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chronology

  (krə-nŏl'ə-jē) pronunciation
n., pl. -gies.
  1. The science that deals with the determination of dates and the sequence of events.
  2. The arrangement of events in time.
  3. A chronological list or table.
chronologist chro·nol'o·gist or chro·nol'o·ger n.
 
 
Dental Dictionary: chronology

n

The arrangement of events in a time sequence, usually from the beginning to the end of an event.

 

Chronology The following general chronology is provided for reference. The history of photography has been traced thematically in many of the longer entries. But this ‘backbone’ of dates offers a general overview of key technical, institutional, and artistic events in a wide range of countries. Usually, for each year cited, technical innovations appear first, followed by institutional events, and with publications (italicized) and significant photographs (italicized and bold) last.

Listing dates is not always a straightforward matter, especially in the case of new processes or items of equipment. In some cases—the year 1839 is an extreme example—similar discoveries were claimed by several people in different places. Preparing the list sometimes revealed inconsistencies between entries in the book, which were difficult to resolve. But we have done our best, using a wide range of sources. The most useful included Gail Buckland, Fox Talbot and the Invention of Photography (1980); Farbe im Foto: Die Geschichte der Farbphotographie von 1861 bis 1981 (1981); Willfried Baatz, Geschichte der Fotografie (1997); Quentin Bajac, L'Image révéleé: l'invention de la photographie (2001; Eng. The Invention of Photography, 2002); A. W. Tucker et al., The History of Japanese Photography (2003); and, much the most detailed and wide ranging, Christian Sixou, Les Grandes Dates de la photographie (2000). There is an admirably clear and well-illustrated short chapter on the history of photographic processes in Brian Coe (ed.), Techniques of the World's Great Photographers (1981).

