2700 Prehistoric painters in the Rocamadour cave in Ardéche, France use carbon black derived from burned wood or bone, along with red ocher, the naturally occurring iron compound. The evidence of the extreme image permanence and light stability of carbon black is still visible today.
1040 Bi Sheng invents the world’s first movable type printing press in China during the Northern Song Dynasty.
1250 Albertus Magnus first hypothesizes the photosensitive properties of silver nitrate.
1430 Intaglio printmaking is first invented and used in Germany.
1440 The printing press, based on existing screw processes, is introduced by Johannes Gutenberg.
1515 Etching applied as a printmaking technique possibly invented by Daniel Hopfer of Augsburg, Germany.
1642 German Ludwig von Siegen invents mezzotint printing process.
1650 Jan van de Velde IV invents aquatint printing process in Amsterdam.
1727 German physicist and medical professor Johann Heinrich Schulze first scientifically proves the photosensitivity of silver.
1760 The French printmaker Jean-Baptiste Le Prince perfects the aquatint process.
1772 English cartographer and artist Peter Perez Burdett introduces a new aquatint technique.
1787 Gilles-Louis Chrétien invents a semi-automatic machine called a physionotrace.
1790 Thomas Wedgwood makes photograms by placing objects on leather sensitized with silver nitrate.
1792 Jacob Perkins introduces steel engraving for printing banknotes.
1798 Alois Senefelder of Munich first discovers lithography.
1799 The French Revolution ends.
1801 Societe d’encouragement pour l’Industrie nationale is founded.
1802 Thomas Wedgwood publishes the dissertation “An Account of a Method of Copying Paintings upon Glass and of Making Profiles by the Agency of Light upon Nitrate of Silver” in the Journal of the Royal Institution, London.
1806 Joseph Nicéphore Niépce begins to experiment with chemically fixing the images of the Camera Obscura.
1815 Lithographic printmaking introduced in France.
1816 Niépce discovers the light sensitive properties of Bitumen of Judea.
1819 Sir John Frederick William Herschel discovers that a solution of hyposulphite of soda is a perfect agent for dissolving silver salts, which could then be washed away. This led to the use of hyposulphite as a fixing agent in photography.
1825 Joseph Nicéphore Niépce creates the first photomechanical reproduction, a print made from a photo-engraved printing plate of a horse and its leader.
1826 Joseph Nicéphore Niépce successfully reproduces in photogravure an etching of Cardinal D’Amboise.
Louis Daguerre contacts Joseph Nicéphore Niepce about his work. Niépce creates the first camera photographic image using a camera obscura and his photo-etching process. The image shows the view from an upstairs window at Niépce’s estate, Le Gras, in the Burgundy region of France. Niépce’s invention is the origin of today’s photography, film, and other media arts.
1827 Louis Daguerre sends examples of his dessin fumée works to Nicéphore Niépce.
1829 Joseph Nicéphore Niépce and Louis Daguerre form a partnership to work towards the development of the heliograph.
Rose-Joseph Lemercier establishes a lithographic printing house in Paris.
1833 Joseph Nicéphore Niépce dies, and his son, Isidore, succeeds him in the partnership with Louis Daguerre.
Hercules Florence, a French painter and inventor living in Campinas, Brazil, coins the word photography, meaning “drawing with light.”
1834 William Henry Fox Talbot creates the first permanent (negative) images using paper soaked in silver chloride and fixed with a salt solution. His photogenic drawings mark the first photographic process.
1835 William Henry Fox Talbot develops his photogenic-drawing process and produces silhouettes of objects laid on sensitized paper. Using this process and a “mousetrap” camera, Talbot then creates the earliest surviving negative, Latticed Window, Lacock Abbey.
1837 Daguerre perfects the daguerreotype, the first practical photographic process.
1838 William Henry Fox Talbot records his first notes on etching steel using sun rays.
Samuel Morse demonstrates the telegraph at the Speedwell Iron Works in Morristown, New Jersey. Moritz von Jacobi invents the electrotype.
1839 On January 7, François Arago announces Louis Daguerre’s invention of the daguerreotype to the French Academy of Sciences.
