A BRIEF HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY

by Joelle Steele

I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s with film cameras. My mother gave me her old Ansco, and I don’t even remember any time after that when I didn’t have a camera. Today, I have forsaken all my film cameras in favor of my digital ones, and many people are now turning to the digital camera as the best camera for their needs. It’s really amazing to think how far photography has come in the last 500 or so years. Yes, it’s really been that long.

The earliest roots of camera history began with what later became known as the “camera obscura,” a Latin term meaning “dark room” – and the first ones were almost room-size. The camera obscura was a large dark box with a hole in one end which, if small enough, would produce an inverted image opposite it. The concept of the camera obscura can be seen in a 16th century drawing by Leonard da Vinci, but the basic principles of the device date back to much earlier centuries when they were used to observe solar eclipses. The 10th century Arab, Ibn al Haitam, described the camera obscura for that use in his writings. But by da Vinci’s time, the camera obscura was primarily being advocated as a drawing tool for artists.

As an artist’s tool, the camera obscura could be used to project a scene onto a piece of paper, which the artist could then trace, allowing for a greater degree of accuracy in perspective and detail. This was quite a tool, since the artist had to be able to be inside the box to use it. And it was very expensive. Although many artists felt it was an affront to their artistic talents, some well-known artists were believed to have used the camera obscura in their works. Eventually, smaller versions were made available, and the camera obscura became more widely accepted by artists.

During its earliest years, the camera obscura had its shortcomings, noticeably the lack of a lens to create a clear image. The lens was probably invented by the 16th century mathematician, Gerolomo Cardana. He was supposedly the first to place a convex glass lens into the pinhole of the camera obscura. However, Roger Bacon was likewise given credit for contributing to the invention of the lens. Despite all that was being developed with regard to the camera obscura, it was still a long way from being a camera as we know it today, because there was yet to be a means of chemically fixing the image it produced.

It was known in the 17th and 18th centuries that silver chloride, powdered silver nitrate, and certain liquids, either turned dark or changed color when exposed to light. Several people experimented and even managed to capture images with the use of chemicals, but it was not until 1827 that Joseph Nicéphore Niépce created a picture on material that hardened when exposed to light for eight hours. Just a little over a year later, Niépce went into partnership with Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, but died four years later. Daguerre had some architectural training and was a talented artist and scene painter for opera houses. He had used a camera obscura in his art and it was his desire to be able to fix the image that led him to work with Niépce. After Niépce died, Daguerre continued to work with the process his late partner had pioneered, and he discovered a way to develop photographic plates in only 30 minutes and fix the image by using a salt bath. In 1839, he named these images “Daguerreotypes.”

During these earliest days of photography, portraiture was, as it is today, the most popular use of the medium. But it was quite difficult to achieve a clear image because the exposure time was so long and the contrast of the image was poor. People who had their photographs taken spent a great deal of time preparing themselves to look as good as possible, wearing their finest clothes, having their hair styled, displaying their fine jewelry, etc. But photographers had to convince them to avoid wearing clothing that was overly dark or overly light. And there was the problem of movement creating a blur, so many photographers utilized head restraints to keep their subjects still during the lengthy period of exposure.

Photography also had the potential to create art. Yet, it is hard to believe today that during Daguerre’s lifetime and even into the late 19th and early 20th centuries, photography was increasingly popular but was not always considered to be an art. Its critics believed that because the camera was a mechanical device that it could not be used to interpret subject matter artistically, and it is this artistic interpretation that comprises the traditional definition of what is considered “art.”

To circumvent this problem, many photographers found ways to make their photography more artistic. They turned to darkroom techniques to enhance their images by layering multiple negatives to produce composite prints, softening or blurring images and darkening others, and by drawing on negatives with brushes and pens or using sharp objects such as needles or fine knives to etch lines into their images for artistic or graphic effect. These photographic artists were known as “pictorials,” and they were opposed by another faction of photographers who believed photography was a pure art without the need for such techniques, and that retouching was not necessary as a photographer could wait for the right light effects, etc., to achieve photography as art.

Then there were those who simply believed that not only was photography not art, but it was most likely the invention of the devil. Despite such objections, photography became extremely popular, even more so upon the introduction of the dry plate process. The wet plate process, or collodion method, was invented in the early 1850s by Frederick Scott Archer and Peter Fry, and it led to high quality duplication. With the introduction of the dry plate process in 1864 -- generally attributed to Dr. Richard Norris -- the need for cumbersome equipment was eliminated, but the process was not widely used until about 20 years later.

Bt that time, in 1884, George Eastman had introduced flexible film, followed by the box camera in 1888. Photography was now in the hands of anyone who wanted to pursue it and could afford to do so. Most photographs were still made in the studio by professionals, but many of them took their cameras outside and around the cities and rural areas where they documented people, places, animals, events, and common everyday objects. The photographic process, unlike its earliest predecessor, the camera obscura, was no longer an adjunct to art. It had become an art in and of itself.

The 20th century saw numerous camera manufacturers battling to serve the growing needs of people for affordable, simple, hand-held cameras. By the 1960s, you would have been hard-pressed to find any household without a camera, and even more so today in the 21st century, when filmless digital cameras are available in all shapes and sizes, from simple point-and-shoot versions to ones that rival the sophistication of the finest 35mm cameras.

I will always remember the wonderful film cameras I once used – my three great old Rolleis, my Leica, my Pentax, and all their fantastic filters and other accessories. But with computerized photo editing and the speed, flexibility, and growing sophistication of the digital camera, I must bid them all a fond adieu.