Ch4 Photography
- 1350s — Woodcut printing becomes widespread in Europe
- 1440s — Engraving is widely adopted. Unlike woodcuts, engraved metal plates can hold up for tens of thousands of impressions.
- 1500s — Etching invented by Parmigiano of Parma, Italy (or possibly Daniel Hopfer of Germany). The technique involves painting a metal plate with varnish and then scratching off varnish with a stylus to produce an image. The image is burned in when the plate is immersed in acid. The technique allows editing and changes, making it easier for artists to correct and improve their work.
- 1700s – Silhouette technique using a dark chamber (camera obscura) becomes popular in Europe.
- 1790s – Lithography invented by Aloys Senefelder of Austria. The technique is a precursor of photography and offset printing.
- 1826 – Looking for better lithography techniques, Joseph Niepce makes first experimental photograph
- 1829s – Niepce and Daguerre begin collaboration
- 1839 – Louis Daguerre announces photographic process
- 1840 – Daguerrotype studios set up in major European and US cities
- 1841 – William Fox Talbot patents calotype process in which a negative can make multiple prints
- 1844 – Mathew Brady opens daguerrotype studio on Broadway in New York
- 1851 — Glass negative process introduced
- 1853 – NY Tribune estimates that 3 million daguerreotypes are being produced annually in US
- 1855 – Roger Fenton takes first European war photos from Crimea
- 1861 – Mathew Brady begins documenting the Civil War
- 1862 – Photographs may not be art, says a French court, but they can still be copyrighted.
- 1880s – Pictorialist movement set out to use artistic technique in photographs
- 1884, First Kodak camera with 20 foot roll of paper, enough for 100 2.5 inch diameter circular pictures
- 1887 – Halftone makes it possible to print photos, not just illustrations
- 1889, Improved Kodak with celluloid film instead of paper.
- 1890 – Jacob Riis experiments with new flash for low-light photography and publishes book of halftone photos: “How the Other Half Lives”
- 1892 – Linked Ring pictorialist association formed
- 1900 – Brownie Box roll-film camera introduced.
- 1907 – Lewis Hine begins taking photos to fight child labor
- 1910 – Photo “Secession” movement says photographs are art whether or not pictorialist techniques are used
- 1915 – Paul Strand’s Wall Street photo kicks off Straight Photography movement
- 1920s – New York Daily Graphic fakes photos of celebrity scandal using the “composograph” cut and paste technique.
- 1932 – First Group f/64 exhibit, San Francisco, modernist naturalistic; members include Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, Edward Weston
- 1934, Fuji Photo Film founded. By 1938 Fuji is making cameras & lenses
- 1935 – Farm Security Administration recruits photographers
- 1936 – Life magazine founded by Henry Luce
- 1936 – Robert Capa’s photo Loyalist Militiaman
- 1936 – Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother
- 1941 – Gordon Parks American Gothic
- 1945 – Joe Rosenthal Iwo Jima
- 1946 – Margaret Bourke White photo of Mahatma Gandhi
- 1948 – Polaroid “instant film” cameras hit the market
- 1949 – Paul Strand leaves the US after his Photo League is blacklisted as a Communist front.
- 1955 – Edward Steichen curates Family of Man exhibit at MOMA
- 1969 – Charge coupled device (CCD) for digital photography invented at AT&T Bell Labs.
- 1972 – W. Eugene Smith’s photo of Tomoko, a victim of “Minimata disease” (mercury poisoning)
- 1980 – Annie Liebovitz John Lennon photo
- 1986 – Kodak scientists develop the world’s first megapixel sensor.
- 1990 – Adobe Photoshop released
- 1997 – British princess Diana killed in high speed car chase with Papparazi photographers
- 2000 – Cell phone cameras introduced in Japan
2001 – Polaroid bankrupt
- 2000 – Life magazine folds
- 2004 – Flickr photo sharing website launched
- 2005 – Kodak stops manufacturing film cameras; Agfa film bankrupt
- 2009 – Cell phone photos and videos turn Chinese earthquake into international event despite efforts of censors
- 2009 – Kodak stops manufacturing Kodachrome film
- 2009 – White House photos released through Flickr