Scottish inventor Mungo Ponton discovers that potassium bichromate is light sensitive, paving the way for the invention of the Carbon process and essential to the growth of photomechanical printing. Dr. Joseph Berres, an Austrian anatomis, Vienna etches a microphoto of a plant. Dr. Alfred Donné displays at the French Academy of Science an etched daguerreotype of microscopic images and the intaglio prints made from these plates. He is the first to print true photogravures of camera images. Hippolyte-Louis Fizeau etches and prints a daguerreotype in an effort to produce multiple copies. Talbot writes “Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing, or, the Process by Which Natural Objects May be Made to Delineate Themselves With the Aid of the Artist’s Pencil.” Photographers begin to travel to Egypt, Russia and other areas remote from Europe to satisfy the growing public demand for pictures. Hippolyte Bayard discovers a process for making direct positive photographs on paper.
1840 Dr. Joseph Berres of Vienna publishes the booklet Phototyp nach der Erfindung des Prof. Berres in Wien, illustrated with five plates created by the etching of daguerreotype plates with nitric acid. The first printed matter, known to us, illustrated by a photomechanical method. Dr. Berres’ process was announced in The Mirror – May 30, 1840 No. 1007.
An incentive-based competition is held in connection with the Société d’encouragement pour l’industrie nationale, and leads to preliminary experiments to improve photogravure in the work of Dr. Alfred Donné. Fizeau develops a method of increasing the brilliance of daguerreotypes by toning the image with a solution of gold chloride.
1841 William Henry Fox Talbot patents the Talbotype or Calotype process.
Sir William Robert Grove announces his photogalvanic-caustic process for etching daguerreotypes. Armand-Hippolyte-Louis Fizeau, a French physicist, devises a method for copying daguerreotypes. His method involved etching directly into the daguerreotype plate and printing the image with ink. The original daguerreotype is thereby destroyed, however, the new printing plate allowed for multiple permanent ink prints to be produced. Hector Horeau creates the illustrated book Panorama d’Egypte et de Nubie – the first photographic survey of Egypt and a very early example of aquatints made after dagurreotypes. N.M.P. Lerebours, a French publisher, issues Lerebours, Excursions Daguérriennes, a series of travel views comprised of aquatint engraving made from daguerreotypes.
1842 Excursions Daguérriennes publishes three examples of Fizeau’s complex direct-etching process.
The Illustrated London News begins publication. The galvanograph process, invented by Mr. Thomas Spencer, is published by Franz von Kobell in Munich.
1843 Edinburgh Calotype Club of Scotland, the first photographic club in the world, is founded.
The painter Robert Octavius Hill and engineer Robert Adamson establish a partnership and open Scotland’s first photographic studio. Antoine Claudet patents practical method for etching daguerreotypes. William Henry Fox Talbot and his assistant, Nicolaas Henneman, establish the first photographic production facility in Reading, UK.
1844 William Henry Fox Talbot publishes The Pencil of Nature, the first book illustrated with original photographs, in an attempt to disseminate information about the calotype process. To print the book, Talbot and is assistant/partner Nicolaas Henneman, establish the Reading Establishment in Reading, UK where they could produce hundreds of prints each day.
1845 Alfred Donné publishes the atlas his textbook Cours de Microscopie illustrated with 86 engravings copied from micro-daguerreotypes taken by Foucault. Changed to 1845
Noel Paymal Lerebours opens a photographic studio in Paris.
1846 William Henry Fox Talbot’s Reading Establishment prints 7,000 images to accompany copies of the June 1846 Art –Union Journal, a publication particularly well known for graphic illustrations. Due to the high volume of prints, the process is rushed and the prints begin to fade soon after.
William Henry Fox Talbot’s mother dies, prompting him to abandon his failing The Pencil of Nature project and instead focus on making silver prints more permanent. Blanquart-Évrard improves William Henry Fox Talbot’s negative-positive calotype process by floating paper in silver solution rather than brushing the chemicals. He also developed out his prints rather than printing out – thus able to print faster.
1848 Abel Niepce de St. Victor introduces albumen on glass negatives as a photographic surface superior to the calotype.
David Octavius Hill comments on the artistic qualities of the calotype versus the daguerreotype: “The rough and unequal texture throughout the paper is the main cause of the calotype failing in details before the daguerreotype….and this is the very life of it. They look like the imperfect work of man and not the much diminished perfect work of God.” The Pre-Raphaelite art movement begins. Gustave Le Grey discovers the waxed-paper process. Frederick Scott Archer develops the wet collodion process.
