By Andy Pinkham
Cave paintings are the earliest evidence of sentient Man and also show that we are, and always have been, a visual species. The hunters chasing mammoths and bison over the plains tell a story and we, thousands of years later, can still understand it. The power and simplicity of the image has transcended language and experiences and thousands of years. Our eyes are the main receptors of the world and images, whether the live images of real events we see around us or pictures we look at, arrive unfiltered in our minds. Writing has been a mere blip by comparison and relies on the shapes and symbols being interpreted before it can be understood. 
Images have always played a powerful role in conveying ideas, asserting power and maintaining tradition. One has only to look at some of the great art produced over the centuries to see that imagery has a very powerful effect on the viewer. When we remember, we tend to remember in images, flashing in our minds. If they are our own memories, they will be our own images. If we are remembering something we have been told or taught, we will recall the iconic images that we were given at the time. From Jesus to Che Guevara, images control our memories and thus our feelings.
Sometimes, when we study great inventions through history, they appear to have popped up out of nowhere and created a market or fulfilled a need that nobody was even aware of. Many times national cultures us these inventions - and the inventors - as examples of how clever/ resourceful their people are. In Britain inventors created the industrial revolution, in America, they conquered the land built a huge economic power. But I believe that most inventions have been created due to a specific need and that is why I think photography was inevitable.
Anyone who has tried to follow instruction down a telephone line, or follow a wordless diagram knows how difficult it can be to follow just words or just pictures. the power of using word with pictures allows the follower to understand the context and subtleties of the piece. Following the Italian renaissance, when artists and scientists we able to explore the world without the filter of religious teaching, it was natural that scientists would want to use every method they could to explain their new theories and experiences.
These scientists could have produced the pictures themselves when writing of their experiments, or they could have employed someone else to do it. But in both cases the images would have been completed after the event and so subject to the contamination of poor memory or corruption. Ideally they wanted to produce these images exactly as the experiment took place. The camera obscura had been understood for over a thousand years and had helped artists to make exact records of buildings and landscapes. All science needed to provide was a way of keeping an instant permanent record of the image it created.
Chemistry was behind the development of photography and so it isn't surprising to learn that the earliest pioneers came from a metallurgy or scientific background. In the 1720s it was discovered that that light could have an effect on a mixture of chalk and silver nitrate. A century later frenchman Joseph Nicphore Nipce created the first photograph, "View from the Window at Le Gras". He captured the image with a camera obscura focused onto a sheet of oil-treated bitumen. The exposure time was 8 hours. He was introduced to Louis Daguerre, and they went on to develop the process further. After the death of Nipce, Daguerre won fame as the man who invented the photography.
The first known photographic portrait dates back to 1839 - a self portrait of Robert Cornelius using the daguerreotype process. He was originally a metal polisher, who worked with his father, specializing in silver plating. The daguerreotype process uses silver on a copper plate and Cornelius combined his knowledge of metallurgy and chemistry to try to improve the process. This self-portrait of Robert Cornelius is one of the first photographs of a human to be produced. Cornelius operated two of the earliest photographic studios in the U.S. between 1841 and 1843, but realized that he could make more money at the family gas and lighting company and lost interest.
War has all the drama and emotion and artist might be looking for in a painting and so it was natural that the early cameras, bulky, heavy and unpredictable wold try to capture the essence of brute force. Roger Fenton was one of the first men to photograph warfare when he provided the British people with an exclusive insight into the war in Crimea. He was sent by the British government as an official war photographer, their intention being to use the pictures as a jingoistic prove of British superiority. Due to the limitations of early photography there were no 'action pictures'. All the pictures were either landscapes or posed. Fenton avoided taking pictures of the dead or injured. But his photographs gave the public back in England a unique glimpse of what their soldiers were experiencing in southern Russia.
Only a few years afterwards that taboo was broken. The American Civil war was the first conflict to be widely photographed. Photographers like Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner and Timothy O'Sullivan followed the troops from battle to battle and recorded the carnage and death that resulted. Gardner's famous picture ' The home of the rebel sharpshooter' shocked the nation when it was published just after the war in1866. It began the tradition of war photography which, ever since, has strived to tell the hardship and misery of war.
