| Photography itself has been with us for many hundreds of years now.
In fact, the first person to make a permanent recording by using chemical means of a
camera obscura was Joseph Nicephore Niepce (1765-1833) in 1824. Camera obscura is the
technique by which But it wasn't until 1839 when the Frenchman Louis Jaques Mande Daguerre (1787-1851), whos is considered to be the inventor of photography, was able to perfect a direct ppositive image on a silver-coated copperplate called the Daguerreotype. From the time the British guy invented the negative technique, photography has remained virtually unchanged. The technology has become exponentially better but no real change has occured. Cameras have gotten smaller and companies like Eastman Kodak have made it incredibly easy to take photos in just about any situation and at any point in your life. Photography itself has played a large role in the history or out country. Photographers like Matthew Brady brought home the reality of war via his photographs of the Civil War. Brady devoted much of his fortune to training photographers and dispensing them throughout the battefields as they brought back images of war that contrasted previous views that proclaimed war as being this glorified act between men. Throughout most of the early 20th century, photography became a vehicle of social activists. The depression, homelessness, child labor practices, and many more controversial issues were addressed through the use of photography and later contributed to the enactment of many of today's human rights laws. In the late 20th century the digital world began to invade photography. The digital camera has become a mainstay in today's society. With the advent of the computer cameras are now mini computers in which images are then stored and downloaded onto a computer's hardrive. Many newspapers have switched to digital photography. Digital photography has overtaken traditional means of photography so much that the wet-darkroom process is being removed from the equation in many of the arenas where photography is such a big part of. | |
