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• Inventing the medium
  • Early experiments
• Photography’s early evolution, c. 1840–c. 1900
  • The revolution of technique
  • Establishing genres
    • Documentary photography
  • Photography as art
• Perfecting the medium, c. 1900–c. 1945
• Photography c. 1945 to the 21st century

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History of photography, method of recording the image of an object through the action of light, or related radiation, on a light-sensitive material. The word, derived from the Greek photos (“light”) and graphein (“to draw”), was first used in the 1830s.

This article treats the historical and aesthetic aspects of still photography. For a discussion of the technical aspects of the medium, seephotography, technology of. For a treatment of motion-picture photography, or cinematography, seemotion picture, history of, and motion-picture technology.

General considerations

As a means of visual communication and expression, photography has distinct aesthetic capabilities. In order to understand them, one must first understand the characteristics of the process itself. One of the most important characteristics is immediacy. Usually, but not necessarily, the image that is recorded is formed by a lens in a camera. Upon exposure to the light forming the image, the sensitive material undergoes changes in its structure, a latent (but reversed) image usually called a negative is formed, and the image becomes visible by development and permanent by fixing with sodium thiosulfate, called “hypo.” With modern materials, the processing may take place immediately or may be delayed for weeks or months.

The essential elements of the image are usually established immediately at the time of exposure. This characteristic is unique to photography and sets it apart from other ways of picture making. The seemingly automatic recording of an image by photography has given the process a sense of authenticity shared by no other picture-making technique. The photograph possesses, in the popular mind, such apparent accuracy that the adage “the camera does not lie” has become an accepted, if erroneous, cliché.

This understanding of photography’s supposed objectivity has dominated evaluations of its role in the arts. In the early part of its history, photography was sometimes belittled as a mechanical art because of its dependence on technology. In truth, however, photography is not the automatic process that is implied by the use of a camera. Although the camera usually limits the photographer to depicting existing objects rather than imaginary or interpretive views, the skilled photographer can introduce creativity into the mechanical reproduction process. The image can be modified by different lenses and filters. The type of sensitive material used to record the image is a further control, and the contrast between highlight and shadow can be changed by variations in development. In printing the negative, the photographer has a wide choice in the physical surface of the paper, the tonal contrast, and the image colour. The photographer also may set up a completely artificial scene to photograph.

The most important control is, of course, the creative photographer’s vision. He or she chooses the vantage point and the exact moment of exposure. The photographer perceives the essential qualities of the subject and interprets it according to his or her judgment, taste, and involvement. An effective photograph can disseminate information about humanity and nature, record the visible world, and extend human knowledge and understanding. For all these reasons, photography has aptly been called the most important invention since the printing press.

Inventing the medium

Antecedents

The forerunner of the camera was the camera obscura, a dark chamber or room with a hole (later a lens) in one wall, through which images of objects outside the room were projected on the opposite wall. The principle was probably known to the Chinese and to ancient Greeks such as Aristotle more than 2,000 years ago. Late in the 16th century, the Italian scientist and writer Giambattista della Porta demonstrated and described in detail the use of a camera obscura with a lens. While artists in subsequent centuries commonly used variations on the camera obscura to create images they could trace, the results from these devices depended on the artist’s drawing skills, and so scientists continued to search for a method to reproduce images completely mechanically.

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In 1727 the German professor of anatomy Johann Heinrich Schulze proved that the darkening of silver salts, a phenomenon known since the 16th century and possibly earlier, was caused by light and not heat. He demonstrated the fact by using sunlight to record words on the salts, but he made no attempt to preserve the images permanently. His discovery, in combination with the camera obscura, provided the basic technology necessary for photography. It was not until the early 19th century, however, that photography actually came into being.

Early experiments

Photography

Heliography

Nicéphore Niépce, an amateur inventor living near Chalon-sur-Saône, a city 189 miles (304 km) southeast of Paris, was interested in lithography, a process in which drawings are copied or drawn by hand onto lithographic stone and then printed in ink. Not artistically trained, Niépce devised a method by which light could draw the pictures he needed. He oiled an engraving to make it transparent and then placed it on a plate coated with a light-sensitive solution of bitumen of Judea (a type of asphalt) and lavender oil and exposed the setup to sunlight. After a few hours, the solution under the light areas of the engraving hardened, while that under the dark areas remained soft and could be washed away, leaving a permanent, accurate copy of the engraving. Calling the process heliography (“sun drawing”), Niépce succeeded from 1822 onward in copying oiled engravings onto lithographic stone, glass, and zinc and from 1826 onto pewter plates.

In 1826/27, using a camera obscura fitted with a pewter plate, Niépce produced the first successful photograph from nature, a view of the courtyard of his country estate, Gras, from an upper window of the house. The exposure time was about eight hours, during which the sun moved from east to west so that it appears to shine on both sides of the building.

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Niépce produced his most successful copy of an engraving, a portrait of Cardinal d’Amboise, in 1826. It was exposed in about three hours, and in February 1827 he had the pewter plate etched to form a printing plate and had two prints pulled. Paper prints were the final aim of Niépce’s heliographic process, yet all his other attempts, whether made by using a camera or by means of engravings, were underexposed and too weak to be etched. Nevertheless, Niépce’s discoveries showed the path that others were to follow with more success.