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Introduction to photomicroscopy
381.01 Scientific > Introduction to photomicroscopy
          
|Early photographers needed to have an undertanding of the sciences of chemistry and optics. The early camera makers were frequently opticians and the makers of scientific instruments and given this it should be no surprize that they understood telescopes and microscopes. Within a few years of the announcement of photography in 1839 it was being used to record microscopic objects for scientific study.
- William Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877), one of the inventors of photography and a remarkable polymath, took photomicrographs of plant and insect specimens using a solar microscope.
- John Benjamin Dancer (1812-1887) in 1840 showed a daguerreotype of a fly at the Liverpool Mechanics' Institution and the following year showed daguerreotypes taken with a microscope. By 1851 he was taking wet collodion photomicrographs and the following year selling microscopic portraits of Queen Victoria and the Lord's Prayer.
- John William Draper (1811-1882) took a photomicrograph (ca. 1850) on a daguerreotype of a Fly's proboscis (Smithsonian, National Museum of American History, Division of Information Technology and Society, Photographic History Collection)
- Wilson A. Bentley (1865-1931), known as "Snowflake Bentley", could be described as a person with a fixation for the structure of snowflakes - in 1885 he attached a camera to a microscope and was able to create high quality albumen prints showing their different crystalline structure. In 1903 he supplied prints of his research to the Smithsonian in Washington.[1] Interestingly James Glaisher, a President of the Royal Photographic Society, had preceded Wilson A. Bentley and had taken photomicrographs of snowflakes in 1855.
Photomicrographs were taken by Alfred Reeves in England from around 1859 until the middle of the 1860s and can be distinguished by the "A.R." on microscope slides.[2] All manner of images were reduced including celebrities such as missionary and explorer Rev. Dr. Livingstone and Lieut. Gen. Sir Colin Campbell, G.C.B. (1792-1863) a veteran of the Peninsular War, the War of 1812, the First Opium War, the Second Anglo-Sikh War, the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny.
Victorian celebrities
 
As a novelty item Alfred Reeves also made microscope slides with copes of popular paintings of the period.
Edward Matthew Ward: Dr Johnson Reading 'The Vicar of Wakefield' by Oliver Goldsmith (ca. 1860) - Photomicrograph by Alfred Reeves
 
Sir Edwin Henry Landseer: Islay, Tilco a Macaw and Two Love-Birds (1839) - Photomicrograph by Alfred Reeves
 
John Federick Herring: An English Farmyard (1859) - Photomicrograph by Alfred Reeves
 
