Who took the first photo. First color photographs

Despite the abundance of photographers, often self-made, few can tell in detail about the history of photographs. That is what we will do today. After reading the article, you will learn: what is a camera obscura, what material became the basis for the first photograph, and how instant photography appeared.

Where did it all begin?

O chemical properties people have known sunlight for a very long time. Even in ancient times, any person could say that the sun's rays make skin color darker, guessed about the effect of light on the taste of beer and sparking precious stones. History has more than a thousand years of observations of the behavior of certain objects under the influence of ultraviolet radiation (this is the type of radiation characteristic of the sun).

The first analogue of photography began to be truly used as early as the 10th century AD.

This application consisted in the so-called camera obscura. It represents a completely dark room, one of the walls of which had a round hole that transmits light. Thanks to him for opposite wall a projection of the image appeared, which the artists of that time “finalized” and received beautiful drawings.

The image on the walls was upside down, but that didn't make it any less beautiful. This phenomenon was discovered by an Arab scientist from Basra named Alhazen. For a long time he was engaged in observing light rays, and the phenomenon of the camera obscura was first noticed by him on the darkened white wall of his tent. The scientist used it to observe the dimming of the sun: even then they understood that it was very dangerous to look at the sun directly.

First photo: background and successful attempts.

The main premise is the proof by Johann Heinrich Schulz in 1725 that it is light, and not heat, that causes silver salt to turn dark. He did this by accident: trying to create a luminous substance, he mixed chalk with nitric acid, and with a small amount of dissolved silver. He noticed that under the influence of sunlight the white solution darkens.

This prompted the scientist to another experiment: he tried to get an image of letters and numbers by cutting them out on paper and applying them to the illuminated side of the vessel. He received the image, but he did not even have thoughts about saving it. Based on the work of Schultz, the scientist Grotgus found that the absorption and emission of light occurs under the influence of temperature.

Later, in 1822, the world's first image was obtained, more or less familiar to modern man. It was received by Joseph Nsefort Niépce, but the frame he received was not preserved properly. Because of this, he continued to work with great zeal and received in 1826, a full-fledged frame, called "View from the Window". It was he who went down in history as the first full-fledged photograph, although it was still far from the quality we were used to.

The use of metals is a significant simplification of the process.

A few years later, in 1839, another Frenchman, Louis-Jacques Daguerre, published new material for taking photographs: copper plates coated with silver. After that, the plate was doused with iodine vapor, which created a layer of light-sensitive silver iodide. It was he who was the key to future photography.

After processing, the layer was subjected to a 30-minute exposure in an illuminated sunlight room. Next, the plate was taken to a dark room and treated with mercury vapor, and the frame was fixed with table salt. It is Daguerre who is considered to be the creator of the first more or less high-quality photograph. This method, although it was far from "mere mortals", was already much simpler than the first.

Color photography is a breakthrough of its time.

Many people think that color photography appeared only with the creation of film cameras. This is not true at all. The year of creation of the first color photograph is considered to be 1861, it was then that James Maxwell received the image, later called the “Tartan Ribbon”. For creation, the method of three-color photography or the color separation method was used, whichever one likes more.

To obtain this frame, three cameras were used, each of which was equipped with a special filter that makes up the primary colors: red, green and blue. As a result, three images were obtained, which were combined into one, but such a process could not be called simple and fast. To simplify it, intensive research was carried out on photosensitive materials.

The first step towards simplification was the identification of sensitizers. They were discovered by Hermann Vogel, a scientist from Germany. After some time, he managed to get a layer sensitive to the green color spectrum. Later, his student Adolf Miethe created sensitizers sensitive to the three primary colors: red, green and blue. He demonstrated his discovery in 1902 at a Berlin scientific conference along with the first color projector.

One of the first photochemists in Russia, Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, a student of Mitya, developed a sensitizer more sensitive to the red-orange spectrum, which allowed him to surpass his teacher. He also managed to reduce the shutter speed, managed to make the pictures more massive, that is, he created all the possibilities for replicating photographs. Based on the inventions of these scientists, special photographic plates were created, which, despite their shortcomings, were in high demand among ordinary consumers.

