Beschreibung:

SELLA Giuseppe Venanzio. Il Plico del Fotografo. Trattato teorico-pratico di Fotografia. Seconda edizione riveduta e corretta. Torino, Paravia, 1863. 8vo mm. 230 x 160, pp. XV, 500, with 56 woodcut illustrations in the text [one with color cloth temples] and other geometric figures and a vignette at the titlepage. Contemporary quarter calf binding, gilt titles and ornaments on spine. Contemporary piemontese’s bookplate. Some foxing, but excellent specimen.
Second edition, featuring various updates compared to before 1856, of this important manual, among the first work complete published in Italy on the subject. Particularly developed the section dedicated to photographic chemistry, followed by a detailed analysis of the various development and printing processes then practiced at the time. The chapter of introduction contains an interesting historical exposition of the discovery of the darkroom and the invention of photography. Giuseppe Venanzio Sella [Biella, 1823-76], father of Vittorio, "comes to photography from the study of chemistry, science that deeply interested in both its theoretical aspect ... and its practical application to dyeing to improve the conditions of opifici Lanieri ... Since 1851 he devoted himself to the study of chemical processes in the photographic field ... already in 1852 he made a series of views of the main places of Turin that he sent to the King . The prevailing interests of Venanzio Sella still remain in the scientific order and find their way into the drawing of the Plico del Fotografo ... the first treatise of photography edited in Italy, translated into French and German languages" [Avigdor, Cassio ed altri, Fotografi del Piemonte, p. 42]. Settimelli, 22.