The History of Photography
The name "Photography" comes from the Greek words for light and writing. Sir John Herschel, was the first to use the term photography in 1839, when he managed to fix images using hyposulphite of soda. He described photography as "The application of the chemical rays to the purpose of pictorial representation". Herschel also coined the terms "negative", "positive" and "snapshot".
But a man called de la Roche (1729 - 1774), wrote Giphantie and in this imaginary tale, it was possible to capture images from nature, on a canvas which had been coated with a sticky substance and this would produce a mirror image on the sticky canvas, that fixed after it had been dried in the dark.
There are two distinct scientific processes that combine to make photography possible and these two processes have existed for hundreds of years, but it was not until the two they had been put together that photography came into being. The first of these two processes was the Camera Obscura, which had been in existence for at least four hundred years. The second process was chemical. People had been aware, for hundreds of years before photography, that some colours are bleached by the sun, but they made little distinction between heat, air and light.
The Camera Obscura, which means Dark Room in Latin, was a dark box or room with a small hole on one wall, which projected an inverted image on the opposite wall. This principle was known by thinkers as early as Aristotle, around 300 BC. In the 10th century, an Arabian scholar Hassan ibn Hassan, described what could be called a camera obscura in his writings "On the form of the Eclipse". He wrote "The image of the sun at the time of the eclipse, unless it is total, ...
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...ing Penn took photos of tribes people in a studio, isolated from their contextual surroundings, to focus all the attention on the people. Diana Arbast (suicide 71 - self portrait) as well as Penn took "off the wall" photos. Andy Warhol took art influenced photographs, playing on repetition and using photographs he found rather than taking his own.
Beschers view objectivity is truthful and real photography, a visual record of an event. Mundane and everyday photographs, an honest view objectivity, with just pictures that make no comment or statement, using the photographic way of seeing. Jenny Holtzer used photography to record writing on peoples arms. In 1992 Gillian Wearing produced "Signs That Say What You Want Them To Say And Not What Someone Else Wants You To Say" a collection of Photographs of people holding up boards with statements from the subjects.
Wilder, Kelley E.. "invention of photography." Answers. Answers Corporation, n.d. Web. 1 Feb. 2014. .
Prior to the invention of the daguerreotype, the Camera Obscura was the main optical instrument that was used to project images onto paper. The Camera Obscura was a device in the shape of a box that allowed light, which was being reflected from the images that the user was intending to capture, to enter through an opening at one end of the box to form an image on a surface and an artist would then trace the image to form the most accurate impression of an image at that peri...
Practiced by thousands who shared no common tradition or training from the earliest days of taking photos, the first photographers were disciplined and united by no academy or guild, who considered their medium variously as a trade, a science, an art, or an entertainment, and who often were unaware of each other’s work. Exactly as it sounds photography means photo-graphing. The word photography comes from two Greek words, photo, or “light”, and graphos, or drawing and from the start of photography; the history of the aforementioned has been debated. The idea of taking pictures started some thirty-one thousand years ago when strikingly sophisticated images of bears, rhinoceroses, bison, horses and many other types of creators were painted on the walls of caves found in southern France. Former director of photography at New Yorks museum of modern art says that “The progress of photography has been more like the history of farming, with a continual stream of small discoveries leading to bigger ones, and in turn triggering more experiments, inventions, and applications while the daily work goes along uninterrupted.” ˡ
Question 2: Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre made the Louis Daguerre in 1838, which was made with a camera obscura but had no color in it. The Daguerreotype manuals went around the world a year later and begin studies on the process. Historical it was the first photograph and changed the art world view on images because it was just so perfectly designed.
In Edward Weston’s essay, he addresses the aesthetics of the photograph and how they have changed throughout time. He begins by discussing its inception and how the early photographers saw it as a method to replicate paintings, even though the materials and mode of production are completely different. Photography wasn’t seen as art in the early days; it was rather seen as a painting that had been produced by a machine, a practice that became standardized early on as “photo-painting”. Weston differentiates photography from the other arts and discusses that for a photographer to take great pictures the most important thing is not that he learn to use his equipment but that que learns to see photographically. This, is
The first camera ever invented was the camera obscura, invented by Joseph Nicephore Niepce. Originally the camera obscura was a box with a hole in one side. Light would shine through that hole and project an image onto paper inside the box. Prior to Neipce artists used the camera obscura for viewing or drawing purposes. It was not possible to make permanent photographs from the device. Neipce placed a plate with bitumen on it in the camera obscura and the first photograph was created (Bellis). This first image took 8 hours to create and later faded. Eventually, a photograph called the daguerreotype was produced. This first image did not fade and only took up to 30 min...
The theory of photography originated from the discovery of the camera obscura phenomenon – light that enters a darkened chamber through a small hole is projects an identical inverted image on the interior wall of the outside scene. The first recordings of scientists recognizing this concept was in the writings of Greek philosopher, Aristotle (384 – 322 BC).
The Birth of Photography goes way back to the very early stages of it’s development, in 1565 it was found that certain silver salts turned black when open to an element, which at this time they believed to be air. It wasn’t until mid 1720’s when they discovered it was in fact light that reacted with the salts to turn them black; this led to numerous amounts of unsuccessful trials at capturing images in a lasting, photochemical form. Many scientists, amateur inventors and artists passionately pursued developing this form throughout the 29th century. A French scientist, Joseph Niepce was the man who made this process a success. He took an eight-hour exposure of what is believed to be his courtyard outside his house and created the first paper negative in 1816. It took another three years before a fixing agent was discovered for this process and the term ‘photography’ was born. It was hundreds of years till photography had reached this stage but over the next 80 years progression in photography was dramatic. Different techniques were tried and tested but most common was the black-and-white method, which dates back to the birth of photography. “In this ‘gelatin silver’ technique, a sheet of paper is coated with a mixture of white pigment and gelatin, then with a gelatin / silver-salts solution. It is exposed to light through a negative and developed in a chemical solution.” (Wheeler, 2002, p.9)
Photography was first utilized over 100 years ago in an attempt to preserve life as it existed before the industrial revolution. Over time photography has gradually corrupted memory in a variety of ways, despite its original intention to preserve it. From there, photography has evolved to become a pressing threat not only to memory, but also to consciousness.
It was made on a polished sheet of pewter and coated with light-sensitive bitumen dissolved in lavender oil (Hirsch, “Seizing the Light: A History of Photography”). Being able to permanently fix a photographic image was a big leap for the field of photography, but it was still not practical for commercial or consumer use; the exposure for Niepce’s image is believed to have took anywhere from eight hours to several days—a staggering amount of time to create just one image (Hirsch). When Niepce died suddenly in 1833, he left his notes to his partner Louis Daguerre who continued to make technological advancements in photography after Niepce’s death. Daguerre further experimented with silver-based processes and was able to cut the exposure time of an image down from multiple hours to mere minutes in optimum conditions (Ward). Images crafted in this manner were officially dubbed “Daguerreotypes.” Figure 4 shows a Daguerreotype made by Daguerre himself; it is believed to be the first photographic image containing living people. The process discovered by Daguerre was the first photographic process to be commercially introduced to the public in 1839, and this year is now considered the birth of practical photography
"History of photography and photojournalism.." History of photography and photojournalism.. N.p., n.d. Web. 21 Nov. 2013. .
Camera History.The first camera like devices can be seen as far back as Ancient Greece and China. This piece of early technology was called the Obscura, the invention of this was an important part in developing cameras and photography. A camera Obscura is a dark closed space that is shaped like a box with a hole on the other side of it. The light that comes through the tiny hole projects an image that meets the wall of the box. The image was then drawn by an artist; however, the image was projected upside down.
When going for a walk, a person takes in the beauty around them. On this particular day, the refulgent sun is extra bright, making the sky a perfect blue. White, puffy clouds fill the sky, slowing moving at their own pace. The wind is peacefully calm, making the trees stand tall and proud. There is no humidity in the air. As this person walks down the road, they see a deer with her two fawns. The moment is absolutely beautiful. Moments like this happen only once in a great while, making us wanting to stay in the particular moment forever. Unfortunately, time moves on, but only if there were some way to capture the day’s magnificence. Thanks to Joseph Niépce, we can now capture these moments and others that take our breath away. The invention of the camera and its many makeovers has changed the art of photography.
If we go back beyond Lumière Brothers’ projection of their cinematography in Paris over Christmas 1895, which is too straightforward birth narration of cinema; ancient visual forms like Egyptian hieroglyphics or pre-cinematic technologies of image capture and projection, known as magic lanterns, employing a series of lenses and light sources, were early proof of humanity mesmerised by the play and tricks of light and shades.
Photography is a word derived from the Greek words “photos” meaning light and “graphein” meaning draw. The word was first used by John F.W Herschel in 1839. It is a method of recording images by the action of light, or related radiation, on a sensitive material (Bellis, N.D).