Invention of Photography
Adam M. Bolenbaugh
DeVry University

Invention of Photography
Photography, a nineteenth century scientific invention, has like many other technical innovations of the era “dramatically altered mankind’s perception and experience of the world, “an effect that continues to this day.” The invention of photographs defines the beginning of the modern era due to the effects it had on new systems of representation including graphic design and advertising. The photograph evolved and “it was this fertile and receptive soil” of the nineteenth century which saw its serious development. From the birth of lithography to the development of chromolithography, and the new systems of representation in graphic design and advertising on billboards, posters, and in magazines, its invention next to the printed word, is still the “widest form of communication” since the beginnings of the modern era. The ability and need to create and reproduce photographs ourselves has created a virtual reality that has
Become an inescapable part of our modern era.

The invention of photography as we know it in the modern world today is one which not one person can solely be praised for as many generations have been involved in its perfection. The concept behind photography is the “camera obscure” Latin for “dark chamber”, and was a room or box with a small opening or lens in one side which was known to the ancient world as early as Aristotle and Leonardo da Vinci in the fourth century B.C. As scientific discoveries grew over thousands of years, so did the development of photography. In 1826, Frenchman Joseph Nieces’ was the first to obtain a faint photographic image, fulfilling “an ancient desire of mankind to create an imaginary world that would be as believable as the real world itself” (Museum Ludwig Cologne 1996). But it was Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre most importantly, who perfected his “daguerreotype” process to minute detail. These premature stages of photography saw painter Paul Delaroche remark, “From today, painting is dead!”

It was obvious though that photography was not just another invention. “For the first time, one could record the past not just with written words or painted pictures.” Now it could live on in the form of exact images. One could now believe in this past as if one had experienced it personally. The photographic image evolved into a collective memory. The invention of photography was “the birth of a new language” ” and gave birth to a “new kind of visual communication”, which would change graphic design and advertising forever.

Too many painters though the invention of photography was seen a somewhat of a threat as they had been until its introduction the only people who could record events, people and places in society visually. Contrary to this, many others saw the specific nature of the new medium and were greatly interested in its “usefulness as a supplier and multiplier of images.” But like the older technique, photography had to fight for recognition as a graphic art, though artists involved in both media gave proof that “there can be creative art forms, as well as inexpensive methods of illustration.”

New systems of representation in advertising and graphic design from the advent of photography advanced as printing techniques did during this industrial age. The first major development, the invention of lithography in the early nineteenth century, “allowed easier experimentation with type styles, weights and swifter production”, and became the chief means of reproducing works of art and illustrating books and magazines. Printers began to produce successful lithographs in the 1830s, by over printing separate stones. This led to a new system of advertising and graphic design especially in France as their posters were designed to stress image over text a style that created commercial persuasion. The illustrative poster led to the belief that “modern art and modern advertising were born together in the late nineteenth century.”

Further development in this use of color, and advances in “photographic adaption of images to gravure and lithographic processes”, saw a huge boom in illustrated posters in the late 1880s and 1890s. This process called chromolithography “had vast social and economic ramifications.” This new system of representations affordability meant that advertising graphics of every description, “poured from the presses in millions of impressions each year.” This only furthered the development of advertising that was modernizing due to these new systems of representation, which were becoming accessible.

Developments in the science in photography helped create “the vitality of this graphic revolution.” Chromolithography continued to be widely used “for this outpouring of Victorian popular graphics” which were beginning to be transferred onto labels and packages. Package design was chromolithographed on tin for food and tobacco products using “bright flat colors, elaborate lettering, and iconic images to create an emblematic presence for the product.” Foundries and letterpress printers also saw chromolithography as a source for new ideas because of the inspiration they found in the “uninhibited lettering.” Although this progression came into being close to the end of chromolithography’s “golden era”, label design became another system of representation which we still use today in advertising products.

