Photography's Storied History
The history of photography is also the story of human ingenuity, from the discovery of the founding principles of camera technology and film development to the explosion of artistic experimentation to the thrilling potential of the digital age. A few of the highlights:
5TH CENTURY B.C. –In China, Mo Ti records the principal idea of the camera: that the reflected light rays of an illuminated object passing through a small hole in a dark enclosure result in an inverted but exact image of the object.
1038 –Arab scholar Alhazen describes a working model for what would later be known as the camera obscura (Latin for "dark room").
1553 –Scientist Giovanni Battista della Porta posits that the camera obscura can be used to trace a precise copy of nature. By the end of the 17th century, a portable machine is created by fitting a lens into one end of a 2-foot box and covering the other with a sheet of frosted glass; the image cast can be seen outside the camera.
1725 –In Germany, Johann Heinrich Schulze observes that the darkening of silver salts is not due to the sun's heat or the air, but to light alone, the basis of film development.
1826 –Using his knowledge of the camera obscura and Schulze's discovery, retired French Army officer Joseph Nicéphore Niépce produces what is now regarded as the first photograph: an image of his courtyard dubbed a "heliograph."
1839 –Theatrical designer Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre patents his "daguerreotype," which cut exposure time from eight hours to about 30 minutes and produced finely detailed photographs that became wildly popular.
1841 –In England, William Henry Fox Talbot patents the basis for the modern photograph (he calls it a calotype), by using a negative/positive process that allows multiple prints to be made from a single negative.
1851 –Employing the newly discovered substance collodion, English sculptor Frederick Scott Archer is able to take pictures with exposure times as short as 10 seconds. The only drawback: The film has to be developed immediately.
1854 –In Paris, André- Adolphe-Eugène Disdéri develops the carte de visite, using a camera with four lenses that could make several separate photographs on one negative. Images of royals and celebrities were mounted, collected, and traded like baseball cards.
• The London Stereoscopic Co. is founded to mass-produce stereoscopic cameras–quickly fashionable machines with twin lenses that produce a three-dimensional image.
1855 –Roger Fenton photographs the Crimean War, the first extensive combat coverage.
1859 –In California, the first photograph to be entered into evidence in a U.S. court case–an image of a signature–proves that a document was forged.
1862 –"The Dead at Antietam" exhibit opens at Mathew Brady's gallery in New York.
1864 –Landscape photos of the Yosemite Valley by Carleton Watkins are instrumental in Congress's passing legislation protecting the area–a preface to the national parks movement.
1878 –The dry plate process is perfected, allowing delayed development of film; thus, no more hauling around makeshift darkrooms.
1884 –Thanks to the development of the halftone printing process, German general interest journal Illustrirte Zeitung is able to publish photos alongside type.
1888 –Kodak manufactures the first consumer-friendly camera, which costs $25.
1889 –The Eastman Co. starts selling rolls of photographic film.
1890 –National Geographic publishes its first photograph, a shot of Herald Island, which lies northeast of Russia in the Chukchi Sea.
1900 –The cardboard Brownie is the first widely affordable camera, at $1.
1902 –Alfred Stieglitz founds the New York-based Photo-Secession Group, dedicated to promoting photography as a fine art.
1904 –Auguste and Louis Lumière patent the Autochrome system, an early color film process.
1925 –The Leica, a small, lightweight 35-mm camera, offers instantaneous exposure and good image definition in a variety of lighting situations–without attracting the attention of a subject. It fast becomes popular among photojournalists.
• The flashbulb debuts.
1935 –The Associated Press sends its first wire photo, "Plane crash in the Adirondacks," to 24 different media outlets.
• Beginning of the Farm Security Administration photo project.
• Kodachrome color film hits the market.
• Art curator Otto Bettmann sneaks two steamer trunks full of pictures out of Nazi Germany, and begins building what would eventually become the world's largest collection of historic photographs, drawings, and illustrations.
1936 –The first issue of Life magazine is published, with a Margaret Bourke-White photograph of Montana's Fort Peck Dam on the cover.
1946 –The United States attaches a camera to a V-2 rocket and photographs the first images of the Earth from space.
1947 –American physicist Edwin Land demonstrates the Polaroid, making one-step photography possible.
• Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and other Paris-based photojournalists found Magnum, one of the first, most famous photo agencies.
1955 –Photographer Edward Steichen curates the influential Family of Man exhibit of American photography at the Museum of Modern Art.
1959 –Swiss-born photographer Robert Frank publishes The Americans. Using icons like flags, diners, and highways, he depicts alienation amid a burgeoning consumer culture.
1979 –First digital imaging on computers.
1987 –Disposable cameras hit the U.S.
1989 –Toshiba Corp. and Fuji Photo Film Co. introduce the first digital camera. Previously, electronic cameras had stored images with analog, not digital signals.
1990 –Launch of Adobe Photoshop 1.0, a professional image manipulation program for Macintosh computers.
• Robert Mapplethorpe's show "The Perfect Moment," which includes explicitly sexual photography, opens at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati. Later that same year, the museum and its director are tried on–and acquitted of–obscenity charges.
1994 –In the wake of Nicole Brown Simpson's murder, an altered photo of O. J. Simpson–in which his face appears darker than in real life–appears on the cover of Time; the magazine apologizes one week later.
• Kodak begins selling the first consumer-priced digital camera, for under $1,000.
1995 –Bill Gates's digital photography company, Corbis, buys the Bettmann Archive, which now includes more than 17 million images.
2001 –Corbis unveils plans to a build an underground storage and digitization facility for the archive, to be completed next year.
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