The true value of the miniaturisation came about with the "Siege of Paris" during the Franco-Prussian War (1870) when René Patrice Proudhon Dagron used pigeons to deliver photo-messages across enemy lines.
Photomicroscopists
381.02 Scientific > Henry Fox Talbot: Photomicrographs
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381.03 Scientific > John William Draper: Photomicrographs
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381.04 Scientific > Adolphe Bertsch: Photomicrographs
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381.05 Scientific > Arthur E. Durham: Photomicrographs
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381.06 Scientific > Joseph Janvier Woodward: Photomicrographs
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In 1862, during the still-ongoing American Civil War, Joseph Janvier Woodward[3] was selected for the US War Department‘s newly-founded medical research facility, the Army Medical Museum. Woodward‘s duties included management of the Museum‘s medical work and microscopy as well as production of the three medical volumes for the massive Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1870-1888) whose final volume was published four years after his death.[4]
In 1869 Woodward became the first microscopist to successfully resolve the 19th band of Norbert‘s 19-band test plate, created as test object for the resolution of period microscopes. While it was not understood at the time, Woodward was thereby approaching the absolute theoretical limits of the optical microscope, and the subsequent 20-band test-plates produced by Norbert contained rulings only capable of resolution by methods such as the electron microscope.[5]
Woodward‘s work at the Army Medical Museum involved extensive documentation through microphotography where again his work was on the frontier of period science. At the Museum he implemented important advances in microscopes, light-sources, tissue-dying techniques and integration of photography with microscopy, turning America into a world-leader in microphotography .[6] Not inappropriately Woodward has been called "the most skillful microphotographer of his age"[7]
Woodward published several pamplets illustrating his advances with the microscope, often accompanied by superb 6 x 6 inch (16x16 cm) albumen prints of his photomicrographs on special gilt-bordered mounts. These typically measure 14 x 11 inches (35x28 cm) and bear the imprint "War Department, Surgeon General‘s Office, Army Medical Museum" ... "By J. J. Woodward".
Nine such plates were intended to accompany his Report to the Surgeon General of the United States Army on an Improved Method of Photographing Histological Preparations by Sunlight (1871), including Striated Muscular Fibres of Mouse and Small Artery and Capillaries from Lung of Frog. The plates bear pasted-on print labels identifying each subject as well as its magnification, series number, and other notations.
Woodward‘s Army Medical Museum plates were also issued in reference volumes and were presumably available to researchers individually. Thus, Woodward‘s photomicrograph of a Head Louse is found on his standard gilt War Department mount but with manuscript notations of subject and magnification rather than a printed label, perhaps indicating that it was issued one-off and not as part of a series.
Woodward's beautiful microscopic images present a jarring intersection between the onset of advanced scientific technology and an era we more often associate with muskets and hardtack.
[Courtesy of Christopher Wahren]
381.07 Scientific > Otto Müller: Photomicrographs of plants
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381.08 Scientific > René Patrice Proudhon Dagron: Photomicrographs, carrier-pigeons and the beseiged city of Paris during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871)
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René Patrice Proudhon Dagron[8] was a French chemist and photomicroscopist whose innovations in microscopy, lens design, and marketing created a popular craze in optical novelities - his Bijoux Photomicroscopiques[9] (better known as Stanhopes[10] or Peeps) from the late 1850s. Dagron had his own factory for photomicroscopy and during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871) he was ideally placed to create photo-messages that could be transported by carrier-pigeons in and out of the besieged city of Paris.
381.09 Scientific > Frederick H. Evans: Photomicrographs
