Read Ebook: The Atlantic Monthly Volume 12 No. 69 July 1863 A Magazine of Literature Art and Politics by Various

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. ISSUE.

POETRY.

REVIEWS AND LITERARY NOTICES.

Cullum's Systems of Military Bridges 74.

Dicey's Six Months in the Federal States 71.

Fuller's Good Thoughts in Bad Times 74.

Hospital Transports 71. Howitt's History of the Supernatural 71.

Kemble's, Frances Anne, Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation 70. Kirk's History of Charles the Bold 74.

Livermore's Historical Research 70. Long's Translation of the Thoughts of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius Antoninus 72. Lyell's Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man 69.

Mitchell's Astronomy of the Bible 69.

Phillips's, Wendell, Speeches, Lectures, and Letters 74.

Richter's Levana 72.

Spurgeon's Sermons 69. Substance and Shadow 69.

Ticknor's History of Spanish Literature 73.

Washburn on the American Law of Easements and Servitudes 69.

RECENT AMERICAN PUBLICATIONS 69, 70, 73, 74.

THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY.

A MAGAZINE OF LITERATURE, ART, AND POLITICS.

DOINGS OF THE SUNBEAM.

Few of those who seek a photographer's establishment to have their portraits taken know at all into what a vast branch of commerce this business of sun-picturing has grown. We took occasion lately to visit one of the principal establishments in the country, that of Messrs. E. & H.T. Anthony, in Broadway, New York. We had made the acquaintance of these gentlemen through the remarkable instantaneous stereoscopic views published by them, and of which we spoke in a former article in terms which some might think extravagant. Our unsolicited commendation of these marvellous pictures insured us a more than polite reception. Every detail of the branches of the photographic business to which they are more especially devoted was freely shown us, and "No Admittance" over the doors of their inmost sanctuaries came to mean for us, "Walk in; you are heartily welcome."

We should be glad to tell our readers of all that we saw in the two establishments of theirs which we visited, but this would take the whole space which we must distribute among several subdivisions of a subject that offers many points of interest. We must confine ourselves to a few glimpses and sketches.

The guests of the neighboring hotels, as they dally with their morning's omelet, little imagine what varied uses come out of the shells which furnished them their anticipatory repast of disappointed chickens. If they had visited Mr. Anthony's upper rooms, they would have seen a row of young women before certain broad, shallow pans filled with the glairy albumen which once enveloped those potential fowls.

The amount of photographic paper which is annually imported from France and Germany has been estimated at fifteen thousand reams. Ten thousand native partlets--

cackle over the promise of their inchoate offspring, doomed to perish unfeathered, before fate has decided whether they shall cluck or crow, for the sole use of the minions of the sun and the feeders of the caravanseras.

In another portion of the same establishment are great collections of the chemical substances used in photography. To give an idea of the scale on which these are required, we may state that the estimate of the annual consumption of the precious metals for photographic purposes, in this country, is set down at ten tons for silver and half a ton for gold. Vast quantities of the hyposulphite of soda, which, we shall see, plays an important part in the process of preparing the negative plate and finishing the positive print, are also demanded.

Each single process in the manufacture of elaborate products of skill often times seems and is very simple. The workmen in large establishments, where labor is greatly subdivided, become wonderfully adroit in doing a fraction of something. They always remind us of the Chinese or the old Egyptians. A young person who mounts photographs on cards all day long confessed to having never, or almost never, seen a negative developed, though standing at the time within a few feet of the dark closet where the process was going on all day long. One forlorn individual will perhaps pass his days in the single work of cleaning the glass plates for negatives. Almost at his elbow is a toning bath, but he would think it a good joke, if you asked him whether a picture had lain long enough in the solution of gold or hyposulphite.

We always take a glance at the literature which is certain to adorn the walls in the neighborhood of each operative's bench or place for work. Our friends in the manufactory we are speaking of were not wanting in this respect. One of the girls had pasted on the wall before her,

We had been for a long time meditating a devotion of a part of what is left of our more or less youthful energies to acquiring practical knowledge of the photographic art. The auspicious moment came at last, and we entered ourselves as the temporary apprentice of Mr. J.W. Black of this city, well known as a most skilful photographer and a friendly assistant of beginners in the art.