1558Giovanni Battista della Porta's Magiae Naturalis includes a description of a camera obscura
1725The German chemist Johann Heinrich Schulze discovers that light can darken a solution of chalk moistened with silver nitrate
1777The Swedish chemist Carl Vilhelm Scheele compares the darkening effect on silver compounds of the different colours of the spectrum
1801The English doctor Thomas Young elucidates the principles of human colour perception
1802Thomas Wedgwood and Humphry Davy contact-print silhouettes of leaves and other objects on paper and leather sensitized with silver nitrate, but cannot fix them
1816The French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, working at his Burgundian estate near Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, embarks on photographic experimentation, using a variety of supports and light-sensitive materials. His objective is to create multiple reproductions of engravings and of images formed in the camera obscura
1822Niépce makes a permanent copy of an engraving contact printed onto a glass plate sensitized with bitumen of Judaea, a substance that hardens when exposed to light
1824At about this time, Niépce succeeds in making camera obscura images from his study window (points de vue), using a direct-positive process involving bitumen-coated metal plates. He names the process ‘heliography’
In Paris, the diorama proprietor Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre also begins photographic experiments
1826Daguerre learns from the Paris optician Chevalier of Niépce's work and conducts an inconclusive correspondence with him
1827Probably in this summer Niépce creates View from the Study Window (Point de vue du Gras à Saint-Loup de Varennes). Niépce meets Daguerre in Paris while en route to visit his brother in London, where he fails to interest the scientific establishment in his heliographic process
1829Niépce and Daguerre sign a formal partnership contract (14 December), prior to which Niépce writes a description of his process, Notice sur l'héliographie. Subsequently Niépce starts using silver iodide as a means of sensitizing silver-plated copper plates
1833In rural Brazil, Hercules Florence succeeds in contact printing and fixing on paper drawings and script created on glass with a burin; he also uses the term photographie
Following Niépce's premature death (5 July), and building on his work, Daguerre continues to experiment, from 1836 assisted by the architect Eugène Hubert. The priority is now the speed of the process and the clarity and permanence of the image, rather than its reproducibility
1834In England, William Henry Fox Talbot begins photographic experiments (January) and eventually succeeds in making and partially fixing silhouetted cameraless negative images of botanical specimens on paper, a process he describes as ‘photogenic drawing’
1835On 28 February Talbot first notes the possibility of making ‘positive’ from ‘negative’ images
That summer Talbot creates photogenic negative images on his estate at Lacock, using small wooden cameras (‘mousetraps’). The earliest surviving example is the c.1-inch square Lacock Oriel Window (Latticed Window) (August). Most significantly for the future, however, he also makes positive prints from his original negatives
Some time between c.1835 and 1837, Daguerre begins to use mercury vapour to develop the latent image and salt to fix the result: a unique, positive, and finely detailed picture which becomes known as the daguerreotype
1838In the autumn, after unsuccessful attempts to fund his invention by public subscription, Daguerre approaches the physicist and parliamentarian François Arago with a view to obtaining government support
Daguerre, Boulevard du Temple Paris, probably the first surviving photograph of a human being, a man having his shoes polished in the street
Charles Wheatstone invents a reflecting stereoscope
1839Arago and the physicist Jean Baptiste Biot announce Daguerre's discovery—but not its practical details—to the Academy of Science in Paris (7 January)
The first public showing of Talbot's photogenic drawings takes place at the Royal Institution, London (25 January)
Talbot reveals the working details of his process to the Royal Society, London (21 February)
Talbot's friend Sir John Herschel reveals his own, rapidly devised photographic process to the Royal Society (14 March). Herschel also proposes the use of sodium thiosulphate (‘hypo’) as a means of fixing photographic images
The French civil servant Hippolyte Bayard produces his first direct-positive images on paper (20 March)
In Munich, Carl August von Steinheil and Franz von Kobell make circular paper negatives of local views, and describe their process to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (13 April)
In June and July it is arranged that Daguerre should cede the rights to his invention to the French state in return for an annual pension of 6, 000 francs
Arago reveals the details of Daguerre's process at a joint meeting of the Academies of Science and Fine Arts (19 August)
Daguerre's manual Historique et description du procédé du daguerréotype et du diorama is published (21 August). A daguerreotype craze follows, with kits on sale from entrepreneurs like Chevalier, Lerebours, and Daguerre himself for c.300 francs
The first public demonstration of the daguerreotype in London (11 September)
In Barcelona, Ramón Alabern makes Spain's first daguerreotype (10 November)
The details of Daguerre's process rapidly circulate throughout Europe and the eastern United States, and many translations of the Historique et description appear
1840The Hungarian mathematician Josef Petzval designs a fast (f/3.6) ‘portrait’ lens that, in conjunction with chemical improvements by John Goddard, Franz Kratochwilla, and Antoine Claudet, greatly reduces daguerreotype exposure times; Hippolyte Fizeau introduces gold toning to improve the contrast of the final image and make it less fragile
The American dentist Alexander S. Wolcott opens the world's first photographic (daguerreotype) portrait studio (Wolcott & Johnson) in New York (4 March)
The first lunar daguerreotype is taken by the American chemistry professor John W. Draper
Talbot discovers a method of speeding the formation and development of the latent (negative) image (September). It becomes easier to use the negative-positive process for living subjects, and Talbot creates a portrait of his wife Constance on 10 October. Talbot's improved process, patented in 1841, is called the calotype (or, by some, the Talbotype)
The Abbé Louis Compte, visiting South America aboard a French vessel, makes daguerreotypes at Rio de Janeiro (January); the young Emperor of Brazil, Pedro II, buys a camera and subsequently becomes a patron of photography
Hippolyte Bayard, Self-Portrait as a Drowned Man (Le Noyé)
During the next decade, a variety of optical, chemical, and manipulative advances improve the efficacy of both Daguerre's and Talbot's processes, until both are superseded by the wet-plate process during the 1850s
1841Richard Beard opens what is reputed to be Europe's first daguerreotype portrait studio, in Regent Street, London (March); Hermann Biow opens a studio in Hamburg
1842Herschel invents the cyanotype printing process
Appearance of the Illustrated London News (14 May)
Biow photographs the aftermath of the catastrophic Hamburg fire (May)
Mads Alstrup opens the first portrait studio in Copenhagen
1843The Austrian Joseph Puchberger patents a panoramic camera capable of making 48.3 × 61 cm (19 × 24 in) daguerreotypes
Robert Adamson opens a studio at Rock House, Calton Hill, Edinburgh (May), and goes into partnership with the painter David Octavius Hill; that year they begin making calotypes at the fishing village of Newhaven (until 1847)
Founding of the Edinburgh Calotype Club
Appearance of the Illustrirte Zeitung in Leipzig, Saxony
Anna Atkins begins publication of Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions (October; it is completed a decade later)
Sergei Levitsky makes daguerreotype views in the Caucasus
The firm of Southworth & Hawes is founded in Boston
1844Henry Talbot opens the Reading Establishment for commercial production of photographic prints and publications
Talbot, The Pencil of Nature (6 parts, 1844-6)
Talbot, The Haystack
1845Talbot, Sun Pictures of Scotland
1847C. F. A. Niépce de Saint-Victor introduces a practical method for making negatives on glass, using a coating of egg white (albumen) and potassium iodide
Calotype Society founded in London
L.D. Blanquart-Évrard announces significant improvements to Talbot's calotype process
The African-American Glenalvin Goodridge founds a daguerreotype studio in York, Pennsylvania; by 1865, after an interval, his brothers Wallace and William have restarted the business in Saginaw, Michigan
1848L'Illustration publishes wood engravings of revolutionary events in Paris from daguerreotypes by Thibault (July)
1849Sir David Brewster perfects a lenticular stereoscope for viewing stereo daguerreotypes
In the autumn Maxime Du Camp and Gustave Flaubert embark on a photographic expedition to the Middle East which lasts until the spring of 1851
1850The Imperial Printing Office in Vienna opens a photographic department under Paul Pretsch which produces calotype architectural studies and views
L.D. Blanquart-Évrard introduces albumen paper for printing positives from negatives
The Daguerreian Journal (later Humphrey's Journal) is founded in New York
J.T. Zealy makes daguerreotypes of South Carolina slaves (rediscovered in 1976)
1851Gustave Le Gray's waxed negative technique further improves the calotype process, enabling sensitive materials to be prepared and stored before use
Frederick Scott Archer publishes a description of the wet-collodion process in The Chemist (March). Although cumbersome and difficult to use, especially out of doors, this wet-plate process, especially in conjunction with albumenized paper, is capable of producing extremely fine images. It dominates photographic practice for over two decades
The Great Exhibition in the Crystal Palace, London, includes over 700 entries from both sides of the Atlantic, including Jules Duboscq's stereo-daguerreotypes and John Whipple's daguerreotype of the moon, but also boosts the wet-plate process
Société Héliographique founded in Paris (January)
Appearance of La Lumière, edited by Ernest Lacan (9 February)
The French Mission Héliographique, the first state-sponsored photographic survey of historical monuments, produces c.300 paper prints, made by Baldus, Bayard, Le Gray, Le Secq, and Mestral
L.D. Blanquart-Évrard opens his Imprimerie Photographique at Loos-lès-Lille, and by the time the establishment closes in 1855 has produced the salt prints for several important archaeological and other works, including Du Camp's Égypte, Nubie, Palestine et Syrie (1852), Greene's Le Nil (1854), and Salzmann's Jérusalem (1856)
