Photography is a huge part of our daily lives. For many of us, our recollections go back to perhaps instamatic cameras and electromechanical single-lens-reflex (SLR) cameras. While some of us still have separate cameras, more likely we are using our camera phones to record and document all types of events.

Over the past week, International Photography Day was celebrated, a day to honor photography. Design News has put together a list of major milestones in the evolution of photography.

Design News would like to thank the sites photographytalk.com, thoughtco.com, and Wikipedia for providing the historical information to help produce this timeline.

Early Optics: 1400s – 1700s

Near the start of the 16th Century, scientist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci sketched out diagrams and wrote instructions about the camera obscura. In these papers, he included not just pinholes but also simple glass lenses.

Early Film: 1604 – 1827

Astronomer Johannes Kepler gets credited with coining the term photograph for a drawing with light in 1604. He was referring to using telescopic optics to project an image onto a sheet of paper or a canvas to draw the stars. 

Astronomers and inventors sought a way to make the paper or canvas itself sensitive to light. Glass or metal plates were also used in experiments by various people. 

Around 1717, German polymath Johann Heinrich Schulze accidentally discovered that a slurry of chalk and nitric acid into which some silver particles had been dissolved was darkened by sunlight. After experiments with threads that had created lines on the bottled substance after he placed it in direct sunlight for a while, he applied stencils of words to the bottle. The stencils produced copies of the text in dark red, almost violet characters on the surface of the otherwise whitish contents. The impressions persisted until they were erased by shaking the bottle or until overall exposure to light obliterated them. 

First Photograph: 1827

It was just one in a series of experiments but View from the Window at Le Gras is the earliest surviving photograph. Nicéphore Niépce used a sheet of metal with a film of chemicals spread on it. 

Though light-sensitive, it wasn’t very sensitive. It took 8 hours to record the image. You can see sunlight illuminating both sides of the buildings. From here on, the timeline of photography moves rapidly. 

Different metal plate technologies began to be used by astronomers, other scientists, and a new breed of artist/scientists, the naturists. The naturists were quite often scientists and inventors themselves, using this new technology to record the beauty of the world around them.

Bettman

View from the Window at Le Gras is known as the earliest surviving photograph.

Daguerreotype: 1839

Around this time, the word photography began to be used to describe this new industry. From 1839 on, the popular metal plate process known as daguerreotype opened up this mix of art and technology to the masses.

Well, the masses that could afford the time and money involved anyways. Though it may have been one of the easier metal plate photographic processes, it was still messy, expensive, very time consuming, and somewhat dangerous.

Earliest Camera: 1841

Photographers of this era generally used cameras designed and made by themselves or skilled craftsmen, adapting lenses made by optical manufacturers to use photographically.  

Early in the camera timeline of the history of photography, optical companies such as Zeiss, Leitz, and others started to design lenses specifically for photography. Voightlander went a step beyond and introduced a camera for metal plates in 1841. 

Developing Film Cameras

The problem with metal and glass plates was that they were fragile, cumbersome and hard to work with, and costly for the average person.  

A combination of two technologies, silver halides and celluloid based emulsions would undergo further development.  In 1835, Henry Fox Talbot invented a viable method of spreading a gelatine emulsion on paper. In 1839, astronomer John Herschel came up with a way to fix the image recorded by silver halides.

Late in the 1800’s, George Eastman pioneered the use of photographic film. Eastman started manufacturing paper film in 1885 before switching to celluloid in 1888–1889. His first camera, which he called the “Kodak“, was first offered for sale in 1888. It was a very simple box camera with a fixed-focus lens and single shutter speed, which along with its relatively low price appealed to the average consumer.

The Kodak came pre-loaded with enough film for 100 exposures and needed to be sent back to the factory for processing and reloading when the roll was finished. By the end of the 19th century Eastman had expanded his lineup to several models including both box and folding cameras.

35-mm Film

Another major photographic milestone was the development of 35-mm film. Oskar Barnack, who headed research and development at Leitz, decided to investigate using 35 mm cine film for still cameras while attempting to build a compact camera capable of making high-quality enlargements. He built his prototype 35 mm camera (Ur-Leica) around 1913, which transported the film horizontally, producing a 24x36mm image frame.

After World War I, Leica commercialized their first 35 mm cameras.

Single-lens-reflex Cameras

It was the single-lens-reflex (SLR) camera that paved the way for contemporary photography,  first electromechanical and later digital versions. The first practical reflex camera was the Franke & Heidecke Rolleiflex medium format TLR of 1928. Though both single- and twin-lens reflex cameras had been available for decades, they were too bulky to achieve much popularity. The Rolleiflex, however, was sufficiently compact.

Mehmet Ali/ iStock / Getty Images Plus

Medium format cameras were the first practical reflex cameras, though they were bulky and expensive.

1933 saw the introduction of the Ihagee Exakta, a compact SLR which used 127 rollfilm. This was followed three years later by the first Western SLR to use 135 film (otherwise known as 35 mm film), the Kine Exakta. The 35 mm SLR design gained immediate popularity and there was an explosion of new models and innovative features after World War II.

