Invention & Technique Photography

Invention & Technique is an important thread within the history of photography. Practices that established photography’s foundational technologies, including the daguerreotype and calotype. This movement page brings together photographers, eras, and related contexts so readers can see how the approach developed, where it circulated, and which artists help define its historical position.

Basic facts
MovementInvention & Technique
Photographers4

Overview

Practices that established photography’s foundational technologies, including the daguerreotype and calotype.

Photographers

🇫🇷FR1765–1833
Nicéphore Niépce
Invention & Technique
Invention & TechniqueHeliography

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce was born in 1765 in Chalon-sur-Saône, Burgundy, France.

Read details
🇫🇷FR1787–1851
Louis Daguerre
Invention & Technique
Invention & Technique

Daguerre began as a theatrical designer who ran a large diorama theater in Paris.

Read details
🇬🇧GB1800–1877
William Henry Fox Talbot
Invention & Technique
Invention & Technique

In October 1833, while on his honeymoon at Lake Como, Talbot tried to sketch with a camera lucida and was frustrated by what he saw as his own lack of drawing skill.

Read details
🇫🇷FR1820–1884
Gustave Le Gray
Landscape
LandscapeInvention & Technique

Gustave Le Gray, trained first as a painter in Paris, turned to photography in the late 1840s and opened the school that helped shape figures such as Nadar.

Read details