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Frederick H. Evans (1853-1943)[11] is best known for his platinum prints of English and French cathedrals but along with this he was interested in photomicroscopy.
381.10 Scientific > Wilson A. Bentley: Photomicrographs of snowflakes
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The American Museum of Natural History in New York has a number of slides of snowflakes that appear to be the work of Wilson A. Bentley
Attributed to Wilson A. Bentley: 35mm colour slides of snowflakes
  
381.11 Scientific > Richard Neuhauss: Photomicrographs of snowflakes
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381.12 Scientific > Laure Albin-Guillot (1879-1962): Micrographie Décorative
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The patterns shown were so fantastic that parallels were seen between them and contemporary abstract art and some of the works of Laure Albin-Guillot (1879-1962)[12] and the Sorbonne geology professor H. Ragot were published in The Illustrated London News (May 1931).
381.13 Scientific > Alfred Ehrhardt: Photomicroscopy
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381.14 Scientific > Carl Strüwe: Photomicrographs
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Carl Heinrich Jakob Strüwe (1898–1988) was a professional graphic designer who spent his career as an employee of a graphics company in Bielefeld, Germany. As an artist and photographer he was self taught but he exhibited and published before and after the Second World War in first class galleries and museums. In the 1950s he became a member of the movement of Subjective Photography of Otto Steinert in West Germany and participated in his exhibitions and publications. He was an innovative photographer and a pioneer in the art of microphotography.
Subjects for photomicroscopy
381.15 Scientific > Photomicrographs of insects
    
381.16 Scientific > Rose-Lynn Fisher: Bee
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The loss of scale through high levels of magnification takes us into undreamt of world of visual forms. In the series Bee by Los Angeles photographer Rose-Lynn Fisher an exploration of the honeybee takes us from the commonplace into a world of spikes, hooks, scales and complex shapes:
Photographs of a honeybee through a scanning electron microscope reveal a realm of design and function that stretches our sense of scale and wonder to another order of magnitude and brings science to the threshold of art. With highly magnified views of the bee’s eyes, antennae, wings, legs, hair, and abdomen through the perspective of microscopy, these images present a new frontier right here in our everyday world. In the process of exploring a bee under a microscope, we enter a realm of design, structure and pattern at an astonishing level of detail; and as the magnifications increase, the integrity of form is continuously revealed. When our sense of scale has no frame of reference, the micro and macro worlds seem interchangeable. Our familiar context confounded, the interplay of observation and imagination can inspire new ideas, connections, and applications. Seeing what exists at the micro level naturally extends to a more sensitized awareness of what is all around us in the visible and invisible worlds. Considering the endless structures and forms that comprise a little bee at higher and higher magnifications, we get a hint of the amazing, unending complexity of nature all around us. This can be startling and inspiring, and my hope is to foster deeper curiosity, greater appreciation, awe and marvel for the honeybee. After looking up close at the honeybee, one can never think of this tiny amazing creature in the same way again.[13]
381.17 Scientific > Photomicrographs of botany
The realization that photography could create a visual memory for microscropy took place almost as soon as the discovery was announced. On 3 March 1840 Andreas Ritter von Ettingshausen, who was involved in the earliest experiments with photography in Vienna, made a whole plate daguerreotype of the Cross section of a clematis stem.[14] Adolphe Bertsch would do a cut through pin sylvestre (1857) and John William Draper would take photomicrographs of algae along with his studies of frog blood and a Fly's Proboscis.
Copying paintings and documents
381.18 Scientific > Henry Hering - Alfred Reeves: Photograph. The Kings and Queens of England
         
