Thesis (doctoral)--Giessen, 1899.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 1983. / Typescript. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 29-31).

Daguerreotypes, nineteenth century photographs made entirely of metal, tarnish easily when exposed to atmosphere or other corrosive environments. The removal of such corrosion products has always been a controversial issue due to the irreversibility and potential damage inflicted by the treatment process. When performed using the proper technique and tools, electrochemical cleaning has been shown to remediate daguerreotype corrosion without causing damage to the object. This investigation explores in detail the effects of electrochemically treating daguerreotypes to better comprehend the physical, chemical, and aesthetic changes which occur during tarnish remediation. Such analysis includes understanding the extent to which tarnish is removed from the object, whether the microstructure and surface roughness are altered, and whether deposits are formed on the surface as the result of cleaning. Before characterizing the effects of treatment, a reliable and consistent electrochemical cleaning method was optimized on modern, custom-made daguerreotype coupons. These coupons were tarnished in controlled settings to create silver sulfide or silver oxide, two commonly found daguerreotype corrosion products. They were then treated by the optimized electrochemical cleaning process, which involved immersing the object in a 0.1 M NaNO3 electrolyte and connecting it to a platinum counter electrode, an Hg/Hg2SO4 reference electrode, and a potentiostat. Tests were executed to determine the most effective voltage for removing each corrosion product. Full characterization of the modern coupons was performed prior to corrosion, after corrosion, and after electrochemical remediation to provide full understanding of the treatment effects. Characterization techniques include scanning electron microscopy/energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy, Raman spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy. The optimized process was also tested on three nineteenth century daguerreotypes, and the changes fully characterized and compared to those of modern samples. Both silver sulfide and silver oxide were noticeably reduced as the result of electrochemical cleaning, while the treatment process did not alter the physical and chemical features of the daguerreotype image particles or silver base layer. The results provide a much better understanding of the electrochemical cleaning process on a chemical and microscopic level, allowing conservators to make informed, scientifically-supported treatment decisions for their clients and institutions.

Thesis--University of Michigan. / Includes bibliographical references (vol. 1, leaves 408-421).

Thesis--University of Michigan. / Includes bibliographical references (vol. 1, leaves 408-421).

This study analyzes how the Art-Union, a British journal interested only in the fine arts, approached photography between 1839 and 1854. It is informed by Karl Marx’s materialism-informed commodity fetishism, Gerry Beegan’s conception of knowingness, Benedict Anderson’s imagined community, and an art critical discourse that was defined by Roger de Piles and Joshua Reynolds. The individual chapters are each sites in which to examine these multiple theoretical approaches to the journal’s and photography’s association in separate, yet sometimes overlapping, periods. One particular focus of this study concerns the method through which the journal viewed photography—as an artistic or scientific enterprise. A second important focus of this study is the commodification of both the journal and photography in Britain. Also, it determines how the journal’s critical engagement with photography fits into the structure and development of a nineteenth-century British social collectivity focused on art and the photographic enterprise.

