roger fenton
steve.raynor@leedscitycollege.ac.uk
- 5th-4th Centuries B.C.
Chinese and Greek philosophers describe the basic principles of optics and the camera. - 1664-1666
Isaac Newton discovers that white light is composed of different colors. - 1727
Johann Heinrich Schulze discovered that silver nitrate darkened upon exposure to light. - 1794
First Panorama opens, the forerunner of the movie house invented by Robert Barker. - 1814
Joseph Niepce achieves first photographic image with camera obscura - however, the image required eight hours of light exposure and later faded. - 1837
Louis Daguerre's first daguerreotype - the first image that was fixed and did not fade and needed under thirty minutes of light exposure. - 1840
First American patent issued in photography to Alexander Wolcott for his camera. - 1841
William Henry Talbot patents the Calotype process - the first negative-positive process making possible the first multiple copies. - 1843
First advertisement with a photograph made in Philadelphia. - 1851
Frederick Scott Archer invented the Collodion process - images required only two or three seconds of light exposure. - 1859
Panoramic camera patented - the Sutton. - 1861
Oliver Wendell Holmes invents stereoscope viewer. - 1865
Photographs and photographic negatives are added to protected works under copyright. - 1871
Richard Leach Maddox invented the gelatin dry plate silver bromide process - negatives no longer had to be developed immediately. - 1880
Eastman Dry Plate Company founded. - 1884
George Eastman invents flexible, paper-based photographic film. - 1888
Eastman patents Kodak roll-film camera. - 1898
Reverend Hannibal Goodwin patents celluloid photographic film. - 1900
First mass-marketed camera—the Brownie. - 1913/1914
First 35mm still camera developed. - 1927
General Electric invents the modern flash bulb. - 1932
First light meter with photoelectric cell introduced. - 1935
Eastman Kodak markets Kodachrome film. - 1941
Eastman Kodak introduces Kodacolor negative film. - 1942
Chester Carlson receives patent for electric photography (xerography). - 1948
Edwin Land markets the Polaroid camera. - 1954
Eastman Kodak introduces high speed Tri-X film. - 1960
EG&G develops extreme depth underwater camera for U.S. Navy. - 1963
Polaroid introduces instant color film. - 1968
Photograph of the Earth from the moon. - 1973
Polaroid introduces one-step instant photography with the SX-70 camera. - 1977
George Eastman and Edwin Land inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. - 1978
Konica introduces first point-and-shoot, autofocus camera. - 1980
Sony demonstrates first consumer camcorder. - 1984
Canon demonstrates first digital electronic still camera. - 1985
Pixar introduces digital imaging processor. - 1990
Eastman Kodak announces Photo CD as a digital image storage medium.
 Camera Obscura, 16th century |  Table-Top Camera Obscura, 17-18th centuries |
We owe the name "Photography" to Sir John Herschel, who first used the term in 1839, the year the photographic process became public. The word is derived from the Greek words for light and writing. The innovations which would lead to the development of photography existed long before the first photograph. The camera obscura (Latin,literally translating to "dark room") had been in existence for at least four hundred years, but its use was limited to its purpose as an aid to drawing. It was discovered that if a room was completely darkened, with a single hole in one wall, an inverted image would be seen on the opposite wall. A person inside of the room could then trace this image, which was upside-down (similating the way that images actually enter our eyes). The earliest record of the uses of a camera obscura can be found in the writings of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who may have used it as an aid to understanding perspective. In the 17th and 18th centuries, a table-top model was developed. By adding a focused lens and a mirror, it was possible for a person outside of the box to trace the image which was reflected through it.
 Nicephore Niepce, World's First Photograph 1827 |
It was a French man, Nicephore Niepce (pronounced Nee-ps) who produced the first photograph in June/July 1827. By using chemicals on a metal plate, placed inside of a camera obscura, he was able to record an obscure image of the view outside of his window. He called his process "heliography" (after the Greek "of the sun"). The image is difficult to decipher, but there is a building on the left, a tree, and a barn immediately in front. The exposure lasted eight hours, so the sun had time to move from east to west, appearing to shine on both sides of the building. Another problem is that he had difficulty "fixing" the image so that it would not continue to darken when exposed to light.
