Considerations on Photography Invention and Its Beginning

Presented to the world in French Academy of Science on 1839, photography foundations were laid centuries ago. As documents suggest, the invention of photography was not the outcome of creativity and efforts of an individual or a group of people, but the result of a need by the people living in a specific geographical territory, sharing the same concerns. In fact, the foundations of photography were laid in the 15th century and during the Renaissance. Man in that era tried to put himself in the place of a god-like observer (to see through an omniscient point of view) meanwhile using mathematical and geometrical rules to achieve the objective look. The quests culminated in the dark room (camera obscura) as a response to that demand, leading to fundamental changes in western visual culture. With the photographic image being formed in the dark room, the idea of camera did not seem too far; just one more step needed to be taken for the birth of photography. Painting and drawing- in absence of photography- took the opportunity to secure their place as forms of representation, leading to a competition in early years after the invention of photography. Photography, an amalgam of artistic and scientific expressions, was rooted in the visual tradition of the dark room. Photography became a means of documentation to diverse scientific and research intentions, and challenged painting as a new form of art. A demand by the new-born and developing middle-class for identification and capturing its own image on one hand, and the commercialization of photography in the age of industrial revolution and capitalist economy on the other hand, contributed to the growth and expansion of photography. In fact, a period between 15th to 20th centuries, named modernity, was an era in which fundamental changes in human intellectual basis took place, leading to deep evolutions in social structures. Photography was seeded during this era with increasing numbers of people demanding and yearning for such a medium. Mankind sought to mechanize the image formation and photography as mechanical process of image formation was the proper answer. Photography was born and flourished quickly in a society that longed for it. Photography was everywhere and was received warmly wherever it reached. The 19th-century man thought of photography as a way of conquering the world. Photography was invented to democratize and publicize the image; photography was meant to make the nature reproduce itself and thus fulfill the scientific ideal of positivism; photography aimed to challenge all forms of art. Being everywhere, photography turned to be one of the most profitable businesses of the century. In fact, photography blossomed in the ground of modernism and fruited in a century that brought fundamental changes to social, economic and cultural structures of western societies. Tracing these changes and evolutions and their causes help us in investigating the context in which photography began to develop and flourish.