1852Henry Talbot begins experimenting with a photomechanical etching process (‘photoglyphic engraving’), later known as photogravure, which is eventually brought to fruition by Karl Klič in 1879
George Washington Wilson establishes his firm in Aberdeen, Scotland
1853Adolphe Martin invents a rapid direct-positive process later known as the tintype, which becomes particular popular with itinerant photographers
The Photographic Society of London is founded (20 January; it becomes the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain (RPS) in 1894)
Félix Teynard, Égypte et Nubie (part-work completed in 1858)
1854Achille Quinet patents the first ‘binocular’ (twin-lens) stereoscopic camera, the Quinetoscope
First description of a solar camera, using reflected sunlight to make enlargements from negatives (ordinary contact printing created images the same size as the original negative)
Société Française de Photographie (SFP) founded in Paris
London Stereoscopic Company founded
The Liverpool Journal of Photography is launched, becoming in 1860 the British Journal of Photography
André Disdéri patents the carte de visite format (November)
The firm of Fratelli Alinari is founded in Florence
Nadar, The Mime Charles Debureau as Pierrot (1854-5)
US Acting Master's Mate Eliphalet Brown Jr., Portrait of Tanaka Mitsuyoshi and other daguerreotypes of people and scenes in Yokohama and elsewhere (the Mitsuyoshi portrait is rediscovered in 1983); other Japanese scenes are photographed by a Russian naval officer, Alexander Fyodorovich Mozhaisky
1855Roger Fenton takes c.360 wet-plate photographs of views and military scenes in the Crimea (March-June)
Édouard-Denis Baldus creates an album of photographs of the railway between Paris and Boulogne-sur-Mer
Gustave Le Gray opens a lavish studio on the Boulevard des Capucines, Paris
The Exposition Universelle in Paris includes a large photographic exhibition organized by the SFP
A photographic school is established at Elphinstone College, Bombay
John Mayall, Sergeant Dawson and his Daughter
1856William Thompson makes primitive underwater photographs in the Wey estuary, southern England
Photographic instruction is included in the training of the British Royal Engineers
Countess Castiglione begins her photographic association with Pierre-Louis Pierson of the Paris studio Mayer & Pierson
Gustave Le Gray, The Brig
1857Felice Beato photographs Lucknow after its recapture from rebels by the British
Carlo Naya opens a studio in Venice
The Bonfils photographic company is founded in Beirut
Camille Silvy, La Vallée de l'Huisne (River Scene, France)
Oscar Gustav Rejlander, The Two Ways of Life
Robert Howlett, Isambard Kingdom Brunel before the Launch of the Leviathan [Great Eastern] (November)
Shiro Ichiki, Portrait of Nariakira Shimazu, the oldest surviving daguerreotype by a Japanese (rediscovered in 1975)
1858The South Kensington Museum, London (later the Victoria & Albert Museum) holds an international photography exhibition jointly organized by the Photographic Society and the SEP
Nadar makes wet-plate aerial photographs from a balloon
Warren de la Rue makes stereographs of the moon
The American Society of Photographers is founded
Désiré Charnay makes the first of several visits to the Yucatán, Mexico, where he photographs pre-Columbian ruins
Founding of the Odessa Photographic Society and the Russian journal Svetopis (Light-Painting)
Egypt and Palestine Photographed and Described by Francis Frith
Henry Peach Robinson, Fading Away
1859Camille Silvy opens a successful carte de visite studio in Bayswater, London
Charles Leander Weed takes the first photographs of the Yosemite Valley (June)
1860Permission for the sale of royal photographic portraits in Britain gives a major impetus to celebrity photography
Personal and financial difficulties force Le Gray to leave France; later he photographs Palermo shortly after its capture by Garibaldi (June)
Disdéri launches his subscription celebrity series Galérie des contemporains
1861The English photographer Thomas Sutton invents and patents (August) a single-lens reflex (SLR) camera, but few are actually made
The Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell makes the first (projected) colour photograph, using three colour separations, but the photographic establishment takes little notice
Auguste Rosalie Bisson takes wet-plate views from the summit of Mont Blanc (24 July)
Nadar uses battery-powered lights to photograph the Paris catacombs (December)
A photographic department is founded by the Krupp steelworks, Essen
1862The British Fine Art Copyright Act extends copyright protection to photographs registered at Stationers' Hall, London (it remains in force until 1912)
Hikoma Ueno opens the first Japanese-owned studio, in Nagasaki
Guillaume Duchenne de Boulogne, Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine
1863The studio of Howard, Bourne & Shepherd (from 1865, Bourne & Shepherd) is established in Simla, north-western India; Samuel Bourne makes the first of three photographic expeditions into the Himalayas
Felice Beato arrives in Japan, and opens a studio in Yokohama
1864John Wilson Swan introduces important improvements to the carbon process, described by Adolphe Louis Poitevin in 1855; the resulting prints are both subtle and permanent, and become widely used in commercial photography
The journal Photographische Mitteilungen is founded by Hermann Wilhelm Vogel
Central Europe's first exhibition devoted exclusively to photography is organized in Vienna by the Photographische Gesellschaft (f. 1861)
1865Charles Piazzi Smyth uses magnesium combustion to photograph inside the Great Pyramid at Giza, Egypt
Foundation of the Palestine Exploration Fund
William Mervyn Lawrence opens a portrait and view business in Dublin; a British intelligence officer, Samuel Lee Anderson, based in Dublin Castle, creates an album of Irish nationalists, inscribed Members of the Fenian Brotherhood
The Uruguayan Esteban Garcia photographs the war between Paraguay and Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay (1865-70) for an American company
Alexander Gardner, Execution of the Lincoln Conspirators at Washington Arsenal (7 July)
1866W. B. Woodbury patents the photomechanical Woodburytype process
The Rapid Rectilinear distortion-free lens is introduced independently by J. H. Dallmeyer and H. A. Steinheil
Ernst Abbe of Zeiss collaborates with the Schott glass company to develop new glasses suitable for the manufacture of more advanced lenses
Introduction of the cabinet format studio photograph
Émile Gsell photographs of the ruins of Angkor in Cambodia
George Barnard, Photographic Views of Sherman's Campaign
1867Commencement of the first of four US Geological and Geographical Surveys of the Western Territories, a programme lasting until 1879 and producing thousands of photographs of the American West
Julia Margaret Cameron, Sir John Herschel (April)
1868An eight-volume official work, The People of India, begins to appear, and is completed in 1875
1869The ‘joining of the rails’ at Promontory Point, Utah, is recorded by A. J. Russell, Alfred Hart, and Charles R. Savage (10 May)
Launch of the specialist Revue photographique des hôpitaux de Paris, illustrated with tipped-in, hand-coloured photographs (it lasts until 1876)
1870During the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1), microphotography is used to create micro-documents transportable by pigeon to and from besieged French cities
Eugène Appert's Crimes of the Commune use photomontage to fake images of atrocities committed by the Paris Communards
Foundation of the Archaeological Survey of India, which in 1871 acquires a photographic branch
Launch in Yokohama of the journal Far East (30 May), regularly illustrated with albumen prints
Andrei Karelin, Nizhni Novgorod
1871Richard Leach Maddox describes a prototype gelatin dry plate; improved versions are increasingly used in the course of the decade, and eventually revolutionize photographic practice. In particular, dry emulsions make the creation of roll-film possible, and standardized manufacturing procedures encourage the development of practical sensitometry
William Henry Jackson photographs in Yellowstone
1872Tomishige Studio founded by Rihei Tomishige in Kumamoto City, Kyushu, Japan
Henry Taunt, A New Map of the River Thames
Charles Darwin, On the Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, partly illustrated with photographs by Oscar Rejlander
1873William Willis introduces the platinum print (platinotype)
Timothy H. O'Sullivan, Ancient Ruins in the Canyon de Chelly, New Mexico
1877John Thomson, Street Life in London (12 parts completed in 1878)
1878Eadweard Muybridge devises a battery-of-cameras system to capture photographs of horses in motion
1879Photogravure, a photomechanical process for creating high-quality reproductions, is perfected by Karl Klič
1880The New York Daily Graphic uses the half-tone process to print a small-scale reproduction of a photograph of Manhattan's Shantytown (4 March)
The Underwood & Underwood stereographic company is founded in Ottowa, Kansas (it moves to New York in 1891)
1881George Eastman founds the Eastman Dry Plate Company at Rochester, NY, with six employees
1884Photomechanical reproductions of photographs of military manoeuvres by Ottomar Anschütz appear in the Leipzig Illustrirte Zeitung (15 March)
Launch of Amateur Photographer magazine (10 October)
Lala Deen Dayal becomes court photographer to the Nizam of Hyderabad
The first edition of Josef Maria Eder's multi-volume Ausführliches Handbuch der Fotografie (Comprehensive Handbook of Photography) begins to appear
1885Launch of the Eastman-Walker roll holder, taking a 24-exposure paper film and suitable for attachment to standard plate cameras
Gaston Tissandier, La Photographie en ballon
1886John Thomson is appointed ‘Official Instructor of Photography’ at the Royal Geographical Society, London
Nadar's interview of the centenarian chemist Michel Chevreul is photographed by Paul Nadar, and thirteen of the pictures are photomechanically reproduced in Le Journal illustré (5 September)
An international photography exhibition is held in Oporto, Portugal
Frank Meadow Sutcliffe, Water Rats
Josef Maria Eder, Die Moment-Photographie (Instantaneous Photography)
1887Patenting of the Kinetoscope motion-picture viewer
Peter Henry Emerson, Life and Landscape on the Norfolk Broads
Eadweard Muybridge, Animal Locomotion
1888Launch of the Kodak roll-film box camera (June), with the marketing slogan ‘you press the button, we do the rest’
As a by-product of their pioneering research on sensitometry, Ferdinand Hurter and Vero Driffield patent an exposure calculator (14 April), later marketed as the Actinograph
Founding of the Photo-Club de Paris
Appearance of National Geographic Magazine (October)
1889Opening of the Graphische Lehr- und Versuchsanstalt (Graphic Art Institute) in Vienna, providing important facilities for photographic training