1850 Louis Désiré Blanquart-Évrard shows the first albumen paper prints to the French Academy of Sciences, and describes the ability of the albumen process to increase sharpness by lifting the sensitized surface off of the fibrous photogenic drawing paper.
Gustave Le Grey describes his waxed paper process in the first of his four treatises on photography. Firmin Gillot develops his Paniconograph, a relief process compatible with type. Publication of the first journal devoted to photography, The Daguerrian Journal, NY, Nov. 1, 1850
1851 Frederick Scott Archer publishes his wet-plate collodion process in the March issue of The Chemist.
Photographs are included in The Great Exhibition in London. Recognized by William Henry Fox Talbot, the inclusion of photographs in the first World’s Fair marked a pivotal moment for the medium. The first national photographic society, Société Héliographique, is formed in Paris. Members are committed to exploring photography as an artform with creative potential. Under the presidency of the daguerreotypist Jean-Baptiste Louis, Baron Gros, members included: Hippolyte Bayard; Edmond Becquerel; Eugène Durieu; Niépce de Saint-Victor; Olympe Aguado; Gustave Le Gray; Édouard Baldus; Henri Le Secq; N. M. P. Lerebours; the writers Francis Wey, Henri-Victor Regnault, and Ernest Lacan; the painter Eugéne Delacroix; the engraver Augustin-François Lemaître; and the optician Charles-Louis Chevalier. Louis Désiré Blanquart-Évrard and Hippolyte Fockedey start the Imprimerie Photographique de Lille, the first large scale photographic printing company.
1852 William Henry Fox Talbot patents his photographic engraving process, based on the insolubilization of bichromated gelatin exposed to light, which produced printable steel plates.
Rosé-Joseph Lemercier collaborates with Noel Lerebours, Barreswill, and Alphonse Davanne to develop the Lithophotographie, a photolithographic process. The process is reported to the French Academy of Sciences, and Lemercier is granted a patent for the process. The Exhibition of Recent Specimens of Photography is organised by the Society of Arts. It is the first exhibition in the world dedicated solely to photography. It is held at the House of the Society of Arts in London from December 22, 1852 until January 29, 1853 and features the work of 76 photographers, for many of whom this is their first public exhibition. It led directly to the creation of the Photographic Society. The exhibition wanted to focus on the artistic aspect of photography, and excluded daguerreotypes. Alois Auer publishes his development of nature printing, “Naturselbstdruck”.
1853 Niepce de Saint-Victor patents an improvement on asphaltum process and begins using aquatint grain. He presents his findings to the Paris Academy.
Photographie Zoologique ou représentation des animaux rares des collections du muséum d’histoire naturelle is released by Louis Rousseau and Achille Devéria. The publication originally called for sixty photographs of rare specimens from the salted paper print negatives of Louis-Auguste and Auguste-Rosalie Bisson, however, due to fading only 38 prints were ever complete, eighteen of which were heliogravures made using A. N. de St. Victor’s bitumen process. Rosé-Joseph Lemercier establishes his lithographic studio in Paris where he produces prints from the negatives of Henri Le Secq. The Photographic Society (the future The Royal Photographic Society) is first formed in London. The early years of the society focused on the issues of photography’s image permanence English miniature painter, Sir William J. Newton suggests photographing nature “with the acknowledged principles of Fine Art” at the first meeting of the Photographic Society of London. Alois Auer publishes The Discovery of the Nature Printing-Process: An Invention. John Pouncy presents a method of carbon printing to the Photographic Society of London.
1854 Experimentation with photomechanical printing in France spreads, and is followed by writers of the journal La Lumière.
