It should go with­out say­ing that one should drink respon­si­bly, for rea­sons per­tain­ing to life and limb as well as rep­u­ta­tion. The ubiq­ui­ty of still and video cam­eras means poten­tial­ly embar­rass­ing moments can end up on mil­lions of screens in an instant, copied, down­loaded, and saved for pos­ter­i­ty. Not so dur­ing the infan­cy of pho­tog­ra­phy, when it was a painstak­ing process with min­utes-long expo­sure times and arcane chem­i­cal devel­op­ment meth­ods. Pho­tograph­ing peo­ple gen­er­al­ly meant keep­ing them as still as pos­si­ble for sev­er­al min­utes, a require­ment that ren­dered can­did shots next to impos­si­ble.

We know the results of these ear­ly pho­to­graph­ic por­trai­ture from many a famous Daguerreo­type, named for its French inven­tor, Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. At the same time, dur­ing the 1830s and 40s, anoth­er process gained pop­u­lar­i­ty in Eng­land, called the Calo­type—or “Tal­bo­type,” for its inven­tor William Hen­ry Fox Tal­bot. “Upon hear­ing of the advent of the Daguerreo­type in 1839,” writes Linz Welch at the Unit­ed Pho­to­graph­ic Artists Gallery site, Tal­bot “felt moved to action to ful­ly refine the process that he had begun work on. He was able to short­en his expo­sure times great­ly and start­ed using a sim­i­lar form of cam­era for expo­sure on to his pre­pared paper neg­a­tives.”

This last fea­ture made the Calo­type more ver­sa­tile and mechan­i­cal­ly repro­ducible. And the short­ened expo­sure times seemed to enable some greater flex­i­bil­i­ty in the kinds of pho­tographs one could take. In the 1843 pho­to above, we have what appears to be an entire­ly unplanned group­ing of rev­el­ers, caught in a moment of cheer at the pub. Cre­at­ed by Scot­tish painter-pho­tog­ra­phers Robert Adam­son and David Octavius Hill—who grins, half-stand­ing, on the right—the image looks like almost no oth­er por­trait from the time. Rather than sit­ting rigid­ly, the fig­ures slouch casu­al­ly; rather than look­ing grim and mourn­ful, they smile and smirk, appar­ent­ly shar­ing a joke. The pho­to­graph is believed to be the first image of alco­holic con­sump­tion, and it does its sub­ject jus­tice.

Though Tal­bot patent­ed his Calo­type process in Eng­land in 1841, the restric­tions did not apply in Scot­land. “In fact,” the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art writes, “Tal­bot encour­aged its use there.” He main­tained a cor­re­spon­dence with inter­est­ed sci­en­tists, includ­ing Adamson’s old­er broth­er John, a pro­fes­sor of chem­istry. But the Calo­type was more of an artists’ medi­um. Where Daguerreo­types pro­duced, Welch writes, “a star­tling resem­blance of real­i­ty,” with clean lines and even tones, the Calo­type, with its salt print, “tend­ed to have high con­trast between lights and darks…. Addi­tion­al­ly, because of the paper fibers, the image would present with a grain that would dif­fuse the details.” We see this espe­cial­ly in the cap­tur­ing of Octavius Hill, who appears both life­like in motion and ren­dered artis­ti­cal­ly with char­coal or brush.

The oth­er two figures—James Bal­lan­tine, writer, stained-glass artist, and son of an Edin­burgh brew­er, and Dr. George Bell, in the center—have the rak­ish air of char­ac­ters in a William Hog­a­rth scene. The Nation­al Gal­leries of Scot­land attrib­ut­es the nat­u­ral­ness of these pos­es to “Hill’s socia­bil­i­ty, humour and his capac­i­ty to gauge the sit­ters’ char­ac­ters.” Sure­ly the booze did its part in loos­en­ing every­one up. The three men are said to be drink­ing Edin­burgh Ale, “accord­ing to a con­tem­po­rary account… ‘a potent flu­id, which almost glued the lips of the drinker togeth­er.’ ” Such a side effect would, at least, make it extreme­ly dif­fi­cult to over-imbibe.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

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Relat­ed Con­tent

The First Pho­to­graph Ever Tak­en (1826)

See The First “Self­ie” In His­to­ry Tak­en by Robert Cor­nelius, a Philadel­phia Chemist, in 1839

