Almost everyone practices photography now–be it a professional, an amateur, or just someone with a smartphone. From taking selfies to capturing sweet moments, to taking Instagram-worthy shots, photography has become an inevitable part of life.
But ever wondered how photography first came to the United States? Who invented the first camera? When did it become the phenomena we see today? Here are some quick answers to the history of how America’s best event photography first arrived at these shores.
A Brief History of Photography in the United States
The earliest records of the history of American photography involving cameras and photography dated back to the 5th Century B.C. when Chinese and Greek philosophers talked about primary optics and the camera. Over the centuries, man has tried to capture an instant on the rock, metal and paper, and finally in the 19th century that became a possibility.
The first daguerreotype was invented in 1839, and it was the very first practical and publically available process of photography, created by a French painter and physicist named Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre.
By 1840, the daguerreotype had become incredibly popular in the United States–especially in New York City– after it originated in Europe. This ignited the spark of photography in the country.
The person who brought photography to America wasn’t a photographer or such, but a pharmacist–Albert Sands Southworth. He was amazed at the new invention so, with the help of Samuel Morse, he decided to study the technique.
Not more than a year later, Southworth put up his daguerreotype studio in Boston with Morse’s assistant, Joseph Pennell. In 1843, Josiah Johnson Hawes came when Pennel left. Hence, the start of their nineteen-year partnership.
They made some of the world’s finest daguerreotype portraits for politicians, artists, and intellectuals in the U.S. Then came Mathew B. Brady, who learned the technical process from the pioneers of the daguerreotype and set out on improving the process more.
The Era of American Print Photography (1850s-1860s)
The daguerreotype process dominated the first 20 years of photography in the U.S, but photography with paper negatives, which originated in Europe as well, would eventually find its way to America by the mid-century.
By 1844, Brady opened up his studio and took the job of photographing the country’s presidents, business leaders, military men, celebrities, artists, and writers.
During the mid-1850s, Brady and other artists started using wet plates, or collodion-on-glass negatives, which resulted to the end of the daguerreotype era, so that by the beginning of the Civil War, the paper took the place of the daguerreotype as the means of taking photos.
Because the daguerreotype took so long to develop, most of the American photographs taken before the Civil War era were portraits, and landscape views were rare. But by 1860, innovations in photography were able to capture entire city and town views better, and developed faster, meaning you could use photography for more than just portraits.
Since then, photography in the United States and the rest of the world has only become even more efficient and more accessible thanks to the enormous amounts of technological advancements in everyday life. Thus, it came to where we are now! Now that you know how everything started, you can love taking pictures even more!
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