Credited to Slovenia. A Frenchman, Niepce de Saint-Victor, is more widely credited with early photography on glass. Puhar's method was reported publicly in 1842 but only recognized by the Vienna Academy of Sciences in 1851.
How it began
Janez Puhar was born in Kranj in 1814, the son of a stonemason, and entered the priesthood in 1838. Serving as a chaplain in Slovenian villages, he took up the new art of the daguerreotype, and his earliest experiments were reported in a Carniolan newspaper in spring 1841. Because the materials were too costly for his income, he worked out his own cheaper technique on a transparent glass plate. The first public reference to the invention dates from April 19, 1842.
Before it existed
The process Puhar started from was the daguerreotype, which recorded an image on a metal plate. He found its materials too expensive for a village chaplain. His response was to replace the metal with glass and to use sulfur, mercury, bromine and alcohol, which he could afford.
How it works
Puhar coated a cleaned glass plate with light-sensitive sulfur and held it over a flame while exposing it to iodine vapor. The plate went into the back of the camera, and heated mercury in a metal flask at the bottom of the camera gave off vapor during an exposure of about 15 seconds. Bromine vapor improved the image, which was then treated with alcohol, varnished and covered with a second glass plate against scratches. The whole process took five to eight minutes.
Who pushed back
Puhar's reports were overshadowed by the heavily promoted glass photography of the Frenchman Claude Felix Abel Niepce de Saint-Victor. He received no official recognition until the Reports of the Vienna Academy of Sciences published his work in 1851. He was later sent to a remote parish and did not appear again on the international photography scene.
Where it stands today
Five of Puhar's photographs survive, held in the National Museum in Ljubljana, the Museum of Architecture and Design, and a private collection. A museum room in Kranj presents his life and work. The 200th anniversary of his birth was marked in 2014 with a year of photography events opened at the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts.
