Introduction to the History of Photography

Antecedents: miniature painting and silhouette François I of France Jean Clouet (c.1535, oil on panel) (Louvre) Miniature portrait painting evolved in the Renaissance from the art of illuminating books . Beethoven as a boy, 18th century silhouette portrait Machine for drawing silhouettes. From the 1792 English edition of Johann Kasper Lavater's Essays on Physiognomy Daguerreotype portraits Daguerreotype of a young man by T.H. Newcomer, Philadelphia. Split leather case with the photographer's imprint on velvet mat. source: http://www.antiquephotographics.com/Format%20Types/dags&ambros.htm With rapid developments in the daguerreotype's materials, equipment and technique, portraiture, formerly a privilege of the powerful and the very wealthy, gained popularity and soon developed into a large industry providing a new commodity for mass consumption. Prestige, utility, the human passion for the mimetic, narcissistic investment and the human desire for the kind of immortality ...

According to M. W. Marien ( Photography, A Cultural History ), prior to 1800, in utopian and speculative fiction there is only one example of imaginative anticipation of photography and film: the novel Giphantie by CHARLES-FRANCOIS TIPHAIGNE DE LA ROCHE (1722 - 1774), published in 1760. “You know, that rays of light reflected from different bodies form pictures, paint the image reflected on all polished surfaces, for example, on the retina of the eye, on water, and on glass. The spirits have sought to fix these fleeting images; they have made a subtle matter by means of which a picture is formed in the twinkling of an eye. They coat a piece of canvas with this matter, and place it in front of the object to be taken. The first effect of this cloth is similar to that of a mirror, but by means of its viscous nature the prepared canvas, as is not the case with the mirror, retains a fac-simile of the image. The mirror represents images faithfully, but retains none; our canvas r...