Daguerre (pronounced Dagair) is the most famous of several people who invented more successful and commercially applicable forms of photography. He regularly used a camera obscura as an aid to painting in perspective, and this had led him to seek to freeze the image. In 1826 he learned of the work of Niepce, and in January of 1829 signed up a partnership with him. The partnership was a short one since Niepce died in 1833, but Daguerre continued to experiment. He was able to reduce the exposure time to thirty minutes, and in 1837 he discovered a chemical process which would permanently to fix the image. This new process he called a Daguerreotype. Drawbacks at this time included the fact that the length of the exposure time ruled out portraiture; the image was laterally reversed (as one sees oneself in a mirror); and that the image was very fragile. Another drawback was that it was a "once only" system (since it was fixed to metal). Soon, exposure times were reduced to a matter of seconds, and portraiture became a commercially viable purpose for the new technology. It would be up to George Eastman to introduce flexible film in 1884, allowing multiple images to be produced on light-sensitized paper. Four years later he introduced the box camera, and photography could now reach a much greater number of people. With his slogan "You press the button, we do the rest" he brought photography to the masses.
Early Daguerrotypes
 Daguerrotype of Couple Holding Daguerrotype (Unknown Artist) 1850 |  Kneeling Woman, daguerrotype 1850 Courtesy: American Museum of Photography. http://www.photographymuseum.com |
Couple Holding a Daguerrotype is one of my favorite historical photographs because of its unique commentary on the value of photographs as a record of the real world. There is a sadness apparent in the couple's faces which tell me that the persons in the photograph are either deceased or separated from a long distance. Daguerre's invention made it possible for anyone of moderate means to have a portrait created, and photographers profitted from traveling to towns across the United States. In addition, any large town had dozens of photographic studios available for people to travel to.
Most people embraced this new technology with great enthusiasm. A few religious zealots, however, claimed that it was the work of the devil. Many artists who had trained for years in the techniques of portrait painting were also to find it a threat to their livelihood. Some painters dubbed the new invention "the foe-to-graphic art." A number of artists turned to photography for their livelihood, while others cashed in on the fact that the images were in monochrome, and began coloring them in. Some painters also used photography to assist them in painting (some of these artists were Gauguin, Cezanne, Courbet, Lautrec, Delacroix and Degas). Photography would eventually change the purpose of painting from one which focused on outward facts of reality to more emphasis on personal vision.
 Matthew Brady, Abraham Lincoln |  Emily Dickinson at 17 (Unknown Artist) 1847 |  Julia Margaret Cameron, Echo 1868 |
Anyone who was famous after 1839 had their likeness captured for future generations. Abraham Lincoln credited the success of his presidential election to two things: his widely known speech (the Gettysburgh Address) and his photograph, which was widely distributed. In addition to Lincoln's portrait, Matthew Brady is also famous for his images of Mark Twain, Walt Whitman, and Edgar Allen Poe. Julia Margaret Cameron was also well known for her photographs of famous men (Charles Darwin among them) as well as for her images of "fair women", She preferred a soft-focus effect, which have a poetic, haunting quality.
 Civil War Field Camera |  Timothy O'Sullivan, Harvest of Death (Gettysburgh) |
In addition to portraits of famous men, Matthew Brady is known for his portraits of Civil War generals and for his images of vast fields littered with the corpses in the aftermath of battle. This was the first time that the destruction of war was captured on film, and would change the way we look at war forever. Brady is sometimes thought of as the century's most important photographer and the man who invented photojournalism. He also took credit for hundreds of photographs which were done by his employees, the most famous of these artists was Timothy O'Sullivan, who is believed to have moved corpses to attain more successful compositions.
Stereo Photographs
Stereograph (unknown artist)
http://robinurton.com/history/photography.htm
One way that a photograph differs from the way that we perceive things in reality is that our eyes see in stereoscopic vision, whereas a photograph flattens all sense of three-dimensional depth. To compensate for this difference, the stereograph was invented. A camera would take 2 simultaneous images, and the developed image could be viewed by a stereoscope, which converged the 2 images into one 3-dimensional image. Viewing these images continued to be a very popular past-time until the invention of television
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_camera
http://www.earlyphotography.co.uk/site/camera_a_chapter.html
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