The History & Evolution Of Photography
“A picture is worth ten thousand words,” famous words by Fred R. Barnard, could not be more true. Photography can be defined as the art or practice of taking and processing photographs. It is an art, a product of history, and one of the world’s greatest inventions. Photography was a revolutionary breakthrough in the world of inventions. The history, evolution, and impact of photography has changed our world immensely. In eighteen thirty nine, the invention was first announced. The invention is credited to Nicéphore Niépce but his former partner, Louis Daguerre claimed the idea with Henry Fox Talbot (Nickel 2).
Nicéphore and Louis were both Frenchmen are said to have originally come up with the invention, but they parted ways to pursue the same invention on their own. Later Louis partnered up with Englishman Henry to carry out his version of what is called a camera today. Regardless of who claims the idea, it for sure can be said that all three of these men are the originators of the invention. Photography was a revolution that changed history. With the camera, people no longer had to spend days painting a portrait or scenery. Anything from big societal events to wars could be physically and photographically recorded. Even the famous scientist Darwin, who came up with the theory of evolution, used a camera in his scientific findings. “Darwin used photography scientifically in presenting his theory of expression, he compels the reader to think about what Gillaspy 2 we mean by evidence, illustration and objectivity in a larger sense,”
It is believed Darwin’s involvement with the camera was to prove its usefulness in the field of science. A problem faced with, is researchers accused Darwin of somehow faking the images (Ione 1). While that can be a major concern, it does not seem probable due to the fact that when Darwin was alive, taking pictures was not just one click and it is over. Cameras took at least ten minutes to capture a picture and it was necessary that everything was still for the duration of those ten minutes or more. Darwin’s theory of evolution applies to cameras and photography itself. As the decades passed, the popularity of photography grew. In a bibliographic database called historical abstracts , the amount of articles about the history of photography shot up in each individual decade from the nineteen sixties to early two thousands (Buchanan 5). It was probably due to the fact that with each decade the art evolved. The camera started as a gigantic block with a lens that takes “okay” pictures, and in a span of twenty minutes or more.
Now, society doesn’t even need a professional camera. People can just use their phones to get crystal clear photos. The popularity of photography also led to more opportunities. Photography is a job for some, a hobby for others, and sometimes both. The two main jobs involving photography is modeling and obviously a photographer, but it expands to other fields as well. How it was used in science was lightly described; the branches also extend into medical fields, such as taking x-rays. History is a big field that photography also changed. Cameras have helped humanity to document important things we learn about today. “From personal photography to documentary photography, photography captures the subject as well as frames the intentions of the photographer, offering the scholar a fluid framework through which the past can be effectively appropriated, framed, analysed, and set within a context,” (Buchanan Gillaspy 3 2).
Would tragedies that have happened in the past, like the Holocaust, given quite the same effect if there was no camera to show the atrocities? Without the camera, there would only be words on a paper and it wouldn’t be quite the same as seeing what happened in the past. Photography has different types and categories to it. The different types include: moving pictures, scientific, contemporary, dry plate, Calotypes, Daguerreotypes, and the Collodion “Wet Plate” Process (Nickel 4). The moving pictures is basically a movie and is primarily apart of film, though still is apart of photography. Scientific photography is the use of photo imaging techniques to take pictures that record data. Some of these techniques are infrared, ultraviolet, and thermal imaging. Contemporary photography is simply photos from our own time compared to photos from around the time photography was invented. Dry plate photography was an improved photographic plate. It came about in eighteen seventy one by Dr. Richard L. Maddox. Calotypes was the technique Henry Talbot is credited with.
How the technique went about was a sheet of paper coated with silver chloride was exposed to light in a dark room with one small hole in the wall; those areas hit by light became dark in tone, creating a negative image. Daguerreotypes is when a picture made on a silver surface sensitized with iodine was created by subjection to mercury vapor. When the invention of photography first came out, this was the most popular method used. Daguerreotypes is named after Louis Daguerre and because of the popularity of this method, that is why he is credited with the invention of photography. The Collodion “Wet Plate” Process was adding a soluble iodide to a solution of cellulose nitrate and coating a glass plate with the mixture. It was another early photography technique invented by Frederick Scott Archer in 1951.
