ABSTRACT
Photography and Its Origins is the first multi-authored book to explore photography's beginnings, which marked 150 years since the public announcements of the medium's invention made by Francois Arago in France and Talbot in Britain. Photography and Its Origins seeks to build upon the celebrations and reflections of 1989 by identifying the medium's beginnings and plotting new directions of inquiry that probe or reframe their construction. Contributors look to early scientific experiments and pictorial traditions but also well beyond them indeed, to the multitude of discourses that made early photographic practices possible. Uncovering remarkable artifacts and historical accounts, they "cultivate the details and accidents that accompany every beginning". Recent years have seen a flurry of new investigations into the scientific origins of photography. Importantly, the primary motivation differs from that of the historiographical critiques marking photography's sesquicentennial, which had much to do with the concurrent proliferation of digital photographic technologies.
