> 0:17:30.040 but it was a painted image spectacle that people looked at. 0:17:30.560 --> 0:17:32.840 And what they were really trying to do was to 0:17:32.960 --> 0:17:38.240 create a startling level of realism in large scale painting. Yeah, 0:17:38.320 --> 0:17:40.560 like what in a way he was really trying to 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:44.360 push beyond the medium to say like, okay, what could 0:17:44.400 --> 0:17:47.560 I do beyond just presenting a painting of, say a landscape, 0:17:47.920 --> 0:17:50.879 what could we do to say, simulate weather? Could we 0:17:51.040 --> 0:17:54.199 change the lighting on it? Um? And then ultimately you know, 0:17:54.240 --> 0:17:57.320 this involved the presentation of two sided works of art 0:17:57.359 --> 0:18:02.920 with dramatic lighting to change you know, what you were seeing. Um. 0:18:02.960 --> 0:18:05.600 You know it's it's it's difficult even looking at images 0:18:05.680 --> 0:18:09.919 and even videos of this. It's it's often uh problematic 0:18:09.960 --> 0:18:12.680 to try and imagine exactly what it what it consisted of. 0:18:12.720 --> 0:18:17.200 But um, I imagine is having similarities to the older 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:21.760 traditions of shadow puppetry, which of course depended on on 0:18:21.880 --> 0:18:26.160 performing something with a screen uh, and also certain dramatic 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:29.560 scroll presentation performance art form. So you find in various 0:18:29.600 --> 0:18:33.240 cultures where you are you are taking a two D 0:18:33.440 --> 0:18:37.760 image and you are displaying it dramatically. But the key 0:18:37.840 --> 0:18:41.080 here in the diorama was the change changing the lighting 0:18:41.080 --> 0:18:43.280 to bring to life one of the two versions of 0:18:43.320 --> 0:18:46.160 the art, such as say a dormant volcano on one 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:48.960 side of the image and an interrupting one on the other, 0:18:49.359 --> 0:18:53.720 or some or simply casting painted storm clouds with lightning 0:18:53.920 --> 0:18:56.840 to give them the sense of give the to give 0:18:56.880 --> 0:19:00.320 the sense that it's alive with actual storm activity. Exactly. Yeah, 0:19:00.440 --> 0:19:02.520 it's that kind of thing. And so uh. In the 0:19:02.600 --> 0:19:04.760 last episode I mentioned this book I've been reading called 0:19:04.800 --> 0:19:07.960 Capturing the Light by Roger Watson and Helen Rappaport, about 0:19:08.040 --> 0:19:12.960 the invention of photography, and it quotes some contemporaneous sources 0:19:13.000 --> 0:19:16.239 describing the diorama that I that I thought were kind 0:19:16.240 --> 0:19:20.560 of helpful in establishing how powerful this medium was to people. 0:19:20.600 --> 0:19:22.879 So there was a critic of the Paris Monthly Review 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:26.160 who was writing about one of Daguerre's early dioramas, which 0:19:26.320 --> 0:19:29.040 was a painting that was supposed to represent the inside 0:19:29.040 --> 0:19:34.440 of Canterbury Cathedral. Okay, so the critic writes this, anyone 0:19:34.480 --> 0:19:38.280 who views the interior of Canterbury Cathedral from the gallery 0:19:38.320 --> 0:19:42.240 of the diorama can with difficulty persuade himself that he 0:19:42.359 --> 0:19:46.520 is not looking up it's almost interminable aisle from the 0:19:46.560 --> 0:19:50.119 actual organ loft. And again, when the scene has changed 0:19:50.320 --> 0:19:53.119 and we gaze upon the valley of Sarnan, we are 0:19:53.160 --> 0:19:58.360 electrified by our representation, so miraculous in execution, we mark 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:02.359 so plainly before us the mountains, lake and buildings which 0:20:02.400 --> 0:20:04.800 