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| Newhall's 1937 (amazon.com) |
Until post-WWII, the history of photography, according to Price & Wells, was largely the history of photographic technique, though they note Gasser’s history of histories, in which three types are identified: the priority debate (who invented photography), manuals and handbooks of techniques, and histories of the photograph as image. Gasser feels the preponderance of the second has led to the mistaken assumption that nothing else was ever published before WWII.
Regarding the debate on priority, the antecedents to the camera are noted, included Aristotle's notes on fixing a reflection on a wall by concentrating light through a small hole, the first notes on the camera obscura from the 16th century, and the large number of people working in optics and chemistry in the 18th century whose discoveries contributed to the publications in science journals in 1839 of details on the creation of instruments and processes for capturing light and fixing images. The authors refer to Mary Warner Marien on the need to examine historical claims carefully, on the need for further research, particularly political, scientific, and cultural contexts.
Two early 20th century histories are introduced as seminal in redirecting academic discussions toward more art-historical concerns, and of putting photography at the center of it’s own theory (rather than as a branch art theory).
