The invention of the early camera,-the Camera obscura whose image recording process was based on the optical structure of the eye heralded a new way of recording visual image. Thus the early camera mimicked the eye in registering image. In its primitive stages it was intended to be an effort to “extend” the human eye and was perceived as a more superior “eye” of sorts. The idea must have been to capture more information or data that the human eye could not through the “more sophisticated” eye – the Camera obscura. In the initial stages, a “film less” version was used by artists for sketches. By the first half of the 19th century, photography was rapidly gaining ground as a communication tool whose power and significance could be likened to the impact of the advent of the printing press. Both painters and photographers were collaborating to discover a better way of representing images. The industrial revolution of this era facilitated general acceptance.
Development
In the mid 19th century, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre, a French painter built on his previous collaborative and experimental work with Niepce and in 1839 his work morphed into making direct positive image on a silver plate called the Daguerreotype process. This resulted in the possibility of multiplicity of photographs accessibility and availability was born. The French government played a key role in publicising photography by buying the patent from Daguerre. Prior to this development, only the middle class had access to photography and it was largely through portraiture and because the traditional artists could not meet with the demands. Photography was in a vantage position to fill in the gaps. The invention of Calotype process by William Henry Fox Talbot in the early 19th century (1840) enabled the negative-positive process of photography and made it possible to produce multiple copies of images. This was a landmark invention in photography; availability was taken out of the privileged reach of the middle class and placed in the public domain. The Calotype process solved the need for reproducibility and made mass production of photographs a possibility. During this era, the first illustrated book with photograph emerged printed by Talbot one of the inventors of the photographic printing process. This book- The Pencil of Nature (1844–46) brought a new dimension to how literacy will be viewed. Photography had started influencing print.
By the mid 19th century (1851) the Colloidion process solved a problem plaguing the photographic processes by merging the advantages of the previous processes. This resulted in a universal acceptance aided by the industrial revolution of the era. The Colloidion process merged advantages of its predecessors building on that to solve the need for durability. The late 19th century saw another shift in photography with the launch of the Kodak camera in 1884. General use of the camera was being marketed and ease-of –use created more appeal as photographers no longer had to carry plates and chemicals, cameras were easier to move around. In the early 20th century (1901) the first mass-produced camera debuted. From the early 19th century photography has been undergoing a remediation from one form to another. Art and technology have had been progressively influential in the development of photography from inception leading to the portable camera which solved the problem of mobility and ease of use and further influenced the influx of ore enthusiasts into the burgeoning profession.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
Western Society’s ideological shift from the influence of the Renaissance period to a more Scientific approach in the 1830s marked a society that was ready for a change in representation of their reality. The first permanent image created by the French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce of his surroundings in 1826 (National Geographic Society, 2010) set forth a pursuit of chemical and optical processes to capture reality beyond what the hand could. The scientific approach to the investigation of plants, animals, landscape and objects influenced by the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution signaled a change in the worldview of society at the time. From a significant change from spiritual perspectives to one focused on “reason and evidence based on proof”, it was an era of the middle class as well to encourage the flourishing of the invention of photography (Hackett, 1992). With the development of the photograph through Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre’s daguerrotype it began a new process of creating permanent images.
