Photography has always been a controversial medium—is it an art or a science?
1826–c. 1870 C.E.
videos + essays
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Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, View from the Window at Le Gras
Niépce's heliograph is the earliest surviving camera-made photograph.
Édouard Baldus, Cloister of St. Trophîme, Arles
Baldus’s Cloister of St. Trophîme, Arles aspired to use photography to make an imagined reality visible, tangible, and therefore achievable.
Muybridge, The Attitudes of Animals in Motion
Getty Conversations
Have you ever wondered what it took to take a photograph in the 1800s?
Francis Galton, eugenics, and photography
Galton, who founded the Eugenics movement made composite portraits to validate his stereotypes.
Marey, Joinville Soldier Walking
The title of the photograph suggests that this image of lines and dots in wavy bands represents a walking soldier. But how?
David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, Newhaven Fishwives
Hill and Adamson spent considerable time documenting the daily life and activity of the village of Newhaven, making upwards of 130 calotypes during their visits.
Honoré Daumier, Nadar Elevating Photography to the Height of an Art
Despite the medium’s infancy, Daumier’s lithograph leads the viewer to believe that 1862 Paris was teeming with photography studios.
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, The Artist’s Studio / Still Life with Plaster Casts
Daguerre’s The Artist’s Studio shows off his new medium’s promise—photography—as an art form.
Eadweard Muybridge, The Horse in Motion
When the first eleven images of Sallie Gardner are seen in rapid succession at a speed of at least 24 frames per second, they allow us to re-experience her run.
Anna Atkins and the cyanotype process
Although today Atkins’s prints are sold and viewed as art, they were originally made as botanical illustrations.
Julia Margaret Cameron, Mrs. Herbert Duckworth
Cameron’s evocative portrait captures her young niece… before she became the mother of a literary giant.
Browse Smarthistory images for teaching & learning!
