Lets take a step back in time and list the most important dates in the history of photography.
A long time ago: It all began with the Camera Obscura (which is Latin for the Dark Room). It is believed that Aristote (384-322 BC), the Arabian scholar Hassan ibn Hassan (965-1038) and Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) already knew its principles. Camera Obscura is essentially a dark, closed space (room or box) with a hole on one side of it. The light passes through the hole and strikes a surface inside, where it is reproduced, upside-down, but with color and perspective preserved. It helped painters during the Renaissance to draw lines over the projected images on canvas.
1816: We know from a letter to his sister in law that Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (French inventor 1765-1833) succeeded in making negative images but that they disappeared quickly with exposure to light.
1826: Is the date of the earliest surviving photograph from nature using a camera obscura by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. (Photo above)
1829: Niepce and Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (French artist and physicist 1787-1851) start working together until Niépce's death.
1835: William Henry Fox Talbot (British inventor 1800-1877) makes his first photogenic drawing a durable silver chloride camera negatives on paper
1839: Louis Daguerre develops the process he calls Daguerréotype after himself. Using the camera obscura, he made the plate inside the camera light sensitive by fumes from iodine crystals. Because Niépce was at the beginning of the research, Daguerre and Niépce's son both received money for their invention by the French government. - John Herschel makes the first glass negative. - W. H. Fox Talbot makes the Calotype process public
1841: W. H. Fox Talbot patents the Calotype process - the first negative-positive process making possible the first multiple copies. It is an improved version of his earlier discovery that greatly reduces the required exposure time.
1851: Frederick Scott Archer (1813-1857) invents the photographic collodion process which precedes the modern gelatin emulsion.
1861: James Clerk Maxwell (Scottish 1831-1879) presents a projected additive color image of a multicolored ribbon, the first demonstration of color photography by the three-color method
1871: Richard Leach Maddox (English 1816-1902) invents lightweight gelatin negative plates for photography.
1888: George Eastman (American innovator 1854-1932) sells the Kodak n°1 box camera, the first easy-to-use camera. It is introduced with the slogan You press the button, we do the rest.
1948: The first poloroid camera is sold to the public. It was invented by Edwin Land (American 1909-1991)
1975: Steven Sasson (engineer at Eastman Kodak) invents and builts the first electronic camera using a charge-coupled device image sensor (digital camera). It is a prototype with 100x100 pixels in black and white.
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An expanded chronology charting Todd Hido's career, with ten years of new work.
Well known for his photography of landscapes and suburban housing, and for his use of detail and luminous color, acclaimed American photographer Todd Hido casts a distinctly cinematic eye across all that he photographs, digging deep into his memory and imagination for inspiration. Newly revised and expanded, Intimate Distance: Over Thirty Years of Photographs, A Chronological Album includes ten years of new work since the book's first publication, including breathtaking new images from his travels to Iceland, Norway, and Japan, where he brings both a familiar eye and an expansive new vision.
Though Hido has published many smaller monographs of individual bodies of work, this gathers his most iconic images, along with many unpublished works to provide the most complete and comprehensive monograph charting his career. The book is organized chronologically, showing how his series overlap in exciting ways. David Campany introduces the work and looks at the kind of cinematic spectatorship the work demands. And Katya Tylevich muses on the making of each of Hido's major monographs, "The photographs lead as far as human-made roads go. They reach the periphery of utility wires, footprints, and paths already taken." From exterior to interior, surface observations to subconscious investigations, from landscapes to nudes, from America and beyond, this midcareer collection reveals how his unique focus has developed and shifted over time, yet the tension between distance and intimacy remains.
The fourth chapter of the celebrated series The Day May Break by the renowned photographer Nick Brandt, featuring Syrian refugee families, displaced by climate change in water-scarce Jordan
This is the fourth chapter of The Day May Break, photographer Nick Brandt's global series portraying people and animals impacted by climate change and environmental degradation. The series was photographed in Jordan, one of the most water-scarce countries in the world. It features rural Syrian refugee families currently living there, whose lives have been seriously impacted by droughts intensified by climate change. Living lives of continuous displacement, they are forced to move their homes up to several times a year, moving to where there is available agricultural work, to wherever there has been sufficient rainfall to enable crops to grow. The photographs show the families' connection and strength in the face of adversity, that when all else is lost you still have each other. The boxes on which the families gather aim skyward, pedestals for those in our society that are typically unseen and unheard.
Photographer Ed Kashi’s passion is long-term documentary projects that immerse him in issues that need attention or people’s lives whose struggles warrant concern. He has had a lengthy and varied career with National Geographic and other major magazines, traveling around the world to tell visual stories.
Kashi’s archive, now housed at the Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas at Austin, houses many of his personal memories and the experiences attached to the creation of those images. More than a simple repository of images, the archive is a growing, thriving, and continually evolving organism, a living library with immense value.
Through his photography, Kashi has had an intimate, front-row seat to witness and record major events in history. His work has been a passport to worlds unseen, unveiling issues that need illumination, documenting history in the making, and capturing the human experience and the many awe-inspiring places in our fragile world. A Period in Time is a testimony to some of Kashi’s most memorable stories—people he has been privileged to observe and learn from and the places and narratives that have shaped his life, all captured one moment at a time.
An essential introduction to the complexities of visual representation, this book offers a critical new framework for understanding and practicing photojournalism in a global digital context.
Critical Photojournalism guides readers through a variety of ethical, technical and business skills, plus the mental health, self-care and safety considerations necessary to thrive in the field. Drawing on their extensive industry and teaching experience, the authors provide real-world advice on how to navigate the demands of the profession while addressing the impact that photojournalism has on society and ways that photojournalists can mitigate harm. Consideration is given to understanding and disrupting implicit bias and power structures in newsrooms, as well as issues around access, working in breaking news environments and balancing informed consent with varying media laws around the world. In accessible language, this book highlights the importance of collaboration and community engagement in contemporary photojournalism and encourages students to adopt a decolonial approach to their work. Readers will learn to balance the needs for accuracy and thoughtfulness with the priorities of a global, social-media-engaged audience.
This is a key textbook for those seeking a nuanced introduction to visual journalism and/or a fresh approach to their craft. This book is supported by a website which can be accessed at www.criticalphotojournalism.com. The website includes a full-length bonus chapter on video and photojournalism, interviews with professional visual journalists, further tips and tools, and a glossary of key terms.