The invention of photography and its effect graphic design has had an overwhelming impact on the beginnings of the modern era. Its use in advertising brought in the later part of the nineteenth century “an overwhelming flood of imagery” and unlike before it gave advertisements “structure and meaning” which had traditionally been fulfilled by art or religion. Previously, household products and food were sold in bulk containers, as a result, consumers had not yet been aware of, or influenced by brand names. Although it is often said that during the nineteenth century that advertisements function changed from ”information to persuasion” it was also the effects of the new systems of representation which contributed to the success of early advertisers such as Pears and Cadbury. Underlying all this there were transitions in capitalism to the corporate production of “monopoly” capitalism, “and the changes in advertising were an integral part of it.”

“The field of vision” opened up by the photographers rapidly widened during the 1800s adding definition to the modern era. Many began travelling to distant countries bringing back with them “uncommon and exotic pictures.” It was the beginning of colonial expansion as they followed colonizers, Recording what they saw, and therefore learning more about the “natives” who inhabited these areas, as well as their homes, dress, and way of life. Consequently, because of their strangeness, the visual records of foreign places began undermining the assumptions by which man lived, and then also “showing them up” through the “reality” displayed in photographs.

Photography is important in defining the modern era as its power of revealing things which are invisible to the naked eye and which specialists alone had been able to perceive; and its power of confronting everyone with images of unknown people and places, of strange and thought provoking situations, of exceptional events. By steadily enlarging the field of knowledge and awareness, photography directly modified the traditional value of human experience. Till the advent of the camera people had lived narrow lives, knowing nothing about the world beyond the bounds of local experience and personal relationships. People began to see more and more of what they would never actually experience with momentous consequences, “it reduced everything to the same scale, and limited to the delineration of appearances.”

The invention of the roll film, and the first camera for the amateur market made by George Eastman founder of the Eastman Kodak Co. in 1890, was at the forefront of this industrial surge before the beginning of the modern era of the twentieth century. The invention and marketing of the Kodak brought the camera out of the studio and “it ended the reign of inevitably artificial studio portrait.” The family album now came into existence with photography as the amateur now took over “seeking out his own subjects”. This defining moment in the modern era gave rise to the family album had the effect of “promoting the sentimentality interpretation of photography.” Just as painting moved away from “descriptive realism”, so photography too became more subjective and the amateur snapshot more closely identified with the “subject and its emotional overtones.” As the photograph became accessible to the masses, “the more serious photographers began thinking of themselves as artists.” Photography therefor defined the modern era as it went into the twentieth century, as photography seemed to fulfill peoples “deeply rooted desire for realism, even as it translated this longing into the uncertain conditions of the industrial age.”

Photography has become as significant a component to our culture as it has representing it. The invention of photography during the nineteenth century gave us a new way of seeing, thinking, creating and there for a new kind of visual communication which continues to evolve today. It is those scientific discoveries which were made by Niepce and Daguerre that made photography possible, and exposed us to a “new kind” of visual communication. The consciousness of the Victorian ages and the promising industrial spirit gave way to the innovation of chromolithography, and new ways of representing and creating graphic design and advertising. It is the subsequent wide use of these mechanically reproduced images which have paved the way for modernisms mass production and mass media which we are inhabited by today.

References
Bajac, Q. (2002). The invention of photography. New York: Harry N. Abrams.
Surveys the early of history of photography, including the debut of the daguerreotype in 1839 in Paris, the growth of portrait studios in the mid-1800s, and the spread of the photographic image in the late 1800s.
Buckingham, A. (2004). Photography. New York: Dorling Kindersley.
Examining landmark developments in photography from the very first print in 1826 to the rapidly changing medium of the digital age, Eyewitness Photography brings the world of cameras into focus with unique insight into this changing art form.
Sandler, M. W. (1979). The story of American photography: an illustrated history for young people. Boston: Little, Brown.
This book talks about the early years of American Photography. Some of the first known famous people of American Photography.
Walker, R. J., & Walker, R. E. (1983). Exploring photography. South Holland, Ill.: Goodheart-Willcox Co..
This book explains the History of Photography with detail about several subjects. The subjects are First Practical Photograph, First Color Photography, Roll Film Introduced and Major Advancements.