![]() ![]() Documentary photography was associated with the recording of social and political events for the purposes of documentation and communication. Recreational photography in the form of the snapshot was associated with the amateur documentation of aspects of everyday life. The ubiquity of photography for domestic and recreational purposes, as a result of cheap and easy-to-use cameras and its use for social purposes, contributed to the emergence of a distinction between different modes of photography. In the 1920s and ’30s documentary photography played an important role in recording social and cultural events during the Depression era in America. These innovations of photography as a means of documentating social, political and cultural events in the form of Documentary Photography. The development of lightweight and flexible equipment, such as the Leica in the 1920s and innovations in film in terms of light and speed, resulted in more dynamic and spontaneous photography. Photography also became important to the promotion and dissemination of commercial goods through advertising, as a consequence of its capacity for mass reproduction. These innovations contributed to the development of photography making it more visible and accessible to a growing middle class of consumers and a working class with increased leisure time and disposable income. The introduction of low-cost portable cameras, such as the Kodak camera in the 1880s and the Brownie in the 1900s, resulted in the increased popularity and use of photography for domestic and recreational purposes. In the 1830s William Henry Fox Talbot developed the more versatile Calotype, which allowed for the production of multiple prints through the development of a negative image. The Daguerreotype became a popular method of photography however, because it was expensive to produce and it was not possible to create multiple images, it was used mainly for portraiture. ![]() Niépce collaborated with Louis Daguerre to produce the Daguerreotype which was the result of their experiments with light-sensitive paper. The first fixed photograph was produced by Joseph Niépce in 1827 and was originally referred to as a Heliograph due to the long period of exposure to the sun required to produce the image. It was the outcome of many technological developments, most notably associated with the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century, but was also influenced by earlier technological developments such as the Camera obscura, which is an optical device used during the Renaissance to aid drawing and perspective. The invention of photography is a contested subject. Despite the prevalence of photography in many aspects of modern life, only a small minority of photographs are considered to be art and tend to be displayed in museums and galleries in formats similar to painting. With the prevalence of digital cameras and mobile phone cameras, these activities are also documented for display on photo-sharing websites and photo-based Social Networking Sites. ![]() Most photographs produced today take the form of Snapshots documenting activities such as holidays and celebrations. Photography also plays an important role in domestic and recreational activities. As a form of communication and documentation, photographs are present in newspapers, magazines, advertisements, posters, television, the Internet, passports, ID cards, archives, security and Surveillance Systems, forensics and medicine. The photograph is evident in nearly every aspect of modern life. Photography is the process of recording an image – a photograph – on lightsensitive film or, in the case of digital photography, via a digital electronic or magnetic memory. The word Photography literally means ‘drawing with light’, which derives from the Greek photo, meaning light and graph, meaning to draw. Art terms are indicated with an underline and their definition can be viewed by hovering the cursor over the term. This introductory text provides a brief overview of Photography. ![]()
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