19th Century Photographic Studios
Dark tents 
  

• D.L. Mundy
   
  My usual plan of proceeding was to erect an ordinary digger's tent, supported upon a couple of forked poles and well fastened down with guy-ropes; then, from the ridge of the structure, suspending a square photographic tent made of mackintosh material, with black calico skirts resting on the ground and kept securely fixed with stones. In fine weather this supplementary operating-tent was erected outside the ordinary dwelling; but at other times better protection was afforded by suspending it within the larger tent. A square window of yellow oiled silk, measuring about 18 inches in both dimensions, admitted enough light to work by, and was of course proof against fracture during my journeys. A packhorse carried a couple of strong leather trunks slung from the saddle, in one of which the chemicals were packed, while the apparatus was placed in the other.
   
  D.L. Mundy, "Photographic Experiences in New Zealand.", The Photographic Journal, No.254, Dec 11, 1874, p.87.
   
  
• Samuel Bourne
   
  Or, if we wish to make sure of our pictures on the spot, and lug about a huge tent and a score or two of bottles, in addition to what is required for a dry process, the thing absolutely becomes the work of a slave. Great as is my liking for photography, I confess that were I always compelled to adopt the latter expedient when I wanted to take a picture far away from home, my journeys abroad for that purpose would be something like angels' visits—" few and far between." How many photographers could relate pleasing narratives of certain not over-pleasing incidents connected with their pictorial wanderings!—how, being mistaken for a pedlar, they have been told, when about to plant their camera to take a view of some curious old farm-house or uninhabited ruin, that they need not unpack their traps, as there was "nothing wanted;"—how many limes they have had to mourn over an upset bath of nitrate of silver, or a collodion bottle from which an ejected stopper has allowed all the precious fluid to escape;— how the perspiration has streamed from them as with lightning rapidity they popped in and out of the suffocating tent;—how some curious bull, anxious to know the contents of the suspicious-looking camera, has playfully employed his horns to lift it up for that purpose; and how they have stood looking on in silent and pensive amazement, while a gust of wind has sent tent, bottles, and camera on a rolling expedition down the mountain's side. Such are a specimen of what every photographer may expect to meet with and undergo, in the ardent pursuit of his favourite study.
   
  Samuel Bourne, "On Some of the Requisites Necessary for the Production of a Good Photograph" read before the Nottingham Photographic Society, Jan 31, 1860 and published in The Photographic News, Feb 24, 1860, p.297. This article has been reprinted in Hugh Raynor (ed.) Photographic Journeys in the Himalayas - Samuel Bourne (Bath: Pagoda Tree Press, 2001).
   
  
• Color Sargeant D.G. Crotty
   
  In the afternoon, while busy cleaning our guns, a thundering noise is heard. Looking in the direction of the sound, a monster shell is observed approaching. We all drop a courtesy, a la Japanese, by getting on our knees. It passes over and thuds into the ground behind the photographic tent of Fred H___, who runs out, white as a sheet, to learn the cause of the noise, and observes behind his tent, a hole large enough to bury a mule in, caused by the shell. He immediately packed up his pictures, vamoosed the camp, and it is said, never stopped until he was safe in his own valley city, in Michigan, nor did he take any more pictures on the sacred soil.
   
  Color Sargeant D.G. Crotty, Third Michigan Volunteer Infantry, Four Years Campaigning in the Army of the Potomac (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Dygert Bros. & Co., 1874), p.41.
   
  
• Paul D. Du Chaillu
   
  My photographic apparatus, or at least what remained of it, was much admired by friend Mayolo. He was the most inquisitive man of his tribe, none of whom were wanting in curiosity, and he was never weary of asking me questions and inspecting my wonderful stores. When I first took out the photographic tent from its box, he was amazed, after seeing it fixed, to discover what a bulky affair could come out of so small a box. After fixing the tent I withdrew the slide and exposed the orange-coloured glass, and invited the mystified chief to look through it at the prairie. At first he was afraid and declined to come into the tent; but on my telling him that he knew I should never do anything to harm him, he consented. He could not comprehend it. He looked at me, at my hands, then at the glass, and believed there was witchcraft at the bottom of it. After Mayolo had come out of the tent unharmed, the rest of the negroes took courage, and my tent was made a peep-show for the remainder of the day.
   
  Paul D. Du Chaillu, A Journey to Ashango-Land, and Further Penetration into Equatorial Africa, (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1871), Chapter IX, p.194. There is a very similar account of this event in his later book The Country of the Dwarfs (New York: Harper & Brothers), p.176. The illustrations in his books were questioned by his contemporaries - see for example "Art. VI Equatorial Africa, and its Inhabitants" in The Westminster Review, No.CXLIX, July 1861, p.75 onwards where one of his illustrations looks very similar to a photograph of a gorilla taken by Roger Fenton in the collections of the British Museum.
   
  

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