Take a Shot at This History of Photography Quiz

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a pioneer of street photography, taking candid shots of everyday life. For one of his first photojournalism assignments, he covered the 1937 coronation of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, and characteristically took only atmospheric photos of the crowds lining the streets and none of the monarchs. In 1947, he co-founded the international photographic cooperative Magnum.

Daguerreotypes were the first successful form of photography and were developed by Louis Daguerre in the 1830s. The technology relied on coating a copper plate with silver iodide and then exposing it to light. The plate was then exposed to mercury fumes to develop the picture and finally fixed in a salt solution. Daguerreotypes were a popular form of portraiture until the 1850s.

Baron Adolph de Meyer is considered the first fashion photographer; he was appointed to American “Vogue” in 1913. Since then, many others have followed in his footsteps, including Richard Avedon, famed for his ability to capture emotion; Annie Leibovitz, who is best known for her celebrity portraits; and Helmut Newton, who is celebrated for the originality of his black and white images.

The first official war photographer was Roger Fenton, who was employed by a Manchester publisher in 1855 to document the Crimean War, a conflict in which British, French, Sardinian, and Turkish troops fought the Russians. Fenton’s photos of Crimea showed never-before-seen images of soldiers and the terrain, bringing the realities of war to life and paving the way for future war correspondents.

Capturing realistic color in photography was a huge technological problem that many scientists worked to crack. Ultimately, French innovators Auguste and Louis Lumière came up with autochrome, the first successful method of color photography. Launched in 1907, autochrome used plates covered in microscopic green, red, and blue potato starch grains, which acted as a filter to create colored images.

In 1900, Kodak released the Brownie and priced it at just $1, making it one of the first affordable cameras on the market. More than 100,000 Brownies were sold in the first year, bringing photography to the masses. The camera was very basic — just a box with a simple lens — but due to Kodak’s new roll film, it was a lot lighter and easier to use than older glass plate cameras.

In 2016, Australian photographer Peter Lik’s black and white image titled “Phantom” sold in a private sale to an anonymous buyer for an unprecedented $6.1 million. The photo was taken in Arizona’s Antelope Canyon, and shows a shaft of light penetrating the slot canyon. The image sale beat out the previous record holder, “Rhein II” which sold at auction for $4.3 million in 2011.

The development of flash powder allowed photographers to work indoors and at night, but it didn’t come without danger. In the 1880s, a magnesium powder mixture was commonly used to produce instant nighttime photos by causing a large, bright spark. The powder was highly explosive and therefore dangerous, but was very popular nonetheless.

In the early days of photography, images depicted the world in black and white. It wasn't until 1861 that Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell and photographer Thomas Sutton were able to produce the world's first color photograph. Maxwell had developed a method where an object would be photographed through red, green, and blue filters. The images could be layered together to create a single composite. The first photograph that used this method was of a tartan ribbon.

Sometime in 1826, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce took a picture of the view outside his window in Burgundy, France. Niépce was fascinated by lithography — reproducing graphics using stone or metal and oil-based ink — and was trying to find other ways to reproduce images. He set up a camera obscura, or pinhole camera, and cast the image on a specially treated pewter plate. Hours later, it produced the first known permanent photograph. You can see the photo today on display at the University of Texas-Austin.

At the start of the 20th century, cameras were still very bulky, which inspired German optical engineer Ernst Leitz to develop a smaller lens. This allowed the use of a 35mm roll of film, which significantly reduced the size of the camera. In 1925, the Leica I was released and immediately became the favored camera for photojournalists and street photographers.

The word "photography," meaning “drawing with light,” comes from the Greek roots “phos” (meaning "light") and “graphe” (meaning “draw or write”). The term combines the two distinct sciences that create photos: the convergence of light rays to form an image, and the chemistry used to permanently record it on a light-sensitive surface.

Baron Adolph de Meyer, fashion’s first major photographer, was hired in 1913 to shoot portraits of models, actresses, and aristocrats for “Vogue” magazine. This was the first time real photographs (rather than illustrations) were used in fashion editorials, paving the way for fashion magazines as we know them today.

Single-lens reflex, or SLR, cameras use a mirror and prism to allow the photographer to see exactly what will be captured in each shot. Debuting in the late 19th century, this was a useful innovation, as previous rangefinder cameras often produced an image quite different from that which was seen through the viewfinder. More recently, SLR technology has been superseded by digital LCD preview screens.

It is estimated that over a billion people have seen “Bliss” by Charles O’Rear, taken during a drive through Napa Valley. You probably recognize it because it’s been the default wallpaper for Microsoft Windows XP since 2001. The unedited image was reportedly sold to Microsoft by O’Rear for at least $100,000.

With his glorious mutton chops and steely gaze, John Quincy Adams became the first U.S. President to be photographed in 1843. The original photo was a daguerreotype, a type of early photography technology, and was created by German-born artist Philip Haas. Today the image is housed in the Smithsonian Museum.

Photographer Arthur Sasse captured this famous image of Albert Einstein on his 72nd birthday in 1951. After smiling for a while, the scientist grew tired of the photographer's poses and playfully stuck out his tongue. It is now one of the most recognizable images of Einstein, with a signed copy selling for more than $125,000 in 2017.

Today, we enjoy flashing a wide smile for a photo, but the first Victorian photos were the opposite. Social decorum dictated a small, carefully controlled mouth; so, when Richard Beard, Britain's first portrait photographer, began taking family portraits, he allegedly told his clients to say "prunes." This probably helped practically, too, as taking a photo was a long ordeal back in the day, and holding a smile might have become painful.

When inventor Edwin H. Land was on vacation with his young daughter in 1944, she asked why she couldn’t see the pictures taken on the camera right away — so Land was inspired to invent the technology to do just that. In 1948, Land launched the Polaroid instant camera and it sold out in one day. Polaroid cameras became hugely successful and were beloved by artists such as Andy Warhol.

When the photography-focused magazine “National Geographic” debuted in 1888, its cover featured dull colors and plain typography. A new cover design was created in 1910 that showed a muted yellow background with an illustrated oak-leaf border. In 1970, the magazine decided to accentuate that yellow color and establish the rectangle as its official logo.

Alfred Eisenstaedt's photo of a sailor kissing a woman in Times Square encapsulated the joy many felt on V-J Day in 1945 when WWII came to an end. “Life” photographer Eisenstaedt shot the candid picture — often called “The Kiss” — on a Leica, but due to the impromptu nature of the photo, he never got the names of the subjects. Their identities — sailor George Mendonsa and dental assistant Greta Zimmer Friedman — only came to light decades later.