photographichistory

A Look at The Unknown and Controversial Photography Career of Lewis Carroll

He's known as the author behind the famed Alice's Adventures In Wonderland by most, but the breadth of his disciplines goes far beyond literature. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, more commonly known by his pen name, Lewis Carroll, was also a logician, mathematician, an ordained minister and a photographer... yes, a photographer.

In this article, we'll share a collection of his work as we dive into his upbringing, his photography career and the controversy that surrounds it to this day.

A Look at Some of the Most Powerful and Iconic Photography from the Civil War

The Civil War wasn't the first war to be photographed, but the leaps and bounds that photographic technology had taken leading up to the war in 1861 enabled American photographers at the time to come out en masse when news of the attack on Fort Sumter came.

Many photos came out of the war, showing everything from the horrifically scarred back of an escaped slave, to the bravado of young confederate soldiers. In the video above, curator of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's "Photography and the American Civil War" exhibit Jeff L. Rosenheim walks us through some of those photos, explaining the role each one played in documenting four years of bloodshed.

The Fascinating Story Behind The Oldest Surviving Photograph of a US President

In June of last year, we gave you a quick "photo trivia o' the day" lesson on the history of presidential photography. We told you that John Quincy Adams sat for what is currently the oldest surviving photo of a US President, that James Polk sat for the oldest of a US President in office, and that President Obama was actually the first to have his official photo taken digitally. That first of those three facts, however, comes with an interesting story.

The Story of How the Influential Nikon F SLR Camera Was Designed

The Nikon F, Nikon's first SLR camera, played an important and influential role in photographic history after it was unveiled in 1959. It was the first to combine many of the emerging camera design ideas into a single body, and was the first SLR system widely adopted by professional photographers around the world. This is an interesting 20 minute documentary film that tells the story of how the camera was designed.