some of us have seen before while leaning from our 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:08.520 rustic balconies, that the mind loses itself in a vision 0:20:08.560 --> 0:20:12.440 of wonder and delight. Uh. And then also they write 0:20:12.440 --> 0:20:14.960 in their book that the Dean of Canterbury, So who 0:20:15.119 --> 0:20:18.400 you know, from the actual cathedral came uh they say, 0:20:18.480 --> 0:20:21.639 quote came specifically to view the diorama of his cathedral, 0:20:21.920 --> 0:20:24.520 and quote could scarcely believe at the sight of the 0:20:24.560 --> 0:20:27.720 cathedral that he was not in his own chapel. There 0:20:27.720 --> 0:20:30.960 are reports of people so convinced by the realism of 0:20:31.000 --> 0:20:34.240 these scenes depicted in the dioramas, like the cathedral, that 0:20:34.320 --> 0:20:37.600 they would approach the proscenium inside the theater and try 0:20:37.640 --> 0:20:40.920 to walk into the scenes like thinking they were real, 0:20:41.320 --> 0:20:44.280 which reminds me of those stories of people getting freaked 0:20:44.320 --> 0:20:47.080 out in in early movies when somebody would say point 0:20:47.080 --> 0:20:48.960 a gun at the camera. There would be a train 0:20:49.080 --> 0:20:53.240 rushing toward the camera. But yeah, So the fascinated and 0:20:53.520 --> 0:20:57.240 enthralled reactions to the dioramas seemed to say something interesting 0:20:57.960 --> 0:21:01.879 about the demand for visual all media and realism in 0:21:02.000 --> 0:21:05.720 visual media, Like I'm trying to imagine how people coming 0:21:05.760 --> 0:21:08.560 in off the streets to pay essentially to go to 0:21:08.600 --> 0:21:11.960 a movie, but not a movie, just one huge painting 0:21:12.040 --> 0:21:15.639 with dynamic lighting effects to simulate stuff like lightning or 0:21:15.680 --> 0:21:19.240 sunshine or running water. Would you know, would just be 0:21:19.359 --> 0:21:22.640 so enraptured by this? I mean, I guess we go 0:21:22.680 --> 0:21:26.080 into museums to look at art usually you have an 0:21:26.119 --> 0:21:29.080 idea that this is some kind of edifying experience that 0:21:29.119 --> 0:21:31.359 you know, you learned something about history, and you're gonna 0:21:31.359 --> 0:21:34.560 look at a lot of different artworks. I'm very interested 0:21:34.600 --> 0:21:37.560 in the idea that people would go in to pay 0:21:37.600 --> 0:21:39.639 to sit in the theater and just like look at 0:21:39.680 --> 0:21:42.280 one gigantic painting, or I think they might change them 0:21:42.280 --> 0:21:44.160 out so you might look at two in in one 0:21:44.160 --> 0:21:48.600 sitting or something, uh, with these lighting effects and and 0:21:48.640 --> 0:21:51.640 sometimes I think they had sound effects to and you'd 0:21:51.640 --> 0:21:54.720 be like, this is this is great afternoon? Oh yeah, 0:21:54.760 --> 0:21:57.440 I mean I can. On one hand, I think back 0:21:57.480 --> 0:22:02.680 to visiting the Cyclorama, and the Cyclorama is a lot 0:22:02.680 --> 0:22:04.760 more interesting than than it may have sounded. You know, 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:06.840 this is a cool history to it and all, uh, 0:22:06.920 --> 0:22:08.760 you know where the painting came from, what kind of 0:22:08.960 --> 0:22:11.679 you know, the varying conditions it was in over the 0:22:11.720 --> 0:22:14.480 course of its history. But still it's it's not as 0:22:14.520 --> 0:22:18.360 exciting as a movie, right. Uh So, on one hand, 0:22:18.400 --> 0:22:20.840 I want to bring that experience into trying to imagine this. 0:22:20.920 --> 0:22:22.760 But then also I think to some of the more 0:22:22.800 --> 0:22:26.879 engaging large works of art that I've appreciated over the years. 0:22:27.359 --> 0:22:30.760 Uh be it like an Irving Norman, Um, you know, 0:22:31.000 --> 0:22:35.240