Nicéphore Niépce work on etching steel plates covered with asphaltum influences Charles Nègre and Édouard Baldus’s work on héliogravures. Paul Pretsch patents Photogalvanography in England. Édouard Baldus begins producing ‘line’ héliogravures, a precursor to his work in continuous tone. Société Française de Photographie is founded October 7 La Lumière publishes the ‘unretouched’ heliographie sur acier, “Bibliothèque du Louvre” by Bisson frères and produced by Riffaut. The first publication of photolithographs of Lemercier, Lerebours, Bareswill et Davanne. Rosé-Joseph Lemercier publishes L’ange qui porte un cadran solaire, a photolithograph after a negative by Henri Le Secq, in Bulletin de la Société d’encouragement pour l’industrie nationale. Louis Figuier proposes an etching process that has not yet been tried. Société Héliographique dissolves and becomes Société française de photographie. James Ambrose Cutting of Boston patents the ambrotype. October 21 La Lumière publishes photogravure by Charles Nègre, Le Maçon accroupi
1855 Alphonse Louis Poitevin takes out patent for the carbon process.
Alphonse Louis Poitevin patents the basic principle of the collotype process– photolithography on stone sensitized with bichromated gelatin, glue, albumen or gum. May 5 La Lumière publishes Nègre’s, Portail Saint-Trophime, as a relief paniconographie. La Lumiére publishes Dumont process photograph in Relief. Exposition Universelle des produits de l’Agriculture, de l’Industrie et des Beaux-Arts de Paris witnessed a surge of interest in the photomechanical processes. Dr. J.M. Taupenot develops the first practical collodion dry-plates. The Photographic Society forms a committee, chaired by Roger Fenton, to examine problems with image permanence. Niepce de St. Victor published the first description of his photogravure process in Recherches Photographiques: Photographie Sur Verre, Hʹeliochromie, Gravure Hʹeliographique.
1856 Paul Pretsch publishes “Photogalvanographie; or, the Engraving by Light and Electricity” in the Art-Journal.
The first issue of Photographic Art Treasures is distributed. Niépce de Saint-Victor publishes Traité Pratique de Gravure Héliographique sur Acier et sur Verre. Duc de Luynes, on behalf of the Société Française de Photographie, establishes a competition to stimulate research on the advancement of photomechanical reproduction. Alphonse Louis Poitevin patents the photolithography process. Rosé-Joseph Lemercier purchases Alphonse Louis Poitevin’s patent for the photolithography process. Charles Nègre takes out a patent on photoengraving. Robert Price patents a method for transferring photographs to a wooden printing block. Duncan Campbell Dallas is awarded a patent for a photogalvanographic process. The first example of Nègre-Gillot’s halftone zincography is printed in the May 5 issue of La Lumiere.
1857 Rising general interest in photography from classically trained artists influences its development as an art.
G. Rejlander produces Two Ways of Life, an allegorical composite photograph combining thirty negatives. Eduard Isaac Asser invents a photolithographic transfer process from chromated papers. The process could be used on grained stone or zinc. Adolphe Bilordeaux devises a method of photolithography. Henry Bradbury’s nature prints are published in The Ferns of Great Britain and Ireland.
1858 William Henry Fox Talbot patents improvements in the art of engraving, naming the process Photoglyphic Engraving introducing the application of an aquatint grain.
Photographic News (London) includes an original Photoglyphic Engraving to demonstrating that photogravures with delicate middle tones and little hand work could be produced in large enough numbers to illustrate books and journals. John Pouncy presents a method of carbon printing to the Royal Photographic Society. Henry Peach Robinson makes Fading Away, a narrative genre print, and begins to establish rules for photographic art. These rules sparked a debate between Robinson and Peter Henry Emerson, who considered Robertson’s allegorical images to be unnatural, saccharine, and damaging to photography as an artform. James Ambrose Cutting and Lodowick H. Bradford are awarded a patent for improvements in photolithography. Joubert and M. Henri Garnier invent the aciérage process.
1859 A.J. Berchtold creates a line screen by exposing his negatives on a metal plate coated with asphalt, re-exposing the metal plate across a piece of glass onto which he has traced parallel lines, and re-exposing the metal plate again after having rotated the glass plate.
The original cut-off date for the Duc de Luynes contest for image permanence. The decision is made to extend the competition through 1864, and then again to 1867. Alphonse Louis Poitevin and Rosé-Joseph Lemercier have a falling out related to the authorship of the plates. Lemercier was substituting “P. Poitevin” for “Procédé de Poitevin.” Sir Henry James develops Photozincography. Henry Bradbury’s nature prints are published in The Nature-printed British Sea-weeds (1859–1860). Osborne patent for photolithography with transfer paper became the standard for photolithography in line in England and the US.
