View from the Window at Le Gras (Gernsheim Collection, University of Texas at Austin).
By Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, 1827.
Photography as we know it today is the result of a gradual understanding of the properties of lenses and light sensitive materials. As early as the sixteenth century, artists used the camera obscura, a device that used a lens to project an image on a glass screen. At roughly the same time, chemists were experimenting with light sensitive salts, hoping to record lasting images.
The First Photograph
It took a French scientist by the name of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce to successfully combine the two concepts in 1827. Placing a plate coated with the light-sensitive material bitumen inside a camera obscura, he created the world's oldest existing photograph.
The Daguerrotype
Niépce shared the details of his new process with Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, a Parisian artist. Daguerre eventually discovered a more permanent and clear method of exposing images, and his procedure was given as a gift to the world by the French government in 1839. Daguerrotypes took Europe and the United States by storm, preserving memories for thousands around the world.
Talbot's Method
At the same time Daguerre published his process, an Englishman named William Henry Fox Talbot was perfecting his own procedure of photography, the first direct predecessor of today's method. Talbot created the basic negative/positive process, which today enables multiple prints to be created from a single negative. His process, called the calotype, eventually gained predominance over the daguerrotype.
New Process
Photography and War
Over time, many new and better processes were developed, including the following: the collodion process, carte-de-visite, the ambrotype, and the tintype. Tintypes were popular, inexpensive forms of documentation during the American Civil War. Each new method of developing prints improved on its predecessor, paving the way for modern printing processes.
Collodion
By Gustave Le Gray, 1856
Carte-de-visite
By Arthur King, 1870
Ambrotype
Courtesy of Library of Congress
Tintype
Photographer Unknown
The advent of simple photography processes made it possible for wars to be fully documented for the first time. The Crimean War (1853-1856) was recorded for history by the British photographer Roger Fenton. Even more important, however, were the photographs of the American Civil War by Matthew Brady, the first man to completely document a war. His photos awakened the world to the horror of war for the first time.
False Beliefs About Photography
The Kodak Camera
For nearly a hundred years, photographers labored to convince artists and the public that photography was a valid art form. Critics claimed that photos robbed the viewer of the chance to use his or her imagination, that photography lacked the creative element of true art.
George Eastman first marketed his point-and-shoot Kodak camera in 1888, and his invention turned thousands of people into photographers. At the same time, the halftone process of printing was developed, making it possible to make many inexpensive prints. For the first time, people had the ability to take spontaneous snapshots of everyday activities.
Artists vs. the "Kodakers"
Famous Photographers
Paul Strand (1890-1976): American photographer, whose realistic, semi-abstract style launched the modern aesthetic style. Strand favored forms and composition over meaningful subjects, creating images that were pleasing to the eye.
Dorothea Lange (1895-1965): American documentary photographer. Lange's intense, compassionate photos of people during the Great Depression in the 1930's and of rural life are among the finest examples of social documentary photography.
Margaret Bourke-White (1904-71): Pioneering woman photojournalist; most famous for her moving photos of Gandhi and the Nazi concentration camps. Her accurate photo documentaries earned her the status as one of history's greatest photographers.
Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908- ): French documentary photographer whose photos of the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War opened the world's eyes. He illustrated to later photographers how to capture the "decisive moment," the point where the composition and expression reveal the subject's significance.
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Source: Microsoft Encarta CD-ROM
Photographers were alarmed by the vast quantities and low quality of snapshots taken by the owners of Kodak cameras. They experimented with new darkroom techniques and photographed interesting subjects to distinguish their photographs from those of the masses. Photographer Alfred Stieglitz led this movement, called pictorialism, and later founded a new group of artistic photographers, the Photo-Secessionists. These photographers embraced abstract imagery and real-life urban and inustrial subjects, and their straightforward approach characterized 20th century photography.
The first workable method of color photography was developed in 1904 by the Lumiere brothers, and its invention signaled the beginning of a gradual decline in the popularity of black and white photography. Of the many famous photographers of the 20th century, most employed both color and black and white photography, experimenting and testing boundaries with both modes. Some notable modern photographers include the following: