History of Photography

History of Photography

For ages, images have been painted on different types of canvasses and then one fine day photography came into being and the images were projected on to surfaces so that memories could come to life. According to certain researches mentioned in the Hockney-Falco thesis, some of the artists have used the camera lucida and camera obscura for tracing scenes way back in the 16th century. Although, it is being disputed by artists today, history maintains the use of the first camera in the 16th century only.

The early camera had no mechanism for fixing an image. It was able to project images through the opening in the walls of a dark room on to the surface. This way the entire room turned into a large pinhole camera. Actually the term camera obscura means dark room. Using of the camera obscura was a critical element in the evolution of modern day photography.

The first ever photograph of a person was taken by Louis Daguerre in early 1839 and was called “Boulevard du Temple”. Louis Daguerre also worked in partnership with Niépce to refine the then existing silver process. Finally in 1833 Niépce passed away but he left his notes for Daguerre to follow upon. Although Daguerre had no scientific background he still made an important contribution to photography. He discovered that when he exposed silver to iodine vapor before exposing it to light, and followed by exposing silver to mercury fumes, he was able to develop a latent image.

Louis Daguerre finally announced on January 7, 1839 the fact that he had invented a process that used silver on a copper plate and he aptly named it daguerreotype. A process quite similar to the daguerreotype is being used even today for Polaroid photos.

Another man Talbot read about Daguerre’s invention and worked towards perfecting his own process of photography. This was another important event in the process of evolution of photography. Talbot partnered with John Herschel, an astronomer, who provided him with an effective fixer. John Hershel is associated for the development of the very first glass negative.

Around 1840, Talbot invented a photographic process called the calotype process. He used to coat sheets of paper with silver chloride so that it could create an intermediate negative image. The remarkable thing of the Calotype process was that it could reproduce positive prints unlike the daguerreotype. Soon after, Slovene Janez Puhar invented a technical process for making photographs on glass.

Eleven years later, Frederick Scott Archer invented the collodion process. His invention was recognized by the Académie Nationale Agricole, Manufacturière et Commerciale on July 17, 1852 in Paris. This was probably the beginning of a new era of modern photography. But it took almost 20 years of improvements and in 1884 George Eastman, developed a dry gel that could be used on paper or on film, and this replaced the use of the photographic plate.

Four years later in July 1888, Eastman came out with his first camera called the Kodak camera (and it is a brand today). It was introduced commercially with an eye catching advertising slogan that said, “You press the button, we do the rest”.

We have come a long way since Eastman introduced the Kodak. Today there are several camera manufacturers, film manufactures, printers etc in the market. Some of the big names apart from Kodak include Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Minolta, Fuji, Sony, Panasonic etc.