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The camera had become a ubiquitous device, its basic techniques easily mastered by even the clumsiest and least sophisticated person.

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In the second half of the 20th century, the photograph has been perceived as the paramount means of visual communication, attracting gifted and imaginative artists as well as commercial practitioners and amateurs, and infiltrating the art marketplace as a commodity while continuing to fulfill established roles in communications and advertising.

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Traditional photographic methods and materials continued to be refined throughout this period until the 1980s. Then, the discovery of ways to produce images electronically and alter them by computer relegated many aspects of conventional photography to the dustbin at the same time that it raised still-unresolved issues about authorship, copyright, and truthfulness.

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After the second World War, photographs became more pervasive than ever before, in large part due to the weekly picture magazines, which continued to be popular through the 1970s despite increasing competition from television.

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With the improvement in colour materials and processes, photographers became more interested in its creative possibilities

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With the improvement in colour materials and processes, photographers became more interested in its creative possibilities

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In the period after World War II, as the United States entered a period of domestic peace and prosperity, many photographers there moved away from documentary realities and focused instead on the intrinsic qualities of photography.

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In the period after World War II, as the United States entered a period of domestic peace and prosperity, many photographers there moved away from documentary realities and focused instead on the intrinsic qualities of photography.

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. Minor White combined ideas about photography’s incomparable descriptive power, taken from Edward Weston, with those about its emotional expressiveness, taken from Alfred Stieglitz.

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White developed the idea that a photograph should contain an inner message that might not be immediately visible on the surface.

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White developed the idea that a photograph should contain an inner message that might not be immediately visible on the surface.

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Minor White, (born July 9, 1908, Minneapolis, Minn., U.S.—died June 24, 1976, Cambridge, Mass.), American photographer and editor whose efforts to extend photography’s range of expression greatly influenced creative photography in the mid-20th century.

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Robert Frank was born on the 9th November 1924 in Zürich, Switzerland, he is one of American photography’s most influential figures. He is also an important figure in American photography and film. His most notable piece of work is a book entitled The Americans, published in 1958; this book earned him comparisons to a modern-day Alexis de Tocqueville. Frank’s book, The Americans, inspired countless photographers across all photographic styles, but he especially appealed to documentary and street photographers.

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Vivian Maier was born on the 1st February 1926 in New York City and died on the 21st April 2009 in Chicago, Illinois. She was 83 years old. She spent most of her childhood in France and when she moved back to the US, she spent forty years working as a nanny in Chicago. During her time as a nanny, Maier took over 100,000 photos, mostly of people and Chicago’s cityscapes, although she did also travel and photograph things worldwide. Despite taking all of these photos, most of them were undeveloped and all remained unknown until John Maloof, a Chicago historian and collector discovered them in 2007. After Vivian Maier died, her photos started to receive critical acclaim, they have been exhibited in the U.S., Britain, Germany, Norway, Belgium, France, and multiple other countries. Vivian Maier’s photographs are predominantly street scenes in Chicago and New York during the 1950s and the 1960s. “An article in The Independent said “the well-to-do shoppers of Chicago stroll and gossip in all their department-store finery before Maier, but the most arresting subjects are those people on the margins of successful, rich America in the 1950s and 1960s: the kids, the black maids, the bums flaked out on shop stoops.””

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Eve Arnold was born on the 21st April 1912 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. and died on the 4th January 2012 in London at the age of 99. She was a widely known photographer, who photographed many of the iconic figures who helped to shape the late twentieth century. Although she snapped these photos of famous people, she was also equally happy to photograph the lives of the poor and dispossessed “migrant workers, civil-rights protestors of apartheid in South Africa, disabled Vietnam war veterans and Mongolian herdsmen.” Arnold began her photography career in 1946 when she worked at a photo-finishing plant in New York City, she then moved on to study photography in 1948 at the New School for Social Research, also in New York.  Eve began to be associated with Magnum Photos in 1951 and became a full time member in 1957.  Magnum Photos being one of the biggest international photographic associations.

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Dennis Stock was born on July 24th 1928 and he died on the 11th January 2010 at the age of 81. The man was a photography marvel, in his earlier years, he photographed many a famous celebrity, onen of his most photographed was actor, James Dean. He took over 100 photos of Dean in 1955 (the same year that the actor tragically died). Stock also took photos of Marilyn Monroe, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Audrey Hepburn and other such famous names of the 1950s.  Stock also set up a film production company in 1968 called Visual Objectives Inc., and made several documentaries under the company.

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Born in Los Angeles, in 1918, Clarke was one of the 1950s most prominent fashion photographers.  His first step into the fashion world was working as a window dresser for I. Magnin, a luxury fashion and specialty goods.   In 1946, Clarke moved to New York and took a temporary job as a background and accessorising assistant at the Vogue studios there.   During his time at Vogue, he had the opportunity of observe the different styles of famous photographers such as Cecil Beaton, Irving Penn and Horst P. Horst.