See the First Pho­to­graph of a Human Being: A Pho­to Tak­en by Louis Daguerre (1838)

The First Faked Pho­to­graph (1840)

Behold the Very First Col­or Pho­to­graph (1861): Tak­en by Scot­tish Physi­cist (and Poet!) James Clerk Maxwell

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

In 1958, Mao Zedong launched the Great Leap For­ward. Eight years lat­er, he announced the begin­ning of the Great Pro­le­tar­i­an Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion. Between those two events, of course, came the Great Chi­nese Famine, and his­to­ri­ans now view all three as being “great” in the same pejo­ra­tive sense. Though Chair­man Mao may not have under­stood the prob­a­ble con­se­quences of poli­cies like agri­cul­tur­al col­lec­tiviza­tion and ide­o­log­i­cal purifi­ca­tion, he did under­stand the impor­tance of his own image in sell­ing those poli­cies to the Chi­nese peo­ple: hence the famous 1966 pho­to of him swim­ming across the Yangtze Riv­er.

By that point, “the Chi­nese leader who had led a peas­ant army to vic­to­ry in the Chi­nese Civ­il War and estab­lished the com­mu­nist Peo­ple’s Repub­lic of Chi­na in 1949 was get­ting old.” So says Cole­man Lown­des in the Vox Dark­room video above. Worse, Mao’s Great Leap For­ward had clear­ly proven calami­tous. The Chair­man “need­ed to find a way to seal his lega­cy as the face of Chi­nese com­mu­nism and a new rev­o­lu­tion to lead.” And so he repeat­ed one of his ear­li­er feats, the swim across the Yangtze he’d tak­en in 1956. Spread far and wide by state media, the shot of Mao in the riv­er tak­en by his per­son­al pho­tog­ra­ph­er illus­trat­ed reports that he’d swum fif­teen kilo­me­ters in a bit over an hour.

This meant “the 72-year-old would have shat­tered world speed records,” a claim all in a day’s work for pro­pa­gan­dists in a dic­ta­tor­ship. But those who saw pho­to­graph would­n’t have for­got­ten what hap­pened the last time he took such a well-pub­li­cized dip in the Yangtze. “Experts feared that Mao was on the verge of kick­ing off anoth­er dis­as­trous peri­od of tur­moil in Chi­na. They were right.” The already-declared Great Pro­le­tar­i­an Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion, now wide­ly known as the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion, saw mil­lions of Chi­nese youth — osten­si­bly rad­i­cal­ized by the image of their beloved leader in the flesh — orga­nize into “the fanat­i­cal Red Guards,” a para­mil­i­tary force bent on extir­pat­ing, by any means nec­es­sary, the “four olds”: old cul­ture, old ide­ol­o­gy, old cus­toms, and old tra­di­tions.

As with most attempts to ush­er in a Year Zero, Mao’s final rev­o­lu­tion wast­ed lit­tle time becom­ing an engine of chaos. Only his death end­ed “a decade of destruc­tion that had ele­vat­ed the leader to god-like lev­els and result­ed in over one mil­lion peo­ple dead.” The Chi­nese Com­mu­nist’s Par­ty has sub­se­quent­ly con­demned the Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion but not the Chair­man him­self, and indeed his swim remains an object of year­ly com­mem­o­ra­tion. “Had Mao died in 1956, his achieve­ments would have been immor­tal,” once said CCP offi­cial Chen Yun. “Had he died in 1966, he would still have been a great man but flawed. But he died in 1976. Alas, what can one say?” Per­haps that, had the aging Mao drowned in the Yangtze, Chi­nese his­to­ry might have tak­en a hap­pi­er turn.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Col­or­ful Wood Block Prints from the Chi­nese Rev­o­lu­tion of 1911: A Gallery of Artis­tic Pro­pa­gan­da Posters

Won­der­ful­ly Kitschy Pro­pa­gan­da Posters Cham­pi­on the Chi­nese Space Pro­gram (1962–2003)

Long Before Pho­to­shop, the Sovi­ets Mas­tered the Art of Eras­ing Peo­ple from Pho­tographs — and His­to­ry Too

Why the Sovi­ets Doc­tored Their Most Icon­ic World War II Vic­to­ry Pho­to, “Rais­ing a Flag Over the Reich­stag”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.