Cette thèse est organisé en trois chapitres: le premier chapitre traite de la naissance du daguerréotype et de sa propagation, de conditionnement, d'abord, à partir des besoins du progrès scientifique déterminés, pour une courte période, une plus grand diffusion des gravures de daguerréotype plutôt que ceux de calotype. D'où notre hypothèse d'un véritable art de la photographie a en effet pu commencer qu'avec la propagation de la procédure de Talbot , rendu public et mis au point par Blanquart Evrard.Le deuxième chapitre analyse le contexte philosophique contemporain à la diffusion des premières représentations photographiques.Cette œuvre se concentre, en particulier , sur la figure de Victor Cousin. Ce travail révèle en partie le climat historique et culturel dans lequel on va définir l'objet problématique de cette recherche. En fait , le beau de cette philosophe est une représentation vague de la nature qui, cependant, ne donnerait pas une relation directe avec les données des sens toujours présents.Le dernier chapitre conclut en examinant la dichotomie entre le beau et l’utile. La distinction est plus subtile qu'il n'y paraît à une première vue du traité: si les catégorisations traditionnelles parlaient de “arts utiles” et “beaux-arts”, Cousin garda seulement "utile" et "beau", cette position va permettre à tous les produits fabriqués la possibilité d'entrer dans le monde des arts, y compris la photographie. Il faut considérer que –dans le contexte– il été très diffusé la Scienza Nuova (traduit par Michelet ) de Vico, œuvre que Cousin commenta pendent ces leçons. / Cette thèse est organisé en trois chapitres: le premier chapitre traite de la naissance du daguerréotype et de sa propagation, de conditionnement, d'abord, à partir des besoins du progrès scientifique déterminés, pour une courte période, une plus grand diffusion des gravures de daguerréotype plutôt que ceux de calotype. D'où notre hypothèse d'un véritable art de la photographie a en effet pu commencer qu'avec la propagation de la procédure de Talbot , rendu public et mis au point par Blanquart Evrard.Le deuxième chapitre analyse le contexte philosophique contemporain à la diffusion des premières représentations photographiques.Cette œuvre se concentre, en particulier , sur la figure de Victor Cousin. Ce travail révèle en partie le climat historique et culturel dans lequel on va définir l'objet problématique de cette recherche. En fait , le beau de cette philosophe est une représentation vague de la nature qui, cependant, ne donnerait pas une relation directe avec les données des sens toujours présents.Le dernier chapitre conclut en examinant la dichotomie entre le beau et l’utile. La distinction est plus subtile qu'il n'y paraît à une première vue du traité: si les catégorisations traditionnelles parlaient de “arts utiles” et “beaux-arts”, Cousin garda seulement "utile" et "beau", cette position va permettre à tous les produits fabriqués la possibilité d'entrer dans le monde des arts, y compris la photographie. Il faut considérer que –dans le contexte– il été très diffusé la Scienza Nuova (traduit par Michelet ) de Vico, œuvre que Cousin commenta pendent ces leçons.

Magister Artium - MA / I read representations of Sojourner Truth in her Spiritual Narrative, The Narrative of Sojourner Truth with a focus on the portrayal of her unconventional character, through a close analysis of language, structure, photographs and narrative voice. Truth’s editor Olive Gilbert’s raises questions about whether the daguerreotype offers a more accurate form of representation than text. I explore the similarities and differences between visual and written portraits in representations of Truth as a unique figure. I question critical readings of Sojourner Truth’s dress in photographs as conservative, reading instead for a combination of conservative and subversive elements. I suggest that her interest in aesthetic forms such as dress and décor is symbolic of her yearning for home, her heritage, her agency, and unique taste. Her many references to her family indicate that she was more than just an empowered figure, but also one who still grieved. I read Truth’s description of domestic space as representing ambivalently, both her sense of loss, and her attempts to acquire agency. I consider how Truth attempts to recreate a sense of family and belonging through fragments of memory. In my reading of how she questions and extends conventional notions of family and community, I explore how she adapts and includes song, and quotations from the Bible in her sermons, by drawing on elements of African folktale and music. Most critics focus on Truth’s strong voice as an activist, there is little attention to the significance of spiritual solitude for her reimagining of community. I suggest that Truth offers alternative ideas of community as fluid rather than as fixed in one place. I explore how her ideas challenge the notion of nation as exclusive. I consider the genre of The Narrative by analyzing Olive Gilbert’s role as editor and writer. I propose that her role in The Narrative is a more complex one than suggested by critics, as it challenges conventional concepts of autobiography creating a conversation between two voices and lives.