P. H. Emerson, Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art
1890Paul Rudolph of Zeiss designs the Protar, the first anastigmat lens
Inauguration of the Berlin Lette-Verein's photography school for women
Berliner illustrirte Zeitung founded
Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives
Alphonse Bertillon, La Photographie judiciaire
1892Foundation of the Brotherhood of the Linked Ring (April)
Foundation of the Keystone View Company in Meadville, Pa., by Benjamin L. Singley
1893Verascope stereoscopic camera launched by Jules Richard, Paris
1894Invention of the Mutoscope, a device using series of still photographs to create the illusion of movement
Creation of the Japanese Army Photographic Unit
Alfred Lichtwark, Die Bedeutung der Amateur-Photographie (The Significance of Amateur Photography)
1895The German physicist Wilhelm Röntgen takes the first X-ray photographs (November-December)
The pictorialist Society for the Encouragement of Amateur Photography is founded in Hamburg
George Ewing, A Handbook of Photography for Amateurs in India
1896Paul Martin receives the RPS's Gold Medal for his series of night photographs London by Gaslight
1897Foundation of the National Photographic Record Association by Sir Benjamin Stone and others, active until 1910
Richard and Cherry Kearton, With Nature and a Camera
1898The Folmer & Schwing Manufacturing Co. launches the Graflex camera, the first of a long line of best-selling SLR cameras
Secondo Pia takes controversial photographs of the Turin Shroud
Clarence H. White, Girl with a Mirror
1899Louis Boutan makes an artificially lit underwater photograph 50 m (164 ft) down in the open Mediterranean
1900Eastman Kodak launches the Brownie camera
By this time, c.30 per cent of British amateurs are women, and more than 3, 500 female professionals are working in the USA
George R. Lawrence of Chicago uses a purpose-built Mammoth camera to photograph an entire train
The Munich Photo School is founded, a joint venture between the city, the Bavarian state, and the South German Photographers' Association
Louis Boutan, La Photographie sous-marine et les progrès de la photographie
1901The Professional Photographers' Association is founded, and later (1983) becomes the British Institute of Professional Photographers
Charles Caffin, Photography as a Fine Art
1902Paul Rudolph designs the Tessar lens
Alfred Stieglitz founds the Photo-Secession in New York
1903Stieglitz launches the journal Camera Work
Rodolphe Archibald Reiss, La Photographie judiciaire
Frederick Evans, A Sea of Steps (Wells Cathedral)
1904The German physicist Arthur Korn transmits photographic images over telephone lines from Munich to Nuremberg
The autochrome colour process is announced by the Lumière brothers of Lyon, France
Edward S. Curtis, The Vanishing Race—Navaho
1905The Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession—later known as Gallery 291—open at 291 Fifth Avenue, New York, and continue until 1917
Sir Benjamin Stone's Pictures: Records of National Life and History (2 vols., 1905-6)
1906Marketing of the first commercial panchromatic plates, sensitive to all the colours of the spectrum
1907The autochrome process is introduced commercially, becomes popular with amateurs, and remains available for c.30 years
The first volume of Edward S. Curtis's twenty-volume The North American Indian appears (the last volume is published in 1930)
Alfred Stieglitz, The Steerage
1908Karl Karlovich Bulla and his son Victor photograph Leo Tolstoy and his family at Yasnaya Polyana on the occasion of the writer's 80th birthday (July)
1909Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii embarks on an official photographic survey of Russia, using his own three-colour system
1910Herbert Ponting makes still and motion pictures of Scott's ill-fated expedition to the Antarctic (1910-12)
International Exhibition of Pictorial Photography at the Albright Museum, Buffalo, NY
The ‘Kodak Girl’ becomes a central feature of Kodak advertising
1911International Salon of Artistic Photography in Kiev
1912Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Grand Prix of the Automobile Club de France
1913Alvin Langdon Coburn, New York from its Pinnacles
Anton Giulio and Arturo Bragaglia, Fotodinamismo futurista
Paul Strand, Abstraction, Shadows of a Veranda, Connecticut
1914The Australian Frank Hurley joins Shackleton's expedition to Antarctica and takes spectacular photographs in extreme conditions
1915British troops attacking at Neuve Chapelle on the Western Front use maps based entirely on aerial reconnaissance; in general, the First World War produces major advances in aerial photography
Wilhelm Weimar, Die Daguerreotypie in Hamburg, 1839-1860
1916Arnold Genthe, The Book of the Dance
1917Alvin Langdon Coburn's Vortographs exhibited at the London Camera Club (February)
The final, double issue (49/50) of Camera Work appears, with modern work by Paul Strand (June)
Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths take their first ‘fairy’ photographs at Cottingley, Yorkshire (July)
Foundation of the Imperial War Museum, London
Victor Bulla records the revolutionary events in Petrograd (St Petersburg) (February-October)
1919The Photographic Bureau of the British Ministry of Information becomes the Imperial War Museum's Department of Photographs (1 January)
1922Arthur Korn transmits photographs by radio
Edward Weston, Armco Steel
1923Edward Steichen becomes chief photographer for Nast Publications, publishers of Vogue
Alfred Stieglitz embarks on a long series of cloud studies that he describes as Equivalents
Edward Weston travels to Mexico with Tina Modotti
1924L'Illustration (26 January) publishes a three-dimensional anaglyph of the moon produced by Léon Gimpel from two earlier (1902, 1904) astronomical photographs
László Moholy-Nagy, Malerei Fotografie Film (Painting Photography Film)
Man Ray, Kiki: le violon d'Ingres
1925Launch of Leitz's Leica I (a) 35 mm camera
Arbeiter illustrierte Zeitung founded
1926The German Ica, Goerz, Ernemann, and Contessa-Nettel companies merge to create the Zeiss Ikon photographic conglomerate
Meeting of Eugène Atget and Margaret Bourke-White, who acquires many of his negatives after his death the following year; later she sells them to MoMA, New York
Japanese magazine Asahi Camera launched
Rudolf Koppitz, Movement Study
1927Germaine Krull, Metall
1928Franke & Heidecke introduce the Rolleiflex twin-lens reflex
Dephot agency founded in Berlin
Appearance of the French illustrated weekly Vu (21 March)
Salon de l'Escalier exhibition of modern photography in Paris (May-June)
Karl Blossfeldt, Urformen der Kunst (Archetypes of Art)
Albert Renger-Patzsch, Die Welt ist Schön (The World is Beautiful)
August Sander, Pastry-Cook, Cologne
1929Alfred Stieglitz opens the gallery An American Place in New York, which lasts until 1946
Walter Peterhans is appointed to teach photography at the Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany
Film and Foto (Fifo) exhibition in Stuttgart
An exhibition of Hill and Adamson calotypes is held at the Belvedere, Vienna, curated by Heinrich Schwarz
August Sander, Antlitz der Zeit (Face of our Time)
Tina Modotti, Woman of Tehuantapec (c.1929)
1930Lewis Hine is commissioned to document the construction of the Empire State Building, New York, eventually creating hundreds of images, a selection of which are published in Men at Work (1932)
Atget: photographe de Paris, introduced by Pierre Mac Orlan
At about this time, Man Ray creates his celebrated Glass Tears
1931The Soviet photo-essay A Day in the Life of a Moscow Worker (Alpert, Shaikhet, Tules) appears in the Arbeiter illustrierte Zeitung
Julien Levy opens his first gallery, at 602 Madison Avenue, New York, with a retrospective exibition of American photography
1932Launch of Zeiss Ikon's Contax I 35 mm camera
Group f/64 exhibition at the M. H. de Young Museum, San Francisco (November-December)
Edward Weston, The Art of Edward Weston
Launch of Japanese journal Koga (Light Picture)
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Place de l'Europe
Wanda Wulz, I+Cat
1933Founding of the Rapho agency in Paris
A team led by Col. L. V. S. Blacker overflies Mount Everest for the first time and takes photographs (3 April)
Brassaï: Paris de nuit: 60 photos inédites
José Ortiz-Echagüe inaugurates a three-part series (completed in 1943) of photographic studies of Spain with España: tipos y trajes (Spain: People and Costumes)
1934Founding of Alliance Photo in Paris, and opening of the Harcourt Studio
Edward Weston begins a relationship with Charis Wilson (April), who inspires a series of celebrated nudes in the mid- and late 1930s
Alexey Brodovitch becomes art director of Harper's Bazaar
Doctrine of Socialist Realism proclaimed in the USSR
Antoine Poidebard, La Trace de Rome dans le désert de Syrie, based on aerial photographs
Alexander Rodchenko, Girl with a Leica
1935Launch of the AP WirePhoto network (1 January)
Kodachrome colour transparency film is introduced for cinematographic use (in 1936 for still cameras)
Roy Stryker creates and heads the Historical Section of the US Resettlement Administration (in 1937 renamed the Farm Security Administration [FSA])
Madame Yevonde, Lady Milbanke as ‘Queen of the Amazons’
1936Launch of Ihagee Kamerawerk's 35 mm Kine Exakta SLR, and of Agfacolor transparency film
T* lens coating patented by Zeiss
In Japan, the Seiki Optical Co. designs a Leica-type 35 mm camera called the Kwannon (marketed in Europe from 1937 as the Hansa Canon)
Walter Benjamin's essay ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’
Appearance of Life magazine (23 November)
Founding of the Black Star agency in New York
The Photo League, a group of New York-based documentary still photographers, emerges from the earlier (1928) Film and Photo League
Bill Brandt, The English at Home
Bill Brandt, The Lambeth Walk
Dorothea Lange, Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (Prairie Mother) (March)
Robert Capa, The Falling Soldier (Death in Spain) (23 September)
1937Founding of Mass-Observation in England by Tom Harrison, Humphrey Jennings, and Charles Madge
Edwin Land founds the Polaroid Corporation
The Hindenburg disaster at Lakehurst, NJ (6 May), is recorded by numerous photographers; many of the pictures are distributed by WirePhoto and published next day
Photography 1839-1937 exhibition at MoMA, New York, curated by Beaumont Newhall, and the first survey of photography to be held at an American museum. It is accompanied by Newhall's The History of Photography
Edward Weston receives the first fellowship awarded to a photographer by the Guggenheim Foundation, for travel in the western states of the USA
Maurice Bonnet founds the Relièphographie company in Paris for production of lenticular stereograms
Man Ray, Max Ernst, Lee Miller, and other Surrealists gather at Lambe Creek near Truro, Cornwall (June)
