Essay on The History of Photography

Photography, meaning “drawing with lights” in Greek, is an art as well as a science of capturing light and storing it on a medium with unprecedented accuracy. Yet, up until the late 18th century, history was mainly recorded through the techniques of painting and the press. These mediums unarguably contained a certain degree of a truth, though, it was not uncommon for events, such as war to be composed with glorified details, or an unfavorable bias from the artist at hand. Beginning in the 1830’s, cameras provided a revolutionary solution by combining the advancements in optics and chemistry. Consequently, the new medium of photography was established and forever changed how history would be visually captured. Unlike other methods, photography

The camera obscura catches an image through a lens and it is projected in a darkened chamber. The portable camera obscura invented in the 17th century could be moved around and used both indoors and outdoors. It had an adjustable lens and a slanted metal mirror which projected the image onto a translucent screen. By moving the lens forward and back, the image could be focused on the screen. It should be noted here that if Vermeer placed such a portable camera obscura on the table, the height of the lens would correspond to the height of the windowsill in Vermeer’s home, which is the same level of the viewing points in many of his paintings (Koningsberger 139). Therefore, Vermeer would have had both the technology and the right mindset of the day to be aided by the camera obscura.

They were both working together to make the first permanent image. Daguerre is known for his invention, the daguerreotype. A daguerreotype was the first commercially successful photographic process and was publicated. It was photo made on a silver surface sensitized with iodine was developed by exposure to mercury vapor. This is also known as the “daguerreian process.” In 1851, Frederick Scott Archer, a sculptor in London, improved photographic resolution by spreading a mixture of collodion (nitrated cotton dissolved in ether and alcohol) and chemicals on sheets of glass. This wet plate photography was less expensive than processing

This technique was discovered by Filippo Brunelleschi in the fifthteenth century. The School of Athens fresco, done by Raphael, featured depth of field and light, and also included Aristotle and Plato, two greek philosophers, Socrates, Donatello, and Raphael himself. Art contributed to the modern world by the introducing the technique of perspective and light. In the Renaissance time period, anatomy was one of the multiple fields of study. Da Vinci sketched images of the human body in his notebook.

Sense the invention of the camera in 1826 photography has been used to document everything from family portraits, social injustice, sporting events, world news, expressions of joy and sorrow, and hundreds of monumental moments. The camera has given man the power to reveal the truth visually. Throughout history photographs have made enormous impacts on social consciousness and ultimately shaped public opinion on many pressing issues in society. Although photography is often considered a casual pastime, the invention of the camera has contributed to many aspects of history, science, and other important pieces of todays world.

“It is perhaps worth stating the obvious; the camera is central to our understanding of photography.”- John Szarkowski.² The first (daguerreotype) cameras did not only weigh over 100 pounds but were expensive as well. A large sum of 400 francs, equal to six months’ salary for a skilled worker was needed to purchase a daguerreotype, and they also had to be experienced with the chemical process to develop their photos. Photographers where given more freedom to move out of the portrait studio and explore the world around them through photography when William Henry Fox Talbot developed the collotype and “wet plate” technique in England during 1841. The advantage of using the collotype process was that you could produce a paper negative which could be used to make numerous prints on specially treated paper.

My thesis will be talking about photography before it was invented which means that how people were able to have a photograph back then, and how was the camera invented and it will be including the development of photography. Moreover, my thesis will be talking about what is the Camera Obscura, Daguerreotype, Collotype, Collodion Process, Polaroid in Colour, and the First Digital

Photography serves many purposes and since its invention people have used it for many different reasons, but mostly for

Photography is a word derived from the Greek words photos light and to draw. A scientist called Sir John F.W. Herschel, which was in 1839, first used the word. It was a method which was all about recording images by using light or radiation on a sensitive material. The first known camera was created by Alhazen also known as who lived around 100AD he invented the first pinhole camera this camera was used to capture the movement of the sun. Photography was explained to be the science and art of documenting photographs by capturing light on a light sensitive material which included film or an electronic sensor. Light could be reflected from objects which could expose a chemical or electronic material during a timed exposure which is typically used through a camera which can store the information chemically or electronically. The first photograph was take in 1827 taken by Joseph Nicephore Niepce who made the first photograph

