Rise of Photography in the World of Art

The rise of photography began in the early 1830’s in France, and wasn’t very popular as most artists preferred a paintbrush and canvas to a new contraption that wasn’t popular and wasn’t manufactured locally or globally yet and that was fairly expensive to try to produce, and since this time it has been debated if photography deserves its place in the art world. Through the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s it grew in popularity and throughout time photography went from being badly received to a new form of art though people around the world still debate if it is indeed “art”. Photography has a long history from the first camera obscura in the 18th century to the latest Nikon or Canon camera in the 21st century.

Photography is traced back to France in the 1800’s where the camera obscura was invented and in the late 1820’s to the 1830’s where a French inventor by the name of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, invented the first camera and printed the first photograph on paper he is also credited with taking the first photograph1, but he wasn’t the only one working on this new invention, there were many others during this time period inventing different parts and making the camera better with each invention. It took time and many different inventors over years to create a process where they could turn a negative into a photo. By the late 1800’s photography was rising in popularity due to more families wanting portraits done and not being able to afford an artist for a sitting or being able to sit for such long periods though this wasn’t very favourable because it was so fragile and expensive to use and carry around.

“The advent of photography served as a catalyst in challenging the realist tradition that had predominated since the Ren...

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... into these images that a regular person with a Nikon point and shoot camera might not be able to produce, much like a person might not be able reproduce a work of art by Michelangelo. The photography world much like the art world is quickly changing but somehow staying the same throughout time. They are two of many different types of an artistic medium.

Works Cited

. 1 Margot Lovejoy “Art, Technology, and Postmodernism: Paradigms, Parallels, and Paradoxes” (Vol. 49, No. 3, Autumn, 1990): Page 257 of 257-265. “Art Journal”

. 2 Davies, Denny, Horfrichter, Jacobs, Roberts, Simon “Summary, Photography, Chapter 26 Progress and its discontents: Post-Impressionism, Symbolism, and Art-Nouveau 1880 - 1905” (2007): Page 943 “Janson’s History of Art – The Modern World”

. 3 Greenspun, Phillip “History of Photography Timeline” (January 2007): “Online Document ”