Landscape photography; or, A complete and easy description of the manipulations and apparatus necessary for the production of landscape pictures,

geological sections, etc. by the calotype, wet collodion, collodion-albumen, albumen, gelatine, and wax-paper processes. By the assistance of which an amateur may at once commence the practice of the art. By Joachim Otté, F.G.S., author of “A Short cut to photography.” London : Robert Hardwicke, 192, Piccadilly, 1858. First edition. Small octavo (167 x 110 mm), publisher’s embossed brown cloth boards with gilt lettering and device to upper board (rubbed), spine titled in gilt (slightly dulled); original endpapers, wood-engraved frontispiece plate, pp xvi, 76, [4 publisher’s advertisements]; scattered foxing, more pronounced on the preliminaries and last few leaves, otherwise clean and sound, the binding firm; a very good copy.

A significant early work on the technical aspects of photography, published within two decades of its invention at a critical juncture when the science (or art) was in flux, with numerous processes coming into vogue and competing simultaneously.

Otté’s manual is a practical and comprehensive guide to all of the contemporary processes that involved printing images on paper or glass; these were becoming accessible to a rapidly growing number of amateur practitioners in Britain, Europe and America. His treatment omits altogether the daguerreotype process – a reflection of the fact that the daguerreotype’s popularity was already in decline by the late 1850s, largely due to the introduction of the safer, faster and less expensive collodion processes, in particular the ambrotype.

Gernsheim, 805.

Very rare; a single copy traced at auction in the last 50 years.

Trove locates a single copy in Australian libraries (SLV).