Snapshot is another step towards speeding up the process.

In general, the year of the appearance of this type of photography is considered to be 1923, when a patent was registered for the creation of an “instant camera”. There was little use for such a device, the combination of a camera and a photo lab was extremely cumbersome and did not greatly reduce the time it takes to get a frame. Understanding the problem came a little later. It consisted in the inconvenience of the process of obtaining the finished negative.

It was in the 1930s that complex light-sensitive elements first appeared, which made it possible to obtain a ready-made positive. Agfa was involved in their development in the first couple, and the guys from Polaroid were engaged in them en masse. The first cameras of the company made it possible to take instant photographs immediately after taking a picture.

A little later, similar ideas were tried to be implemented in the USSR. Photo sets "Moment", "Photon" were created here, but they did not find popularity. main reason- the absence of unique light-sensitive films to obtain a positive. It was the principle laid down by these devices that became one of the key and most popular at the end of the 20th century - early XXI century, especially in Europe.

Digital photography is a leap forward in the development of the industry.

This type of photography really originated quite recently - in 1981. The founders can be safely considered the Japanese: Sony showed the first device in which the matrix replaced the film. Everyone knows how a digital camera differs from a film camera, right? Yes, he could not be called high-quality digital camera in the modern sense, but the first step was on the face.

In the future, a similar concept was developed by many companies, but the first digital device, as we are used to seeing it, was created by Kodak. The serial production of the camera began in 1990, and it almost immediately became super popular.

In 1991, Kodak collaborated with Nikon to release a professional digital reflex camera Kodak DSC100 based on Nikon F3 camera. This device weighed 5 kilograms.

It is worth noting that with the advent of digital technologies, the scope of photography has become more extensive.
Modern cameras, as a rule, are divided into several categories: professional, amateur and mobile. In general, they differ from each other only in the size of the matrix, optics and processing algorithms. Due to the small number of differences, the line between amateur and mobile cameras is gradually blurring.

Application of photography

Back in the middle of the last century, it was hard to imagine that clear images in newspapers and magazines would become a mandatory attribute. The boom in photography was especially pronounced with the advent of digital cameras. Yes, many will say that film cameras were better and more popular, but it was digital technology that made it possible to save the photographic industry from problems such as running out of film or overlaying frames on top of each other.

Moreover, modern photography is undergoing extremely interesting changes. If earlier, for example, to get a photo in your passport, you had to stand in a long queue, take a picture and wait a few more days before printing it, but now it’s enough just to take a picture of yourself on a white background with certain requirements on your phone and print the pictures on special paper.

Artistic photography has also come a long way. Previously, it was difficult to get a highly detailed frame of a mountain landscape, it was difficult to crop unnecessary elements or make high-quality photo processing. Now even mobile photographers are getting great shots, ready to compete with pocket digital cameras without any problems. Of course, smartphones cannot compete with full-fledged cameras, such as Canon 5D, but this is a topic for a separate discussion.

So, dear reader, now you know a little more about the history of photography. I hope this material will be useful to you. If so, why not subscribe to the blog update and tell your friends about it? Moreover, there are many more waiting for you. interesting materials, which will allow you to become more literate in photography. Good luck and thank you for your attention.

Sincerely yours, Timur Mustaev.

Photo(photo - light, graph - I draw, I write - Greek) - drawing with light, light painting - was not discovered immediately and not by one person. The work of scientists of many generations has been invested in this invention. different countries peace. People have long sought to find a way to obtain images that would not require long and tedious work of the artist. Some prerequisites for this already existed in remote times. In 1978, the heliographic image of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce "View from the Window of the Workshop, 1826" was 160 years old. In the homeland of the inventor, in the French town of Varennes, celebrations were held in his honor, lectures were given on the history of photography, and retrospective photo exhibitions were arranged.