1860 The Photogalvanographic Company closes.
Example of F. Joubert’s carbon ‘dusting on’ method published in The Photographic Journal, Proclamation of the Army for Italy by Silvy. Joseph Wilson Swan invents the incandescent filament electric light bulb.
1861 Thomas Bolton’s photographic transfer process is first mentioned in William Andrew Chatto’s A Treatise on Wood Engraving. Bolton’s process is used for a reproduction of Flaxman’s “Deliver us from Evil” for Catherine Winkworth’s translation of Lyra Germanica (1861). Winkworth’s book is considered the first book published with photographic wooden engraving.
1862 Joseph Wilson Swan introduces the carbon printing process.
Louis-Alphonse Poitevin is awarded the Duc de Luynes Prize for his invention of the carbon process. Pouncy and Garnier were the runners up.
1863 Paul-Emile Placet of France patents his etching method.
Charles Nègre moves to Nice. William Toovey modifies Eduard Isaac Asser’s photolithographic process.
1864 January 1 Duncan Campbell Dallas presents his Dallastype in Photographic News.
Walter Woodbury patents the woodburytype process, and carbon becomes practical. Société de Francaise de Photographie exhibition displays to the public the contestant entries, allowing viewers to examine and compare various methods. Progress in photogravure stalls as it is viewed by the photographic press as commercially impractical. British physicist and chemist Joseph Wilson Swan patents carbon tissues.
1865 Duc de Luynes hires Charles Nègre to produce plates and proofs from Louis Vignes negatives.
Charles Amand-Durand begins to use a secret heliographic ‘In Line’ process. Baron Frederick W. von Egloffstein invents a halftone plate process using ruled screens. Heliographic Engraving Company, NY created to exploit the process. Survives until about 1870. M. Tessie du Motay and Ch. Raph. Maréchal use chromated gelatin coatings on a copper plate base under the name phototypie. William A. Leggo patents the Leggotype.
1866 David Octavius Hill hires Thomas Annan to reproduce his painting of the Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland.
Charles Nègre prints Louis Vignes’s negative plates. John Henry Dallmeyer constructs the soft-focus portrait lens. Édouard Baldus issues his first major publication in line form reproducing the work of past masters.
1867 The International Exposition of 1867 is held in Paris. Photogravures are successfully included in the exhibition.
Charles Amand-Durand presents to the French Academy of Sciences his technique of heliography on steel and copper for typography and copper-plate engraving. Charles Nègre’s large plates are published in Monographie de la cathédrale de Chartres. Alphonse Louis Poitevin and Rosé-Joseph Lemercier dissolve their commercial relationship. Alphonse Louis Poitevin wins Duc de Luynes grand prize for his photolithographic process. Max Gemoser invents a method of making improved collotype printing plates from lithographic stones. (was 1869G)
1868 Johann Baptist Obernetter’s firm commercially introduces G.W. Simpson’s collodion silver chloride papers.
Joseph Albert perfects, presents, and patents in Germany the Albertype, a variation of collotype. The Autotype Fine Art Company is founded in London. German lithographer Max Gemoser first uses the term “Lichtdruck.” John Calvin Moss is credited with inventing the first practicable photo-engraving process, the Moss-type.
1869 The Autotype Company, takes out the first English patent for the collotype process.
Joseph Albert secures an American patent for his Albertype process. Édouard Baldus first publishes his own photographs as photogravures for a publication on the architecture and ornament of the Louvre and the Tuileries Palaces. Adolphe Bilordeaux’s lithographs are published in Belgrand and Bourguignat’s La Seine: I. Le Bassin Parisien Aux Âges Anté Historiques. François Drivet’s heliogravure processes are published in La Seine aux âges anté-historiques. Ernest Edwards develops and patents the heliotype process in England. William Leggo patents granulated photography. J.W. Osborne receives a patent for a process of map reproduction. William Leggo’s granulated photography first appears in the Canadian Illustrated News.
1870 John Calvin Moss founds the Actinic Engraving Company.
Reproductions made by the Lichtdruck process first appears in German publications.
1871 Dr. Richard L. Maddox invents the first gelatin dry plates. The invention aided the accessibility of photography, as it replaced wet-plate processes, and this prompted a desire for photographically produced reproductions.
