# PHOTOGRAPHY / 1839 — present

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Category: Art
Slides: 14
Updated: 2026-05-17T20:56:03.883Z
Tags: catalog, art, photography

## Summary

From silver-iodide plates and 8-hour exposures to neural networks that hallucinate light. Two centuries of fixing the world onto a surface — and then losing the surface entirely. Key sections include: PHOTOGRAPHY / 1839 — present; 1826 — Niépce burns a window into pewter.; 1839 — the daguerreotype goes public.; 1888 — "You press the button, we do the rest."; 1925 — 35mm, Leica, and the decisive moment.; The war photographer.; The Depression, in photographs.; 1935 — Kodachrome arrives. Critics sneer.; Photojournalism, 1936–1972.; 1991 — the sensor replaces the silver halide..

## Slide Outline

1. PHOTOGRAPHY / 1839 — present
2. 1826 — Niépce burns a window into pewter.
3. 1839 — the daguerreotype goes public.
4. 1888 — "You press the button, we do the rest."
5. 1925 — 35mm, Leica, and the decisive moment.
6. The war photographer.
7. The Depression, in photographs.
8. 1935 — Kodachrome arrives. Critics sneer.
9. Photojournalism, 1936–1972.
10. 1991 — the sensor replaces the silver halide.
11. 2010 — photography becomes a feed.
12. 2022 — the index breaks.
13. References & viewing.
14. Watch.

## Slide Transcript

### Slide 1: PHOTOGRAPHY
/ 1839 — present

- A history in 13 frames
- From silver-iodide plates and 8-hour exposures to neural networks that hallucinate light. Two centuries of fixing the world onto a surface — and then losing the surface entirely.
- Niépce · Daguerre · Kodak · Leica · Magnum · Kodachrome · DSLR · iPhone · Diffusion
- f / 1.4 — open
- DARKROOM · SAFELIGHT ONFRAME 01 / 13

### Slide 2: 1826 — Niépce burns a window into pewter.

- Le Gras · pewter plate · 1826
- Frame 02 · Origin
- Joseph Nicéphore Niépce coats a pewter plate with bitumen of Judea and points it out his attic window in Burgundy. Eight hours later, the world is fixed: View from the Window at Le Gras — the first surviving photograph.
- ~8 hrExposure
- PewterSubstrate
- Heliograph"Sun-writing"
- Sunlight falls on both sides of the courtyard — because it kept moving while the plate exposed.
- 1826 · CHALON-SUR-SAÔNEFRAME 02 / 13

### Slide 3: 1839 — the daguerreotype goes public.

- Frame 03 · Process
- Niépce dies; his partner Louis Daguerre perfects a silver-iodide-on-copper plate, developed in mercury vapour. France buys the patent and gifts it "free to the world" on 19 August 1839 — photography's official birthday.
- Sharper than any prior process — a mirror with a memory.
- Single positive, no negative: every plate unique, laterally reversed.
- Exposure drops to minutes; portrait studios open globally within a year.
- Talbot's calotype (1841) introduces the negative — and reproducibility.
- camera obscura · silvered plate
- 1839 · ACADÉMIE DES SCIENCESFRAME 03 / 13

### Slide 4: 1888 — "You press the button, we do the rest."

- No.1 · 100 exposures · $25
- Frame 04 · Democratization
- George Eastman's Kodak No. 1 ships pre-loaded with roll film for 100 exposures. You shoot, mail the camera back. Rochester develops, prints, reloads, returns it. Photography leaves the studio for the kitchen table.
- $25Camera price (1888)
- 100Frames per roll
- 1900Brownie · $1
- 1888 · ROCHESTER, NYFRAME 04 / 13

### Slide 5: 1925 — 35mm, Leica, and the decisive moment.

- Frame 05 · The small camera
- Oskar Barnack's Leica I uses motion-picture 35mm film in a body you can put in a pocket. Cameras stop being furniture. Henri Cartier-Bresson turns the street into a stage — geometry caught in 1/125th of a second.
- "The decisive moment" — l'instant décisif, 1952.
- Candid, ambient-light, eye-level photography becomes possible.
- Tri-X, Plus-X — fast films catch up with the small format.
- 35mm · 36 exp · ASA 400
- 1925 · WETZLAR · LEITZFRAME 05 / 13

### Slide 6: The war photographer.

- D-Day · Omaha · 6 Jun 1944
- Frame 06 · Witness
- Robert Capa wades onto Omaha Beach with two Contax cameras. Only 11 frames survive a darkroom accident — The Magnificent Eleven. His partner Gerda Taro had already died at the Spanish Civil War in 1937, the first woman war photographer killed in action.
- "If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough."
- Photography becomes the moral conscience of the 20th century.
- Capa dies on a landmine in Indochina, 1954, aged 40.
- 1936–54 · SPAIN · NORMANDY · INDOCHINAFRAME 06 / 13