Herbert List, Goldfish Bowl, Santorini
1938Kodak Super Six-20 camera with automatic exposure control, styled by Walter Dorwin Teague
The Minox sub-miniature camera goes into production in Riga
Andor Kraszna-Krausz founds the Focal Press in London
Appearance of the British weekly illustrated paper Picture Post (1 October), edited by Stefan Lorant
D. A. Spencer, Colour Photography in Practice
R. M. Taft, Photography and the American Scene: A Social History, 1839-1889
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Sunday on the Banks of the Marne
1939Horst P. Horst, Mainbocher Corset, Paris
1940Foundation of the Department of Photography at MoMA, New York, the first of its kind in an art museum, directed by Beaumont Newhall
Edward Weston, Tide Pool, Point Lobos
1941Victor Hasselblad founds his own manufacturing company in Gothenburg, Sweden
The German serviceman Joe Heydecker takes illicit photographs of the Warsaw Ghetto (February)
Launch of the Zurich monthly magazine Du (March)
John Grierson founds the National Film Board in Canada
The Wandering Jew exhibition held by Tanpei Shashin Club, Osaka, Japan (May)
Walker Evans (with James Agee), Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
Ansel Adams, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico
1942Introduction of the Kodacolor process for making colour prints from colour negatives
Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead, Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis
Jindrich Styrsky (with Jindrich Heisler), On the needles of these days
Launch of the Japanese propaganda magazine Front in sixteen languages (January), its first edition dedicated to the Japanese navy
Gordon Parks, Ella Watson (American Gothic)
1943George Strock, Three American Soldiers Ambushed on Buna Beach, New Guinea (February; published in Life, 20 September)
Weegee, The Critic
1944Robert Capa photographs the D-Day landings on Omaha Beach, but most of the pictures are ruined in processing (6 June)
1945Atomic bomb test at Alamogordo, N. Mex.; the only surviving colour photograph of the explosion is taken by Jack Aeby of the Special Engineer Detachment (16 July)
The atomic attack on Hiroshima is photographed from the bomber Enola Gay by George R. Caron, and on the ground by Yoshito Matsushige (6 August)
Alexey Brodovitch, Ballet
Weegee, Naked City
Joe Rosenthal, Raising of the Stars and Stripes at Iwo Jima (23 February)
1946Refounding of Rapho by Raymond Grosset
1947Edwin Land's ‘peel-apart’ instant picture process is demonstrated at the American Optical Society (21 February), heralding the launch of Polaroid 95 instant cameras the following year
Magnum agency founded at meetings in Paris and New York
Edward Steichen succeeds Beaumont Newhall as director of the Department of Photography at MoMA, New York, and stays until 1962
Incorporation of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction (Indiana University, Bloomington), which eventually acquires a large photographic archive
Hugo van Wadenoyen, Wayside Snapshots
1948Holography described and named by Denis Gabor
W. Eugene Smith's photo-essay Country Doctor appears in Life
Philippe Halsmann, Dali Atomicus
Eric Hosking, Barn Owl with Vole
1949Opening of the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, NY
German fotoform group founded
Launch of Paris Match (25 March)
Robert Doisneau (with Blaise Cendrars), La Banlieue de Paris
Willy Ronis, Provençal Nude
1950First Photokina photographic trade fair, Cologne
Drum magazine founded in South Africa, lasting until 1985
Japan Professional Photographers' Society founded
Izis (Israëlis Bidermanas), Paris des rêves
Robert Doisneau, The Kiss at the Hôtel de Ville (Les Amants de l'Hôtel de Ville) (March)
1951Partly as the result of official harassment, the Photo League disbands
Light Publicity, one of the most important post-war Japanese advertising agencies, is created, and employs many leading photographers
The Photographic Society of Japan is founded (December)
David Douglas Duncan, This Is War
1952Helmut and Alison Gernsheim rediscover Niépce's View from the Study Window (Point de vue du Gras à Saint-Loup de Varennes) of 1827 (15 February)
Launch of the journal Aperture
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Images à la sauvette, photographies (Paris)/The Decisive Moment: Photography by Henri Cartier-Bresson (New York)
1953Launch of Playboy magazine (November)
Dmitri Baltermants, The Announcement of Stalin's Death
1954Ernst Leitz GmbH launches the Leica M series with the M3 rangefinder camera
Pierre Bourdin begins working for French Vogue
Pierre Verger, Deux Afriques
1955The Family of Man exhibition opens at MoMA, New York (January)
Henri Cartier-Bresson, Les Européens
1956The Family of Man exhibition is held at the Takashimaya department store in Tokyo, and attracts large crowds (March-April); later the first International Subjective Photography exhibition takes place at the same location (December)
William Klein, New York (Life is Good and Good for You in New York)
Josef Sudek Fofografie
O. Winston Link, Hot Shot Eastbound at Iaeger Drive-In, West Virginia
1957Picture Post closes (1 June)
Lucien Clergue, Corps mémorables
1958Robert Frank, Les Américains: photographies de Robert Frank (Paris)/The Americans (New York, 1959)
Ansel Adams, Aspens, Northern New Mexico
1959Launch of 35 mm Nikon F SLR by Nippon Kogaku (later Nikon)
The Family of Man exhibition reaches Moscow
VIVO agency launched in Tokyo (July), and lasts until 1961
Bernd Becher and Hilla Wobeser (later Becher) begin collaborating on images of industrial structures in western Germany
A selection of W. Eugene Smith's Pittsburgh photographs appears in Photography Annual
Richard Avedon, Observations
Jeanloup Sieff, Borinage
1960Federico Fellini's film La dolce vita gives currency to the term paparazzo for intrusive celebrity photographers
Irving Penn, Moments Preserved
Alberto Korda, Il guerillero heroico (Che Guevara) (5 March)
1961Creation of the first successful holograms
Bill Brandt, Perspective of Nudes
1962John Szarkowski succeeds Edward Steichen as director of the department of photography at MoMA, New York
Bert Stern photographs Marilyn Monroe (July), shortly before her death
American aerial reconnaissance photographs identify Russian missiles positioned in western Cuba (October)
Malick Sidibé opens Studio Malick in Bamako, Mali
Eliot Porter, with texts by H. D. Thoreau, In Wildness is the Preservation of the World
1963Kodak Instamatic series launched (February)
First production 35 mm SLR camera with through-the-lens (TTL) metering, Tokyo Kogaku's Topcon RE Super
Nippon Kogaku launches the Nikonos underwater camera
An acclaimed exhibition of Jacques-Henri Lartigue's early photographs is held at MoMA, New York
Publication of the first Pirelli Calendar
1964The young Chinese photographer Li Zhensheng joins the Heilongjiang Daily in Harbin in north-eastern China (October); later he photographs events of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76)
Edwin Smith (with Edward Hyams), The English Garden
1965Pierre Bourdieu, Un art moyen: essais sur les usages sociaux de la photographie (Paris)/Photography: A Middlebrow Art (New York, 1996)
Lennart Nilsson, A Child is Born
1966The Photographer's Eye exhibition at MoMA, New York
Michelangelo Antonioni's film Blowup
Hou Bo, Mao Zedong Swimming in the Yangtze River
1967New Documents exhibition at MoMA, New York
Founding of the Friends of Photography at Carmel, California
Ernest Cole, House of Bondage
1968The radical Japanese journal and collective Provoke is founded (November) by Daido Moriyama and others
Laura Gilpin, The Enduring Navaho
Eddie Adams, General Nguyen Ngoc Loan Executes a Vietcong Prisoner in a Saigon Street (1 February)
Ronald L. Haeberle, Massacre of Villagers at My Lai 4, South Vietnam (16 March; the pictures are not published until November 1969)
1969Ralph Gibson founds Lustrum Press in New York
The Lee Witkin photographic gallery opens in New York
Harlem on my Mind exhibition, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
MoMA, New York, acquires the Eugène Atget archive
Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin on the Moon (20 July), taken with a Hasselblad 500SL camera
1970E. J. Bellocq's rediscovered Storyville Portraits of New Orleans prostitutes, taken c.1912 and newly printed by Lee Friedlaender, are exhibited at MoMA, New York
The French Law of 17 July 1970 severely restricts the photographic invasion of privacy
Inauguration of the Arles Festival
Ralph Gibson, The Somnambulist
Bernd and Hilla Becher, Anonymous Sculptures
Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Diary of a Century
Kishin Shinoyama, Nude
1971The Photographers' Gallery opens in London
Sotheby's, London, holds its first photographic auction, organized by Philippe Garner
Appearance of the Spanish journal Nueva lente
Philip Jones Griffiths, Vietnam Inc.
Nobuyoshi Araki, Sentimental Journey
Larry Clark, Tulsa
1972Launch of Olympus's OM SLR system with the mechanical OM-1
Bell Systems USA announces the use of charge-coupled devices (CCDs) for a solid-state camera
Polaroid SX-70 Deluxe instant-picture camera, with ultrasonic autofocus system
The Musée Niépce opens at Châlon-sur-Saône
Diane Arbus becomes (posthumously) the first photographer to be represented at the Venice Biennale
Publication of Life magazine suspended (December)
The publishing house La Azotea is founded in Argentina; in general, book publishing becomes an increasingly important activity for photographers
The first of W. Eugene Smith's photographs of pollution in Minamata, Japan, appear in Life (2 June); they are exhibited in Japan and elsewhere from 1973 and are published as a book in 1975
Daido Moriyama, Bye Bye Photography
Nick Ut, Napalm Attack, Trang Bang, South Vietnam (8 June)
1973Sygma agency founded in Paris
Harold E. Edgerton, Bullet Passing through a Candle Flame
1974The Camera and Dr Barnardo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London includes images of Victorian child prostitutes by ‘Francis Hetling’ shown later (1978) to be fakes: a symptom of the rising value of the market in historic photographs
International Center of Photography founded in New York
New Japanese Photography exhibition at MoMA, New York, curated by John Szarkowski and Shoji Yamagishi
Tony Ray-Jones (d. 1971), A Day Off: An English Journal
Bernd and Hilla Becher, Water-Towers, 1
1975The Fox Talbot Museum opens at Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire
New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape, organized by William Jenkins, at the International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House
The Camera Obscura gallery opens in Stockholm
Mervyn Bishop, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam Pours Soil into the Hand of Traditional Gurindji Landowner Vincent Lingiari, Northern Territory, [Australia]
Josef Koudelka, Gypsies