Niepce was the first in the world to fix the "solar pattern". He focused on using the properties of asphalt, a thin layer of which hardens in illuminated places. In loose and unlit places, the asphalt was washed out with lavender oil and kerosene. In 1826 Niépce, using a camera obscura, obtained a view from the window of his workshop on a metal plate covered with a thin layer of asphalt. He called the picture just that - heliography (solar drawing). The exposition lasted eight hours. The image was of very poor quality, and the terrain was barely visible. But photography began with this picture. However, Niépce, Daguerre and Talbot are considered the inventors of photography. But which of them, when, on what day did it dawn on them to discover one of the wonders of the age? Why is this story so confusing? Let's figure it out. In the Book of Technical and industrial productions”, published in St. Petersburg in 1860, about the photograph that burst into life, it was written: “If a few decades ago a so-called “educated” person had been told that they would soon find a way to arrange a mirror in such a way that the image once reflected by him would forever remain on it, he would have taken these words for folly...” Yes, photography has rapidly and firmly entered the consciousness of a person, into his activities and life, in terms of significance this discovery is usually compared with the discovery of printing, they are called “second sight”, “living memory of history”. However, we must disappoint our readers: photography, like some other great inventions of the 19th century, was not discovered immediately and by more than one person. The work of scientists of many generations from various countries has been invested in its creation. For a long time, people have known the property of a dark room (or camera obscura) to reproduce the light patterns of the outside world.

Aristotle wrote about this. The time has come when these drawings began to be outlined in pencil. With the help of camera obscura in Russia, for example, in the 18th century, views of St. Petersburg, Peterhof, Kronstadt were documented. That was “photography before photography”: the work of the draftsman was extremely simplified. But daring people tirelessly thought about how to completely mechanize the drawing process, how to learn not only to focus the optical drawing on a plane in order to trace "freehand", but also to securely fix it by chemical means. Science provided such an opportunity in the first third of the last century. In 1818, the Russian scientist H. Grotgus pointed out the connection between photochemical transformations in substances and the absorption of light. Soon the same feature was established by the English scientist D. Herschel and the American chemist D. Draper. This is how the fundamental law of photochemistry was discovered. This gave impetus to the purposeful search for fixing the light image. In many countries, versions about their inventors of photography were born. It is no coincidence that the French optician Charles Chevalier, who manufactured and sold camera obscura, said that even before N. Niepce, a poorly dressed foreigner was asking the price of his products, assuring that he knew a way to fix an optical pattern, but he did not have the means to buy a camera. To prove his words, he allegedly showed C. Chevalier images on paper created with the help of light, and left a bottle of brown light-sensitive liquid. The Chevalier regretted that, through frivolity, he had not written down the name and address of the stranger. Experiments with liquid did not give him positive results. And the stranger never showed up at his counter again. Today this story is beautiful legend. The same legend is heard about N. Niepce himself, who allegedly received fixed light drawings in 1824 and even in 1822, since there is also no material evidence of this.

And yet, it was N. Niepce who received the first picture in the world. A technically imperfect view of the roofs of a neighboring house, imprinted on an asphalt plate, is in front of you. He is a document confirming that the possibility of "mechanical drawing" with the help of the sun was proven in 1826. We will be objected: but why then is the year 1839 considered the birth date of light painting? And why do historians recognize not only N. Niepce as the author of the invention, but also L. Daguerre and F. Talbot, whose first pictures appeared much later? Of course, the year of the invention of light painting is chosen conditionally, but there are reasons for this. Firstly, N. Niepce's heliographic method was imperfect, unsuitable for practical photography due to the exposure of 8 hours. Secondly, N. Niepce did not publish his method during his lifetime, but he died in 1833. Only L. Daguerre knew about N. Niepce's method, with whom he entered into contractual relations to improve the photoprocess and gave an obligation to keep the results of the experiments secret. Prior to the publication of the principles of daguerreotype (1839), compatriots did not have the slightest idea about the photographic activity of N. Niepce. And after that, the name of N. Niepce for a long time was in the shadow of the glory of L. Daguerre. Solemn consolidation of the discovery of heliography for N. Niepce was made only ... in 1933, when the 100th anniversary of the death of the inventor was celebrated. This is now confirmed by the inscription on the monument that is installed on the grave of N. Niepce in Varennes. As you can see 1839 It is no coincidence that it became the official date of the discovery of photography. This year the following events took place: on January 7, in France, the secretary of the Paris Academy of Sciences, Dominique-Francois Arago, reported to the scientific assembly information about “a perfect method for fixing a light image in a camera obscura, invented by the artist L. Daguerre”; On August 14, L. Daguerre received a patent for his invention; On August 20, he issued a detailed practical guide on the use of daguerreotype; in England, on January 25, 1839, at the Royal Institute in London, on the proposal of the physicist M. Faraday, the first paper photo print of F. Talbot, obtained from a paper negative, was demonstrated; On January 31, the talbottype method was made public. Guidelines for daguerreotype and talbotype immediately spread throughout Europe and the United States. 1839 immediately made photography an international treasure. That's why in all encyclopedic dictionaries you can read: the year of the invention of photography - 1839, inventors: the French N. Niepce, L. Daguerre and the Englishman F. Talbot. We have already shown you the picture of Niepce, it remains to show you the first pictures of Talbot and Daguerre.

