History of American Photography

The initial use of photography in America was to document portraits of families. As time went on, many more uses for photography became prominent.

The first camera to become available was the box camera, pictured above, also known as the brownie. It allowed family portraits to be taken from home, instead of the studio. It gave the portraits more of a natural feel, versus a staged picture. The brownie, costing only $1, was also made available to the working class because of it's inexpensiveness. Since many people began taking photos with the brownie, the business of postcards started. Kodak made an offer to print photos on postcard paper for free. Postcards were often used to show major news events or important moments in history.

The availability of photographs next launched into the newspaper business. Newspapers used to have to glue the pictures they wanted to use individually onto the page. They could now print the picture righ onto the page, which set the newspaper business on fire. Magazines also began doing this. The original founder of National Geographic began printing pictures of foreign places that people in America had never seen before. It opened people's eyes to the world around them and formed their impressions of the world. These pictures pioneered the printing of colored pictures.

Photography was used to make many impressions on the world. Edward Curtis published a 20 volume set of books on American Indians. He would make them pose in different ways, so people began viewing them as how they were portrayed in these pictures although that wasn't what their life was really like. A man named Hein took pictures of children working and published them in a collection to convince people that child labor wasn't right. This led to the outlaw of child labor.