Around 1800, the first attempts of photography are recorded as Thomas Wedgewood discovers the camera obscura, however, it is not until 1827 that the first recorded photograph comes into existence by French inventor, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. The inception of the photograph began as a method to capture moments of cultural importance in a person’s life, such as birth, marriage, and death. Much in the way traditional painted portrait sought to capture similar moments, the photograph was able to do so in a far quicker and easier way. It’s popularity rose in the mid-1800’s and its uses moved from strictly capturing families but also as a mode to capture history. Technological advances brought the advent of digital photography in 1969 at AT&T Bell Labs, however, it was not until 1975 that Kodak develops it’s Bayer filter. We see kodak as the front runner of photography, as they release campaigns to encourage users to produce “Kodak moments”. In 1992, the first digital photo, by Tim Berners-Lee was published to the internet, and since there has been a clear movement to archive photographs and make them all digital, both out of preservation, and out of the goal of sharing. Moving forward into the age of the digital, the photograph has made leaps and bounds as companies such as Sony in the 1980’s released the first handheld personal camera, as such the act of photographing the world was no longer a form of art but rather that of the mundane. Today, they are ever more present as most handheld devices – outside of the actual digital camera – such as a mobile phone or even the iPod come equipped with cameras.

Professor Martin Irvine — 2013