An advertisement was published in the 31 May 1862 issue of The Bookseller for a carte de visite with "A Beautiful Portrait of 83 Portraits of the Kings and Queens of England". The unusual card had a lot to recommend its educational potential and part of the marketing was to give the carte for "School Prizes, or Rewards for Good Conduct". The person to contact on the advertisement was H. Hering of 137 Regent Street, London.[15]
Henry Hering had been in the bookbinding trade, photographed inmates at an insane asylum (1852-1862) for Dr. Hugh Welsh Diamond,[16] and exhibited photographs.[17] It is not certain who made this photograph as Alfred Reeves[18] had made photomicrograph slides with the same image that were described in 1859.[19] There are multiple possibilities here - Henry Hering produced the image, Alfred Reeves or another person created it and Henry Hering was the publisher.[20]
381.19 Scientific > W. & F. Langenheim: The Lord's Prayer
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Footnotes
- Λ Book with the photographs of Wilson A. Bentley - W.A. Bentley, 1962, Snow Crystals, (Dover), Introduction by meteorologist W.J. Humphreys.; W.A. Bentley, 2000, Snowflakes in Photographs, (Dover)
Biography of Wilson A. Bentley - Duncan A. Blanchard, 2005, The Snowflake Man: A Biography of Wilson A. Bentley, (McDonald and Woodward Publishing)
- Λ The initials A.R. appear on microscope slides from the mid 1850s and in the Summer 2007 issue of Micro Miscellanea ("Initials on microphotographs – thoughts on AR", no. 66, pages 20-29) Stanley Warren proposed an excellent argument that A.R. was Alfred Reeves.
I'm indebted to Prof. Brian Stevenson for his knowledge and examples of early photomicroscopy.
- Λ 1870-88, Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1865-65), (Washington, Gov’t print. off.) [Three volumes. Includes work by Joseph Janvier Woodward]; J.J. Woodward, 1873, November, U.S. Army Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 262, The Toner Lectures, Washington, U.S.A., Lecture I: "On the Structure of Cancerous Tumours, and the Mode in which Adjacent Parts are Invaded."; Joseph Janvier Woodward, 1871, Report to the Surgeon General of the United States Army on an Improved Method of Photographing Histological Preparations by Sunlight, (Washington D.C.)
- Λ Stanley Burns, 1983, Early Medical Photography in America (1839-1883), (New York, The Burns Archive), p. 1463
- Λ Gerard L'Estrange Turner, 1980, Essays on the History of the Microscope, (Oxford: Senecio Publishing)
- Λ Stanley Burns, 1983, Early Medical Photography in America (1839-1883), (New York, The Burns Archive), p. 1463
- Λ Edouard Frison, 1954, L'Evolution de la Partie Optique de Microscope au cours du Dix-Neuvieme Siecle (National d'Histoire des Sciences Exactes et Naturelles a Leyde), p. 120
- Λ R.P.P. Dagron, 1864, ‘Microscopic photography‘, British Journal of Photography, pp. 402; R.P.P. Dagron, 1864, Traité de Photographie Microscopique, (Paris)
- Λ René Dragon,1862, Cylindres photo-microscopiques, montés et non montés sur bijoux brevetés en France et l'étranger [36 pages]
- Λ Douglas Jull, 1997, Collecting Stanhopes, (D.S. Publications); Jean Scott, 2002, Stanhopes: A Closer View - A History and Handbook for Collectors of Microphotographic Novelties, (Greenlight Publishing); Bobbi London, 2013, ‘Stanhopes: A Package Deal‘, in Bryan & Page Ginns, 2013, Antique Photographica: The Collector's Vision (Schiffer), pp. 164-182;
- Λ The photographic historian Beaumont Newhall authored the first monograph on Frederick Henry Evans - Beaumont Newhall , 1973, Frederick Evans: Photographer of the Majesty, Light and Space of the Medieval Cathedrals of England and France, (Aperture)
Anne Hammond (ed.), 1992, Frederick H. Evans: Selected Texts and Bibliography, (Boston: G. K. Hall) [World Photographers Reference Series, vol. 1]; Anne M. Lyden & Hope Kingsley, 2009, The Photographs of Frederick H. Evans, (J Paul Getty Museum)
- Λ Laure Albin-Guillot, 2013), L’Enjeu Classique, (Jeu de Paume and Éditions de la Martinière), [Preface: Marta Gili; text: Delphine Desveaux, Catherine Gonnard, Michaël Houlette and Patrick-Gilles Persin, bilingual French/English]
- Λ Rose-Lynn Fisher, 2010, Bee, (Princeton Architectural Press)
- Λ Andreas Ritter von Ettingshausen, "Cross section of a clematis stem", 4 March 1840, Daguerreotype, whole plate, Albertina
- Λ For the original carte de visite - Henry Hering (1814-1893), The Kings and Queens of England: From the Conquest to Queen Victoria, 1862, Carte de visite, photomontage, 2 7/8 x 2 1/8 ins (image), National Portrait Gallery (NPG), Given by Algernon Graves, 1916, NPG Ax13139
- Λ Sander Gilman (ed.), 1976, The Face of Madness: Hugh W. Diamond and the Origin of Psychiatric Photography, (Brunner/Mazel); Sander L. Gilman, 1882, Seeing the Insane, (NY: John Wiley in association with Brunner/Mazel)
- Λ Roger Taylor & Larry J. Schaaf, 2007, Impressed by Light: British Photographs from Paper Negatives, 1840-1860, (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)
- Λ The initials A.R. appear on microscope slides from the mid 1850s and in the Summer 2007 issue of "Micro Miscellanea" ("Initials on microphotographs – thoughts on AR", no. 66, pages 20-29) Stanley Warren proposed an excellent argument that A.R. was Alfred Reeves. Alfred Reeves was able to copy painting onto microscope slides and managed to place all eighty five portraits of the "Kings & Queens of England, From the Conquest to Queen Victoria" on a single slide.
An account of the life of Alfred Reeves will be found at microscopist.net
With thanks to Professor Brian Stevenson.
- Λ With thanks to Professor Brian Stevenson for bringing this to my attention. (pers. emails: Professor Brian Stevenson to Alan Griffiths)
- Λ I would be interested in research that sheds light on who the original photographer was - alan@luminous-lint.com
alan@luminous-lint.com |
    