We consider ourselves at this present time competent to set up a photographic ambulance or to hang out a sign in any modest country town. We should, no doubt, over-time and under-tone, and otherwise wrong the countenances of some of our sitters; but we should get the knack in a week or two, and if Baron Wenzel owned to having spoiled a hat-full of eyes before he had fairly learned how to operate for cataract, we need not think too much of libelling a few village physiognomies before considering ourselves fit to take the minister and his deacons. After years of practice there is always something to learn, but every one is surprised to find how little time is required for the acquisition of skill enough to make a passable negative and print a tolerable picture. We could not help learning, with the aid that was afforded us by Mr. Black and his assistants, who were all so very courteous and pleasant, that, as a token of gratitude, we offered to take photographs of any of them who would sit to us for that purpose. Every stage of the process, from preparing a plate to mounting a finished sun-print, we have taught our hands to perform, and can therefore speak with a certain authority to those who wish to learn the way of working with the sunbeam.

Notwithstanding the fact that the process of making a photographic picture is detailed in a great many books,--nay, although we have given a brief account of the principal stages of it in one of our former articles, we are going to take the reader into the sanctuary of the art with us, and ask him to assist, in the French sense of the word, while we make a photograph,--say, rather, while the mysterious forces which we place in condition to act work that miracle for us.

We are in a room lighted through a roof of ground glass, its walls covered with blue paper to avoid reflection. A camera mounted on an adjustable stand is before us. We will fasten this picture, which we are going to copy, against the wall. Now we will place the camera opposite to it, and bring it into focus so as to give a clear image on the square of ground glass in the interior of the instrument. If the image is too large, we push the camera back; if too small, push it up towards the picture and focus again. The image is wrong side up, as we see; but if we take the trouble to reverse the picture we are copying, it will appear in its proper position in the camera. Having got an image of the right size, and perfectly sharp, we will prepare a sensitive plate, which shall be placed exactly where the ground glass now is, so that this same image shall be printed on it.

For this purpose we must quit the warm precincts of the cheerful day, and go into the narrow den where the deeds of darkness are done. Its dimensions are of the smallest, and its aspect of the rudest. A feeble yellow flame from a gas-light is all that illuminates it. All round us are troughs and bottles and water-pipes, and ill-conditioned utensils of various kinds. Everything is blackened with nitrate of silver; every form of spot, of streak, of splash, of spatter, of stain, is to be seen upon the floor, the walls, the shelves, the vessels. Leave all linen behind you, ye who enter here, or at least protect it at every exposed point. Cover your hands in gauntlets of India-rubber, if you would not utter Lady Macbeth's soliloque over them when they come to the light of day. Defend the nether garments with overalls, such as plain artisans are wont to wear. Button the ancient coat over the candid shirt-front, and hold up the retracted wristbands by elastic bands around the shirt-sleeve above the elbow. Conscience and nitrate of silver are telltales that never forget any tampering with them, and the broader the light the darker their record. Now to our work.

Here is a square of crown glass three-fourths as large as a page of the "Atlantic Monthly," if you happen to know that periodical. Let us brush it carefully, that its surface may be free from dust. Now we take hold of it by the upper left-hand corner and pour some of this thin syrup-like fluid upon it, inclining the plate gently from side to side, so that it may spread evenly over the surface, and let the superfluous fluid drain back from the right hand upper corner into the bottle. We keep the plate rocking from side to side, so as to prevent the fluid running in lines, as it has a tendency to do. The neglect of this precaution is evident in some otherwise excellent photographs; we notice it, for instance, in Frith's Abou Simbel, No. 1, the magnificent rock-temple fa?ade. In less than a minute the syrupy fluid has dried, and appears like a film of transparent varnish on the glass plate. We now place it on a flat double hook of gutta percha and lower it gently into the nitrate-of-silver bath. As it must remain there three or four minutes, we will pass away the time in explaining what has been already done.