Rosé-Joseph Lemercier purchases exclusive rights to Joseph Albert’s printing process. Karel Klíč opens in Vienna the Photochemische Werkstaette Capt. W. de W. Abney invents the Papyrotype.
1872 Brothers Alfred and Charles Dawson found the Typographic Etching Company in London.
Ernest Edwards moved to the US when James R. Osgood, the boston publisher bought the rights to his heliotype process and hired Edwards to come and run the operation. Henri Marie Rousselon develops a photogravure method for Goupil based on electrotyping from a Woodbury Relief.
1873 Josef Albert’s rotary press comes on the market, making photomechanical printing low cost for the first time.
William Willis Jr. invents and patents the platinum process. William Leggo and George E. Desbarats found the New York Daily Graphic, the first daily illustrated paper with all of the illustrations in photolithography. The first halftones in a daily paper appear in the December 2, 1873 edition and briefly thereafter.
1875 Brothers Louis Edward Levy and Max Levy invent the Levytype.
1877 Louis-Alphonse Davanne published Impressions Photographiques aux encres grasses analogues a la lithographie, or Photographic Prints with fat inks similar to lithography.
1878 Karl Klic invents the grain gravure on copper by transfer of carbon print– the most precise, economical and beautiful method of photogravure printing.
Charles Guillaume Petit perfects the halftone process. Petit calls his process “similigravure” it becomes the generic term for halftone in France. A group of investors in the US buy Obernetter’s patent and set up the Artotype Company to commercialize it by selling licenses to individuals across the US.
1879 Walter Bentley Woodbury patents the Stannotype.
1880 Stephen Horgan’s “Shanty Town” halftone in the NY Daily Graphic of March 4, 1880 comes to be called the FIRST halftone in a daily paper. Horgan makes various claims about the method of printing but does finally admit that the print is a photolithographic one.
The Eastman Dry Plate Company is founded.
1881 Frederic Ives patents a relief halftone “Ives” process.
Joseph Wilson Swan founds the Swan Electric Company.
1882 Captain Baden Pritchard orders 2,000 copies of a photograph of Mungo Ponton and adds it to the Yearbook of Photography, London. This is the first print by Klic to appear in an English publication.
George Meisenbach patents the cross-line screen, a single line screen turned at 90 degrees in the middle of the exposure.
1883 T. & R. Annan & Sons of Scotland purchase a license to use Karl Kilc’s photogravure process.
Alfred Stieglitz buys his first camera. Meisenbach, Riffarth & Co. is founded. Johann Baptist Obernetter discovers the Lichtkupferdruck process.
1884 Eastman Kodak produces flexible negative film.
The Linotype is invented.
1885 Interest in amateur photography explodes in Europe.
The Photo Exchange Club, an amateur group working in the Pictorialist style, forms in England. The partnership of Thomas Annan and Joseph Swan is established. Peter Henry Emerson begins his attack on high art and the artificiality of the work of H.P. Robinson and his followers. Emerson’s naturalistic photographs and extensive writings create an aesthetic of photography as an independent art form thatdoes not have to imitate painting. Ernest Edwards leaves the Heliotype Printing Company in Boston to found The Photo-Gravure Company in New York. Joseph Wilson Swan founds the Swan Engraving Company.
1886 Peter Henry Emerson outlines his ideas on naturalistic photography at a meeting of the Camera Club of London.
Peter Henry Emerson produced his first gravure, Gathering Water Lilies. Photographische Mitarbeiter of Vienna publishes the first account of the Klic process.
1887 While a photographic contest judge for the Amateur Photographer, Peter Henry Emerson discovers Alfred Stieglitz and awards him first prize for A Good Joke.
Thomas Annan commits suicide. Heinrich Hertz, the father of wireless communication, demonstrates the radiation of electromagnetic waves. Professor J. Husnik of Prague patents the Leimtype.
1888 Eastman Kodak introduces the first roll film camera, the Kodak.
Peter Henry Emerson’s Pictures of East Anglian Life is used as a reference to naturalistic photography. The Photo-Club de Paris is founded. Peter Henry Emerson publishes Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art, outlining his idea of photographic aesthetics which he calls Naturalism. Adolph and Herman L. Wittemann found the Brooklyn-based Albertype Company. Arthur Brood publishes Sun Artists. American Amateur Photographer begins publication. W.J. Nichols invents the kallitype process.