Snapshot of Talbot

In 1835 Talbot also noted Sunbeam. It was a picture of the barred window of his house. Talbot used paper impregnated with silver chloride. The exposure lasted for an hour. Talbot received the world's first negative. Applying a photosensitive paper prepared in the same way to it, he made a positive print for the first time. The inventor called his method of shooting calotype, which means "beauty". So he showed the possibility of replicating pictures and connected the future of photography with the world of beauty.

Snapshot of Daguerre

Simultaneously with Niepce, the famous French artist Daguerre, the author of the famous Parisian diorama, worked on the method of fixing the image in the camera obscura. Working on light paintings gave him the idea to fix the image. From the optician Charles Chevalier, who subsequently created the lens for the daguerreotype camera, he learned that Niépce had obtained the first encouraging results. Daguerre concluded an agreement with Niépce on joint cooperation over the invention. However, in 1833 Niepce is dead. Daguerre persistently continued the work he had begun and in 1837. opened reliable way manifestation and fixation of a latent image on a silver plate sensitized to light. Daguerre for the first time in the world took a picture with a relatively high image quality. He shot a rather complex still life, composed of paintings and sculptures. Daguerre later gave this picture to de Caille, curator of the museum at the Louvre. The author exposed the silver plate in a camera obscura for thirty minutes, and then transferred it to a dark room and held it over heated mercury vapor. Fixed the image with a salt solution. In the picture, the details of the picture were well worked out both in the highlights and in the shadows. The inventor called his method of obtaining a photographic image own name- daguerreotype - and handed over its description to the secretary of the Paris Academy of Sciences, Dominique-Francois Arago. At a meeting of the Academy on January 7, 1839, Arago solemnly reported to the scientific assembly about Daguerre's amazing invention, declaring that "from now on, a ray of the sun has become an obedient draftsman of everything around." Scientists approvingly accepted the news, and this day will forever go down in history as the birthday of photography.

The art of photography, unlike painting, sculpture, architecture, appeared relatively recently and many are interested in how it all began. Almost 200 years have passed since the first photograph was taken. Much has changed since then, and photographic equipment has become incredibly high quality and diverse, but those very, very first pictures still arouse great interest and excite the imagination.

The very first photograph in the world, which was made in 1826 by the Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niepce. His invention was the very first step towards the ability to take photographs, and subsequently to television, cinema, and so on. The picture is called: "View from the window on Le Gras." To create this image, Joseph Niépce smeared a metal plate with a thin layer of asphalt and exposed it to the sun for eight hours in a camera obscura. After an eight-hour exposure, an image of the visible landscape from the window appeared on the plate. Thus, the very first photograph in the world appeared.

The first photograph of a person. The photograph was taken by Louis Daguerre in 1838. The photo is called: Boulevard du Temple. View from the window to a busy street. Due to the fact that the shutter speed was 10 minutes, all the people on the streets blurred and disappeared, except for one person who stood motionless and became visible in the lower left part of the photo.

