41 Of The Most Important Photos In Photography History As They Signal A New Era

The firsts in any field are important as they signal a new era and give hope for new developments in the future. But some firsts are more important and influential than others. To discuss photography Bored Panda reached out to Louis Kaplan, a Professor of History and Theory of Photography and New Media at the University of Toronto as well as author of many books in photography studies including The Strange Case of William Mumler, Spirit Photographer (Minnesota, 2008).  His forthcoming book (with Scott Michaelsen) is The Revelations of Xxenogenesis with Metanoia Press.

In his opinion, the most groundbreaking point in photography was when William Henry Fox Talbot discovered how to develop photos from a negative. The Professor said, “Without question, William Henry Fox Talbot’s invention of the positive-negative process at Lacock Abbey at his estate in southern England is the most important breakthrough in the history of photography. It ushers in the age of ‘mechanical reproduction’ (a phrase made famous by the German-Jewish critic Walter Benjamin). It made photography the art and the technology that not only copies the world but also multiplies itself ad infinitum.”

Actually there was a lot of debate at first whether photography was an art or an industry as people couldn’t agree on whether “its sole purpose was to provide us with facts in an exact accounting of the world or whether it should have a place in the life of the imagination.”

Even now not everyone knows that before the first photoshopped photo in 1987, people still manipulated them in one way or another, “The First Photoshopped Photograph (1987) reminds us of the long history of photographic manipulation in the darkroom as well as theatrically staged photographs that began in the nineteenth century as well. This other history of photography breeds doubt and skepticism in the viewer — that seeing is not always believing whether dealing with analog or digital photography.”

While photography isn’t included in the seven traditional art forms, it falls in the broader category of visual arts. The pictures are pretty to look at or make us think and search for deeper meaning. But even more than that. Photography has more significance than just an art form.

Professor Kaplan claims that “Photography has always had a lot of legs. Its documentary and record-keeping functions brought visual history into the world. It also has been an aid to scientific discovery from the very beginning — from microscopic images of botanical specimens to telephoto lunar images.  We can say that photography operates at the crossroads of so many fields as it disseminates its ‘light writing’ and as it salvages our memories.”

Maybe we don’t think of those photos as art but we appreciate how much they can tell us. Also, to document and keep record of important events and things is one of the main functions of photography alongside it being an art.

But there are more unexpected uses of photography. Louis Kaplan knows better than anyone being a Professor of History and Theory of Photography. The most curious use of it that he spent a lot of time researching was “about the suspect and questionable practice of spirit photography and the belief that photography could capture the spirits of the dead.”

He would definitely add another entry to this list and it would be “First Spirit Photograph: William H. Mumler, Self-Portrait with the Sprit of his Deceased Cousin, Boston, 1862. Even if spirit photography was a fake and a fraud, it reminds us that all photographs conjure ghosts and that the camera is a ghost generating machine.”

While Professor Kaplan talks about real people that once lived and were immortalized in photographs, not real ghosts, but photography does have some sort of magic to it. Now even if we don’t really know how it technically works, we don’t associate it with witchcraft, but when it was first started to be used, it must have seemed like a wonder how a real life view can appear on a piece of metal. 

In our technology age it is so common and very easy to take pictures and we have a camera with us all the time. We see a funny-looking cloud or an unusual ad, we go out to eat food at an aesthetic cafe or meet a random cat and we snap everything. Our phones are full of photos that we will never look at for a second time. 

As a Professor of New Media, Louis Kaplan knows this too well, “You are talking here about processes of routinization and habituation in the oversaturated image environment that constitutes our digitized lives in the 21st century. The omnipresent use of the camera as a component of the mobile phone means not only that we record everything so easily but also that we transmit everything instantaneously via social media. It is possible that this instrumental rush to networked communication has quashed and suppressed the photographic magic that lies dormant but that always awaits its resurrection with the press of a button, with the snap of a camera.”

Do you think that the accessibility of photography made it lose part of its magic and value? Have you ever thought of photography as not belonging to the arts? Which one of these first would you consider to be the most important? Let us know what you think in the comments!