Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre announced the first
commercially successful photographic process, the daguerreotype,
in 1839. A year later William Henry Fox Talbot presented his negative-positive
calotype process, which became the forerunner of modern photographic
processes. This was followed by the wet collodion process in 1851
and by dry plates in 1871. Flexible films were introduced in 1889
by George Eastman and photographic technology developed rapidly
until it was brought within the scope of everyone.
Throughout much of the nineteenth century, the chief purpose of
art was to achieve a perfect representation of nature. Photography
developed as a result of attempts to fix a perfect image and was
seen as a means of fulfilling this ideal, even though the reproduction
of colour was not accomplished until 1861. Those with an artistic
education and the necessary wealth took up the "New Art" with enthusiasm,
and produced some very fine images. Painters who believed their
livelihoods to be threatened vehemently attacked the new medium,
though many of them secretly used photography in their work. The
debate over the artistic value of photography has continued to this
day. |
The first Irish photographs were probably taken
by Francis Stewart Beatty of Belfast in 1839. Ireland's first Daguerreotype
portrait studio opened on the roof of the Rotunda, in Dublin in
October 1841. A small group of amateurs worked with the Calotype
paper negative process during the 1840's. This necessitated making
exposures of four minute duration in strong sunlight. A new wave
of enthusiasts was fostered in the early fifties by the new Wet-Collodion
process which required much briefer exposures of approximately 10
seconds in strong sunlight.
Photographers such as W.D. Hemphill, F.E. Currey, The Countess
of Rosse, Lady Augusta Crofton, Captain Henry, E. King-Tenison,
Lord Otto Fitzgerald, J. Robinson, Sir J. Coghill, T. Grubb and
F. H. Mares made their reputations throughout the British Isles
and were regular prizewinners at major exhibitions throughout the
1850's and 1860's.
Later in the century, J.S. Lauder of Lafayette achieved prominence
as a royal and society photographer. Alfred Werner made a life-size
negative and platinum print of the famous beauty Maude Gonne McBride
and Robert French documented much of the country for William Laurence.
(Text material and images from Birr Castle archives and other
sources is currently being compiled to complete this page.)
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