1890 The Photographic Society of Great Britain holds their Pall Mall Exhibition.
Alfred Stieglitz returns to New York City and becomes a partner of the Photochrome Engraving Company. Peter Henry Emerson learns the photogravure technique from Walter Colls. Peter Henry Emerson publishes a pamphlet, The Death of Naturalistic Photography, contradicting his previous understanding of artistic photography. Jacob A. Riis published How the Other Half Lives, first book to contain a number of photographs reproduced directly as halftones. Silver print begin to replace albumen prints. The Journal of the Society of Chemical Industry publishes “Photomechanical Investigations and a New Method of Determination of the Sensitiveness of Photographic Plates” by Ferdinand Hurter and Vero C. Driffield. Karl Klic invents the rotogravure process.
1891 The Club der Amateur-Photographien of Vienna (The Vienna Camera Club) holds the first exhibition of artistic photography.
1892 Photo-Club de Paris is formed by members who seceded from the Société de Française de Photographie. The club holds its first Salon, where for the first time in France photographs are shown for their aesthetic value.
Stieglitz edits and publishes the first issue of Camera Notes. The pictorial photography movement in Britain takes shape. The Linked Ring is founded in London. The term Photo-Aquatint is first used at an exhibition at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
1893 Alfred Stieglitz becomes co-editor of the American Amateur Photographer.
The hand camera is invented. William Kurtz with Ernst Vogel develops and publishes a three-color photoengraving technique called Coloritype.
1894 Photo-Club de Paris hosts an international exhibition for photography, Première Exposition d’Art Photographique.
Vienna Camera Club publishes Wiener Photographische Blätter: Herausgegeben Vom Camera-Club In Wien. Alfred Stieglitz acquires his first Annan photogravures. The Photographic Society becomes the Royal Photographic Society. James Craig Annan is elected to The Linked Ring.
1895 Peter Henry Emerson publishes Marsh Leaves, an album of sixteen photogravures.
Herbert Denison and Nathan Lyons publish A Treatise On Photogravure. Walter Colls prints ‘The Photographic Salon’ London, influencing Alfred Stieglitz’s Camera Notes. The Rembrandt Intaglio Printing Company is founded in a collaboration between Kilc and Fawcett in Lancaster. The company produced rotogravure art prints. Wilhelm Röntgen discovers X-rays and radiography.
1896 James Craig Annan publishes Venice & Lombardy, a series of photogravures.
Hans Watzek, Hugo Henneberg, and H`einrich Kühn found the ‘The Clover Leaf’ (‘Das Kleeblatt’ or ‘Trifolium’) group inVienna. Alfred Stieglitz helps form the Camera Club of New York.
1897 R.H. Russell publishes Alfred Stieglitz’s Picturesque Bits of New York and Other Studies.
First issue of Camera Notes is distributed, representing the beginning of a movement towa 9mnrds artistic photography in America. Photographic exhibitions rotate among the Boston Camera Club, the Society of Amateur Photographers of New York, and the Photographic Societies of Philadelphia. German physicist Ferdinand Braun invents the cathode ray tube. Eastman Kodak publishes Kodak portfolio: souvenir of the Eastman Photographic Exhibition 1897: a collection of Kodak film pictures by eminent photographers. Theodor Reich invents the Mezzo Tinto Gravure. Bruckman introduces the system in 1905. Alfred Maskell and Robert Demachy publish Photo-aquatint, or, The gum-bichromate process : a practical treatise on a new process of printing in pigment especially suitable for pictorial workers.
1898 The Photographic Society of Philadelphia announces the first Philadelphia Photographic Salon– an annual photography exhibition to follow the photographic salons of Europe and to promote artistic, scientific, and technical excellence.
1899 The first exhibition of artistic photography opens at the Royal Academy of Art in Berlin.
Sandell Cristoid Film is patented.
1900 Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz meet for the first time in New York City, as Steichen was on his way to Paris to further his art studies.
Holland Day’s exhibition, “New School of American Photography” opens at the Royal Photographic Society’s gallery.
