In 1839, Louis Daguerre invented the first practical technology for producing what we would call “photographs.” Appropriately enough, they were called “daguerreotypes.” The process was complicated and expensive, and the field was thus limited to professionals and a few zealous and wealthy amateurs. (There was even an American Daguerre Association that helped regulate the industry, as do all such associa-tions, by keeping competition down so as to keep prices up.)
Yet despite high prices, the demand for daguerreotypes was strong. This pushed inventors to find simpler and cheaper ways to make “au-tomatic pictures.” William Talbot soon discovered a process for mak-ing “negatives.” But because the negatives were glass, and had to be kept wet, the process still remained expensive and cumbersome. In the 1870s, dry plates were developed, making it easier to separate the taking of a picture from its developing. These were still plates of glass, and
thus it was still not a process within reach of most amateurs.

The technological change that made mass photography possible didn’t happen until 1888, and was the creation of a single man. George Eastman, himself an amateur photographer, was frustrated by the technology of photographs made with plates. In a flash of insight (so to speak), Eastman saw that if the film could be made to be flexible, it could be held on a single spindle. That roll could then be sent to a de-veloper, driving the costs of photography down substantially. By lower- ing the costs, Eastman expected he could dramatically broaden the population of photographers. Eastman developed flexible, emulsion-coated paper film and placed
rolls of it in small, simple cameras: the Kodak. The device was mar-keted on the basis of its simplicity. “You press the button and we do the rest.”

For $25, anyone could make pictures. The camera came preloaded with film, and when it had been used, the camera was returned to an Eastman factory, where the  film was developed. Over time, of course, the cost of the camera and the ease with which it could be used both improved. Roll film thus became the basis for the  explosive growth of popular photography. Eastman’s camera first went on sale in 1888; one year later, Kodak was printing more than six thousand negatives a day.
From 1888 through 1909, while industrial production was rising by 4.7 percent, photographic equipment and material sales increased by 11 percent. Eastman Kodak’s sales during the same period experienced an average annual increase of over 17 percent.

The real significance of Eastman’s invention, however, was not economic. It was social. Professional photography gave individuals a glimpse of places they would never otherwise see. Amateur photogra-phy gave them the ability to record their own lives in a way they had never been able to do before. As author Brian Coe notes, “For the first time the snapshot album provided the man on the street with a per-manent record of his family and its activities. For the first time in history there exists an authentic visual record of the appearance and ac-tivities of the common man made without [literary] interpretation or bias.”

Hi at all

This is the first post in meseon english blog. After publish lot of articles an interviews in spanish meseon blog, we are proud of inaugurate the english flavour of meseon blog.

In this blog you will find art, artists, news and interviews. We hope you enjoy this blog. Are comments and suggestions are welcome.