Images have always played a powerful role in conveying ideas, asserting power and maintaining tradition. One has only to look at some of the great art produced over the centuries to see that imagery has a very powerful effect on the viewer. When we remember, we tend to remember in images, flashing in our minds. If they are our own memories, they will be our own images. If we are remembering something we have been told or taught, we will recall the iconic images that we were given at the time. From Jesus to Che Guevara, images control our memories and thus our feelings.
Sometimes, when we study great inventions through history, they appear to have popped up out of nowhere and created a market or fulfilled a need that nobody was even aware of. Many times national cultures us these inventions - and the inventors - as examples of how clever/ resourceful their people are. In Britain inventors created the industrial revolution, in America, they conquered the land built a huge economic power. But I believe that most inventions have been created due to a specific need and that is why I think photography was inevitable.
Anyone who has tried to follow instruction down a telephone line, or follow a wordless diagram knows how difficult it can be to follow just words or just pictures. the power of using word with pictures allows the follower to understand the context and subtleties of the piece. Following the Italian renaissance, when artists and scientists we able to explore the world without the filter of religious teaching, it was natural that scientists would want to use every method they could to explain their new theories and experiences.
These scientists could have produced the pictures themselves when writing of their experiments, or they could have employed someone else to do it. But in both cases the images would have been completed after the event and so subject to the contamination of poor memory or corruption. Ideally they wanted to produce these images exactly as the experiment took place. The camera obscura had been understood for over a thousand years and had helped artists to make exact records of buildings and landscapes. All science needed to provide was a way of keeping an instant permanent record of the image it created.
Chemistry was behind the development of photography and so it isn't surprising to learn that the earliest pioneers came from a metallurgy or scientific background. In the 1720s it was discovered that that light could have an effect on a mixture of chalk and silver nitrate. A century later frenchman Joseph Nicphore Nipce created the first photograph, "View from the Window at Le Gras". He captured the image with a camera obscura focused onto a sheet of oil-treated bitumen. The exposure time was 8 hours. He was introduced to Louis Daguerre, and they went on to develop the process further. After the death of Nipce, Daguerre won fame as the man who invented the photography.
The first known photographic portrait dates back to 1839 - a self portrait of Robert Cornelius using the daguerreotype process. He was originally a metal polisher, who worked with his father, specializing in silver plating. The daguerreotype process uses silver on a copper plate and Cornelius combined his knowledge of metallurgy and chemistry to try to improve the process. This self-portrait of Robert Cornelius is one of the first photographs of a human to be produced. Cornelius operated two of the earliest photographic studios in the U.S. between 1841 and 1843, but realized that he could make more money at the family gas and lighting company and lost interest.
War has all the drama and emotion and artist might be looking for in a painting and so it was natural that the early cameras, bulky, heavy and unpredictable wold try to capture the essence of brute force. Roger Fenton was one of the first men to photograph warfare when he provided the British people with an exclusive insight into the war in Crimea. He was sent by the British government as an official war photographer, their intention being to use the pictures as a jingoistic prove of British superiority. Due to the limitations of early photography there were no 'action pictures'. All the pictures were either landscapes or posed. Fenton avoided taking pictures of the dead or injured. But his photographs gave the public back in England a unique glimpse of what their soldiers were experiencing in southern Russia.
Only a few years afterwards that taboo was broken. The American Civil war was the first conflict to be widely photographed. Photographers like Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner and Timothy O'Sullivan followed the troops from battle to battle and recorded the carnage and death that resulted. Gardner's famous picture ' The home of the rebel sharpshooter' shocked the nation when it was published just after the war in1866. It began the tradition of war photography which, ever since, has strived to tell the hardship and misery of war.
About the Author:
Andy Pinkham has worked in the photography industry for more than two decades. He has a particular interest in digital imagery and good cameras. Learn more about the best digital SLR cameras on his photography site, Camerawize and get greatadviceon how to improve your picture taking.