Clarke became fascinated with photography and subsequently enrolled on a course for it at the New School for Social Research.  He was able to learn how to combine the fantasy of fashion with the energy of photo-reportage, he also taught himself how to use the twin-lenses Rolleiflex camera, ultimately realising that the future of photography depended on using much smaller and more adaptable cameras.

By the middle of the 1950s, Henry Clarke was working exclusively for Vogue magazine (but not before taking time away from Vogue to become a freelance photographer).  The photographs he captured often caught the elegance and sophistication of the modern woman: that being young, lively, carefree and seductive.  He worked with the most beautiful models of the time such as Suzy Parker, Ann Sainte Marie and Bettina.  Clarke also took celebrity portraits of many famous women like Coco Chanel, Sophia Loren, Anna Magnani, and Maria Callas.  He also photographed many other famous women of the time, such as the Duchess of Windsor, the Empress of Thailand and Robin Duke.

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Postwar developments

With the improvement in colour materials and processes, photographers became more interested in its creative possibilities. Beginning in the 1940s, American photographer Eliot Porter produced subtle studies of birds and nature in which colour allowed him to render an unparalleled level of nuance. Appreciated for both their scientific and their aesthetic value, these photographs embodied the potential of colour. Austrian photojournalist Ernst Haas first used colour in the photo-essay New York for Life magazine in 1953. Through this and similar projects he challenged the standard of using only black and white in photojournalism, and his use of colour added vibrancy to images of everyday life. While these and other experiments achieved some success, it was not until later in the century that colour dominated photographic output and was incorporated into daily newspapers.

In the period after World War II, as the United States entered a period of domestic peace and prosperity, many photographers there moved away from documentary realities and focused instead on the intrinsic qualities of photography; such experiments paralleled the ascendancy of the Abstract Expressionist art movement, which similarly looked at the intrinsic quality of painting. Minor White combined ideas about photography's incomparable descriptive power, taken from Edward Weston, with those about its emotional expressiveness, taken from Alfred Stieglitz. Through his long career as an influential teacher and founding editor of Aperture, White developed the idea that a photograph should contain an inner message that might not be immediately visible on the surface.

Other American photographers influenced by the Abstract Expressionist style of the era included Aaron Siskind, who found formal configurations in graffiti, weathered wood and plaster, and torn billboards (what he called the "detritus of the world"), and Harry Callahan, whose work demonstrated a highly developed sense of linear form. Siskind and Callahan inspired a generation of young photographers through their teachings at the Institute of Design, the school that had been started in 1937 in Chicago by Moholy-Nagy as the New Bauhaus. Barbara Crane, Ken Josephson, and Garry Winogrand were among students who later achieved fame. In England Bill Brandt created expressive photographs of nudes, shooting his subject matter at such close range that the human body took on the appearance of series of patterns and abstract designs. In Germany Otto Steinert led the Fotoform group of photographers, who created close-up views of nature that were also nearly abstract in their effects.

By the 1960s similar styles and ideas in photography had spread to Asia, in part because photographic magazines became widely available. Japanese photographers had been aware of Modernist currents before World War II, but afterward they pursued them more openly. Among the important photographers of this generation were Shōmei Tomatsu, who made vivid images on the streets of Tokyo; Eikō Hosoe, who captured imagery evoking human sensuality; and Hiroshi Sugimoto, who was entranced by images conveying stillness and emptiness. For a period the government in China exerted control over photographic imagery, but by the late 20th century photographers had found some freedoms. Chen Changfen was able to indulge his interest in colour abstractions, and Xie Hailong produced photographic documentations of problems in contemporary Chinese society, such as the difficulties faced by rural students seeking an education.

Street photography might be considered a special aspect of documentation: the street photographer is intrigued by the serendipitous nature of street activity, but, in contrast to the social documentarian, the street photographer does not necessarily have a social purpose in mind. Important street photographers included Helen Levitt, who documented subjects such as underprivileged children and young African Americans. All her work was infused with a compelling sense of immediacy. Levitt was following the steps of Cartier-Bresson, Brassaï, and André Kertész-the best known of the many European photographers of the 1930s-50s who used their small cameras to capture the vitality of urban life. Roy DeCarava documented his native Harlem and the civil rights movement; he said that he strove for "a creative expression, the kind of penetrating insight and understanding of Negroes which I believe only a Negro photographer can interpret." This kind of street photography, made possible by the increasing availability of light portable cameras with fast-acting mechanisms, appealed to photographers around the world. Indian photographer Raghubir Singh, who worked in colour, sought to reveal both the inner and outer life of his people through his street photography.

