A History of Photography - 1888-Present

The art of photography has definitely come a long way. The first "camera" was basically nothing more than a projector-and it displayed things upside down at that. However, after a number of technological leaps during the 19th century, such as daguerreotypes and ferrotypes, the first fairly modern camera was introduced in 1888. Since then, cameras have become virtually omnipresent, and we enjoy taking and displaying our photos as art throughout our homes.

How has camera technology come so far in such a short time? Of course, one can argue that technology itself has rapidly grown and expanded. However, in 1888, the predecessor to our modern Nikons and Canons was a Kodak camera that needed a twenty-foot roll of paper in order to take pictures. Additionally, these cameras took circular pictures instead of our rectangular ones today.

After 1888, a number of breakthroughs occurred in improving photography. First, in 1889, Kodak came out with film for their cameras rather than paper. This truly allowed for mass-produced cameras that were more usable. A year later, Kodak created its Brownie box roll-film camera. Because the Brownie was a cheap, cardboard-body camera, it made picture-taking easy for everyone, not just the elite. After taking enough pictures to fill a roll of film, a person would send in the camera with the film to be developed.

At first, all photographs were in black and white, or some shades of gray. Of course, many people chose to get their photographs tinted after they were taken, but this was not always an accurate representation of the colors present when the image was actually made. Thus, in 1907, the Lumiere brothers developed commercial color film, called Autochrome plates.

Of course, with the advent of portable, cheaper cameras and better film came the rise in photojournalism and taking pictures of different cultures. This documentation also extended to the government hiring Lewis Hine to photograph child labor mills in 1909. Perhaps cameras and film opened up the door for politicians to see how harsh some lives actually were, and they were able to regulate child labor and other harmful practices.

In 1914, Oscar Barnack, under the employ of German microscope company Leitz, created the first modern-frame camera. He made a 24x36mm frame and 35mm movie film. This camera was perfected until 1924, when Leitz marketed the device under the name Leica. This Leica was a very high quality 35mm camera, and it was a far cry from the previous Brownies.

The mid 1900s led to a number of new practices in photography. In 1931, a man at MIT developed strobe photography. In 1936 came Kodachrome, which was the first multi-layered color film. Also during this time period came manufacturers such as Nikon, Fuji, and Zeiss. In 1963, Polaroid made cameras available with instant color film.

In the late 20th century, such things arrived as autofocus (Minolta in 1985), Photoshop (Adobe in 1990),  and in 1991, the first digital camera, from Kodak. Of course, you probably know the story from there. Now, we can put our pictures on internet albums such as Snapfish and Facebook. We can take pictures and put them straight into our computers. Digital cameras, which were $6,000 for 2.74 megapixels in 1999, can now be found for $200-and at least 10 megapixels.

With the ease we now have in participating in photography, we should take advantage of the other benefits we have from modern technology, such as turning our photos into canvas works of art. For more information on printing your images on canvas, check out YourCanvasPhotos today.