The Idea of Photography
How do you capture a moment, and record it for someone else to see? For most of human history there were two answers to this question. You could describe it, through speaking or writing. Or, if you knew how, you could draw or paint the scene.
Neither solution was particularly trustworthy. Words are easily distorted, and drawings take time and depend heavily on the skill of the artist. Details are inevitably missed, lost, or warped. What was needed — what was missing — was a way of drawing with light alone.
The quest to find such a technique lasted for centuries. The journey was long and winding, taking in philosophers, alchemists, businessmen, spies and fraudsters. But eventually, around 150 years ago, mankind succeeded, and learned how to draw with light.
The resulting technology, photography, is almost miraculous. It is hard to overstate how much it has come to dominate the modern world. We take it almost for granted, and barely spare a moment to consider how it came to be. But if you want to understand photography, if it is a skill you wish to master, then studying the history of photography is vital.
The English word “photography” comes from Greek — from photos, meaning light, and graphe, meaning drawing. Together, then, the word means light drawing, or drawing with light. From this we can get a hint of the fundamentals…
