“Painting is dead”: Celebrating the 150th anniversary of photography in 1989 | Photography

‘F“Today painting is dead!” was how the French artist Paul Delaroche greeted one of the earliest photographs in horror. It was not, but on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of photography in 1989 observer examines how this “miraculous new invention” has changed our perspective.

Cartes de visite – one of the earliest affordable mass-market images – challenge the cliché of Victorian photography. Instead of a bearded family man in his Sunday best, stiff and serious as the long exposure times demand, they show a surprising variety and a sense of sensation. Alexandra, Princess of Wales, carries her daughter piggyback; a bare-bottomed boy is slapped; there are giants, severed heads, bearded children, chimney sweeps and celebrities.

Another post looked at the visual tricks of Victorian “ghost” photography – ghosts, ghouls, specters and spectral apparitions. Apparitions were conjured using simple techniques such as multiple exposure, montage and double printing. These “deception devices” gradually evolved from con artists to harmless family entertainment before settling into advertising, art and the burgeoning film industry.

Most arresting are the snapshots of “ordinary people” by Paul Martin, a 19th-century Martin Parr who used lighter, less bulky equipment to photograph people at work and, above all, at play. Images of men and women napping, bathing and cuddling on Yarmouth beach contradicted the disapproval of an 1898 photography magazine that lambasted “hand-held camera fanatics who take snapshots of ladies as they emerge from their morning bath.”

The special edition ended with the legendary observer “Room of My Own” by photographer Jane Bown. Her farmhouse living room was filled with animals – ceramics, sculptures, painted ones and a real dozing Labrador – but there were only two photos: one of her daughter and one of the impressive observer former picture editor Mechthild Nawiasky, who hired Bown. Bown became enthusiastic about photography after the war (she had signed up for a photography course because she didn’t find it boring, she explained), and she spoke wonderfully modestly about her talent: “There’s nothing to say, I just hold up my camera and take a photo.”