historyofphotography

Martin Kaninsky

How Richard Nixon ‘Stole’ This Photo and Twisted It Into a Campaign Slogan

American people standing up to the Soviets! America needs Nixon! These were some of the tag lines attached to this photo during Nixon’s presidential campaign in 1960. But behind every picture, there is a story. And this is one of those photos where the story is just as good as the picture.

DL Cade

Take a 40-Minute Tour Through the History of Photography

Great Britain's Royal Institution has put together a fascinating "tour through the history of photography." Using his own camera collection as a jumping off point, chemist Andrew Szydlo takes you through a sort of "crash course" on the history of photography in 41 minutes.

Ken Mitchell

The High Cost of Perfection

Walking past booth after booth at the PhotoPlus Expo in New York, I often heard camera company presenters explaining to their uncomfortably-seated, yet nonetheless-enraptured, audiences how they shot the “perfect” photo.

Andrew Molitor

A Sketch History of Early Color Photography

I ran across yet another case of Holy Cow Look At These Russian Photos, in which the photographs of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky were showcased. In 1902, Prokudin-Gorsky learned the method of shooting three negatives (color separations) and then projecting them in registration through filters to produce projected color images.

Michael Zhang

X-Ray Photos Reveal the Evolution of Cameras

Fossils can tell us a lot about the history of living things. Photographer Kent Krugh is creating a "fossil record" of sorts for cameras. His project Speciation is a series of X-ray photos of cameras that provides a brief history of photography, as told through the evolution of the camera.

Andy Romanoff

How Ansel Adams Wrote Pictorialism Out of Photography History

We all have a blind spot, both literally and metaphorically. Ansel Adams had one so big and powerful that he, Beaumont Newhall, and a few others “disappeared” some very important and wonderful photographers from the history of photography. And in doing so they also helped “disappear” an important movement in photography, one called Pictorialism.

DL Cade

This is the World’s First Underwater Portrait, Taken in 1899

It's been called the first underwater photograph and the first underwater self-portrait, but it doesn't seem to be either of those things. No, but this photo by diver and photography pioneer Louis Marie Auguste Boutan, taken in 1899, does seem to be the world's first underwater portrait.

Michael Zhang

Polaroid’s History of Innovation, War, and Lawsuits

Ronald K. Fierstein is a man who has had a front row seat to the evolution of photography as we know it. He's a lawyer who helped represent Polaroid during its lengthy legal battle with Eastman Kodak over patents.

Fierstein has written a new book that sheds light on the life and career of Polaroid founder Edwin Land, the "original Steve Jobs" (Jobs revered Land and modeled his career after his). It's titled A Triumph of Genius: Edwin Land, Polaroid, and the Kodak Patent War.

DL Cade

An Animated History of Photography from Camera Obscura to Camera Phones

If you've never heard a basic overview of the history of photography, then this cute little animated video from TED-Ed is here for you. It covers everything from the invention of the camera obscura, to the battle between the calotype and the daguerreotype, to the rise of portable cameras.

Michael Zhang

A Brief History of the Chemical Processes Used in Photography Over the Years

Photography isn't even 200-years-old yet, but there have already been over 150 different chemical processes developed over its relatively short lifetime. In this interesting 5-minute video titled "A Brief History of Photography: Innovations in Chemistry," photo conservation scientist Art Kaplan of the Getty Conservation Institute quickly introduces some of the groundbreaking processes that have made a significant impact on the history of photography -- processes such as the daguerreotype, ambrotype and tintype.