Other social documentation in the postwar period used the medium to examine contemporary society from a distance. Such efforts had various labels, including "social landscape." Inspired by Swiss-born émigré Robert Frank, who during the 1950s viewed American culture with an ironic eye, American photographers such as Bruce Davidson, Lee Friedlander, and William Klein were among those whose work suggested the effects of contemporary culture on people in industrialized societies. Often utilizing 35-mm cameras, these photographers caught seeming mundane everyday moments in works that resembled snapshots. Beneath this seeming spontaneity lay an element of critique, however, that in some cases paralleled Pop art 's examination of the banality of contemporary consumer culture.

Several important photographers defied categorization. In the early 1960s the photographer Seydou Keïta, working as a commercial portraitist in Mali, allowed his sitters to arrange and costume themselves. The resulting photographs created an extensive and compelling documentation of his country's people. In the same period, influenced by the mordant eye of the earlier Austrian émigré photographer Lisette Model, Diane Arbus created challenging portraits of people living outside prescribed ideas of "normalcy," such as transvestites and the intellectually disabled.

Developments from the 1970s to the present

Continuing the example set by Arbus, a gritty sort of social documentation emerged beginning in the 1970s and '80s, when photographers such as Larry Clark and Nan Goldin documented alternative lifestyles involving drug addiction, transvestism, and casual sex. In particular, Goldin created an elaborate series titled The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, through which she compiled an evolving record of the people she and her camera encountered. Such direct, unflinching photographs established intimate documentary work as an important genre in the late 20th century. Photographers such as Sally Mann and Tina Barney extended this genre to portray intimate, sometimes unsettling images of their own families.

Goldin usually photographed in colour, which added to the harsh sense of reality in their work; this represented a general move toward colour among photographers of their generation. William Eggleston pushed the artistic boundaries of colour by using it to explore the banality of small-town existence; along these same lines, Candida Höfer used colour to emphasize the tedium of institutional life. Richard Misrach created a massive project, known as the Desert Cantos, in which he photographed desert scenes in colour, sometimes juxtaposed against sinister elements such as nuclear sites. Barbara Norfleet, Joel Meyerowitz, Stephen Shore, Barbara Kasten, and Franco Fontana were among the other prominent photographers of the period who used colour expressively in landscapes, interiors, still lifes, and street scenes.

From the 1970s on, as the advent of television news began to affect the popularity of picture magazines, many photojournalists whose work had been published in magazines began to take advantage of a burgeoning interest in photographic picture books. These, often produced in conjunction with exhibits, comprised photographs of newsworthy events or topics of social interest along with informative texts. Working in black and white, Swiss-born photographer Claudia Andujar (working in Brazil) and Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide portrayed indigenous peoples-groups they believed were becoming marginalized by society-and their customs. Other important figures included English photographer Don McCullin, who portrayed the devastation brought about by wars in Vietnam and in Africa; French photojournalist Raymond Depardon, who worked in Asia, Africa, and Europe; American Mary Ellen Mark, who photographed street performers and prostitutes in India, depicted street children in Seattle, Washington, and spent time documenting the inmates of a mental hospital; and Brazilian photographer Sebastião Salgado, who examined work and workers throughout the world, exhibiting and publishing a number of books on that topic. For his ability to make world events come pictorially alive, American James Nachtwey was three times the winner of the International Center of Photography's photojournalism awards. By the end of the century, the technology used by these photojournalists had changed. Digital cameras sent images directly to computers, and programs allowed images to be altered seamlessly, making newspaper and magazine darkrooms obsolete.

The documentation of artifacts, begun in the 19th century, continued to interest late 20th-century photographers. Italian photographer Gabriele Basilico and American photographer Lewis Baltz concentrated on architecture and the built environment. The German duo Bernd and Hilla Becher produced an extensive portrayal of industrial buildings such as mine tipples and factories, which they usually displayed in carefully planned arrangements of multiple prints. This sort of project combined traditional documentary conventions with postmodern concepts about typologies.

Fashion photographers found their role redefined at the end of the century. As giants of fashion photography from earlier in the century such as Irving Penn and Richard Avedon became the subjects of major museum retrospectives, fashion and celebrity photography, initially meant to illustrate fashion magazines such as Harper's Bazaar and Vogue, became fully recognized as an art form. Photographers David LaChapelle, Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton, Mario Testino, and Bruce Weber were among those whose work was esteemed enough to be exhibited in both gallery and museum shows and published in popular monographs.

