Photojournalism | 5 Unintended Consequences of Photography

 Photojournalism

They weren’t trying to change the world.  Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, Louis Daguerre, Henry Fox Talbot, and John Herschel — the handful of men who invented photography — only wanted to capture images from light reflected on a solid surface.

But within a few years, their experimenting turned into a social force that was embraced by the public. Other technology influences — the telephone, the automobile, the internet — took decades before they were in use everywhere. But photography enjoyed nearly instant acceptance. Louis Daguerre introduced his daguerreotype process of photography in 1839.

Within a decade, almost every city in America had a daguerreotype studio, and travelling photographers in their darkroom-wagons were photographing settlers and Native Americans on the frontier. And, just a few years later, photography was shaping the destiny of the American people. Here are five of photography’s unintended consequences.

For generations, war was presented as a noble, romantic venture in which young men proved their courage and gained lasting fame. During the Civil War, photographers like Mathew Brady, Alexander Gardner, and Timothy O’Sullivan travelled to the battlefields and captured the reality.

Source: https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2022/08/5-unintended-consequences-of-photography/

Photojournalism