As we lift the brass cap, we begin to count seconds,--by a watch, if we are naturally unrhythmical,--by the pulsations in our souls, if we have an intellectual pendulum and escapement. Most persons can keep tolerably even time with a second-hand while it is traversing its circle. The light is pretty good at this time, and we count only as far as thirty, when we cover the lens again with the cap. Then we replace the slide in the shield, draw this out of the camera, and carry it back into the shadowy realm where Cocytus flows in black nitrate of silver and Acheron stagnates in the pool of hyposulphite, and invisible ghosts, trooping down from the world of day, cross a Styx of dissolved sulphate of iron, and appear before the Rhadamanthus of that lurid Hades.

Such a ghost we hold imprisoned in the shield we have just brought from the camera. We open it and find our milky-surfaced glass plate looking exactly as it did when we placed it in the shield. No eye, no microscope, can detect a trace of change in the white film that is spread over it. And yet there is a potential image in it,--a latent soul, which will presently appear before its judge. This is the Stygian stream,--this solution of proto-sulphate of iron, with which we will presently flood the white surface.

Let us now proceed to take one of these pictures. In a small room, lighted by a few rays which filter through a yellow curtain, a youth has been employed all the morning in developing the sensitive conscience of certain sheets of paper, which came to him from the manufacturer already glazed by having been floated upon the white of eggs and carefully dried, as previously described. This "albumenized" paper the youth lays gently and skilfully upon the surface of a solution of nitrate of silver. When it has floated there a few minutes, he lifts it, lets it drain, and hangs it by one corner to dry. This "sensitized" paper is served fresh every morning, as it loses its delicacy by keeping.

We take a piece of this paper of the proper size, and lay it on the varnished or pictured side of the negative, which is itself laid in a wooden frame, like a picture-frame. Then we place a thick piece of cloth on the paper. Then we lay a hinged wooden back on the cloth, and by means of two brass springs press all close together,--the wooden back against the cloth, the cloth against the paper, the paper against the negative. We turn the frame over and see that the plain side of the glass negative is clean. And now we step out upon the roof of the house into the bright sunshine, and lay the frame, with the glass uppermost, in the full blaze of light. For a very little while we can see the paper darkening through the negative, but presently it clouds so much that its further changes cannot be recognized. When we think it has darkened nearly enough, we turn it over, open a part of the hinged back, turn down first a portion of the thick cloth, and then enough of the paper to see something of the forming picture. If not printed dark enough as yet, we turn back to their places successively the picture, the cloth, the opened part of the frame, and lay it again in the sun. It is just like cooking: the sun is the fire, and the picture is the cake; when it is browned exactly to the right point, we take it off the fire. A photograph-printer will have fifty or more pictures printing at once, and he keeps going up and down the line, opening the frames to look and see how they are getting on. As fast as they are done, he turns them over, back to the sun, and the cooking process stops at once.

The pictures which have just been printed in the sunshine are of a peculiar purple tint, and still sensitive to the light, which will first "flatten them out," and finally darken the whole paper, if they are exposed to it before the series of processes which "fixes" and "tones" them. They are kept shady, therefore, until a batch is ready to go down to the toning room.

When they reach that part of the establishment, the first thing that is done with them is to throw them face down upon the surface of a salt bath. Their purple changes at once to a dull red. They are then washed in clean water for a few minutes, and after that laid, face up, in a solution of chloride of gold with a salt of soda. Here they must lie for some minutes at least; for the change, which we can watch by the scanty daylight admitted, goes on slowly. Gradually they turn to a darker shade; the reddish tint becomes lilac, purple, brown, of somewhat different tints in different cases. When the process seems to have gone far enough, the picture is thrown into a bath containing hyposulphite of soda, which dissolves the superfluous, unstable compounds, and rapidly clears up the lighter portions of the picture. On being removed from this, it is thoroughly washed, dried, and mounted, by pasting it with starch or dextrine to a card of the proper size.