The first major post-war SLR innovation was the eye-level viewfinder, which first appeared on the Hungarian Duflex in 1947 and was refined in 1948 with the Contax S, the first camera to use a pentaprism. Prior to this, all SLRs were equipped with waist-level focusing screens. The Duflex was also the first SLR with an instant-return mirror, which prevented the viewfinder from being blacked out after each exposure. This same time period also saw the introduction of the Hasselblad 1600F, which set the standard for medium format SLRs for decades.

In 1952 the Asahi Optical Company (which produced Pentax cameras) introduced the first Japanese SLR using 135 film, the Asahiflex. Several other Japanese camera makers also entered the SLR market in the 1950s, including Canon, Yashica, and Nikon. Nikon’s entry, the Nikon F, had a full line of interchangeable components and accessories and is generally regarded as the first Japanese system camera.

35mm SLRs became one of the primary types of cameras for photographic images. Their form factor and image format are still one of the more dominant forces in modern digital photography.

Digital Cameras

The roots of digital photography, which would revolutionize the industry, began with the development of the first charged-coupled device at Bell Labs in 1969. The CCD converts light to an electronic signal and remains the heart of digital devices today. In 1975, engineers at Kodak developed the very first camera creating a digital image. It used a cassette recorder to store data and took more than 20 seconds to capture a photo.

By the mid-1980s, several companies were at work on digital cameras. One of the first to show a viable prototype was Canon, which demonstrated a digital camera in 1984, although it was never manufactured and sold commercially. The first digital camera sold in the U.S., the Dycam Model 1, appeared in 1990 and sold for $600. The first digital SLR, a Nikon F3 body attached to a separate storage unit made by Kodak, appeared the following year. By 2004, digital cameras were outselling film cameras.

By 2004, the sensor in the Canon EOS 1D Mark II had surpassed the resolution of the former industry standard Kodachrome slide film. Digital SLRs were pretty much taking over from 35mm SLRs.

TOSHIFUMI KITAMURA /AFP/Via Getty Images

Digital SLRs such as Canon’s EOS 1D surpassed the performance of film cameras in the early 2000s decade.

Smartphones Take Over

Today, most mobile devices—particularly smartphones—have cameras built into them. Samsung introduced the first smartphone camera—the SCH-V200—in 2000. but it was not until the introduction of the Apple iPhone in 2007 that the smartphone started to become a key medium for digital photography. Since then, improved sensors and optics have enabled smartphones to incorporate digital cameras that are rivaling discrete digital cameras for performance.

By 2013, smartphones with camera capabilities were outselling digital cameras more than 10-to-1.1 In 2019, more than 1.5 billion smartphones (most of which have camera capabilities) were sold to consumers, compared with about 550,000 digital cameras over roughly the same period.

Will AI Shake Up Photography?

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI), particularly generative AI, has led to concerns that the future of photography may lie in some algorithms rather than the creativity of photographers. AI software can now be trained to produce images of objects and people that, while far from perfect, are in some cases reasonable facsimiles. This is an area to keep an eye on, as ongoing developments in generative AI software are likely to produce results that are more accurate and realistic.

The obvious question is, will photographers that were weaned on traditional photographic technology and adopted digital imaging technology now join another potential wave of photographic technology upheaval? Only time will tell.

Omer Messinger / Stringer/ Getty Images Europe

All the artwork and photos hanging in this gallery are AI generated. Could this be the trend of the future?

Upcoming lecture will discuss how photography played a crucial role at Arches and Canyonlands

Moab’s national parks—Arches and Canyonlands—owe part of their founding to photography: the medium was a way for conservationists to show the beauty of these areas to Congress over in Washington, D.C. Today, photos of the national parks are shared prolifically on social media in both positive ways—inspiring people to travel and get outside—and negative—prompting overuse of delicate areas if a photo goes viral. 

Kat Connelly, a backcountry ranger with the National Park Service, will discuss photography’s role in the national parks during a free lecture on Thursday, September 7 at the Moab Information Center. 

Connelly has been working for the NPS since 2018; she’s been in Moab specifically since the latter half of 2019. She’s a hobbyist photographer, and currently, shoots most of her photos in film—she loves the way it forces her to slow down to think about each shot, she said. Connelly first became interested in the relationship between photography and the parks during an internship as a photo archives technician at Yosemite: There, she digitized and organized the park’s collection of analog photos. 

During the Thursday lecture, she’ll display a number of historical photographs of both Arches and Canyonlands, and describe photography’s timeline. 

“We’ve gone from this period of time where a lot of people had not seen the West—they’d only seen it in paintings of these grand landscapes. We got to photography, and then were able to disseminate photos in newspapers or journals,” Connelly said. “Now we’re in the next iteration, where there’s so much spreading of imagery: Is that a pro or a con as we move into thinking of new ways to energize people about land conservation and recreating responsibly?” 

