History of photography

1. History of
photography
Jess White

2. What is a photograph?
• A photograph is a picture made using a
camera, in which an image is focused on to
light-sensitive material and then made visible
and permanent by chemical treatment or
stored digitally.

3. The first photograph – 1826
The first photograph, or the earliest known surviving
photograph was taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, in
1826. The image depicts the view from an upstairs
window at Niépce's estate, Le Gras, in France. He
obtained the photograph by the process of heliography –
he began experimenting with litographic printmaking,
which led to his invention of heliography. During his trials
with litography, he experimented with light-sensitive
varnishes and then with images produced in camera, but
he was unable to prevent the images from fading. In 1822,
Niépce successfully made a heliograph from an engraving
of Pope Pius VII, which was actually destroyed in an
attempt to copy it some time later. Finally, in 1826 he
coated a pewter plate with the same solution that he
used in his previous experiments, and laced the plate into
a camera. After he had left it to expose for around 8
hours, the plate was washed with a mixture of oil of
lavender and white petroleum – this dissolved away the
parts of bitumen that had not been hardened by the light.
The result was the picture on the left.

4. Innovations and advances of
exposure times
• Exposures were made faster in 1840, when
English chemist John Frederick Goddard
discovered that adding bromine to a
daguerreotype plate made it more light-sensitive
– therefore speeding up the
exposure time.
• A new lens was also designed and made by
German-Hungarian mathematician Joseph
Petzval had an aperture of f/3.5 and let in eight
times the amount of light.

5. Pioneers of photography
A few of the pioneers of photography are; Angelo Sala,
Carl William Scheele and Thomas Wedgwood.
Angelo Sala was a self-educated chemist that experimented with silver salts.
In 1616, he published that the paper containing silver nitrate reacted with
sunlight, causing it to darken. The same observations were made by Robert
Boyle, who unfortunately gave the wrong explanation – he stated that the
reaction occurred due to air and not sunlight.
Carl William Scheele was a Swedish scientist, who was also self-educated. He
was especially interested in chemical analysis and worked particularly with the
chemical reactions between silver nitrate and sunlight, therefore making a
break through in the chemistry of photography. The records from his
experiments were of a great importance for the next generations of scientists.
Thomas Wedgwood was the son of a well known pottery maker – Josef
Wedgwood. In spite of his health problems and the interruptions of his
studies, he continued to experiment with silver nitrate, in order to record
programmes and images. He finally made it with the help of his friend Davy,
one of the most important chemists of all time. Unfortunately, he had no
way to fix the prints so he was destined to view them under very dimmed
light, in order to prevent them from darkening.

6. First cameras
• The first camera invented
was mad by Alexander
Wolcott - his camera
design was patented on
May 8th, 1840. His
invention made it
possible for candid
photos to be taken and
not fade away with time.
He also has the
distinction of opening
the earliest photography
shop – that was known
as a dagurran parlor – in
New York City.

7. First woman
photographer
Anna Atkins (March 16, 1799 –
June 9, 1871) was an English
botanist and photographer. She
is often considered the first
person to publish a book
illustrated with photographic
images – some sources claim that
she was the first woman to
create a photograph and
therefore, the first woman
photographer.

8. 1800’s Photographers
Mathew B. Brady (May
18, 1822 – January 15,
1896) was one of the
most celebrated 19th-century
American
photographers. He was
best known for his
celebrity portraits and
his documentation of
the American Civil war.
William Henry Fox Talbot (11
February 1800 – 17
September 1877) was a
British inventor and
photography pioneer. He
invented the calotype
process – a precursor to
photographic processes of
the 19th and 20th centuries.

9. 1900’s Photographers
• Edward Weston (March 24, 1886 –
January 1, 1958) was a 20th-century
American photographer – he has been
recognized as one of the “masters of 20th
century photography”.
• Harold Edgerton (April 6, 1903 – January 4,
1990) was a professor of electrical engineering
ant the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He is largely credited with transforming the
stroboscope for an obscure labatory
instrument into a common device. He was also
deeply involved with the development of
sonar and deep-sea photography.

10. 1900’s – Birth of 35mm
cameras
• The Kodak Vest Pocket Autographic
Kodak was a version advertised as
"Soldier's camera" during WWI. It was
manufactured from 1915 to 1926, sold
1,750,000 times.
• The Argus C3 was a low-priced
rangefinder camera mass-produced
from 1939 to 1966 by Argus in Ann
Arbor, Michigan, USA. The camera sold
about 2 million units, making it one of
the most popular cameras in history.
Due to its shape, size, and weight, it is
commonly referred to as "The Brick"
by photographers.

