History of Photography

History of Photography



History of Photography

Introduction

Photography has revolutionized our world. It has contributed towards research, history, and various other fields. This technology has gone through various stages, and now it has reached a pinnacle with the introduction of digital technology.

History of Photography

Helmut, Erich Robert Gernsheim

Helmut Gernsheim was born in Germany. He quickly took the same path as his brother, and he was destined for a career as an art historian. In response to the English situation, where innovation had no place, Helmut Gernsheim wrote New Photo Vision, which he published in 1942. This book illustrated his photographs, similar to a critical book in which he attacked all the photographers who use artistic techniques and effects related to those of the art of painting. Gernsheim considered photography as a medium in its own right and not as a minor art submitted to the painting (Buckingham, 2004).

Beacemont New Hall

The photography historian Beaumont Newhall is one of those who have both sought to understand the workings and challenges of this medium and who said, searched archives, and talked with the photographers of their time. Born in Lynn, Massachusetts, Newhall studied art history at Harvard University, where he graduated in 1930 and where he obtained his master's degree the following year. In 1932 and 1933, he lectured at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and then left for France. In Paris, he studied at the Institute of Art and Archaeology.

General Consideration

Communication and Expression

Photography is generally considered as a medium of communication and expression. Since the appearance in 1826 of the oldest known version of a photograph, Joseph-Nicéphore Niépce's heliograph titled View from a Window at Gras, an aura of magic has been attached to photography. To some degree, this has resulted from sensationalistic advertising by the inventors themselves. In this regard, Niépce joined with Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (who in 1839 published his new photographic process, the daguerreotype) to define photography as the spontaneous reproduction of the images of nature received in the camera obscura (a box with a lens used as an aid in Renaissance painting).

U.S. writer Edgar Allan Poe regarded photography to be a miraculous invention, even perhaps the most significant of modern science. Poe was more than fascinated by photography; he became an avid supporter, writing three articles within one year explaining and championing the invention. He believed the photograph to be both absolute truth and supreme perfection.

Characteristics

Photography owns innumerable characteristics. In addition to celebrating the magical qualities of the invention, early commentators on photography wrote about the superhuman ability of the camera to see and record all things (Rosenblum, 1984). Lady Elizabeth Eastlake (wife of the English neoclassical painter Sir Charles Eastlake) published articles on photography arguing that the camera was a supreme eyewitness to the objects and events of life. However, she contributed an important concept that has gripped many commentators long thereafter: the idea of the photograph being a trace or impression taken from the real. What is implicit in this idea is the belief that the ...