Capturing the outside world

Although the title of 'first woman photographer' is hotly contested, the historical moment of the 'first ever photograph' is less controversial. In 1826, Nicéphore Niépce took the 'View from the Window at Le Gras', a heliograph that has gone down in history as the first time someone captured a still image of the moving world. It took about eight hours to capture this photograph.

The heliograph photographic process involves placing an object or a negative directly onto light-sensitive paper and then exposing it to the sun. This is different from the photograms described in the last chapter: where a photogram can only capture an imprint of the object that is laid directly onto the light-sensitive paper, a heliograph can actually capture a view of the world without anything except light having to touch the paper. The sun's rays cause the paper to darken, creating a direct positive image. Its long exposure time was one of its main limitations, making it difficult to capture moving subjects or produce prints in anything approaching real-time.

In hindsight, it seems curious that the first-ever photograph captured an outside scene, because the first decades of photography were dominated by images created indoors.

The first photographic studios

From the 1840s onwards, photographic studios began popping up everywhere. They were places where anyone could get their picture taken quickly and at an affordable price.

Julia Widgren (1842–1917) was known as one of the first female photographers in Finland. She was well-known for her studio in Vaasa, where she took stately portraits like this.

Although photography was generally speaking a male-dominated profession, studio photography was seen as something that women were capable of doing – it didn't involve hard physical work, and you could stay indoors whilst doing it.

Widgren made several series of photographs depicting people in folk costumes. This picture was later coloured to depict the vibrant colours of the farming couple's clothes.

With the rise of studio photography, politicians, artists and other leading high-class people started hiring photographers to take portraits of them regularly. Bertha Valerius, at first a portrait painter and later a studio photographer, became the official Swedish royal portrait artist in 1864. In this image from 1870, she photographed Crown Prince Frederik VIII with his wife, Princess Louise of Sweden.

In the striking collage below, Valerius took separate studio photographs of every member of the Swedish parliament and spliced them together to create a group picture – an ingenious piece of photographic manipulation, well before Photoshop!

Moving outdoors

Female studio photographers that were exceptionally good at their craft began emerging in the early years of studio photography. But why stay confined to their studios?

Emma Schenson, another Swedish photographer, was the first professional photographer to open a photography studio in Uppsäla, in the 1860s. Her work was not limited to her studio - she also created an album of outdoor photographs in honour of the Swedish botanist Linnaeus as well as making a series of photographs on Uppsäla's architecture.

Most notably, she documented the restoration of Uppsäla Cathedral, demonstrating her skills of exposing photographic plates outdoors, and skilfully framing buildings and landscapes. In the photograph below, our eye is drawn to the intricate wooden scaffolding around the cathedral. Meanwhile, in the lower half of the picture, a stable boy pumps water from a well to give to the horses who pulled the carriages strewn around the courtyard.

Urban photography was challenging: photographers needed to be versatile, managing cumbersome equipment and responding to changing conditions of light, weather and people in motion.

Julia Widgren, whilst famous for her studio photographs, also took her camera outside to capture the stunning Swedish landscape. Her photographs often kept their studio-like feel though, with the subjects of her photographs standing or sitting with their faces turned towards the camera, clearly posed. This gives her outside work an almost theatrical atmosphere, as if the backdrops of these pictures aren't the real world but artificial stage sets.

Signe Brander was yet another influential figure in outdoor photography. Born in Helsinki, Brander was a pioneer in the field of Finnish photography and her work expressed a unique perspective on Finnish life and culture. She was tasked by the Helsinki Antiquities Board with photographing the changing city, as part of preparations for Helsinki’s new City Museum. Over 900 images captured the rapidly changing face of Helsinki at the start of the 20th century, with her photographs showing people going about their daily lives.

Even though her work was carried out for the Helsinki City Board, Brander had a lot of artistic freedom in how she portrayed the city and its citizens. Brander's craft was tellingly different from the female studio photographers that came before her. She didn't pose her subjects in a scene, she didn't colourise her images, and she did not cut and paste photographs together.

This picture of a man rowing his horse to the other side of the lake, with the houses and trees serenely reflecting on the water's surface, shows Brander's typical style. She relied on patience, being in the right place at the right time, and used great framing to capture the world as it was presented to her.

In using photography to capture the present for the future, Brander showed how powerful the medium could be. In the next chapter, we'll learn about other examples of women who used their cameras to help change the world.