The Genius of Photography

[Marvin]

If anyone else is a member of UKNova, it currently has a download of The Genius of Photography, which details the history of photography. It is quite interesting - just been shown in the UK recently.

[who]

Also on usenet in alt.binaries.british.documentaries - about 715meg

It is a 6 part series, Part 1 aired 25/10/07 9-10pm on BBC Four.

Quote from the NFO, probably taken from the BBC docs

The Genius Of Photography - 1 0f 6

Thursday 25 October - 9.00-10.00pm BBC FOUR

The series begins in a palazzo on the Grand Canal, Venice. Using bin-liners and masking tape, photographer Abe Morell turns a room into a camera. He cuts a small hole to let a tight beam of light into the blacked-out room and, with it, the outside world comes pouring in – upside down and twice as natural, thereby demonstrating one half of the simple but profound physical principles on which photography is based.

The other half – the problem of "fixing the shadows" – took longer to solve but, when that was done by two rival methods announced in 1839 by Henry Fox Talbot and Louis Daguerre, photography was born.

Tonight's programme tells the story of the inventions of photography and the way in which it became an integral part of the modern world – not just by documenting but also by changing the way people understood their world. It describes the remarkable achievements of the pioneer photographers including Edward Muybridge's Motion Studies – the revolution that took place when George Eastman made photography
available to the masses with the invention of the Kodak brand and the story of Jacques-Henri Lartigue, the child photographer and ultimate amateur. There are also interviews with Chuck Close and David Byrne.