historyof photographyworksheet08（photographyworksheet08史）.docVIP

Photographic History of Photography Please read and answer the questions below… Camera obscura literally means “dark room”. The phenomenon of light passing through a pinhole of a completely dark room and an upside down image appearing on the opposite wall was known for thousands of years back to the days of ancient Greeks like Aristotle. Arab astronomers used it to observe eclipses in the 10 century. During the 16 and 17 century artists looking for a way to accurately render perspective used the camera obscura as an aid to drawing. It was the artist’s desires to some how fix and save the image they saw in the camera obscura that lead to the invention of photography. No one person is responsible for photography as we know it today. The history of photography is the history of curious inventors, artists and entrepreneurs building on each other’s success to capture light and keep it in a frame. The first person to succeed in fixing an image from a camera obscura was Joseph Nicephore Niepce. Niepce was interested in printmaking but not skilled at drawing. He was looking for a way to let light do the drawing for him. His experiments led him to a substance that hardened when exposed to light. Niepce made a varnish out of bitumen of Judaea and oil. He coated a metal plate placed it inside a camera obscura and exposed the plate for 8 hours pointed outside his cottage window. In 1826 Niepce created the first photograph. He called the images heliographs. Niepce would further etch the metal plates and use them to pull prints. A French artist who created large Trompe l’oeil paintings, meaning to fool the eye, contacted Niepce in 1827. Louis- Jacques –Mande Daguerre was a successful business man with his Diorama, a hall filled with huge painting, special lighting and props that spectators would pay to walk through and experience far away places. In 1829 Daguerre entered a 10-year contract with Niepce to perfect the process so that it could be a commercial su