Photography is a technique that was developed in France in the second half of the 19th century. Its general principle is to leave an impression on a medium through the use of light. The image is captured within a camera obscura, a box with a hole drilled in it and fitted with a lens. The lens projects the reversed image from outside onto the inside end of the box. This image is saved through the use of light-sensitive substances.
The invention of photography is attributed to Niepce (1765-1833) who used paper covered in grains of silver which turn black in light. In 1816 he obtained the first reproduction of an image of nature – a view from his window – but shortly after it was removed from the camera, the paper turned completely black. Niepce managed to fix the image by using a bitumen-covered copper plate, and the image took several days to become fixed. The plate was then dipped in a bath of lavender oil which dissolved the parts which had not, or had only partially, been exposed to light, which made the image appear as a negative. Later, around 1830, he obtained positives on silver by using iodine fumes.
Daguerre (1787-1851) perfected the technique and invented the “daguerrotype” around 1837. The image was still fixed on a metal plate but the exposure time was now only a few minutes, which made it possible to do portraits.
The English inventor Talbot (1800-1872) developed a paper process which allowed multiple positive images to be captured on paper from a single negative; the images could then be disseminated in albums and magazines which became widespread in the 1850s.
This technique posed questions about art’s capacity to imitate reality. In spite of is precision, photography does not copy reality but interprets it; it also showed painters that perspective and chiaroscuro were no more than conventions which do not exist in nature. Painters then found new kinds of framing and angles, allowing them to free themselves from the traditional sense of painting as an imitation of nature.
