The invention of photography in the Nineteenth century revolutionized both the method and concept of the image, enabling people to capture not only an exact likeness, but also the subtle nuances of expression, changing emotion and visual essence. Black and white images, derived from the original Daguerreotypes, created by M. Daguerre in 1839, have a history as long and varied as photography itself, and dominated the medium until the accessibility of color film took hold in the 1970s. Twentieth century innovators like Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Robert Mapplethorpe changed the landscape of black and white photography …
The invention of photography in the Nineteenth century revolutionized both the method and concept of the image, enabling people to capture not only an exact likeness, but also the subtle nuances of expression, changing emotion and visual essence. Black and white images, derived from the original Daguerreotypes, created by M. Daguerre in 1839, have a history as long and varied as photography itself, and dominated the medium until the accessibility of color film took hold in the 1970s. Twentieth century innovators like Ansel Adams, Diane Arbus, Henri Cartier-Bresson, and Robert Mapplethorpe changed the landscape of black and white photography as both an act of documentation and an art form. While the nature and equipment of photography has changed throughout history, the fundamental desire of human beings to capture their surroundings and image has remained—carried on by contemporary photographers such as Sally Mann, Annie Leibovitz, and Sebastião Salgado.
