William Brooke O’Shaughnessy (1809 -1889) was an Irish physician and one of the strongest applicants for the title of the first photographer in India. He moved to Kolkata in 1833 where he became an Assistant Surgeon with the British East India Company.
He is famous for his wide-ranging scientific work in pharmacology, chemistry, and inventions related to telegraphy and its use in India. William Brooke O’Shaughnessy was responsible for the introduction of the medicinal use of cannabis to western medicine in 1839 and he was also credited with a role in cementing British rule in India by establishing its expansive telegraph communications network from Calcutta to Agra, Delhi, Lahore and Shimla with a second line from Agra to Bombay and thence to Madras, in total 3200 miles.
William Brooke O’Shaughnessy in 1839 experimented with photogenic drawing, using the light-sensitive properties of gold rather than the more commonly used silver compounds. He exhibited his new kind of Photographic – Drawing by means of the sun’s light – of which the principle wholly differs from that of Europe where Nitrate of Silver is the capturing agent. William Brooke O’Shaughnessy used, a solution of gold, and produced many various tints from a light rose colour, through purple down to a deep black. He also used a specially polished lens, which expedited the process and gave different shades.
The invention and excitement of the discovery of the Daguerreotype process quickly travelled from Europe to India. Descriptions of the Daguerreotype process, details to make practical experimentation and equipment availability are found in Indian newspapers both in Calcutta and in Bombay.
By early 1840 O’Shaughnessy successfully mastered the Daguerreotype process and the Calcutta Courier (5 March 1840) recorded what appears to be the first definite record of Daguerreotype images taken in India.
Daguerreotype created strikingly detailed monotone images of the subject, but because it was a direct positive, they were not reproducible, so only one unique copy of each image could be made. The lack of colour in Daguerreotype motivated William Brooke O’Shaughnessy and sought to improve on it by introducing colour to the process. His preoccupation with electrochemical experiments led him into attempts to substitute the liquid mercury used in Daguerreotypes by other metals, such as gold, platinum, rhodium, palladium, iridium and silver, which occupy higher positions in the atomic table. He did so by melting these metals and exposing the chemically pure silver-plated copper of the Daguerreotype to their vapors. It is said, that he was able to obtain red, purple, and even green tones on the Daguerreotypes by using different metals. He announced his results at the meeting of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in August 1839, when he exhibited several ‘photogenic drawings prepared by himself in which a solution of gold was the used as agent.
William Brooke O’Shaughnessy works of Photographic – Drawing, his Daguerreotype has not found in any museum or any collection apart from the written references, articles in the Asiatic Society of Bengal and newspapers. Difficulties in obtaining chemicals, the lack of know-how and many more problems of working in an unforgiving climate, absence of understating on the new media preservation and conservation have contributed to the disappearance of William Brooke O’Shaughnessy works, what is believed to the first photographs of India which was made in the 1840s.
Reference
https://www.irishpost.com/life-style/10-famous-irish-people-youve-never-heard-of-129221
O’SHAUGHNESSY’S EXPERIMENTS IN COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHY, by G. Thomas
Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, No. 92 (August 1839),p. 691.
Pioneers of Indian photography, by John Falconer
