PHOTOGRAPHY BY IRA GARDNER

At the beginning of every teaching year I ask the question what is photography? To answer this question I go back to the origins of modern photography and the work of William Henry Fox Talbot. Talbot had grown frustrated with his lack of skill in drawing and painting and wrote in his journal in 1833, "How charming it would be if it were possible to cause these natural images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper!"... Six years later in 1839, and only two weeks after Louis-Jacques Mandé Daguerre's daguerreotype process was announced in France, Talbot shared his invention of the Photogenic Drawing. His invention was that of sensitizing paper with salt and silver nitrate which when combined become light sensitive. He place plant specimens on top of the paper and flattened the object and paper with a sheet of glass. Where the paper received light it darkened and revealed the precise outline of the object. At the earliest stages, photography was a camerless art..

Also known as: Photography by Ira