11. 1900’s – Birth of 35mm
cameras
• Typical elements of simple box
cameras were combined in the
Polaroid Swinger Model 20 - a non-focusable
meniscus lens (Polaroid
f17 100mm), a simple rotary single-speed
shutter (1/200 sec.), and roll
film as media, the first type of roll
film for exposures which had to be
pulled out of the camera to be
developed in the light. It was an
early one of the very cheap instant
camera models of Polaroid, made
from 1965 to 1970 in the USA and in
England. Its earliest version was
made in the US, with additional
”no" sign for insufficient light
situations.

12. Iconic photography
• The portrait by Steve McCurry
turned out to be one of those
images that sears the heart.
Her eyes are sea green - they
are haunted and haunting,
and in them you can read the
tragedy of a land drained by
war. She became known
around National Geographic
as the “Afghan girl,” and for
17 years no one knew her
name.

13. Colour photography
• Color photography was attempted beginning in the 1840s. Early
experiments were directed at finding a "chameleon substance"
which would assume the color of the light falling on it. Some
encouraging early results, typically obtained by projecting a solar
spectrum directly onto the sensitive surface, seemed to promise
eventual success, but the comparatively dim image formed in a
camera required exposures lasting for hours or even days. The
quality and range of the color was sometimes severely limited, as
in the chemically complicated "Hillotype" process invented by
American Daguerreotypist Levi Hill around 1850. Other
experimenters, such as Edmond Becquerel, achieved better
results but could find no way to prevent the colors from quickly
fading when the images were exposed to light for viewing. Over
the following several decades, renewed experiments along these
lines periodically raised hopes and then dashed them, yielding
nothing of practical value.

14. Photography movements
• Naturalism – Peter Henry Emerson (May 13 1856 – May 12 1936) was an
English photographer who promoted photography as an independent art
form. He also created an esthetic theory called “naturalistic photography”.
He originally trained as a physician, and first began to photograph as a part
of an anthropological study of the peasants and fishermen of East Anglia.
• Surrealism –Man Ray (born in 1890) was an American, renowned
representative of avant-garde photography in the 20th century, and is
considered as the pioneer of surrealist photographer. Ray’s artistic work is
very diverse – he was a painter, object artist and a film maker. He was the
very first artist whose images/photographs were more valuable to
collectors than his artwork, he therefore made a significant contribution to
the evaluation of photography as a form of art.
• Abstract – Paul Strand (October 16, 1890 – March 31, 1976) was an American
photographer and filmmaker who helped establish photography as an art
form in the 20th century. Strand was born in New York City. In his late teens,
he was a student of renowned documentary photographer Lewis Hine at
the Ethical Culture Fieldston School. It was while on a fieldtrip in this class
that Strand first visited the 291 art gallery, where exhibitions of work by
forward-thinking modernist photographers and painters would move
Strand to take his photographic hobby more seriously..

15. Photography movements
• Photo-journalism – Helen Levitt (August 31, 1913 – March 2009) was an
American photographer, she was particularly recognized for her street
photography of and around New York City. She has been called “the most
celebrated and least known photographer of her time”. Levitt grew up in
Brooklyn, NY. She dropped out of high school and went to work for a
commercial photographer, where she taught herself photography. While
teaching art classes to children in 1937, Levitt became intrigued with the
the transitory chalk drawings that were part of the New York children’s
street culture of that time. She purchased a Leica camera and began to
photograph these works, as well as the children who made them.
• Social documentary – Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975)
was an American photographer best known for his work for the Farm
Security Administration, documenting the effects of the Great Depression.
Most of Evans’ work from the FSA period uses the large-format, 8x10 inch
camera. He said that his goal as a photographer was to make pictures that
are literate, authoritative and transcendent.

16. Digital manipulation
• Photo, or digital
manipulation is the
application of image editing
techniques to photographs,
in order to create an illusion
or deception after the
original photographing has
took place. An
enhancement or correction
is known as retouching,
whereas doctoring refers to
more involved processes,
which often purposefully
deceive the viewer or
misrepresent the scene.
Original
photograph
After
manipulatio
n

17. Thomas Knoll
• Thomas Knoll is an American software
engineer who created Adobe
Photoshop. He initiated the
development of image processing
routines in 1988. After Tom created the
first core routines, he showed them to
his brother, John Knoll, who worked at
Industrial Light and Magic. John liked
what he saw, suggested new features,
and encouraged Tom to bundle them
into a package with a graphical user
interface. In 1989, John successfully sold
the program to Adobe Systems which
brought it out as Photoshop. Tom was
the lead developer until version CS4,
and currently contributes to work on
the Camera Raw plug-in to process raw
images from cameras.