John Herschel’s florilegium: a history of a colour stain

Thesis

In my thesis, I elucidate the conditions of possibility — material and epistemic — which informed the quest for photographic polychromy of John Frederick William Herschel (1792– 1871). I investigate Herschel’s distillation of plant dyes to create colour photography by utilising the process of plant photosynthesis. To understand how Herschel came up with an idea of using plants for photographic purposes and where he got them from, I first detail the historic circumstances of Herschel’s life and work. I then argue that Herschel’s botanical and photochemical research is epistemically linked as two intermingling facets of his inquiry into the vital properties of matter. My thesis thereby investigates in what aspects and to what extent Herschel’s natural history pursuits and photographic experiments were predicated on a crucial change in the conceptualisation of nature and its redefinition from a mechanism, akin to a proverbial God’s clockwork, to a living organism imbued with vital forces. Overall, I place Herschel’s investigation of photographic polychromy in a wider epistemic climate. The aim is to postulate how his transition from the graphic to the photographic can be productively theorised as part of the same process of epistemic transition to modernity that undergirded Herschel’s other scientific pursuits.

Authors: Chervonik, O

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-nrx2mz1b4
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: the history of science; transition from natural history to modern science; early photography; John Herschel; the invention of photography; materiality of early photography; vitalism
• Subjects: Art--History; Photography; History of science