The fog which covers the beginnings of photography is not quite as thick as that covers the beginnings of printing, and more distinctly as for the latter, perhaps the time had come to discovery, more than one had anticipated, and men who, independently of each other, pursuing the same goal: to fix in the camera obscura images, known at least since Leonardo. When this result, after about five years of effort, was granted at the same time Niepce and Daguerre, the State, enjoying the challenges inventors to file a patent, it enters and, after compensation of those involved, made it something public. Thus were laid the conditions for a constantly accelerated development, which excluded any regard for a long time back. That is why the historical questions, or if you will, philosophical suggest that the expansion and decline of photography have remained unnoticed for decades. And if they are now starting to return to consciousness, it's for a reason. The most recent books agree on the striking fact that the golden age of the photograph of a Hill or a Cameron, a Hugo or a Nadar is its first decade. This is the decade that preceded its industrialization. Not that very first time, barkers and quacks were not picked up the new technology for profit, they did the same mass. But that belongs more to the arts of the fair where it is true, photography has so far been home to the industry. It does not conquered the ground with the business card photo, the first manufacturer, significantly, became [p. 7] millionaire. It is not surprising that the photographic practices that attract today for the first time look at this pre-industrial golden age, have a link with the ground shaking of capitalist industry. It is not easy to find their true nature, the charm of the pictures we have the finest books published recently on the old photograph [* Helmuth T. Bossert and Heinrich Guttmann, Aus der Frühzeit der Photographie , 1840-1870 (200 fig.), Frankfurt / Main, Societäts-Verlag, 1930, Heinrich Schwarz, David Octavius Hill, der Meister der Photographie (80 fig.) Leipzig, Insel-Verlag, 1931ds (Note WB)]. Attempts to control theory, it is extremely rudimentary. And although many discussions have been conducted in the last century in this respect, they, basically, have not released the jester pattern through which a sheet chauvinistic, the Leipziger Stadtanzeiger [sic] thought of having to fight this hour diabolical art from France. "Wanting to fix the fleeting images of the mirror, it reads, is not only impossible thing, as reflected in German-depth research, but the desire to aspire is already an insult to God. The man was created in the image of God and no human machine can fix the image of God. The most enthusiastic artist may be exalted by the heavenly inspiration, a moment of supreme dedication, on the order best of his genius and without the aid of any machine, venture to reproduce the divine traits of man. "Here is in all its burdensome balourdise the trivial concept of" art "technique in which any consideration is foreign and who feels his end coming with the advent of the new provocative technique. Without realizing it, it is against this concept fetish and basically antitechnique the theorists of photography have been battling for nearly a hundred years, naturally without any results. Goes ahead as they nothing more than justifying the photographer before the court that it was putting down precisely. A whole host of other blows by which statement physicist Arago presents and defends the invention of Daguerre, on 3 July 1839 before the Chamber of Deputies. That's the beauty of this speech that to connect with all aspects of human activity. The outline view that is sufficiently broad to justify the improbable face of photography to painting, which is not lacking either, seem insignificant, while the idea is revealed the true scope of the invention. "When [p. 8] observers said Arago, apply a new instrument for the study of nature, what they hoped was still relatively little to the series of discoveries which the instrument becomes an origin. "discourse deploys the broad field of new technology, from astrophysics to Philology: next to the prospect of photographing the stars, we find the idea of recording a corpus of Egyptian hieroglyphs