HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY Photography is our �visual link to history!

How old is photography?

• From its beginning as a technological

experiment, it has grown into one of

the most important influences in our

society and culture.

• Everyday we experience hundreds of

images produced with cameras.

• We learn about topics ranging from

the latest fashion trends to the latest Wars.

We also learn about our remarkable

planet on which we live and about the

people with whom we share it.

Ancient times & Camera Obscura

The camera existed before photography!

• In ancient times camera obscuras were used to form images on walls in darkened rooms.
• Images formed from light passing through a pinhole.
• The camera obscura was a room or small building with no windows. One tiny hole, projected images from outside the room onto the far wall inside it! The image was upside down and not very clear, but it

was a good tool for artists.The projected � image could be trace and then used for

drawing or painting.

• 16th century the brightness and clarity of

camera obscuras were improved by

enlarging the hole and inserting a telescope lens

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Paleo-Camera

Natural camera obscuras

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www.paleo-camera.com/reconpage.htm

• 1660: Portable versions of this camera were developed.
• It was a good tool for artists.
• The projected image could be traced and then used for drawing or painting.

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The First

Photo-Sensitive Compound

• 1727 Professor Johann Schulze mixes chalk, nitric acid, and silver in a flask.

• Notices darkening on the side

of the flask that was exposed

to sunlight.

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• Accidental creation of the first photo-sensitive compound.             

Discovery of Basic �Photographic Chemistry

• 1777: Swedish chemist, Carl Scheele repeated Schulze’s experiments.
• Discovered that ammonia would dissolve the silver chloride and leave the image intact. 
• With this second discovery, the

basic chemistry for photography

was established.

• The ammonia fixed the image.

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FIRST PERMANENT CAMERA IMAGE!

• 1816 Joseph Nicéphore Niépce combines the camera obscura with photosensitive paper
• He developed an emulsion, a light sensitive solution, out of a kind of asphalt. Instead of turning black, like Schulze’s experiment, this material is hardened by light. 
• He coated a glass or pewter plate with his

emulsion and exposed it to light inside a

small version of the camera obscura. 

The exposure time lasted eight hours!

He then washed it with solvents.  The

solvents dissolved the unexposed

emulsion, producing a print.

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Behold the First Printed Photograph!

The First Negative

• 1834 Henry Fox Talbot creates

permanent negative images

using paper soaked in silver

chloride and fixed with a salt

solution.

• Talbot created positive images

by contact printing onto

another sheet of paper. 

DAGUERREOTYPES & CALOTYPES

• 1837 Louis Daguerre creates images on silver-plated copper, coated with silver iodide and "developed" with fumes of hot mercury.
• 1841 Talbot patents his process under the name "calotype".
• His process produced a negative image on paper treated with silver compounds.  The exposed paper was then placed over a second sheet of paper and exposed to a bright light, producing a positive image. 
• This process enabled photographers to make multiple copies of a single image.  This was not possible with a daguerreotype, which  produced a positive image directly on a metal plate.  The downside to the calotype is that since it was transferred through a paper negative, it wasn’t as clear as the daguerrotype.

Daguerrotype vs Calotype

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First Photo of a Person

• 1839 French painter and chemist Louis Daguerre photographs a Paris street scene from his apartment window using a camera obscura and his newly invented daguerreotype process.
• The long exposure time (several minutes) means moving objects like pedestrians and carriages don't appear in the photo. But an unidentified man who stops for a shoeshine remains still long enough to unwittingly become the first person ever photographed.

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First

Person

ever

photographed

Some First Photos

1847 First Photo of Lightning & War

• Early photography pioneer

Thomas Easterly makes a daguerreotype

of a bolt of lightning.

• In 1847, during the Mexican-American

War, daguerreotypist Charles J. Betts

follows the American Army to

Veracruz, Mexico, and offers to

photograph the soldiers.

Improvement of Photographic Resolution

• 1851 Frederick Scott Archer improves photographic resolution by spreading

a mixture of collodion (nitrated cotton

dissolved in ether and alcohol) and

chemicals on sheets of glass.

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• Wet plate collodion photography was

much cheaper than daguerreotypes.

