The camera obscura, meaning dark chamber, was a box or room that contained no openings besides one small lens fitted hole. The lens projected images to the opposite side of the room or box. The images were upside down and not as clear as would have been desired, but the images were only used to aide artists in recreating the images manually and accurately. In the 1660's portable versions of the camera obscura were developed.
Daguerro Type
The daguerro type was named by Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre, and was one of the first forms of photography. This method produced clear, permanent images fixed on silver plates. They were produced through a chemical reaction containing silver, iodine, and mercury vapour. Images were fixed using a sodium solution and couldn't be reproduced.
Calotype and Talbotype
The Calotype/Talbotype was a process created by William Henry Fox Talbot in 1835 . This process produced negative images that were developed on paper treated with silver. Positive images were created by placing the negative over another piece of paper and then exposing that to light yet again. You could use this method to produce multiple copies of the same photo, but as the amount of copies made increased in succession, the image would become less clear.
Collodion Wetplate
The collodian wetplate method was founded by Fredrick Scott Archer in 1851, and was essentially an improvement on both the Daguerrotype and Calotype because it could produce both clear and reproducible images. The process started with evenly coating a glass plate with collodion, then dipping it into a silver nitrate solution. It was then inserted into the camera and exposed to light. The glass had to be developed immediately and then allowed to dry. The only downside to this method was if the glass plate dried before the process was completed, the emulsion would harden and in result ruin the photo.
Dorothea Lang
Dorothea Lang was born May 26th 1895, and was best known for her photojournalism that documented the depression-era. She received a Guggenheim Fellowship award in 1941 for her work in photography, and the progression she began in the genre of documenting with photos. The primary focus of her work was to capture moments and invoke emotion within the viewer. She died of esophageal cancer on October 11th 1965.
Lewis Hine
Lewis Hine, born on the 26th of September 1874, was best known for the ways he used photography to make a statement and create change. The photographs he took of young children working to provide for their families in dangerous conditions brought attention to the tragedy that was child labor before laws were enforced in the United States. He was a photographer for the Russel Sage foundation, and the National Child Labor Committee. Lewis took on many different false roles such as that of a fire inspector or bible salesman to gain entry into factories to take photos although it was prohibited. He died at the age of 66 after an operation on November 3rd 1940.
Matthew Brady
Matthew Brady was a photographer and photojournalist that was born May 18, 1822. He was a student of William Page who was a portrait painter, and later a student of Samuel F. B. Morse who had met Louis Jacques Daguerre, the creator of the Daguerro type camera. He won many awards for his work and is most known for his photographs of the Civil War. He was a very passionate man who described that his spirit told him that he had to go capture moments of the civil war in print despite the danger it put him in. He died bankrupt when the government refused to buy his photos in a hospital after complications from a streetcar accident.
Eadward Muybridge
Eadward Muybridge was born on April 9th 1830 and was important and recognized for his studies of motion and early motion-picture projection. He was a bookseller, took professional and artistic photos, and knew the proper steps to performing the Collodion Wetplate method of developing images. His photographs focused mainly on architecture and landscape. He was a race-horse owner, and oddly enough, began to study photographing motion to prove that all four of a horses hooves left the ground mid-gallop. He invented the Zoopraxiscope that was used to project a series of images, and is one of the first people to inspire the animation we know today. He died May 8th 1904 from prostate cancer.