History of Photography

Nicephore Niepce 

Kick starting stoic surface
written in sun beams
with your hand shaky
obscura only obscured
exposed it keeps exposing
to expose a heliography
"by the action of light"
and bitumen
healing the sun soaked scars
lavender oil for unseen
to be seen
the first
unknown
but what is now
always
your name
be known


Louis Daguerre 

For loss of profit
invention under valued
continuation of Niepce
silver-plated copper
vaporized into world
short and shorter days
exposed in 'latent'
fixed in glass
the image committed
yet by light
it passed
even through might
standing still
polished still
they appeared in
even after killed.


Henry Fox-Talbot 

Other side of the pond
competition for Calotype
the art as medium
medium turned to expression
glyphic engravings
withe negative capabilities
and fighting with light
aided with gallic acid
the medium of art in
photography arrives

Hippolyte Bayard 

self portrait with dead eyes
public, yes public
"direct positive printing"
with 12 minutes tops
on paper and exhibited
dead eyes unless closed
the reversal of black turned
into the posed
yes, the public's eyes
drawn into exhibition


Julia Margaret Cameron

the intimacy
the woman
"I longed to arrest all the beauty
that came before me at length
the longing has been
satisfied"
pop celebrities fictionalized
with soft focus eyes
your amateur
your women
with the intimacy only a
photograph can hold the dead
"fancy portraits"
cropped and closely
as if I can almost hold
their hands

Lady Clementina Hawarden 

footsteps developed in her
handled photographed
domestic
as history
as different
what is left
image
where is her life?

Nadar 

man of many names
of many faces
caught in the sky
artificial lightning
electrifying sockets of
skulls
break the boundaries
as birds in the night
"Le Geant"
stomp through the flight
impression on
the mind just blasted
and think around the corners
of known and create the
light we wish to be


Jean-Baptiste Gustave Le Gray 

luminosity expanded
the scapes now more spaceless
the sea and the land
as both and double
expanded as an eye
and found
"Societe Heliographique"
fleeing into horizon line
the world is a mantlepiece
piecing together what is never seen
imagination a door he opened
and we all walked right in

Diane Arbus

"photographer of the freaks"
revealing the truth
of what we see
and what needs to be seen
redefining beauty
we never wanted to see
surreal is the most real
we can ever see
the flaws of humanity
one square
and changed
between a blink of an
...
write our own ugly


Susan Sontag 

"How did the Japanese/American family vacation turn out?
They won't know until they look at the photographs"
isolation within the lense
interpretation regardless of distortion
de-distortion
the evidence within
always interpretive
a lack of integrity
the sense of
"unattainable"
broken open
with phallus intentions
the collection of the world
we all begin


Man Ray
(Emmanuel Radnitzky) 

Surrealist of avant-garde
port   rate       re    invent

solar

iz

ation


photogram into "rayographs"

ego aside

in Montparnasse


leading a sideways

pro to type

of performance a(rt)