Throughout most of the 20th century, the art world was dominated by painting and sculpture, with photography seen as a separate but not necessarily equal art form. In the 1980s and '90s, however, as new media such as video, performance, and installation blurred definitions of "art," photography became one of the art world's most prominent media. During this period a generation of prominent photographers, many of them American, helped break down these barriers between photography and "art." American Robert Mapplethorpe received a maelstrom of attention for his masterfully executed photographs, which ranged from still lifes to portraits to, most controversially, sadomasochistic and homoerotic themes. American photographer Cindy Sherman became an international art star for her elaborately staged self-portraits in which she posed in a variety of stereotypical feminine roles and, in so doing, critiqued these clichés. Barbara Kruger, also American, gained prominence for her modern-day montages, in which she juxtaposed photographic images with text containing social critique-perhaps most famously, the phrases "I Shop, Therefore I Am" and "Your Body Is a Battleground." A similar use of photography in mixed-media was pursued by American Carrie Mae Weems, who reproduced 19th-century photographs of slaves on a series of banners and scrims, presenting them in a three-dimensional arrangement that commented on the visual representation of African Americans throughout history.

Naomi Rosenblum

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History of photography - Contemporary photography, c. 1945-present

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History of photography - History of photography - Contemporary photography, c. 1945-present: With the improvement in colour materials and processes, photographers became more interested in its creative possibilities. Beginning in the 1940s, American photographer Eliot Porter produced subtle studies of birds and nature in which colour allowed him to render an unparalleled level of nuance.

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History of Photography Introduction History of Photography A World History of Photography The Story Behind the Pictures 1827-1991 Photographers' Dictionary "A WORLD HISTORY OF PHOTOGRAPHY" contents Chapter 11 (collection)(collection)(collection)(collection)(collection)(collection)(collection)(collection)(collection)(collection)(collection)(collection)(collection) AARON SISKIND MINOR WHITE PAUL CAPONIGRO WILLIAM A.

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“The camera was invented, or rather, developed by multiple people, over the course of history. But the camera was invented, as we know it today, by french inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in (about) 1816“.

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What year was the camera invented?

When were cameras invented? In 1816 or 1685? The internet seems to throw around both dates, and credits two different people. So we wanted to (briefly) go over the camera's history to clarify the confusion.

Cameras Were Invented When?

When was the camera invented?

The camera was invented, or rather, developed by multiple people, over the course of history. But the camera, as we know it today, was invented by French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in (about) 1816.

Niépce technically took the first photo on a homemade camera, with silver chloride covered paper.

While his first photograph was only partially successful, he is the inventor of the very first surviving photograph, which is a main reason why he is widely accepted as the inventor of the camera. It dates to 1826 or 1827, and is now in the permanent collection of the University of Texas-Austin.

Who Else Had a Hand in Inventing the Camera?

So, what's this talk about 1685 then? Johann Zahn is usually co-credited with inventing the camera.

The German author wrote a ton about camera obscuras, lenses, and telescopes. It was in 1685 when he invented a design for the first handheld reflex camera. Johann Zahn was WAY ahead of his time as it would take another 150 years before this design became a reality.

What is Camera Obscura? And Who Invented It?

The earliest "cameras" weren't used so much to take pictures as they were to study optics. Camera obscuras demonstrate how light can be used to project an image onto a flat surface.

Basic camera obscura mechanism

The basic idea of this natural optical phenomenon is very simple. Light passing through a tiny hole in one wall will project an image onto the opposing wall. The resulting projection is an upside down image and the birth of photography. Learn more about how a camera obscura works and a very brief timeline of how photography evolved below:

Learn more about camera obscura

When was the camera obscura invented?

Arab scholar, Ibn Al-Haytham (945-1040) is usually considered the camera obscura's creator. Though the earliest references of this idea have been found in Aristotle's writings around 330 B.C. and even Chinese texts in around 400 B.C.

You may have also heard the term pinhole camera. The only difference between a pinhole camera is that a camera obscura uses a lens, while a pinhole just has the open hole.

This technology became popularized in the 17th and 18th centuries when artists used them to help project drawings they could then trace.

But there was no actual way to preserve the image. So, when was photography invented?

This is why we credit Joseph Nicéphore Niépce with inventing the camera. By 1816, he had started (though not fully successful) capturing images for the first time. This process was called "heliography."

Cameras That Take Lasting Photos

In 1829, Louis Daguerre received credit for developing practical photography. This technology was sold to the French government.

In 1840, it was Alexander Wolcott who invented the first camera that made photographs that did not fade quickly.

The real inventor was Alexander all along! We made you wait for it.

Or maybe just like it takes a village to raise a child, it takes even more people to build and perfect technology.

Up Next

Types of cameras for photo and video

With this bit of photography history taken care of, let's talk about cameras today. There are actually quite a few different cameras to choose from, each with their own pros and cons. Let's review the different types of cameras most people use for photography and videography. After that, you'll be able to decide which type of camera will best fit your own personal style.

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When Was the First Camera Invented? A Brief History in Photography

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When were cameras invented? In 1816 or 1685? The internet seems to throw around both dates, and credits two different people. So we wanted to (briefly) go over the camera's history to clarify the confusion. The camera was invented, or rather, developed by multiple people, over the course of history.