Part 1 of 5 · freeIntroduction
Photography started with a room, not a camera. The camera obscura is a dark chamber with a small hole: light passing through it throws an upside-down image of the outside world onto the far wall. Described in ancient China and studied from the Greeks to Leonardo da Vinci, it shows the image. It cannot keep it.
Keeping it took until 1826, when a French inventor, Nicéphore Niépce, captured the view from his window at Le Gras: the oldest surviving photograph from nature. He worked with bitumen, and the plate sat in the camera for hours. Niépce later partnered with another inventor, Louis Daguerre, who replaced the bitumen with a more sensitive resin. Even then, nobody sat for a portrait: nothing alive can hold still that long.
The rest is in the Sophia app.The remaining parts, the open-book quiz and the full glossary. Free to start; Premium unlocks everything.
- 2The man who stood still
- 3The slowness excuse collapses
- 4A smile meant something else
- 5They smile when nobody is posing
Open-book quiz8 questions whose answers are in the text.
Glossary7 terms explained in a tap.
30 languagesThe same course, from French to Japanese.
