The daguerreotype, which was the first photographic process, was invented in the late 1830’s by Louis-Jacques-Mande Daguerre. In the field of astronomy, the daguerreotype was used to capture celestial objects less than a year after the technology was introduced. However the problems with its long exposure and insufficient detail were readily apparent, with early attempts of capturing a photograph of the moon appearing as only a faint smudge.1 This lack of detail in the early days of photography was a challenge that artists responded to in unique and creative ways, producing incredible works of art.
This exhibition charts the artists’ various responses to the introduction of photography in the field of astronomy. These various responses show both the possibilities and the limits of the photograph. In the first few years after the invention of the daguerreotype, these artists made the most of these limitations and played to the medium’s strengths. But despite the continuous advancements in photographic technology, some artists started to move away from direct photography of the heavenly bodies. They created detailed models of the lunar surface and photographed that instead. Others made photorealistic paintings and drawings with otherwise unobtainable detail. These precise details not only created more awe-inspiring works of art, but enabled researchers to better understand our solar system, the universe, and the physics that govern the bodies within.
Samuel Dwight Humphry Multiple Exposures of the Moon: Nine Exposures Ranging
from Two Minutes to Half a Second
September 1, 1849
Daguerreotype (4 × 3 cm)
John G. Wolbach Library, Harvard College Observatory, Cambridge, Mass. (OB-1)
This is one of the earliest surviving photographs of the moon. This provides an excellent visualization of the difficulties of capturing an image of a celestial body, despite the fact it is a full moon, which is the brightest object in the night sky. As the title implies, this image is not a singular capture of the moon, but rather multiple exposures, each with a different exposure time. Each exposure is quite small and does not contain a lot of detail. The first exposure is quite dark, and the last exposure looks almost like two exposures on top of each other, but it is a result of the moon moving during the exposure. Not only did the early astronomical photographers have to be careful with the exposure time, they also needed to keep the movement of the celestial bodies in mind in order to produce a decent image.
John Adams Whipple Partial Eclipse of the Sun
July 28, 1851
Daguerreotype (11.4 × 8.9 cm)
John G. Wolbach Library, Harvard College Observatory, Cambridge, Mass. (OB-2)
This is the one of the first captures of a solar eclipse. This snapshot of an astronomical event emphasizes the daguerreotype’s strength by its visually simple subject, as the sun has very little surface detail that can be easily observed. There is a strong contrast from the moon covering the lower left corner of the brilliant sun, creating visual interest. Additionally, by photographing a brighter partially eclipsed sun rather than a dark mostly or totally eclipsed sun,it allows for a shorter exposure time and is easier to capture.
William and Frederick Langenheim Eclipse of the Sun
May 26, 1854
Series of Daguerreotypes (From 3.2 x 2.5 cm to 7.2 x 5.9 cm)
The MET collection
This series of photographs was one of many that were commissioned by scientists to capture this event. Taken by probably the most successful photographers in Philadelphia at that time, these daguerreotypes, like John Adams Whipple’s Partial Eclipse of the Sun captures a solar eclipse. They provide strong visual interest through contrast, but by being a series, these images introduce movement. Rather than record a singular snapshot in time, this sequence of photographs functions like panels in a comic strip, and together they provide greater detail of what happened from the beginning to the end of the celestial event. This takes advantage of one of the benefits of photography, as it would take substantially less work to expose multiple sequential photographs than it would to create a series of drawings or paintings. Despite playing well with many of the strengths of the daguerreotype, the central images are smaller due lack of sufficient light being available near totality, and smaller images need proportionally less light.
H. A. Lawrence and C. Ray Woods Solar Eclipse from Caroline Island
May 6, 1883
Gelatin silver print (13.3 × 13.1 cm)
The MET collection
Captured by two astronomers from Caroline Island in the Pacific Ocean, this photograph displays how much photography had advanced technologically over fifty years. Compared to the earlier daguerreotype, the gelatin silver print provides a much larger resulting image, while also producing a more detailed and brighter picture. Although some of the very fine details are lost, this image is much more “true to life” than what was possible with earlier photographic methods, as a daguerreotype under similar circumstances would have produced a tiny, black photograph with little to no glow emitting around the eclipsed sun.
James Nasmyth and James Carpenter Normal Lunar Crater, in The Moon: Considered as
a Planet, a World, and a Satellite
1874
Heliotype (28.5 × 23 cm)
Private collection
This stunningly detailed image of a lunar crater is an example of how artists used intermediate works to create a more fine image. The artist, looking through the telescope, made drawings of what he saw of the lunar surface. Then, from those drawings, he created these incredible models made of plaster of the lunar landscape before taking a photograph while lighting the model nearly parallel to the surface to enhance detail and make it more convincing. This image also carries with it the underlying idea that a photograph is more truthful and objective, even if it was a photograph of a three-dimensional model made by an artist.
Etienne Leopold Trouvelot Total Eclipse of the Sun, Observed July 29, 1878
1882
Chromolithograph (40.6 × 50.8 cm)
Rare Book Division, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations
This color printed drawing was drawn on grid paper by the artist looking through a telescope with a matching grid on the eyepiece. The artist pointed out the shortcomings of the photograph at the time, describing them as an aid at best and often being "so blurred and indistinct that no details of any great value can be secured." By carefully and methodically drawing this work he not only recreates the objectivity gained from the use of a photograph, he captures many fine details that not only result in a sublime image, but can also be used as detailed records for astronomers to study .
Howard Russell Butler Solar Eclipse
1918
Oil on Canvas
Princeton University Collection
This painting was commissioned for physics research by the United States Naval Observatory to help prove Einstein's Theory of Relativity. In order to know what to look for Howard Butler spent time learning the physics behind what he was looking for so that he could capture what saw during the eclipse. Despite the artist having only a few short minutes to paint and the cloudy weather conditions, he produced an incredibly photorealistic painting. This artist went on to paint several more ellipses around that world into the early 1930’s, capturing many other fine details that were difficult to capture with the limited range of value that a camera could capture at that time.
Bibliography
Barger, M. Susan, and William B. White. “The Daguerreotype as a Scientific Tool.” In The Daguerreotype: Nineteenth-Century Technology and Modern Science. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991.
Department of Photographs. “The Daguerreian Era and Early American Photography on Paper, 1839–60.” In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museumof Art, 2004. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/adag/hd_adag.htm.
Fineman, Mia, Beth Saunders, Tom Hanks, and Art New. Apollo’s Muse : The Moon in the Age of Photography. New York, New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2019.
Layne, George S. “The Langenheims of Philadelphia.” History of Photography 11, no. 1 (January 1987): 39–52. https://doi.org/10.1080/03087298.1987.10443767.
Pasachoff, Jay M, and Roberta J M Olson. “Astronomy: Art of the Eclipse.” Nature 508, no. 7496 (April 16, 2014): 314–15. https://doi.org/10.1038/508314a
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