• The image was still high quality, and

the negative/positive process

permitted unlimited reproductions.

More First Photographs

• 1858 First Bird's-Eye View created by Felix

Tournachon, also known as Nadar

• He combines his interests, aeronautics, journalism,

and photography

• First to capture an aerial photograph in a tethered

balloon over Paris in 1858.

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• The Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell creates a rudimentary color image by superimposing onto a single screen three black-and-white images each passed through three filters, red, green, and blue.

1861 First Color Photo

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His photo of a multicolored ribbon is the first to prove the efficacy of the three-color method.

1878: First Action Photos

• English photographer Eadweard Muybridge, using new emulsions that allow nearly instantaneous photography, begins taking photograph sequences that capture animals and humans in motion.
• His 1878 photo series of a galloping horse, created with 12 cameras each outfitted with a trip wire, helps settle a disagreement over whether at any time in a horse's gait all four hooves leave the ground. (They do.)
• Causes a popular stir about the potential of cameras to study movement.
• Muybridge goes on to create hundreds of image sequences with humans and animals as subjects. These photo series are linked to the

earliest beginnings of cinematography.

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Click

to

Watch

1884 First Tornado Photo

• Taken by an unknown photographer, this image is thought to be the oldest existing photo of a tornado.

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• According to the U.S.

National Weather

Service, it was taken

on August 28, 1884,

about 22 miles

southwest of

Howard, South

Dakota.

Camera

Evolution!

• 1888: first Kodak camera, containing a 20-foot roll of paper, enough for 100 2.5-inch diameter circular pictures.
• The camera was simple, with just a box, a lens, a cord and a button to release it and a crank to advance the film. 
• When the film was used up, the whole camera was sent to the Eastman  Kodak Company, where it was developed, reloaded and returned, ready for another 100 photographs.
• 1889: Improved Kodak camera with roll of film instead of paper.
• Flexible film replaced the clumsy, heavy glass plates.
• 1900: Kodak Brownie box roll-film camera introduced.
• George Eastman opened the world of amateur photography with the development of the box camera.  Roll film was sealed in the camera, which had to be returned to the factory for removal and developing.

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1888 First Published �National Geographic Magazine

19^th Century 20^th Century 21^st Century

National Geographic �First Photos

• 1889: The first photograph to appear in National Geographic is a relief map of North America.

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• The first photograph of a natural scene, is of Herald Island, in the Arctic Ocean, taken from a ship and appearing in the March 1890 issue.

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Alfred Stieglitz

• 1902: Alfred Stieglitz organizes "Photo Secessionist" show in New York City.
• His efforts to improve the way photographs were presented at exhibitions were notably effective in the campaign for the recognition of the photograph as an art object.
• His openness to new sensibilities enabled him to introduce Americans to European modernism and to the avant-garde styles of native artists.
• In both roles as an expressive photographer and an impresario (a person who organizes and often finances events), he has had a more insightful influence on the course of aesthetic photography in America than any other single individual.

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First Wildlife Photos

• July 1906: National Geographic begins its long, celebrated association with wildlife photography.
• Feature titled "Photographing Wild Game with Flashlight and Camera,"
• The magazine publishes some 70 wildlife photographs, many taken at night using flash powder.
• Nobody had ever seen pictures like that of wild animals."

First Photograph at the �North Pole!

• On April 6th 1909 Robert E. Peary and assistant, Matthew Henson, become the first people to reach and photograph the North Pole.
• It was a grueling 37-day journey by dogsled over 475 miles.

�First Natural-Color Photo in �National Geographic

• The July 1914 issue of National Geographic magazine features its first Autochrome, or natural-color photograph.

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• A flower garden in

Ghent, Belgium.

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• The magazine had used hand-colored images since November 1910.
• In April 1916, National Geographic becomes one of the first American publications to run a series of Autochrome color photographs.

Man Ray

• 1921: Man Ray begins making photograms

("rayographs")

• Placed objects on photographic paper and

exposing the shadow cast by a distant light.