The reader who has followed the details of the process may like to know what are the common difficulties the beginner meets with.

The first is in coating the glass with collodion. It takes some practice to learn to do this neatly and uniformly.

The second is in timing the immersion in the nitrate-of-silver bath. This is easily overcome; the glass may be examined by the feeble lamp-light at the end of two or three minutes, and if the surface looks streaky, replunged in the bath for a minute or two more, or until the surface looks smooth.

The third is in getting an exact focus in the camera, which wants good eyes, or strong glasses for poor ones.

The printing from the negative is less difficult, because we can examine the picture as often as we choose; but it may be well to undertime and overtime some pictures, for the sake of a lesson like that taught by the series of pictures from the four negatives.

The only other point likely to prove difficult is the toning in the gold bath. As the picture can be watched, however, a very little practice will enable us to recognize the shade which indicates that this part of the process is finished.

We have copied a picture, but we can take a portrait from Nature just as easily, except for a little more trouble in adjusting the position and managing the light. So easy is it to reproduce the faces that we love to look upon; so simple is that marvellous work by which we preserve the first smile of infancy and the last look of age: the most precious gift Art ever bestowed upon love and friendship!

In our former articles we have spoken principally of stereoscopic pictures. These are still our chief favorites for scenery, for architectural objects, for almost everything but portraits,--and even these last acquire a reality in the stereoscope which they can get in no other way. In this third photographic excursion we must only touch briefly upon the stereograph. Yet we have something to add to what we said before on this topic.

One of the most interesting accessions to our collection is a series of twelve views, on glass, of scenes and objects in California, sent us with unprovoked liberality by the artist, Mr. Watkins. As specimens of art they are admirable, and some of the subjects are among the most interesting to be found in the whole realm of Nature. Thus, the great tree, the "Grizzly Giant," of Mariposa, is shown in two admirable views; the mighty precipice of El Capitan, more than three thousand feet in precipitous height,--the three conical hill-tops of Yo Semite, taken, not as they soar into the atmosphere, but as they are reflected in the calm waters below,--these and others are shown, clear, yet soft, vigorous in the foreground, delicately distinct in the distance, in a perfection of art which compares with the finest European work.

We find in the same series several very good views of Gibson's famous colored "Venus," a lady with a pleasant face and a very pretty pair of shoulders. But the grand "Cleopatra" of our countryman, Mr. Story, of which we have heard so much, was not to be had,--why not we cannot say, for a stereograph of it would have had an immense success in America, and doubtless everywhere.

We, who have exhausted our terms of admiration in describing the stereoscopic picture, will not quarrel with the common taste which prefers the card-portrait. The last is the cheapest, the most portable, requires no machine to look at it with, can be seen by several persons at the same time,--in short, has all the popular elements. Many care little for the wonders of the world brought before their eyes by the stereoscope; all love to see the faces of their friends. Jonathan does not think a great deal of the Venus of Milo, but falls into raptures over a card-portrait of his Jerusha. So far from finding fault with him, we rejoice rather that his affections and those of average mortality are better developed than their taste; and lost as we sometimes are in contemplation of the shadowy masks of ugliness which hang in the frames of the photographers, as the skins of beasts are stretched upon tanners' fences, we still feel grateful, when we remember the days of itinerant portrait-painters, that the indignities of Nature are no longer intensified by the outrages of Art.

The sitters who throng the photographer's establishment are a curious study. They are of all ages, from the babe in arms to the old wrinkled patriarchs and dames whose smiles have as many furrows as an ancient elm has rings that count its summers. The sun is a Rembrandt in his way, and loves to track all the lines in these old splintered faces. A photograph of one of them is like one of those fossilized sea-beaches where the raindrops have left their marks, and the shellfish the grooves in which they crawled, and the wading birds the divergent lines of their foot-prints,--tears, cares, griefs, once vanishing as impressions from the sand, now fixed as the vestiges in the sand-stone.

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