1976Introduction of ASA 400-rated colour negative film (Fujicolor FII 400), 11 million times more sensitive than the bitumen-coated plates used by Niépce in the 1820s
Founding of Contact Press Images
William Eggleston's Guide exhibition of colour photographs at MoMA, New York
Susan Meiselas, Carnival Strippers
1977Konica C35A autofocusing compact camera, using infrared sensing
The Hackney Flashers, a socialist and feminist collective, is founded in east London
Stills Gallery opens in Edinburgh
Cindy Sherman begins the series Untitled Film Stills (1977-80)
Kosti Ruohamaa, Night Train at Wiscasset Station
Humphrey Spender, Britain in the '30s
Thomas Nelson, A Practical Introduction to the Art of Daguerrotypy in the 20th Century
1978Ian Berry, The English
Mirrors and Windows exhibition at MoMA, New York
1979Founding of the Consejo Argentina de Fotografía
Jo Spence, Beyond the Family Album
1980First Week of Spanish Photography in Barcelona (May)
The Imaginary Photo Museum exhibition at Photokina, Cologne
David Bailey's Trouble and Strife
Martine Franck, Le Temps de vieillir
Roland Barthes, La Chambre claire (Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography)
Annie Leibovitz, John Lennon and Yoko Ono
1981Cindy Sherman's Untitled Film Stills exhibited at Metro Pictures, New York
Tee A. Corinne's series Yantras of Womanlove
Susan Meiselas, Nicaragua
Helmut Newton, Self-Portrait with Wife and Model
1982Demonstration of Sony's ‘still-video’ Mavica camera, recording up to 50 analogue images on a magnetic disc
Launch of Kodak disc camera. Production continues until 1988
A survey estimates that c.20 million working cameras exist in France, and that 62 per cent of households own at least one
Susan Sontag, On Photography
Bert Stern, The Last Sitting
Stephen Shore, Uncommon Places
1983The National Museum of Photography, Film, and Television opens in Bradford, an outstation of the Science Museum in London
Scottish Society for the History of Photography founded
The Ken Domon Museum, Japan's first museum dedicated exclusively to photography, opens in Sakata
Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen, Byker
Robert Mapplethorpe, Lady: Lisa Lyon
Roman Vishniac, A Vanished World
Michael Hiley, Seeing through Photographs
1984Launch of the fully automated Minolta Dynax 7000 (Maxxum 7000) 35 mm SLR
The National Galleries of Scotland create the Scottish National Photography Collection
The J. Paul Getty Museum in Malibu, California, founds a department of photography, of which Weston Naef becomes director
Oliviero Toscani begins his association with the Benetton clothing firm (until 2000)
The Picture Photo Space gallery opens in Osaka, Japan
David Williams, Pictures from No Man's Land
1985Richard Avedon, In the American West
Takeshi Ozawa et al. (eds.), The Complete History of Japanese Photography (12 vols., completed in 1988)
Black Sun: The Eyes of Four exhibition (Eikoh Hosoe, Masahisa Fukase, Daido Moriyama, Shomei Tomatsu) at the Museum of Modern Art, Oxford, then in London and Philadelphia
1986Nan Goldin, The Ballad of Sexual Dependency
André de Dienes, Marilyn mon amour
South Africa: The Cordoned Heart, book and exhibition sponsored by the anti-apartheid agency Afrapix
1987Controversial Corps à corps exhibition held by the French group Noir Limite
Andres Serrano, Piss Christ
1988Foundation of the Daguerrian Society in the USA
1989Canon and Fuji launch consumer electronic cameras, recording analogue images on, respectively, floppy disks and memory cards
The 150th ‘official’ anniversary of photography is celebrated with exhibitions including The Art of Photography, 1939-1989 at the Royal Academy, London, and On the Art of Fixing a Shadow at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, and the Art Institute of Chicago
The exhibition Robert Mapplethorpe: The Perfect Moment arouses major controversy
The Ansel Adams Center for Photography opens in San Francisco
David Goldblatt founds the Market Photography Workshop in Johannesburg
Japan Photographers' Association founded, for both professionals and amateurs
1990The Hubble Space Telescope, using a CCD array to capture astronomical images, is launched into orbit by the US space shuttle Discovery
The first edition of Adobe Photoshop image manipulation software is launched
Photography Until Now exhibition at MoMA, New York, followed by the retirement of John Szarkowski as director of the photography department
Ken Burns makes extensive use of historic photographs in his television documentary series The American Civil War
Fay Godwin, Our Forbidden Land
Pierre Mac Orlan and Marcel Bovis, Fêtes foraines
1991Kodak and Philips launch the Photo CD system
The beginning of a spate of censorship scandals in Japan, involving the work of photographers such as Nobuyoshi Araki and Kishin Shinoyama
Foundation of the research-orientated Japan Society for the Arts and History of Photography
Alexandras Macijauskas, My Lithuania
Donna Ferrato, Living with the Enemy
1992Launch of the Canon EOS-5, the first camera with eye-controlled autofocus
Launch of Kodak DCS digital SLR cameras
In their film Photowallahs, David and Judith MacDougall explore the culture of street photography in the north Indian town of Mussoorie
Toshio Shibata, Quintessence of Japan
Jeff Wall, Dead Troops Talk
1993Sebastião Salgado, Workers
1994The US Clementine spacecraft maps the entire surface of the moon and takes c.1.8 million photographs
Sally Mann, Still Time
Nouvelle Histoire de la photographie, edited by Michel Frizot
1995Light from the Dark Room exhibition, National Galleries of Scotland
Freelens professional photographers' association founded in Hamburg
Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography opens fully, and hosts the first Tokyo International Photo-Biennale (June-July)
Launch of Print Club (Puri-Kura) photo-booths in Japan
1 June becomes an annual Day of Photography in Japan
1996Launch of the Advanced Photographic System (APS) by a consortium of manufacturers
First Tokyo Month of Photography (May)
1997The Helene Anderson collection of avant-garde photographs of the 1920s and 1930s is auctioned at Sotheby's, London (May), fetching high prices
Founding of Getty Images Inc.
Opening of Tokyo Photographic Cultural Centre
1998Native Nations: Journeys in American Photography exhibition at the Barbican Gallery, London
David Goldblatt, South Africa: The Structure of Things Then Raghubir Singh, River of Colour
1999The Royal Library of Copenhagen's collection of 10 million pictures becomes the Nationale Fotomuseum
A large part of the Jammes collection of 19th-century and modernist photography is auctioned at Sotheby's, London, achieving record prices and a total of over £6 million; Gustave Le Gray's La Grande Vague, Sète fetches £507, 000 (c.$800, 000)
The New York collector John Pritzker pays over $1 million for a print of Man Ray's Glass Tears
Online sales of photography are boosted by the creation of www.eyestorm.com
Daido Moriyama et al., Stray Dog
Patricia Macdonald (with John Berger), Once in Europa
Annie Leibovitz, Women
2000Photojournalists and other professionals adopt digital photography in ever larger numbers; Canon launches its last film-based professional SLR, the EOS-1V
Paris en 3D exhibition at the Musée Carnavalet, Paris
How You Look at It exhibition, an overview of 20th-century photography, at the Sprengel Museum, Hanover
Inauguration of an annual Documentary Photo Festival at Miyazaki, Japan. However, economic depression leads to the closure of many photographic galleries and periodicals
Naoya Hatekeyama, Underground
Sooni Taraporevala, The Parsis of India: A Photographic Journey
2001Digital cameras outsell film cameras in Japan (and in the USA in 2003)
Founding of VII photographic agency by James Nachtwey and others
Andreas Gursky retrospective at MoMA, New York, curated by Peter Galassi; a print of his Montparnasse (1994) sets a record for contemporary photography by fetching c.$600, 000
Wolfgang Tillmans wins the Turner Prize at Tate Britain, London
Closure of the Friends of Photography (October)
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Architecture of Time
Jean Gaumy, Men at Sea
2002Production of Olympus OM film cameras ceases
The first consumer-level camera phones are launched
The exhibition Ansel Adams at 100 tours the USA and Europe
2003Launch of the Canon EOS 300D 6.3 megapixel digital SLR for under £1, 000
Launch of the Olympus E-1 digital SLR, incorporating the Four Thirds sensor system and using lenses designed exclusively for digital imaging
The Japanese manufacturing giants Konica and Minolta merge to become Konica-Minolta (October)
Guy Bourdin exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London
Transfer of the RPS photographic collection to the National Museum of Photography, Film, and Television, Bradford
Cruel and Tender exhibition at Tate Modern, London, its first exclusively photographic show
Lartigue: l'album d'une vie exhibition at the Pompidou Centre, Paris (and the Hayward Gallery, London, in 2004); another major Paris show, Le Daguerréotype français: un objet photographique celebrates pioneering French photography
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others
Li Zhensheng, Red-Color News Soldier
2004Kodak ends production of APS cameras and embarks on a restructuring of its business worldwide
Launch of the Nikon F6, predicted in some quarters to be the company's last professional film-based SLR
Launch of the Canon EOS 1Ds Mk II digital SLR, with 16.7 million pixels
Samsung launches a 5-megapixel camera phone. A Fonetography exhibition is held at the AOP Gallery, London
Ilford Ltd., specialists in black-and-white film materials, go into administration
Two NASA exploration vehicles soft-land on Mars and begin transmitting stereoscopic digital images of the terrain
Opening of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC, incorporating a major photographic archive (21 October)
The Cable Factory Photography Gallery opens in Helsinki
At its annual award ceremony in November, the RPS honours the lifetime achievements of the portraitist Arnold Newman and documentary photographer Humphrey Spender. Other awards illustrate the many-sidedness of the medium in the early 21st century. Those honoured include the photojournalists Terry O'Neill and Simon Norfolk; the picture editor Aidan Sullivan; the nature photographer Andy Callow; the cinematographer Seamus McGarvey; Eric Fossum and Peter Burns for research on digital image processing, and Efthimia Bilissi for work on image reproduction via the Internet; the collector and auctioneer Philippe Garner; the hologram collector Jonathan Ross; the photographic publisher Dewi Lewis; and Anne McCauley, Colin Harding, Val Williams, and Mark Holborn for curatorship and historical scholarship
2005The Japanese firm Kyocera, maker of Contax and Yashica cameras, announces its withdrawal from camera production and concentration on camera phones