General reading
1870-88, Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion (1865-65), (Washington, Gov’t print. off.) [Three volumes. Includes work by Joseph Janvier Woodward] [Δ]
American Stereoscopic Company (Philadelphia), 1861, Catalogue of Langenheim's New and Superior Style of Colored Photographic Magic Lantern Pictures - Also a Catalogue of Langenheim's Stereoscopic Pictures on Glass and Paper, and Microscopic Photographs of a Superior Quality, (E. Ketterlinus, printer) [Δ]
Bracegirdle, Brian, 1998, Microscopical Mounts and Mounters, (London: Quekett Microscopical Club) isbn-10: 0951444131 isbn-13: 978-0951444139 [Δ]
Girard, Jules, 1869, La Chambre Noire et le Microscope, (Paris: F. Savy) [Δ]
Keller, Corey, 2008, Brought to Light: Photography and the Invisible, 1840-1900, (Yale University Press) isbn-10: 0300142102 isbn-13: 978-0300142105 [Δ]
Libbrecht, Kenneth, 2007, The Art of the Snowflake: A Photographic Album, (Voyageur Press) isbn-10: 0760329974 isbn-13: 978-0760329979 [Δ]
Scott, Jean, 2002, Stanhopes: A Closer View - A History and Handbook for Collectors of Microphotographic Novelties, (Greenlight Publishing) isbn-10: 1897738099 isbn-13: 978-1897738092 [Δ]
Seiler, Carl, 1879, ‘Photography as an Aid to Microscopical Investigations‘, Proceedings of the American Society of Microscopists, vol. 1, pp. 59-62 [Δ]
Readings on, or by, individual photographers
Wilson A. Bentley
Bentley, W.A., 2000, Snowflakes in Photographs, (Dover) isbn-10: 0486412539 isbn-13: 978-0486412535 [Δ]
Bentley, W.A. & Humphreys, W.J., 1962, Snow Crystals, (Dover) isbn-10: 0486202879 isbn-13: 978-0486202877 [Δ]
Blanchard, Duncan C., 2005, The Snowflake Man: A Biography of Wilson A. Bentley, (McDonald & Woodward Pub Co) isbn-10: 0939923718 isbn-13: 978-0939923717 [Δ]
Adolphe Bertsch
Bertsch, Auguste-Adolphe, 1857-1858 (ca), Etudes d'histoire naturelle au microscope, (Paris: no publisher) [Δ]
René Patrice Proudhon Dagron
Dagron, R.P.P., 1864, ‘Microscopic photography‘, British Journal of Photography, p. 402 [Δ]
Dagron, R.P.P., 1864, Traité de Photographie Microscopique, (Paris) [Δ]
Dragon, René, 1862, Cylindres photo-microscopiques, montés et non montés sur bijoux brevetés en France et l'étranger [36 pages] [Δ]
John Benjamin Dancer
Arden, L.L., 1960, John Benjamin Dancer: The Originator of Microphotography, (London: The Library Association) [Δ]
Bracegirdle, Brian & McCormick, James B., 1993, The Microscopic Photographs of J.B. Dancer, (Chicago: Science Heritage Ltd) isbn-10: 0940095106 isbn-13: 978-0940095106 [Δ]
Alfred Ehrhardt
Derenthal, Ludger & Stahl, Christiane (eds.), 2010, Mikrofotografie - Schönheit jenseits des Sichtbaren (Microphotography - Beauty beyond the Visible World), (Hatje Cantz Verlag) isbn-13: 978-3775726788 [Δ]
Ruge, Werner, 1939, Die Melodie des Lebens Ein Bildbuch aus der Zeit der Wende abendländischen Denkens, (Leipzig: Reclam Verlag) [Mit 40 mikroskopischen Aufnahmen von Alfred Ehrhardt] [Δ]
Lennart Nilsson
Forsell, Jacob (ed.), 2002, Lennart Nilsson: Images of His Life, (Stockholm: Bokförlaget Max Ström) [Δ]
Alfred Reeves
Warren, Stanley, 2007, Summer, ‘Initials on microphotographs – thoughts on AR‘, Micro Miscellanea, no. 66, pp. 20-29 [Δ]
Carl Strüwe
Jäger, Gottfried, 1982, Carl Strüwe, Das fotografische Werk, (Edition Marzona) [Δ]
Strüwe, Carl, 1955, Carl Strüwe: Formen des Mikrokosmos. Gestalt und Gestaltung einer Bilderwelt, (Munich: Prestel-Verlag) [Δ]
Strüwe, Carl, 1986, Carl Strüwe: Hohenstaufen in Italien. Bilder und Worte, (Bielefeld: Edition Jesse) [Δ]
Joseph Janvier Woodward
Woodward, J.J., 1873, November, U.S. Army Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, 262, The Toner Lectures, Washington, U.S.A., Lecture I: "On the Structure of Cancerous Tumours, and the Mode in which Adjacent Parts are Invaded." [Δ]
Woodward, Joseph Janvier, 1871, Report to the Surgeon General of the United States Army on an Improved Method of Photographing Histological Preparations by Sunlight, (Washington D.C.) [Δ]
If you feel this list is missing a significant book or article please let me know - Alan - alan@luminous-lint.com
Laure Albin-Guillot (1879-1962) • Alois Auer (1813-1869) • Wilson A. Bentley (1865-1931) • Adolphe Bertsch (1813-1871) • René Patrice Proudhon Dagron (1818-1900) • John Benjamin Dancer (1812-1887) • Alfred Donné (1801-1878) • John William Draper (1811-1882) • Arthur E. Durham (1834-1895) • Alfred Ehrhardt (1901-1984) • Andreas Ritter von Ettingshausen (1796-1878) • Frederick H. Evans (1853-1943) • Claudia Fährenkemper • Albert Fernique (1841-1898) • William Towler Kingley (1815-1916) • Robert Koch (1843-1910) • Frederick Langenheim (1809-1879) • W. & F. Langenheim • William Langenheim (1807-1874) • Richard Neuhauss • Adolphe Neyt (1830-1893) • Jan Evangelista Purkinje (1787-1869) • Alfred Reeves (1829-1907) • George Shadbolt (1830-1901) • John Charles Stovin (check) • Carl Strüwe (1898-1988) • Henry Fox Talbot (1800-1877) • Joseph Janvier Woodward (1833-1884) | Home > Themes > Scientific > Photomicroscopy
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