Pictures while you wait and the first traffic cam – early photography exposed

For the first photographers, “instant” meant as long as it took to take the glass plates into the darkroom and expose them to the necessary chemicals. Nevertheless, as early as 1928 – long before the Polaroid camera was invented – a photographer called Sydney Garbutt had set himself up as the “while you wait man” in Trafalgar Square.

At around the same time, the Scottish photographer and inventor Alex Stewart was marketing the first commercially produced flashbulb, and the Chief Constable of Lancaster was issuing his roadside patrols with enormous box cameras made of wood and leather to try to catch out dangerous drivers.

Photography had already come a long way since the first enthusiasts took to the great outdoors – it was too dark inside — only to disappear under their black camera hoods while they adjusted the lens. They were following in the footsteps of the Dorset scientist William Fox Talbot, who invented the system of photography which endured until the digital age and which is preferred by some photographers even today. An artist as well as an innovator, his images of mid-19th century Britain are among the earliest in existence and constitute a unique historical record.

Less well-known is his contemporary, Anna Atkins, one of the earliest female photographers, who produced the first book that used photos for illustrations. Meanwhile, Julia Margaret Cameron was taking some of the first portraits, with a list of “sitters” that would have made even Lord Snowdon jealous. Charles Darwin and Alfred, Lord Tennyson were just two of them.

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