Towards photo-reportage (1843-1933)

Charles NègreThree chimney sweeps resting, Quai Bourbon© Musée d'Orsay, Patrice Schmidt, A. Brandt

This set of some sixty photographs of the fisherman of the Firth of Forth in the north of Scotland, taken in 1843 by David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, provided a true photo-reportage, before the term was invented. The photographers were planning to publish them, but never achieved this aim.
In France, Charles Nègre was the first person, from 1851 onwards, to photograph people he came across in the streets – chimney sweeps, rag pickers, industrial and agricultural workers, and organ grinders. He thus continued a colourful, realist tradition already well-established in painting, drawing and engraving, from the time of Jacques Callot. In 1857, Napoleon III commissioned Nègre to produce a reportage on life inside the Hospice of Vincennes which the emperor had set up for injured construction workers.

Roger Fenton Landing Place, Railway stores, Balaklava © Musée d'Orsay, Patrice Schmidt, A. Brandt

With the advent of photography, war ceased to be the great heroic subject in painting which it had been up to the Romantic era. So, in 1855, at the request of Agnew, the publisher and art dealer, Roger Fenton photographed the British army's preparations for the Crimean war.
Here, the ordinary soldiers are incidental figures. By contrast, the symbolic Valley of the Shadow of Death c, does concentrate on the multitude of unknown heroes who died for their country.

Thomas AnnanGlasgow : Close n°61 Saltmarket© Musée d'Orsay, Patrice Schmidt, A. Brandt

Similarly Edouard Baldus, working for the Ministry of the Interior, made a dramatic impact with his photographs of the damage caused by the Rhône floods of May 1856, by only portraying the sad fate of those made homeless.In fact, for technical reasons he had to choose between figure and background, each of which required a different exposure time, and so people could not be featured in the middle of ruins.

Some ten years later, the Scot Thomas Annan was photographing the slums east Glasgow using the more rapid technique of wet collodion glass negatives. Thus he was able to photograph these areas, with their inhabitants, before they were cleaned up.

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