History of Photography
When Photography first came about photographs were considered unusual and or magical. Many scientists and artists are responsible for the evolution of photography as we know it today.
The development of photography like most was a lengthy process. In the 1700s it was discovered that silver nitrate became very dark when exposed to light, from there in the 1800s this knowledge was used to create what we call photograms (the process of placing objects onto a piece of photographic paper in the darkroom and exposing it to light, when put through the development process the areas which were not exposed i.e. the objects stay white while the rest of the paper goes black).
At the same time paper negatives came about which were called the calotype process, this process made it possible to make many reproductions of the one image, the drawback being that the image was not as clear as other more expensive processes.
In 1851 Frederick Scott Archer discovered and introduced to the world the ‘wet plate’ technique also known as the collodian process. This process used a glass plate coated in with silver iodide to produce a negative print, this was a major breakthrough in the development of photgraphy.
In 1888, the roll of film and the simple Kodak box camera was invented by George Eastman. With this development came the knowledge that everyone could take a photo.
Since then the shape and function of the camera has changed dramatically, so has the film, photographic paper and chemicals that we use which have developed to become refined and sophisticated.