1901 Photography is included as an independent art at the International Exhibition in Glasgow.
Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian physicist and radio pioneer, successfully sends the first radio transmission from Poldhu, Cornwall, across the Atlantic Ocean, and to Newfoundland, Canada.
1902 After attempts by Alfred Stieglitz to work within the traditional camera club movement failed, Stieglitz founds the Photo Secession, a group of photographers dedicated to promoting pictorial photography as fine art after the salons in Europe.
The newly formed Photo Secession exhibits work at the National Arts Club and in Turin, Italy. Edward Steichen moves to New York City from Europe.
1904 English, French, Austrian, German and American groups join to form the International Society of Pictorial Photographers, headed by the Scottish photographer Annan.
G.E.H. Rawlins develops the oil pigment printing process.
1905 The carbro printing process is introduced.
1906 Ira Rubel of Nutley, New Jersey invents and first uses in America the offset lithography process, a printing process which eventually replaces the photogravure as a more economical means of illustrating books.
Edward Steichen returns to Europe from New York City. Alvin Langdon Coburn begins his training in the creation of photogravure at the London County Council School of Photo-Engraving and Lithography.
1907 Alfred Stieglitz photographs The Steerage.
Alfred Stieglitz exhibits the work of Pamela Colman Smith, the first non-photographer, at 291. The Linked Ring photographic society begins to move photography forward as a fine art. The early additive color process Autochrome Lumière is introduced by the Lumière Brothers in France. Welborne Pipe introduces the Bromoil process.
1908 The Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession changes its name to 291.
1909 Abstract post-impressionist art influences straight photography.
1910 The Photo-Secession peaks with the International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography at the Albright Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. Photography is accepted into the mainstream and 15,000 visitors per month attended.
1911 Alvin Langdon Coburn publishes The Door in the Wall, a series of photogravures.
Gertrude Käsebier, Clarence White, Alvin Langdon Coburn, and Karl Struss begin to pull away from Alfred Stieglitz and the Photo-Secession, to join F. Holland Day and form the Pictorial Photographers of America.
1913 Primed by the work of Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Steichen and the gallery 291, the Armory Show, or the International Exhibition of Modern Art, opens.
1914 Baron de Meyer publishes Sur le Prélude à l’Après-midi d’un Faune, a series of photographs after the Ballets Russes.
Clarence H. White School of Photography opens in New York City. World War One is declared in Europe.
1917 The art gallery 291 closes.
America joins World War One.
1918 World War One ends.
1920 The age of modern photojournalism begins. Newspapers and periodicals seek out sensationalist, on-the-spot coverage of cultural and social conflicts.
1922 Robert John patents the Aquatone process.
1939 World War Two begins.
1942 Chester Carlson patents xerography.
1945 World War Two ends.
1948 Edwin Land introduces the Polaroid camera.
1950 Korean War begins.
1953 Korean War ends.
1955 Vietnam War begins.
1975 Eastman Kodak creates a prototype for the world’s first digital camera.
Vietnam War ends. 1976 Jon Goodman begins his travels to Europe where he searches for anyone still practicing photogravure.
1977 Jon Goodman sets up a small press for experimentation at Centre Genevois de Gravure Contemporaine in Geneva, Switzerland, and establishes a working relationship with the famous Atelier of St. Prex, where he teaches himself the forgotten gravure art.
1980 The age of digital photography begins.
1981 Sony announces the Mavica, the world’s first electric camera.
1982 De Niépce a Stieglitz: La photographie en taille-duce exhibit at the Musée de Elysée, Lausanne France
1986 Paul Taylor establishes Renaissance Press.
1988 Johan De Zoete publishes A Manual of Photogravure: A Comprehensive Working-guide to the Fox Talbot Klíč Dustgrain Method.
1989 Eli Ponsaing adapts the use of photopolymer plates as an alternative to more costly and environmentally unfriendly copper plates for printing.
1994 D’encre et de Charbon: Le Concours Photographique du Duc de Luynes 1856-1867 exhibit at Passage Colbert in Paris
1995 A colloquium on the photogravure is held at the Institute for Research in Art / Graphicstudio, University of South Florida.
1999 The Kyocera Company introduces the world’s first phone with a built in camera.
2002 Graver la Lumière, L’héliogravure d’Alfred Stieglitz à nos jours ou la reconquête d’un instrument perdu