Pioneers of Photography

Biographies

The inventors, artists and scientists who created the art of photography

Showing 1–5 of 11 biographies
Page 1 of 3
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce
01
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce
7 March 1765 – 5 July 1833
📌 World's first photograph (1826)

French inventor and pioneer of photography who created the world's oldest surviving photograph using heliography. Also co-invented the Pyréolophore, one of the world's first inter…

Louis Daguerre
02
Louis Daguerre
18 November 1787 – 10 July 1851
📌 Daguerreotype process (1839)

French artist, scientist and photographer who invented the daguerreotype — the first publicly available photographic process, announced to the world on 19 August 1839.

Robert Cornelius
03
Robert Cornelius
1 March 1809 – 10 August 1893
📌 First photographic portrait in the USA (1839)

American photographer and pioneer who took the first known photographic portrait of a person in the United States — a daguerreotype self-portrait taken in 1839.

James Clerk Maxwell
04
James Clerk Maxwell
13 June 1831 – 5 November 1879
📌 First permanent colour photograph (1861)

Scottish physicist who demonstrated the first permanent colour photograph in 1861 using three-colour separation — a principle that remains the basis of all colour photography.

Félix Nadar
05
Félix Nadar
April 1820 – 20 March 1910
📌 First aerial photograph (1858)

French photographer, caricaturist and balloonist who became the first person to take aerial photographs in 1858, shooting Paris from a hot air balloon.

11 biographies total  ·  5 per page