In 1858, 32 years after the first photograph, Henry Peach Robinson made the first photomontage. Fading Away is a composite of five negatives. The picture shows a girl who died of tuberculosis, and relatives gathered around.

The first color photograph appeared in 1861. It was created by the Scottish mathematician and physicist James Clerk Maxwell.

The first self-portrait (which is now called a buzzword - selfie) was created in 1875. Photographed by Mathew B. Brady. It was he who first came up with the idea to photograph himself.

First photo from the air. It was made in 1903. The inventor of this method was Julius Neubronner. For this purpose, he attached cameras with a timer to the pigeons.

In 1926, the first color underwater photograph was taken. The picture was taken by Dr. William Longley Charles Martin in the Gulf of Mexico.

The first photograph from space was taken on October 24, 1946. The photo was taken with a 35mm camera, which was placed on the rocket, and fired at an altitude of 65 miles above the Earth.

This photograph, titled "View from the Window", was taken in 1826 by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, the discoverer of photography. Shot from an upstairs window on the Niépce estate in Burgundy, France. The image is obtained using a process known as heliography.

The first color photograph was created by physicist and mathematician James Clerk Maxwell in 1861. This is an image of a tricolor bow called Tartan Ribbon (or Plaid Ribbon).

NASA photographers photographed the first launch at Cape Canaveral in July 1950. The two-stage Bumper 2 rocket you see in the frame contained a V-2 rocket (upper stage) and a WAC Corporal (lower stage).

First digital snapshot was made in 1957; nearly 20 years before Kodak engineer Steve Sasson invented the first digital camera. This is a digital scan of an image originally shot on film. It depicts Russell's son Kirsch.

The first photograph of a person is considered to be the one you see above. Made by Louis Daguerre. The exposure lasted about seven minutes. The frame captures the Boulevard du Temple in Paris. In the lower left corner of the photo, you can see a man who stopped to shine his shoes.

Robert Cornelius set up his camera and took the world's first self-portrait while on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. He sat in front of the lens for just over a minute before closing the lens. This historic selfie was taken in 1839.

The first hoax photograph was taken in 1840 by Hippolyte Bayard, who competed with Louis Daguerre for the title of "father of photography". Bayard was allegedly the first to develop the photographic process, but delayed his report on his achievement. And the agile Daguerre presented a report on the daguerreotype, without mentioning Bayard, who, in despair, made his self-portrait with a regrettable signature. It said that the inconsolable inventor drowned himself.

First aerial photograph taken from hot air balloon in 1860. It captures the city of Boston from a height of 610 meters. The photographer, James Wallace Black, called his work "Boston as the eagle and the wild goose see it."

The first photograph (daguerreotype) of the Sun was taken by French physicists Louis Fizeau and Foucault Léon on April 2, 1845.

The first photograph from space was taken from a V-2 rocket launched on October 24, 1946. This is a black and white image of the Earth taken with a 35 mm camera at an altitude of 104.6 km.

The name of the photojournalist is unknown, but this image, taken in 1847, is believed to be the first news photograph. It depicts a man who was detained by the police in France.

John Quincy Adams, the sixth president of the United States, became the first head of state to be photographed. The daguerreotype was made in 1843, many years after Adams left office.

This photograph was taken by photographer William Jennings in 1882.

Disasters are not the most pleasant topic, but you can learn from the mistakes of the past. This picture was taken in 1908, when aviator Thomas Selfridge died, the first victim of an air crash.

The moon was first photographed by John William Draper on March 26, 1840. He obtained the daguerreotype image from the New York University rooftop observatory.

The first color landscape, showing the world the colors of nature, was filmed in 1877. Photographer Louis Arthur Ducos du Hauron, a pioneer of color photography, captured a landscape in the south of France.

The Earth was photographed from the Moon on August 23, 1966. This image was taken from the Lunar Orbiter traveling in close proximity to the Earth's satellite.

