I have been looking into the history of photography recently, and have found much detail (of a fascinating nature) about the first photos taken, of the first person photographed, of the first war photographer, etc.
But what I want to know is: when was the first time somebody took a photo of a tortoise? And for what purpose was the photo taken?
I have not been able to locate the information. I would be greatly intrigued to know if the photo was taken at a zoo (more likely?) or out in the wild, and who the photographer was and if he had an interest in the nature of tortoise-ways or if it was to him just an interesting photo, and if the purpose of the photo was intended for publication, and where, and why, and basically every fact there is to know about the first photo of a tortoise (and he or she who photographed it).
Has anyone here a knowledge of such details?
Thank you kindly.
As with many 'what was the first' questions - especially those about obscure things that weren't necessarily remarked on at the time - this is a difficult one. It's the kind of thing that would take weeks of obsessive research through dusty archives to conclusively answer, possibly by someone with a better command than I have of languages other than English (after all, plenty of early photographers were not Anglophone). And even then it'd be easy to miss something.
However, with that caveat in mind, I have one starting point for you. This is contained in Volume 9 of The Photographic Journal, from 1865. This journal records the minutes of a speech given to the London Photographic Society at King's College, London, on January 3rd, 1865, in which one Frank Haes recounted his summer adventures taking photographs in the 'Zoological Gardens' (presumably the modern London Zoo).
Some of Haes' photographs can be seen here, as part of a page at the Getty Museum; various copies of Haes' photographs were distributed in the period in a few different formats and were quite popular. Haes' photography is valuable to academics today because London Zoo housed several animals at the time which are now extinct - notably the quagga and the thylacine - and Haes took photos of these animals.
Unfortunately the Getty Museum website (or elsewhere on the web that I can find) don't seem to have a copy of a tortoise photo by Haes! However, one clearly existed and was exhibited during Haes' slide show as written down in the journal. During the speech to the Photographic Society, Haes said that:
The last of my animals is the Tortoise, which would of course always move its head just as I was ready to expose; but having at last caught him napping, I obtained what I required, and so finished my first series of Zoological photographs, after three months' hard work.
The easiest place to find a copy of that photo of a napping tortoise, taken in the English summer of 1864 may be in the 1996 book by John Edwards, London Zoo From Old Photographs 1852-1914; alternatively, that photo may also be present in the image collection at the Zoological Society of London.
So there may be earlier photographs of tortoises from before summer 1864, and I haven't found this particular photograph of a London Zoo-based tortoise from 1864 (my university library doesn't have the Edwards book in its collection, unfortunately), but I think chances are very good that a photograph of a tortoise from 1864 still exists.