Connelly said it was easier to find historic photos of Canyonlands than it was of Arches—Arches was established in 1929, when photography wasn’t as popular; Canyonlands in 1964. She found images through NPS archives, the U.S. Geological Survey, and the Denver Public Library: She mostly looked for images from surveys that worked to establish the parks. 

But she’ll also discuss the role social media photography plays. Both Canyonlands and Arches have their own social media accounts and often share modern photos of beautiful views and recreation options—and photos of the parks are shared by visitors. While those photos are aimed at inspiring visitors, sometimes social media can cause an influx of photographers to areas that are more sensitive to visitation. There’s a relatively new movement, Connelly said, to not geo-tag photos shared on any social media—but that also requires a careful balance of not gatekeeping certain areas. 

Even if you’re not interested in the discussion of pros and cons, Connelly said, definitely come for the historic photos: she’s loved looking through photos of old cars driving the White Rim and people’s historic tourist outfits. 

“There’ll be a really good collection to see,” she said. 

The lecture will take place on Thursday, September 7 at 5 p.m. at the Moab Information Center as part of the MIC and Canyonlands Natural History Association’s annual free lecture series. 

A typical subway trip may only take 10 to 20 minutes, but Rita Nannini’s subway journey took 10 years. 

The photographer set out to travel all 665 miles of NYC’s subway tracks, photographing the first and final stops on every single subway line in the subway system. 

First Stop Last Stop, Nannini’s first book, is the tangible culmination of that project, where Nannini explores the varying communities along the NYC subway’s terminal stops and their relationship to public transit.

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Nannini got her first break as an environmental portrait photographer in the late ’70s and early ’80s when she lived in the Upper West Side. In those early years of her career, Nannini didn’t use the subway much, as she says it was more dangerous, dirtier and more complicated to ride back then. She never considered the subway a viable subject for her photography until much later, long after she left the city for Princeton, New Jersey. 

“I had heard about this game that people played later on, fast forward to 2011/2012, of teenagers getting on any subway and riding to the end of the line and getting out and exploring the neighborhoods and then getting back on and going home,” says Nannini of her inspiration. “I never used the subway as a way to get around the rest of the city, so I was immediately struck by the visual possibilities.”

Starting in 2013, Nannini made trips to the city to explore and photograph the subway’s terminal stops—you can find the first picture she took for the project in 2013 at Far Rockaway at the end of the A train in the book. But the idea to turn her project into a book didn’t come until after the artist moved back to the city in 2019. She decided the vastness of the project made better sense in a book instead of an exhibition, besides, the start of the pandemic in 2020 had closed all of the city’s galleries.

“That was a good time to focus on [the book] because you realize how important the subway is to many people, especially during the pandemic, that still had to get to their job,” says Nannini. “So many people could work from home, but the healthcare workers, a lot of people, still had to take the subway. That was actually when I really decided to do a book and to focus solely on that.”

The end result? A visually stunning book, captivating from even before the first photo. The book’s exterior boasts a shiny metallic surface, giving it a true subway feel. On the right side of the book, the pages are color-coded by the MTA’s signature subway line colors. Even the book’s rectangular layout (designed by Caleb Cain Marcus at Luminosity Lab) plays a role, opening up to the dimensions of an actual subway car. 

Once inside the book, you’re instantly greeted by beautiful panoramic images of the red line’s terminal stops—starting with the 1 train, followed by the 3 and so forth. Along the way, the author shares tidbits of information about notable stations and neighborhoods. On the Brooklyn Bridge City Hall page, for example, Nannini mentions that the original City Hall station is now only accessible via private tours.

Just as the first subway photo Nannini took is included in the book, so is the last one taken in January of 2023. Right before the book went into production, Nannini photographed the hands of a construction worker holding a bouquet of flowers on the A train in Inwood. It’s a real, candid moment that reflects life in NYC, as do the rest of the photographs in the book. 

Nannini captures the everyday New Yorker waiting at the station, sitting in the train, running fruit stands on the sidewalk, spending time with their loved ones. And though there aren’t dates on the photos, it’s relatively easy to pick out what point in time they might have been taken. People wearing masks in empty stations points to the peak of the pandemic around 2020. Puffer jackets and beanies mark the cold winter season. Every photo offers a dynamic look into the life and neighborhoods along the subway’s terminal stops, no matter where they may be.

The book wraps up with “Notes from Underground” by Virginia Hines and an afterword by Nannini.

 “The subway is such a beautiful thing in that it connects so many different people from all over the city, from all over the world in a very beautiful way to get to where they have to go,” says Nannini. “It belongs to the people, and it should always be that way. It’s what made New York, New York, that it connected so many neighborhoods and people to jobs and opportunities.”

First Stop Last Stop is now available for purchase online for $45.

Nannini’s photographs of all five Bronx lines will be shown at the Gallery for ARTful Medicine at Montefiore Einstein in the Bronx from October to December 2023.