Nature sometimes demonstrates its tremendous destructive power. This image of a tornado was taken in 1884 in Anderson County, Kansas. Amateur photographer A.A. Adams was 22.5 km from the tornado.

The desire to capture the moments of life that happen to a person or the world around him has always existed. This is evidenced by rock paintings, and art. In the paintings of artists, accuracy and detail were especially appreciated, the ability to capture an object from a favorable angle, light, convey color palette, shadows. Such work sometimes took months of work. It was this desire, as well as the desire to reduce time costs, that became the impetus for the creation of such an art form as photography.

The advent of photography

In the 4th century BC, Aristotle, the famous scientist from Ancient Greece, noticed a curious fact: the light that seeped through a small hole in the window shutter repeated the landscape seen outside the window with shadows on the wall.

Further, in the treatises of scientists from Arab countries, the phrase literally meaning " a dark room". It turned out to be a device in the form of a box with a hole in the front, with the help of which it became possible to copy still lifes and landscapes. Later, the box was improved, providing moving halves and a lens, which made it possible to focus on the picture.

Thanks to new features, the pictures became much brighter, and the device was called the "light room", that is, the camera lucina. Such simple technologies allowed us to find out what Arkhangelsk looked like in the middle of the 17th century. With their help, the perspective of the city was taken, which is distinguished by accuracy.

Stages of development of photography

In the 19th century, Joseph Niepce invented a method of photography, which he called heliogravure. Shooting by this method took place in bright sunshine and lasted up to 8 hours. Its essence was as follows:

A metal plate was taken, which was covered with bituminous varnish.

The plate was directly exposed to bright light, which did not dissolve the varnish. But this process was heterogeneous and depended on the strength of the illumination in each of the sections.

Then poisoned with acid.

As a result of all the manipulations, a relief, engraved picture appeared on the plate. The next significant stage in the development of photography was the daguerreotype. The method got its name from the name of its inventor, Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, who was able to get an image on a silver plate treated with iodine vapor.

The next method was calotype, invented by Henry Talbot. The advantage of the method was the ability to make copies of one image, which, in turn, was reproduced on paper impregnated with silver salt.

The first acquaintance with the art of photography in Russia

The history of Russian photography has been going on for more than a century and a half. And this story is full of different events and interesting facts. Thanks to the people who discovered the art of photography for our country, we can see Russia through the prism of time as it was many years ago.

The history of photography in Russia begins in 1839. It was then that a member of the Academy of Sciences of Russia, I. Hamel, went to Great Britain, where he got acquainted with the calotype method, having studied it in detail. Then he sent detailed description. Thus, the first photographs made by the calotype method were obtained, which are still stored in the Academy of Sciences in the amount of 12 pieces. The photographs bear the signature of the inventor of the method, Talbot.

After that, Hamel meets Daguerre in France, under whose guidance he takes several pictures with his own hands. In September 1841, the Academy of Sciences received a letter from Hamel, in which, according to him, was the first photograph taken from nature. A photograph taken in Paris shows a female figure.

After that, photography in Russia began to gain momentum, rapidly developing. Between the 19th and 20th centuries, photographers from Russia began to take part in international photography exhibitions and salons on a general basis, where they received prestigious awards and prizes, and had membership in the relevant communities.

Talbot's way

The history of photography in Russia was developed thanks to people who were keenly interested in a new kind of art. So was Julius Fedorovich Fritzsche, a famous Russian botanist and chemist. He was the first to master the Talbot method, which consisted in obtaining a negative on photosensitive paper and then printing it on a sheet treated with silver salts and developing in sunlight.

Fritzsche took the first calotype photographs of plant leaves, after which he appeared before the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg in May 1839 with a report. In it, he reported that he found the calotype method suitable for capturing flat objects. For example, the method is suitable for taking snapshots original plants with the necessary precision for a botanist.

Contribution by J. Fritzsche

Thanks to Fritzsche, the history of photography in Russia stepped a little further: he proposed replacing sodium hyposulfate, which Talbot used to develop the picture, with ammonia, which noticeably modernized the calotype, improving image quality. Julius Fedorovich was also the first in the country and one of the first in the world to conduct research work in photography and photography.

