photohistory

Autochromes were the first widely available form of color photography but they are so light-sensitive that putting them on display could ruin them forever.

A new edition of Henri Cartier-Bresson's career retrospective photo book has been published in France, two decades after the great photographer's death.

The 40th Leitz Photographica Auction has concluded with the sale of the most expensive camera ever. Oskar Barnak's Leica 0-Series No. 105 sold for nearly five times the highest estimation: over $15 million.

Leica has announced the return of the Leitz Photographica Auction, the world's largest auction of historic cameras that will be held for the 40th time and celebrate its 20th anniversary, with a special piece this year -- the Leica 0-Series No. 105, produced in 1923 and owned by Leica inventor Oskar Barnack himself.

This 22-minute video offers a fascinating deep dive into the history of portrait photography manipulation, which dates all the way back to the Victorian era. It's an eye-opening look at the continuous relationship between societal beauty standards and reality.

Kodak's modern business strategy is as weird to read as it is to write about. The company has jumped from one strategy to the next in an attempt to stay afloat. This 15-minute video delves into how Kodak went from near film monopoly, to near financial ruin, to pharmaceutical manufacturer.

Photographers know better than most: how you edit a photograph can totally chance the perception of that photo for the viewer. But a new online photo history quiz wants to make this explicit, showing how converting a photo to black-and-white can trick us into thinking a photo is much older than it really is.

Professional wet plate photographer Markus Hofstätter is obviously fond of historical photography processes. But his latest video doesn't actually involve taking any photos; instead, he's restoring a 140-year-old chirping brass bird that is thought to be the origin of the phrase "watch the birdie."

American people standing up to the Soviets! America needs Nixon! These were some of the tag lines attached to this photo during Nixon’s presidential campaign in 1960. But behind every picture, there is a story. And this is one of those photos where the story is just as good as the picture.

On November 21st, the 37th Annual Leitz Photographica Auction will take place in Vienna and online. And while the full catalog hasn't been published yet, Leica has unveiled a few "highlights" for collectors to drool over between now and the big day.

When you see the term "colorized photo" you probably imagine skilled retouchers working in Photoshop, or perhaps a machine learning algorithm that does that same work automatically. But the original colorized photos were hand-painted prints made from glass plate negatives. And, as Vox explains, the best of these images came out of Japan.

The Wall Street Journal recently released a mini-doc that tells the entire story of Kodak—a story of a once-dominant company that made its name in film, and is now seeking to reinvent itself as a drug company after struggling to adapt to a future they, in fact, helped to bring about.

Great Britain's Royal Institution has put together a fascinating "tour through the history of photography." Using his own camera collection as a jumping off point, chemist Andrew Szydlo takes you through a sort of "crash course" on the history of photography in 41 minutes.

The Cambridge Digital Library recently uploaded a powerful collection of images captured by Albert Eckstein in the 1930s. Eckstein, a German Jewish doctor, was exiled by Hitler and the Nazi party in 1935 and he chose to spend his exile in Turkey helping to fight the scourge of infant mortality in the country's poorest communities.

Photographer Jacob Carlson has put together a photography tutorial you don't expect to see in the year 2020. In his latest video, he'll show you how to use the 160-year-old three color process to capture color photos using black & white film.

Photographer Todd Dominey recently inherited a piece of photo history from his parents: an original Polaroid SX-70. This camera sent Dominey down the rabbit hole of instant photography history, as he discovered the story behind this world-shaking camera, and the man who invented it, Edwin Land.

Sotheby's has announced the contents of its upcoming Spring photography auction, and it's quite the lineup. The April 3rd auction will include photos by Dorothea Lange, Irving Penn, Ansel Adams, Edward Weston and a salt print by Roger Fenton that's thought to be one of the earliest war photographs ever made.

It was my younger years. I had just published work from the Sudanese Civil War, and the Editor-in-Chief of Germany's GEO magazine, wrote that “Per-Andre risks life and limb for a good shot." Basically, I presume he meant I was a young fool, who took on assignments very few in their clear mind would consider.

Well-known (and controversial) photographer and gear reviewer Ken Rockwell recently put together a fascinating video that is probably best described as a crash course in Nikon lens history. The video covers 100 years worth of Nikon's optical heritage, from the company's original rangefinder glass all the way to the latest lenses for the brand new Z-mount.

In an entertaining holiday-themed video that's part educational and part "bah humbug," YouTuber Azriel Knight explains how Kodak managed to ruin Christmas for two decades of photographers. It's a fascinating story of schmaltzy ads, dead film formats, and a huge patent lawsuit that cost them almost $1 billion.

In a behind the scenes video worthy of r/oddlysatisfying, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) joins expert conservator Lee Ann Daffner to show you what it takes to clean, rehouse, and ultimately save one of the oldest photographs on Earth from being eaten away by its own chemistry.

When you hear the name Magic Lantern, you probably think of third-party Canon firmware. But long before there was such a thing as firmware, or Canon for that matter, there was the Magic Lantern projector.

If you're a fan of instant photography, Polaroid, or you just like the history of photography, you'll love this Polaroid SX-70 Land Camera ad that resurfaced online over the weekend. The 11-minute ad gives an in-depth look at every aspect of this iconic, folding instant film camera that is still beloved today.

Legendary photographer Edward Weston was one of the most influential photographers in American history, and in this short video, we get to go back in time, visit his home, and watch him process one of his negatives from start to finish.

Did you ever dive into an I Spy book as a kid? These photo books were filled with incredibly detailed images that showed tens, sometimes hundreds of objects in a single shot, and challenged children to find specific items within those pictures. And each illustration was captured using real objects by photographer Walter Wick.