 

[De]

An ordered sequence of related events, episodes, or defined blocks of time. A relative chronology exists where items in the sequence are related to one another but not to absolute dates, such as may be established through stratigraphy, typology, artefact correlations, or cross-dating. An absolute chronology exists where the items in the sequence are each independently dated in calendar years using techniques such as radiocarbon dating or dendrochronology.

 

c.1500-1000 bceVedic period in India
c.1000-800 bceComposition of Brāhmaṇas
c.800-500 bceComposition of major Upaniṣads
c.500 bceLife of Lao-tsu
552-479 bceLife of Confucius
c.485-405 bceLife of the Buddha (Śākyamuni)
c.465-413 bceReign of Bimbisāra
c.405 bceCouncil of Rājagṛha
327-325 bceAlexander the Great in India
322-298 bceReign of Candragupta Maurya
303 bceMegasthenese at court of Candragupta
c.300 bceCouncil of Vaiśālī
c.284 bceCouncil of Pāṭaliputra I
c.272-231 bceReign of Aśoka
c.250 bceCouncil of Pāṭaliputra II
247 bceMahinda introduces Buddhism to Sri Lanka
200 bceBeginnings of Mahāyāna Buddhism. Composition of Prajñā-pāramitā texts begins.
c.200-000 bceStūpa construction at Sāñcī
148 bceAn Shih-kao arrives in China and establishes first translation bureau
200 bce-200 ceInvasion of India by Śuṇgas and Yavanas (187-30 bce), Śakas and Pahlavas (100-75 bce), and Kuṣāṇas (1st-2nd century ce)
101-77 bceReign of Duṭṭhagāmaṇi Abhaya in Sri Lanka; Buddhism becomes state religion
c.100-000 bceAbhayagiri monastery founded in Sri Lanka
29-17 bcePāli Canon written down in Sri Lanka during reign of Vaṭṭagāmaṇi Abhaya
c.100-000 ceBuddhism enters central Asia and China. Composition of Lotus Sūtra and other early Mahāyāna texts
c.100-200 ceFounding of Nālandā
c.200-300 ceBuddhism arrives in Vietnam
c.100-200 ceCouncil of Kaniṣka
150-250 ceLife of Nāgārjuna
c.200 ceBuddhism transmitted to Burma, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia
c.300 ceLife of Asaṇga and Vasubandhu
334-416 ceLife of Hui-yüan
343-413 ceLife of Kumārajīva
350-650 ceGupta dynasty in India, Buddhist philosophy and art flourish
372 ceBuddhism transmitted to Korea
399-414 ceFa-hsien travels to India
c.400-500 ceLife of Buddhaghoṣa
c.500-600 ceComposition of tantric texts in India
499-569 ceLife of Paramārtha
c.500 ceDevelopment of Hua-yen, T'ien-t'ai, Ch'an, and Pure Land schools in China
520 ceBodhidharma arrives in China
538-97 ceLife of Chih-i; development of T'ien-t'ai school
552 ceBuddhism enters Japan from Korea
572-621 cePrince Shotoku sponsors Buddhism in Japan
581-618 ceChinese Sui dynasty
c.600 cefirst diffusion of Buddhism in Tibet
c.600 ceLife of Dharmakīrti; flourishing of logic and epistemology
617-86 ceLife of Woˇnhyo; foundation of ‘unitive Buddhism’ in Korea
618-50 ceLife of Songtsen Gampo; establishment of Buddhism in Tibet.
618-907 ceChinese T'ang dynasty; golden age of Buddhism in China
625-702 ceLife of Uˇisang; introduction of Hwaoˇm (Hua-yen) into Korea
629-45 ceHsüan-tsang travels to India
638-713 ceLife of Hui-neng; Northern-Southern schools controversy
643-712 ceLife of Fa-tsang; consolidation of Hua-yen school
650-950 cePala dynasty in India
668-918 ceUnified Silla Period in Korea; Buddhism flourishes
671-95 ceI-ching travels to India
c.700 ceLife of Padmasambhava
c.700 ceNorthern-Southern Schools controversy in Japan
c.700 ceEsoteric school (Chen-yen tsung) develops in China
c.700-800 ceConstruction of Borobudur
c.700-1100 cePala dynasty; Mahāyāna and tantric Buddhism flourish; consolidation of school of logic and epistemology (pramāṇa)
710-94 ceNara period in Japan; Six Schools of Nara Buddhism
742 ceCouncil of Lhasa
767 ceConstruction of Samyé monastery in Tibet
767-822 ceLife of Saichō; founding of Tendai school
774-835 ceLife of Kūkai; founding of Shingon school
794-1185 ceHeian period in Japan
c.800 ceFounding of Vikramaśīla monastery
836-42 ceReign of Lang Darma and suppression of Buddhism in Tibet
845 cePersecution of Buddhism in China
960-1279 ceSung dynasty in China
978-1392 ceKoryoˇ period in Korea
983 ceFirst printing of Chinese Buddhist canon (Szechuan edition)
1012-97 ceLife of Marpa and origins of Kagyü order
1016-1100 ceLife of Nāropa
1040-77 ceKing Anawrahtā unifies Burma and gives allegiance to Theravāda Buddhism
1040-1123 ceLife of Milarepa
1042 ceAtīśa arrives in Tibet; beginning of second diffusion of Buddhism
1055-1101 ceLife of Uˇich'oˇn
1073 ceSakya order of Tibetan Buddhism founded
1079-1153 ceLife of Gampopa
c.1100 ceConstruction of Angkor Wat
1133-1212 ceLife of Hōnen, founding of Jōdo-shu school
1141-1215 ceLife of Eisai; transmission of Rinzai Zen to Japan
1158-1210 ceLife of Chinul; Chogye order founded; development of Sŏn in Korea
1173-1262 ceLife of Shinran; founding of Jōdo-shinshū in Japan
1185-1392 ceKamakura Period in Japan
1197 ceNālandā University sacked by Mahmud Ghorī
c.1200 ceBuddhism disappears from north India. Traces linger in south.
c.1200 cePrinting of Tripiṭaka Koreana
1200-53 ceLife of Dōgen; Sōtō Zen established in Japan
1222-82 ceLife of Nichiren
1239-89 ceLife of Ippen; foundation of Jishū school
1244 ceSakya Paṇḍita converts Mongols to Buddhism
c.1260 ceTheravāda declared state religion of kingdom of Sukhothai (Thailand)
1290-1364 ceLife of Butön; compilation of Tibetan canon.
1357-1419 ceLife of Tsongkhapa; Gelukpa order founded in Tibet
1360 ceTheravāda becomes state religion of Thailand
1368-1644 ceMing dynasty in China
1392-1909 ceCh'osŏn period in Korea, Buddhism suppressed
1411 ceTibetan Kanjur printed in China
1578 ceOffice of Dalai Lama instituted by Mongols
1617-82 ceLife of Dalai Lama V and beginning of rule of Tibet by Dalai Lamas
1644-94 ceLife of Bashō; Buddhism influence on haiku and the arts in Japan
c.1700 ceBeginning of colonial period and Western domination of south and south-east Asia
1749 ceMongolian Buddhist canon translated from Tibetan
c.1800 ceBeginning of the academic study of Buddhism by Western scholars
1823 ceRoyal Asiatic Society founded
1851-1868 ceReign of Rama IV in Thailand; reform of Thai Saṃgha
1853 ceFirst Buddhist temple founded in USA, in San Francisco.
1868-1912 ceMeiji period in Japan; Buddhism suppressed in favour of Shintō
1870-1945 ceLife of Nishida Kitarō, founder of Kyoto school
1875 ceTheosophical Society founded
1879 cePublication of the The Light of Asia by Sir Edwin Arnold
1881 cePali Text Society founded in England by T. W. Rhys Davids
1891 ceMahabodhi Society founded by Anagārika Dharmapāla
1891-1956 ceLife of B. Ambedkar; conversion of former Untouchables in India
1899 ceBuddhist Churches of America founded
1924 ceThe Buddhist Society founded in London
1924 ceWoˇn Buddhism founded
1924-9 ceCompilation of Chinese canon (Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō) in Japan
1937 ceNichiren Shōshū Sōkagakkai formally established
1938 ceRisshō Koseikai founded
1950 cePeople's Liberation Army enters Tibet
1950 ceWorld Fellowship of Buddhists founded
1954-6 ceCouncil of Rangoon
1959 ceDalai Lama XIV flees to India; persecution of Buddhism in Tibet by Chinese
1967 ceFriends of the Western Buddhist Order founded
1970 ceDevelopment of Engaged Buddhism
1973 ceVajradhatu Foundation founded
1976 ceInternational Association of Buddhist Studies founded
1989 ceInternational Network of Engaged Buddhists founded
1995 ceUK Association of Buddhist Studies (UKABS) founded
2001 ceDestruction of standing Buddha statues at Bāmiyān by Taliban regime