Alexey Grekov and the "art booth"

The history of photography in Russia continued, and the next contribution to its development was made by Alexei Grekov. A Moscow inventor and engraver, he was the first Russian master of photography to master both calotype and daguerreotype. And if you ask a question about what the first cameras were in Russia, then it is Grekov's invention, the "art room", that can be considered as such.

The first camera, created by him in 1840, made it possible to take high-quality portrait photographs with good sharpness, which was not possible for many photographers who tried to achieve this. Grekov came up with a chair with special comfortable pads that supported the head of the person being photographed, allowing him not to get tired during the time. long sitting and keep still. And it took a long time for a person to be motionless in a chair: 23 minutes in the bright sun, and on a cloudy day - all 45.

The master of photography Grekov is considered to be the first portrait photographer in Russia. To achieve excellent portrait photographs, he was also helped by the photographic device he invented, consisting of a wooden camera into which light did not penetrate. But at the same time, the boxes could slide out one from the other and return to their place. At the front of the outer box, he attached a lens, which was a lens. The inner box contained a light sensitive plate. By changing the distance between the boxes, that is, by moving them one from the other or vice versa, it was possible to achieve the necessary sharpness of the image.

Contribution of Sergey Levitsky

The next person, thanks to whom the history of photography in Russia continued to develop rapidly, was Sergei Levitsky. Daguerreotypes of Pyatigorsk and Kislovodsk, made by him in the Caucasus, appeared in the history of Russian photography. As well as Golden medal art exhibition held in Paris, where he sent pictures to participate in the competition.

Sergey Levitsky was in the forefront of photographers who suggested changing the decorative background for filming. They also decided to retouch portrait photographs and their negatives in order to reduce or completely remove technical flaws, if any.

Levitsky leaves for Italy in 1845, deciding to improve the level of knowledge and skills in the field of daguerreotype. He takes pictures of Rome, as well as portrait photos of Russian artists who lived there. And in 1847 he comes up with a photographic apparatus with folding fur, using the fur from the accordion for this. The innovation allowed the camera to become more mobile, which was largely reflected in the expansion of photography opportunities.

Sergei Levitsky returned to Russia as a professional photographer, having opened his own daguerreotype workshop "Light Painting" in St. Petersburg. With her, he also opens a photo studio with a rich collection of photographic portraits of Russian artists, writers and public figures. He does not give up studying the art of photography, continuing to empirically study the use of electric light and its combination with solar and their influence on photographs.

Russian trace in photography

Artists, masters of photography, inventors and scientists from Russia have made a great contribution to the history and development of photography. So, among the creators of new types of cameras, such Russian surnames as Sreznevsky, Ezuchevsky, Karpov, Kurdyumov are known.

Even Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev took an active part, engaging in theoretical and practical problems making photographs. And together with Sreznevsky, they stood at the origins of the creation of the photographic department in the Russian Technical Society.

The successes of Andrey Denyer, a bright master of Russian photography, who can be put on the same level with Levitsky, are widely known. He was the creator of the first photo album with portraits of famous scientists, doctors, travelers, writers, artists. And the photographer A. Karelin became known throughout Europe and entered the history of photography as the founder of the genre of everyday photography.

Development of photography in Russia

Interest in photography late XIX century has grown not only among specialists, but also among the common population. And in 1887 the "Photographic Herald" was published, a magazine that collected information on recipes, chemical compounds, photo processing methods, theoretical data.

But before the revolution in Russia, the opportunity to engage in artistic photography was available only to a small number of people, since almost none of the inventors of the camera had the opportunity to produce them on an industrial scale.

In 1919, V. I. Lenin issued a decree on the transfer of the photographic industry under the control of the People's Commissariat of Education, and in 1929 the creation of light-sensitive photographic materials began, which later became available to everyone. And already in 1931, the first domestic camera "Photokor" appeared.

The role of Russian masters, photo artists, inventors in the development of photographic art is great and occupies a worthy place in the world history of photography.