In 1838, Sir Charles Wheaton patented the stereoscope, a device used for viewing a pair of images through two lenses, one for the left-eye, and one for the right-eye. This device showed that left-eye and right-eye views of the same image would create a single three-dimensional image. He experimented with stereoscopic drawings. Wheaton’s stereoscope was shown to the public in 1838, a year prior to the first practical photography being introduced. Later, the two ideas were combined and stereo-cards were created. The image was made by placing two almost identical photographes on cardboard, side by side, to be viewed with a stereoscope, these were called stereo-cards. Wheatstone's stereoscope was not as popular as a later version, made by Oliver

In the world we live in today, anyone can pick up a handheld video camera and record their son’s soccer game or daughter’s school play, but to really capture the beauty of an event takes true talent. It takes the expertise of a cinematographer or director of photography as they are also known, to capture the true essence of an event and scene. Thomas Edison even once said, “By faithfully reproducing and kind or type of movement, it [cinematography] constitutes man’s most astonishing victory to date over forgetfulness. It retains and restores the things memory alone can’t recover, not to mention its auxiliary agencies: the written page, drawing photography. … Like them, cinematography prevents the things of yesterday that are useful to tomorrow’s progress from sinking into oblivion; amongst these one must count moving things, which only a few years ago were considered impossible to fix in an image” (Neale, 54). A picture, whether it be a photographed image or a filmed image is nothing when it has not been looked at with the proper eyes. When expressed through the proper lens and eye an image can really be worth a thousand words.

While we think of photography as a fairly modern invention, that is simply not true. In fact, there are documents on the underlying principle behind photography dating back to as early as the Fifth Century, B.C. The first recorded instance of a photographic image was found in 5th Century China. During that time, Chinese philosopher and scholar Mo-Ti described how light passing through a pinhole into a dark room created an inverted, full color image on the opposite wall. Mo-Ti the room he used to produce this

Leone Battista Alberti, born in Genoa in 1404, was a famous Italian philosopher, painter, architect, musician, poet, and cryptographer and of the Renaissance period. His most famous work was his “Treatise De Picture” which enclosed the first study of perspective. Alberti was quite skilled in Latin verse and when he was twenty years old, he wrote a comedy entitled “Philodoxius.” He was also wrote the fantasy novel “Hypnerotomachia Poliphili,” which is considered one of the most imaginative and legendary novels ever written (Encyclopedia4U 1).

In 1888, George Eastman made the first light and portable camera under the company name Kodak (Graham 28). These cameras gave people the ability to take a photo almost anywhere. The cameras had to be sent back to the factory so the photographs could be printed. Twenty years after Kodak’s first camera, they produced an improved camera, called “Brownie”. The Brownie was simple to use, making the art of photography boom. Flash cameras did not appear until the 1930s, letting people take pictures in areas with dim or little lighting. In 1947, Edwin Land invented the instant camera. Land got the idea after his daughter asked to see her picture after he took her photo. The next step in improving the camera was by making it digital, which was done in 1975 by a Kodak employee. As the camera gets smaller and simpler to use, the quality of the photographs it produces gets better.

During the mid to late years of the 19th century, a new form of entertainment emerged. Film entered the stage of innovation. New marketing and technological innovations developed for film to become the art it is today. In the 1830s, Joseph Plateau designed the Phenakistoscope. This device had a picture in the middle of a wheel made with mirrors and small openings. When spun, the Phenakistoscope made the picture appear to move. The name changed to Zoetrope in the 1860s and producers advertised the product as an accessory every home needed (Dixon & Foster, 2008). Later inventions that preceded the first motion picture camera include: Henry Du Mont’s Omiscope, Henry R. Heyl’s Phasmatrope, Eadweard Muybridge’s Zoöpraxiscope, Etienne-Jules Marey’s fusil photographique and Eastman Kodak’s chronophotographs (Parkinson, 1997). With a design by Thomas Edison, William Kennedy Laurie Dickson built the first modern movie camera, the Kinetograph, in 1890 (Dixon & Foster, 2008). In 1895, Auguste and Louis Lumiére patented the Cinématographe, a machine that combined the engineering of a camera and a projector (Bergan, 2006). Businessmen capitalized on the growing need for a place to witness these brand new films, thus they charged people to see them in their living rooms (Potter, 2014). These creations made movie-making a reality.