A lot of people concluded that photography is as old as the passion for art in itself. But no, photography was not conceived that way. With equipments needed to put this particular art form into life, its traces can be found since the camera was invented. Even then, the art that is photography did not start as soon as the first camera was introduced. In fact, photography dates back at least eight centuries after the camera came to life.
Photography had to be discovered by someone who is passionate about making permanent images of things through the available tools and methods. And so, when Joseph Niépce came to discover the beauty that can be taken out of a camera product by putting it on paper, photography’s walk in history took a first, nice step.
Years after Niépce made his mark came Louis Daguerre, a professional painter at the opera who dreamed of capturing every performance he laid hands into. His efforts paid off when he joined forces with Niépce, exploring what an image of a photograph can do to support his vision. Several years after Niépce’s death, Daguerre was able to produce a photography process called the Daguerreotype, which was the fruit of all their combined labors.
Niépce was the first person to produce a permanent image from the camera. Daguerre was the first person to invent a photography method. Then again, it was Sir John Herschel who put a name in this particular art. The word photography was taken from Greek words ‘photos’ and ‘graphein’, which are directly translated into “light” and “to draw”, respectively. With these two elements combined, you get the rough translation ‘to draw on light’. And that is precisely how photography works.
A couple of years after the presence of photography as an art form was established, another process came to life. This time, William Henry Fox Talbot decided to create a better method off Daguerre’s. Luckily, he was able to squeeze out a more convenient, cheaper way of producing photographs, especially duplicates – through the Calotype. It was Talbot who held the first negative. It was also him who improved the quality of images churned out of cameras. It was a good thing that all his learnings and discoveries were fully documented in a book released in 1844. People who sparked interest in photography were able to have something to base on.
It was Talbot’s Calotype method that is the basis of what we know of photography today. The ability to create duplicates by using his method has translated the art form into a multi-million industry that is quite popular worldwide.
Other amazing marks in the history of photography were when colored and digital images were first produced. Colored photographs came out of the box before the 19th century closed. The first colored photo appeared during the early 1860s. The practical methods that made colored photographs a lot more convenient to produce were introduced between the 1870s and 1880s. Digital photographs, on the other hand, were developed in late 1960s through late 1980s.
It is quite amazing how people learned to find better ways of making photography easier to fulfill as a full pledged form of art. The advances that were made in this field did not only help it gain popularity but also earn aficionados everywhere in the world.