Louis Jacques Mande' Daguerre (1787 - 1851)

Daguerre began his life as an apprentice painter of panoramas and although his process was widely used he didn't make a direct contribution to the art of photography. 

Talbot's own Calotype method of photography established the basis of the modern negative - positive process. He published the first book, "The Pencil of Nature", ever to be illustrated with original photographs .

Robert Adamson (1820 - 1847)

Robert Adamson became Scotland's first photographer and began his famous partnership with David Octavius Hill in 1843. Together their work is recognised as the most important in the early history of Photography. 

Hill was a well known painter and illustrator. When he first visited Robert Adamson's studio in 1843 he quickly recognised the importance of photography. Hill, often regarded as the creative force behind the partnership, had little photographic success after Adamson died. 

Roger Fenton (1819 - 1869) 

In 1855 Roger Fenton left England for the Crimean war which was the first war to be reported in photographs. Fenton's 360 Crimean war photographs presented the war as a romantic and appealing adventure. 

Mathew Brady (1823 - 1896)

Modern reportage of war was born and matured in the decade between 1855 and 1865 from the Crimean War to the American Civil War. Mathew Brady headed the photographic teams that accompanied the Union Army. He marked all pictures as his own although his team included Timothy O'Sullivan and Alexander Gardner. His team took over 7000 images that present pictures of destruction.

Until the age of 48 she was what was often viewed as a typical middle class Victorian housewife. However after her daughter gave her a camera she has become recognised as a genius of 19th century portrait photography with a remarkable understanding of the human character. 

Muybridge went to the United States in 1852 and provided photographs showing a horse in motion enabling Leland Stanford to win a bet. In return he offered Muybridge financial support to continue with his locomotive studies using multiple cameras and time phased pictures. In 1887 more than 20,000 of his photographs making up 781 series were published in a book called "Animal Locomotion", many of them male and female nudes. 

Frank Meadow Sutcliffe (1853-1941)

Sutcliffe maybe regarded as a pictorialist enraptured by soft tones and picturesque scenes. His outdoor work, however, usually associated with Whitby Yorkshire, reveals the qualities of what will later be known as documentary photography. 

Rejlander became a professional portrait photographer in 1855. He was Swedish, but lived in Britain. He used combination printing techniques to produce art photographs in the style of allegoric paintings. He also produced figure and facial studies for use by other artists. 

Next : 1880's

Photographers Through Time
1830's | 1840's | 1850's | 1860's | 1870's | 1880's | 1890's | 1900's
1910's | 1920's | 1930's | 1940's | 1950's | 1960's | 1970's | 1980's | 1990's
| 2000's |
Alphabetical Index of Photographers