• Assigned to photograph the brothels of Paris

�First Underwater Color Photo

1926

• National Geographic staff photographer Charles Martin used an Autochrome camera and a raft full of explosive magnesium flash powder to illuminate the shallows of Florida's Dry Tortugas to make the first undersea color photographs.

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• The photos, which show reef scenes with fish, are published in the January 1927 National Geographic.

Development of Strobe Photography

1931

• Dr. Harold "Doc" Edgerton, a professor of electrical engineering at the M.I.T.
• Works with National Geographic to perfect high-speed stroboscopic photography, freezing on film the rapid movements of nature that elude the eye.
• Developed and improved strobes and used them to freeze objects

in motion so that they could be captured on film by a camera.

• National Geographic publishes several of the images, including bullets frozen in mid-flight and stilled hummingbird wings.
• He designed the first successful underwater camera.
• He worked alongside oceanographer Jaques Cousteau.

1932 �The f/64 Group

• Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Willard Van Dyke, Edward Weston, form Group f/64.
• Dedicated to "straight photographic thought and production."

�First High-Altitude Photo

1935

• National Geographic teams up with the U.S. Army Air Corps.
• Record-breaking flight of Explorer II, a helium balloon with a hermetically sealed magnesium alloy

gondola.

• The balloon takes off and ascends

72,395 feet.

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• Captain Albert Stevens takes the first

photograph showing the curve of the

Earth and the first color photographs taken from the stratosphere.

� Death of a Loyalist Soldier

• Robert Capa  (1913-1954) is considered the most famous war photographer of the century
• His violent death by stepping on a landmine was somehow inevitable, considering the nature of his work.
• The photograph that made him famous was one of the death of a loyalist soldier.
• He covered the second World War, China, the Middle East, and finally, fatally, Vietnam.

1946: First Photo Taken From Space

• Researchers with the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory strap a 35-millimeter camera to a German V-2 missile and launch it into space.
• The camera snaps a picture every second and a half as the rocket ascends to 65 miles above the surface.
• The camera falls back to Earth and slams into the ground, but the film, contained in a steel cassette, is unharmed.
• The developed photos are the first ever to show Earth from space, a grainy black-and-white wedge of planet framed against the black expanse.

Instant Photography!

• 1947 Edwin Land developed the Polaroid camera.
• His one-step process for developing and printing photographs created a revolution in photography.
• Edwin Land founded the Polaroid Corporation to manufacturer his new camera.
• The first Polaroid camera was sold to the public in November, 1948.

“I am no longer concerned with photography as an art form. I believe it is potentially the best medium for explaining man to himself and his fellow man.”

– EDWARD STEICHEN

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The Most Popular Exhibition in the History of Photography!

• 1955: Edward Steichen curates Family of Man exhibit at New York's Museum of Modern Art.
• The exhibition consisted of 503 photographs grouped thematically around subjects pertinent to all cultures, such as love, children, and death.
• The professed aim of the exhibition was to mark "essential oneness of mankind throughout the world."
• During the time it was open, the Family of Man became the most popular exhibition in the history of photography.

1963

• First color instant film developed by Polaroid.

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�1975: The First Digital Camera

• Steve Sasson comes up with “Film-less Photography”
• The prototype camera records images and plays them back on a television set.
• Sasson hacked together the camera from spare parts
• The image is captured by a CCD

(Charged Coupled Device, an array of

capacitors which convert light into an

electrical signal) and the resulting image

is recorded onto a cassette tape.

• The portable electronic still camera takes

23 seconds to record a 100 line image to

tape.

• To view the picture, you pop out the

cassette and slip it into the custom-built

playback device.

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1985

• Minolta markets the world's first autofocus SLR system.

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1989

• Adobe strikes a deal to license what becomes known as Photoshop

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1991: First Digital Still Camera

• Kodak releases the first commercially available, professional digital camera in 1991. This device, extremely expensive and marketed to professional photographers, uses a Nikon F-3 camera body fitted with a digital sensor. Over the next

five years, several companies come

out with more affordable models,

and today, the market is

overwhelmed with thousands of

digital still camera models.

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1998-Present

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• 16+ mega-pixel cameras, Photoshop CS and SLR cameras with Digital backs.
• Technology: the wave of the future!

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