Photography

The first photograph ever - 1826

View from the Window at GrasBy: Joseph Nicéphore Niépce

The Daguerreotype

The father of a dead girl holds her body in his arms. The mourning picture was a common use for the daguerreotype.

The first nude photograph ever - 1839

“I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do – that was one of my favourite things about it.” – Diane Arbus (Sontag, pp 150)

1888: First Kodak camera

You press the button, we do the rest

The first digital camera prototype - 1975

The importance of capturing a moment in time

http://nml.ru.ac.za/files/carterimage.jpg

Digitization

Manipulation

http://www.flickr.com/photos/rebba/47665167/

(Sontag, 1977: 3)

To collect photographs is to collect the world

Mallarmé said that everything in the world exists in order to end in a book…

… Today, everything exists to end in a photograph. (Sontag, 1977: 156)