Brief history of photography

As you know from my previous post, it all started with camera obscura, which was firstly used for observing the solar eclipse. Even with lens constructed by Girolamo Cardano, this device didn’t record the image, only projected it. Photography as we know it today began in the late 1830s in France when Joseph Nicéphore Niépce first recorded image that did not fade quickly. As a light-sensitive material he used a pewter plate coated with bitumen. After this experiment Niépce with Louis Daguerre constructed the Daguerrotype. Not delving into technical aspects, let’s say that Daguerrotype used something else as a light-sensitive material, which had to be exposed to light for up to 15 minutes.

This famous portrait of Abraham Lincoln is a Daguerrotype

In late 1850s it was replaced by emulsion plates(or wet plates), which were less expensive and took only two or three seconds of exposure time.

At that time the most common photography was portrait photography.

Then, in 1870s, Richard Maddox invented the dry plate, which could be stored and which enabled cameras to be smaller. This gave photographers much more freedom.

But still photography was only for the professionals.

Another huge leap forward was taken in 1880s, when George Eastman started a company called Kodak and created a camera with a flexible roll film. This camera had a small single lens with no focusing adjustment and allowed to make 100 photos. Much like in present-day cameras, after use, the film was send back to the factory to be developed (notice that it wasn’t today’s 35mm film, but larger , which was cheaper). Eastman didn’t invented a flexible roll film himself, he only popularized it (the inventor of it is Hannibal Goodwin), but his camera was the first one affordable for the average person.



Around 1930s the 35mm film was becoming more and more popular, and photographers began to shot something more than portraits.

During the WWII the 35mm film was used by most of photojournalists. Their shots, showing the war reality, changed the face of photography forever.




At the same time Polaroid introduced the Model 95- first instant camera, a type of camera with self-developing film. Initially it was very expensive, but by the mid 1960s more models had appeard on the market and the price had dropped.

In 1950s there has been a breakthrough – Asashi (later Pentax) introduced the Asahiflex, and Nikon introduced its Nikon F camera, first SLR-type (Single Lens Reflex) cameras. They provided easy control of the images, and soon most of them allowed interchangeable lenses and other accessories.

The next step, taken in late 1970s, was creating the smart cameras, which calculated shutter speed, aperture, and focus on their own. These cameras became popular with casual photographers, but professionals to use SLR cameras with more image control.

Finally, the last big invention in photography was made and developed in 1980s and 1990s – cameras that used digital media instead of film. First one of them was smart cameras, but in 1991 Kodak introduced the first one advanced enough to be used by professionals. Since then many innovations have been made, expecially in image sensors. Nowadays the CCD image sensor is the most advanced one.

Through all these years there had been a lot of great photographers. It’s impossible to write about all of them, even about all of those most influental, so I will present works of only few of them, and I encourage you to seek for more of their works :)

- Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904)


- Ansel Adams (1902-1984)


- Edward Curtis (1868-1952)


- Robert Capa (1913-1954)


- Richard Avedon (1923-2004)


- Irving Penn (1917-2009)


- Annie Leibovitz (1949 - )

Are you interested in photography as an art? Or maybe you’re interested in reportage photography? Do you have your favourite photographer? Do you visit photo exhibitions?