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Since the 5th century BCE people have been fascinated by images of reflected light. Learn how early pioneers in photography developed the technology and skills needed to create lasting images out of these reflections. This digital image set covers the progression photographic techniques from daguerreotypes to gelatin silver prints in the years between 1836 and 1908. Teach your students a variety of photographic techniques and terms while exploring how the medium and its uses changed.

• JPEG images in Projection, Screen, and Thumbnail sizes
• Historical information about each artist and artwork
• Cultural context to support photography, art history, and art appreciation programs
• Glossary of photographic terms
• List of photography museums

[William Henry Fox] Talbot was the inventor of the negative/positive method of photography that produced a paper print. Even though the process made possible the production of numerous prints from a paper negative, the paper print was not immediately popular. To the public the transferal of a negative into a positive print was complicated and baffling.

From its inception, photography was recognized as an ideal medium for portraits. Indeed, most of the photography done in the first three decades after photography was invented were portraits. Studios devoted strictly to portraits opened in all of the major cities of Europe, and in New York, Boston, and Washington, DC.

Besides straight portraiture produced by studios, there was also a more intimate type of portrait produced by amateurs. These amateurs were mainly upper-class men and women who considered photography a proper hobby.

As early as the nineteenth century, photographers used the Daguerreotype and calotype processes to provide views of nature that would bring new data to botanists and other scientists; and bring new understanding about the relationships between nature and built environments.

The academies, which dominated the art world in both Europe and the U.S., exhorted photographers and painters to create not only naturalistic works but works that had uplifting sentiments.

One of the most dramatic developments in the use of photography as a tool for scientific discovery came in the photographing of movement. In addition, history painters desired to make figures in battle scenes more realistic.

Because photography was considered most valuable as a document of visual fact, it was inevitable that the medium would be used to document social ills.