Photography

            Photography, a nineteenth century scientific invention, has like many other technical innovations of the era "dramatically altered mankind's perception and experience of the world, "an effect that continues to this day" (Museum Ludwig Cologne 1996). The invention of photographs defines the beginning of the modern era due to the effects it had on new systems of representation including graphic design and advertising. The photograph evolved and "it was this fertile and receptive soil" (McQuire 1998, p. 18) of the nineteenth century which saw its serious development. From the birth of lithography to the development of chromolithography, and the new systems of representation in graphic design and advertising on billboards, posters, and in magazines, its invention next to the printed word, is still the "widest form of communication" (Gernsheim 1962, p. 12) since the beginnings of the modern era. The ability and need to create and reproduce photographs ourselves has created a virtual reality that has become an inescapable part of our modern era (Museum Ludwig Cologne 1996).
             The invention of photography as we know it in the modern world today is one which not one person can solely be praised for as many generations have been involved in its perfection (Davis 1975, p.1). The concept behind photography is the "camera obscure" (Fig. 1) Latin for "dark chamber", and was a room or box with a small opening or lens in one side which was known to the ancient world as early as Aristotle and Leonardo da Vinci in the fourth century B.C. (Meggs 1998, p.135). As scientific discoveries grew over thousands of years, so did the development of photography. In 1826, Frenchman Joseph Niepce's was the first to obtain a faint photographic image (fig. 2), fulfilling "an ancient desire of mankind to create an imaginary world that would be as believable as the real world itself" (Museum Ludwig Cologne 1996). But it was Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre most importantly, who perfected his "daguerreotype" process to minute detail (Fig.