The pictures taken
by the first Slovenian photographer and inventor Janez Puhar – including his full-figure
Self-portrait – belong to the pioneeringperiod of world photography. This is how the Slovene priest inscribed himself in the history of
this art medium and made a valuable contribution to its early experimental
stage.
In the spring of 1842, he invented a process of photographing on a glass
surface. This achievement went on to improve, simplify and lower the costs of
what was an expensive and demanding photographic method at the time. He
developed his original technique shortly after the first inventions by the
French, English and American photographers, and even surpassed many of them as
a portraitist.
Self-portrait is not one of Puhar’s first successes – it was
produced in the 1950s or early 1960s,
after he had already presented his process to the academic circles with a
nearly ten-year delay. In 1850, he disclosed it to the scholars of the Austrian
Imperial Academy of Sciences in Vienna. He also added some photographs to the
description. This was followed by a publication in the periodical publication Sitzungsberichte
der mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Classe der kaiserlichen
Akademie der Wissenschaften (VI/1, 3. jan.
1851). The article triggered an avalanche of related publications in a number
of professional publications across Europe and America (in Germany, Austria,
France, England, Pennsylvania). The following year (1852), the French Academy
of Agriculture, Handcraftsand Commerce in Paris (Académie nationale
agricole, manufacturière et commerciale) issued him with a diploma for the
invention and named him “the
inventor of photography on glass” (Inventeur de la Photographie sur
Verre).
The modest photographer from Slovenian countryside was
thus promoted in the world of science, and the wider international public was
able to see his photographs at three world exhibitions: in London (1851), New
York (1853) and Paris (1855).