As the artwork’s title suggests, Penelope Umbrico’s "Mirrors (from Home Décor Catalogs and Websites)" (2001-2011), are photographs of mirrors that Umbrico has appropriated from print and web based home décor advertisements like those from Pottery Barn or West Elm. The mirrors in these advertisements reflect the photo shoot constructed for the ad, often showing plants or light filled windows empty of people. To print the "Mirrors," Umbrico first applies a layer of white-out to everything in the advertisement except for the mirror and then scans the home décor catalog. In the case of the web-based portion of the series, she removes the advertising space digitally through photo editing software. Once the mirror has been singled out and made digital, Umbrico then adjusts the perspective of the mirror so that it faces the viewer. Finally, she scales the photograph of the mirror cut from the advertisement to the size and shape of the actual mirror for sale. By enlarging the photograph, she must increase the file size and subsequent print significantly, which distorts the final printed image thereby causing pixelation, otherwise known as “compression artifacts.” Lastly, she mounts these pixelated prints to non-glare Plexiglas both to remove any incidental reflective surface effects and to create a physical object. What hangs on the wall, then, looks like a mirror in its shape, size and beveled frame: the photograph becomes a one-to-one representation of the object it portrays. When looking at a real mirror, often the viewer is aware of either a reflection of the self or a shifting reflection caused by his or her own movement. However, the image that the "Mirror" ‘reflects’ is not the changing reflection of a real mirror. Nor is it a clear, fixed image of the surface of a mirror. Instead the "Mirrors" present a highly abstract, pixelated surface to meet our eyes. The "Mirrors" are physical objects that merge two forms of representation into one: the mirror and the photograph, thus highlighting similarities between them as surfaces that can potentially represent or reflect almost anything. However, in their physical form, they show us only their pixelation, their digitally constructed nature. Penelope Umbrico’s "Mirrors" are photographs of mirrors that become simultaneously photograph and mirror: the image reflected on the mirror’s surface becomes a photograph, thus showing an analogy between the two objects. In their self-reflexive nature, I argue that Umbrico’s "Mirrors" point to their status as digital photographs, therefore signaling a technological shift from analog to digital photography. Umbrico’s "Mirrors," in altering both mirrors and photographs simultaneously refer to the long history of photography in relation to mirrors. The history of photography is seen first through these objects by the reflective surface of the daguerreotype which mirrored the viewer when observing the daguerreotype, and because of the extremely high level of detail in the photographic image, which mirrored the photographic subject. The relation to the history of photography is also seen in the phenomenon of the mirror within a photograph and the idea that the mirror’s reflection shows the realistic way that photographs represent reality. Craig Owens calls this "en abyme," or the miniature reproduction of a text that represents the text as a whole. In the case of the mirror, this is because the mirror within the photograph shows how both mediums display highly naturalistic depictions of reality. I contend that as an object that is representative of the photographic medium itself, the shift from analog to digital photography is in part seen through the use of the mirror that ultimately creates an absent referent as understood through a comparison of Diego Velázquez’s "Las Meninas" (1656). As Foucault suggests that "Las Meninas" signals a shift in representation from the Classical age to the Modern period, I suggest that the "Mirrors" signal the shift in representation from analog to digital. This latter shift spurred debate among photo history scholars related to the ontology of the photographic medium as scholars were anxious that the ease of editing digital images compromised the photograph’s seeming relationship to truth or reality and that it would be impossible to know whether an image had been altered. They were also concerned with the idea that computers could generate images from nothing but code, removing the direct relationship of the photograph to its subject and thereby declaring the “death” of the medium. The "Mirrors" embody the technological phenomenon with visual addition of “compression artifacts,” otherwise known as pixelation, where this representation of digital space appears not directly from our own creation but as a by-product of digital JPEG programming. In this way they are no longer connected to the subject but only to the digital space they represent. As self-reflexive objects, the "Mirrors" show that there has been a technological transformation from the physically made analog photograph to the inherently mutable digital file.

Portrait silhouettes, which are the subject of the present work, are a peculiar and now forgotten type of portraits. They represent a specific part of the visual culture of the second half of the 18th and 19th centuries and a number of contemporary social, cultural, artistic and scientific phenomena intertwine in them. Technically, these seemingly simple monochrome profile portraits are very diverse. The range of silhouetted persons and persons creating them is equally diverse. The aim of this work is a comprehensive mapping of the phenomenon of portrait silhouettes in the Czech lands with an overlap to more general levels concerning the philosophical aspects of this type of portraiture. The text is based on knowledge gained from detailed research of domestic collections of silhouettes, which are part of museum, gallery and castle collections. A large amount of pictorial material has been preserved in the Czech Republic, which made it possible to formulate the necessary more general conclusions. The complex approach mixes from a methodological point of view the approaches of art history with its formal analysis and cultural history, some topics overlap with the content of Bild- Anthropology studies. The oldest Czech specimens of silhouettes come from the turn of the 70s and 80s of the 19th century, which is...