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.

View of the Boulevard du Temple, one of the earliest photographs ever made.

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…