### Slide 7: The Depression, in photographs.

- Frame 07 · Documentary
- Roy Stryker's Farm Security Administration hires Dorothea Lange, Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, Russell Lee. Between 1935–1944 they shoot ~175,000 negatives of rural America. Photography becomes social policy — and a national archive.
- Migrant Mother (Lange, 1936) — Florence Owens Thompson, 32, seven children.
- Evans + James Agee — Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941).
- The look of "the documentary" is invented here.
- 175kFSA negatives
- 1935–44Active years
- $5Lange paid Thompson · 0
- Migrant Mother · Nipomo, CA
- 1935–44 · FSA · DUST BOWLFRAME 07 / 13

### Slide 8: 1935 — Kodachrome arrives. Critics sneer.

- color reversal film · 1935–2009
- Frame 08 · Color
- Two musicians, Mannes & Godowsky, invent a three-emulsion color film at Kodak. National Geographic loves it; the art world doesn't. For decades color was "vulgar" — until William Eggleston's 1976 MoMA show forces the gates open.
- 1935: Kodachrome 16mm; 35mm follows in 1936.
- 1976: Eggleston at MoMA — color is "real" photography.
- 2009: last roll of Kodachrome ever manufactured.
- 1935–2009 · ROCHESTER · K-14FRAME 08 / 13

### Slide 9: Photojournalism, 1936–1972.

- Frame 09 · Golden age
- Henry Luce's LIFE launches Nov 1936; circulation hits 13.5 million. Magnum Photos — Capa, Cartier-Bresson, Seymour, Rodger — founded 1947, photographer-owned. The picture story is the news.
- W. Eugene Smith — Country Doctor, Minamata.
- Eddie Adams, Saigon, 1968 — one frame ends a war's reputation.
- Nick Út, Kim Phúc, 1972 — the napalm girl.
- Television and the news weeklies' collapse end the era by the late '70s.
- picture magazine spread
- 1936–72 · LIFE · MAGNUMFRAME 09 / 13

### Slide 10: 1991 — the sensor replaces the silver halide.

- global capture · estimate
- Frame 10 · Digital
- Kodak DCS-100: a Nikon F3 grafted onto a 1.3-megapixel CCD and a 4kg shoulder pack. $13,000. Within 15 years it kills the company that invented it. Phones finish the job.
- 1991First DSLR (Kodak DCS-100)
- 2003Digital outsells film
- 2012Kodak files Chapter 11
- ~92% of photos taken today are taken with a phone.
- 1991–PRESENT · CCD · CMOS · iPHONEFRAME 10 / 13

### Slide 11: 2010 — photography becomes a feed.

- Frame 11 · Social
- Instagram launches Oct 2010 — at first a square-crop nostalgia filter for iPhone 4 photos. By 2024 it ships 95+ million images a day. The photograph stops being a thing and becomes a signal.
- Algorithmic ranking replaces editorial selection.
- The selfie, the influencer, the geotagged sunset.
- Authorship dilutes; provenance breaks; the caption out-weighs the frame.
- Photography is the most produced and least looked-at art form in history.
- 9-up grid · square crop
- 2010–PRESENT · FEED · ALGORITHMFRAME 11 / 13

### Slide 12: 2022 — the index breaks.

- no lens, no light, no referent
- Frame 12 · AI
- For 183 years a photograph was — by definition — light that had touched a sensitive surface. Diffusion models sever that link. The image survives; the indexicality doesn't. DALL·E 2, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Flux, Sora.
- C2PA, content credentials, on-camera signing — provenance becomes infrastructure.
- News orgs publish AI-image policies; courts try to catch up.
- The question stops being what does the picture show and becomes where did the picture come from.
- 2022–PRESENT · POST-INDEXICALFRAME 12 / 13

### Slide 13: References & viewing.

- Frame 13 · Further
- Susan Sontag — On Photography (1977)
- Roland Barthes — Camera Lucida (1980)
- Beaumont Newhall — The History of Photography (MoMA, 1937→)
- John Szarkowski — The Photographer's Eye (1966)
- Geoff Dyer — The Ongoing Moment (2005)
- Fred Ritchin — After Photography (2008)
- Joan Fontcuberta — Pandora's Camera (2014)
- Archives: George Eastman Museum · Library of Congress (FSA-OWI) · Magnum Photos · MoMA Collection.
- YouTube
- Watch.
- › history of photography
- › cartier-bresson · decisive moment
- fin · 13 / 13
- END OF DECK · THANK YOUFRAME 13 / 13


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