LECTURE FIVE

PIONEERING TO CAPTURE AN IMAGE WITH LIGHT
Lecturer: Mark Osterman

The invention of photography begins with the earliest observations of changes effected by the medium of light. Centuries ago, when even the definition of light was being contested there was a progression of important experiments that laid the groundworks for what we know as photography. Join Photographic Process Historian Mark Osterman as he explains how simple photosensitive materials that either darkened or lightened by exposure to light became the basis for chemical based imagery. Processes discussed in this illustrated lecture will include organic tinctures, asphalt heliographs, rosin physautotypes, chromium compounds and the earliest silver compounds.

Mark Osterman, former Process Historian at George Eastman Museum is unique in his primary research. A specialist in the evolution of photography Osterman learned the earliest early processes by reading original manuscripts, viewing vintage samples made by the inventors and demonstrating them at the locations where they were first used by the inventors. He lives in Rochester, New York with his wife France Scully Osterman, also a photo historian and teacher. The Ostermans are collected artists using historic processes as their medium. They operate Scully and Osterman in their skylight studio where they teach workshops and private tutorials in a wide variety of 19th century photographic processes.

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