 
Wikipedia: chronology
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Pictoral chronology of intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency
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Pictoral chronology of intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency

(General) Chronology is the science of locating events in time. An arrangement of events, from either earliest to latest or the reverse, is also called a chronology or, particularly when involving graphical elements, a timeline or a living graph. See also Chronicle.

Definition

Unlike chronometry (i.e. timekeeping), which is part of physics, (general) chronology, as the science of locating historical events in time, is part of the discipline of history.

A chronology may be either relative—that is, locating related events relative to each other—or absolute—locating these events to specific dates in a Chronological Era. In that these dates are themselves events, the difference between the two blurs a little: an absolute chronology just includes a strange sort of event called a date which is common to all absolute chronologies covering the same period of time. Even this distinction may be blurred by use of different calendars. In Judeo-Christian cultures, historical dates in an absolute chronology are understood to be referred to the Christian era, in combination with the (proleptic) Julian calendar (originally) and the Gregorian calendar respectively.

Calendar and Era

The familiar terms ‘calendar’ and ‘era’ (within the meaning of a coherent system of numbered calendar years) concern two complementary fundamental concepts of chronology. For example during eight centuries the calendar belonging to the Christian era, which era was taken in use in the eighth century by Bede, was the Julian calendar, but after the year 1582 it was the Gregorian calendar. Dionysius Exiguus (about the year 500) was the founder of that era, which is nowadays the most widespread dating system on earth.

Anno Urbis Conditae Era

Though in Roman antiquity one frequently reckoned back to any supposed year of foundation of the city of Rome, the Anno Urbis Conditae era, which like the Anno Domini era did not in reality exist yet in antiquity, was used systematically for the first time only about the year 400, namely by the Iberian historian Orosius; pope Boniface IV (about the year 600) seems to have been the first who recognized the connection between these two eras (i.e. AD 1 = AUC 754).

AUC commonly does not stand for Anno Urbis Conditae/ the year of the foundation of the city, but ab urbe condita/ since the foundation of the city (rome).

Astronomical Era

Dionysius Exiguus’ Anno Domini era (which contains only calendar years AD) was extended by Bede to the complete Christian era (which contains in addition all calendar years BC but no year zero). Ten centuries after Bede the French astronomers Philippe de la Hire (in the year 1702) en Jacques Cassini (in the year 1740), purely in order to simplify certain calculations, put the Julian Dating System (proposed in the year 1583 by Joseph Scaliger) and with it an astronomical era into use which contains a leap year zero, which the year 1 (AD) precedes but does not exactly coincide with the year 1 BC. Astronomers never proposed seriously to replace our era with their astronomical era (which for that matter coincides exactly with the Christian era where it concerns the calendar years after the year 4).

Other chronological subjects

Other familiar chronological subjects are for example: timeline, linear timescale, French revolutionary era, leap year, Hebrew calendar. Subjects of the Christian chronology are for example: Dionysius Exiguus' Easter table, Paschal full moon, lunar cycle, solar cycle, easter cycle, lunar phase number, millennium question.

Prehistoric chronologies

In the absence of written history, with its chronicles and king lists, late 19th century archaeologists found that they could develop relative chronologies based on pottery techniques and styles. In the field of Egyptology, William Flinders Petrie pioneered sequence dating to penetrate pre-dynastic Neolithic times, using groups of contemporary artefacts deposited together at a single time in graves and working backwards methodically from the earliest historical phases of Egypt. Compare the American technique of Seriation.

Known wares discovered at strata in sometimes quite distant sites, the product of trade, helped extend the network of chronologies. Some cultures have retained the name applied to them in reference to characteristic forms, for lack of an idea of what they called themselves: "The Beaker People" in northern Europe during the 3rd millennium BCE, for example. The study of the means of placing pottery and other cultural artifacts into some kind of order proceeds in two phases, classification and typology: Classification creates categories for the purposes of description, and typology seeks to identify and analyse changes that allow artifacts to be placed into sequences [1].

Laboratory techniques developed particularly after mid-20th century helped constantly revise and refine the chronologies developed for specific cultural areas. Unrelated dating methods help reinforce a chronology, an axiom of corroborative evidence. Ideally, archaeological materials used for dating a site should complement each other and provide a means of cross-checking. Conclusions drawn from just one unsupported technique are usually regarded as unreliable.

Bayesian analysis has recently started to be routinely applied in the analysis of chronological information, including radiocarbon-derived dates,

Several legendary sources tend to assign unrealistically long lifespans to pre-historical heroes and monarchs (e.g Egypt, Hebrews, Japanese), if the number of years there reported are understood as years of more than 340 days. One potent explanation for this has been that there have been more than one harvest during the actual year, and memories evolving to legends tend to count each growth period as separate year.

Though chronologies formulated before the 1960s are subject to serious skepticism today, more recent results are more robust than readily appears to journalists and enthusiastic amateurs.

See also

Examples

Techniques

Other

References

    Further reading

    • M. Aitken, Science-Based dating in Archaeology (Thames and Hudson, London) 1990: a recent overview

    External links

    absolute chronoloy- dates of phenomena expressed in years, or in the subdivions, consist of absolute or chronometric dates.cu:Хронологї


     

    c. 6000 BC

    Farming begins in Tigris-Euphrates and Nile River Valleys

    c. 4000 BC

    Farming begins in Yellow River Valley

    c. 3500 BC

    Sumerian city-states emerge

    3300 BC

    Rulers divide Nile Valley into Upper and Lower Egypt by this time

    c. 3100 BC

    Egypt unified into single kingdom

    c. 2800

    Indus River Valley civilization begins

    2180 BC

    Egypt’s Middle Kingdom established

    c. 2000 BC

    Stonehenge built in England

    c. 1760 BC

    Hammurabi rules in Babylon

    c. 1700 BC

    Hebrew monotheism emerges