We Humans are visual animals and since antiquity have made images of objects, people, and gods.  Drawing, Painting and Sculpture have the limitation of being highly subjective especially in a time when art works were made at the behest of a wealthy patron. A little license by the artist could be excused under those conditions.

But by the 19th Century there was a need for a way to accurately record information of a scientific nature. A number of persons worked on this problem. Several chemicals were known to darken in the presence of light, but the problem was to "fix" the image so it would not fade and would remain stable.

The first photograph was made in 1836 by the French scientist, Niecephore Npiece, who used a system of tar and oil of lavender to make an image that would last. The next advance was the Daguerreotype which used mercury and iodine on a silver plate to form an image. This method had the advantage of excellent resolution but the disadvantages of not making a positive print and the process was very dangerous due to the toxic properties of Mercury.  Silver halides were found to be most useful for imaging though some photographers used a system of iron and platinum salts. I used this Platinum process for a series of Hercules.  All these images were more or less monochromatic so the search for color was on. Color photography, while invented in the 19th Century has come into its fullest flower in the 20th. The famous physicist, James Clerk Maxwell (who was the first to link electricity and magnetism in a formal theoretical way) is generally credited with the first demonstration of color photography.  Now with easy digital imaging and manipulation the idea that "The camera never lies" has become obsolete though it was never really true at any time.

In ordinary black and white photographs the image is formed by tiny grains of silver metal embedded in a layer of gelatin coated on paper. In color photography the image is formed of tiny "clouds" of dyes. These dyes are yellow, magenta and cyan which combine to form all the colors we see.  In the platinum prints which I do, the image is formed of platinum metal along with a little gold. The platinum is attached firmly to the cotton fibers that make up the paper. This technique is quite permanent. Black and white is reasonably permanent if proper steps are taken in processing. Unfortunately color dyes fade very quickly especially in hot, bright, or humid conditions. The newest digital images are also somewhat impermanent but if recorded on a CD-ROM will probably last at least a century. I do color, black & white, and platinum printing. The digital cameras of today have too little resolution to suit me though they are rapidly improving.  I prefer to use conventional photographs, scan them and then manipulate them. I have been doing digital manipulation of scanned photographs using Paint Shop Pro by JASC which is a full featured easy to use and economical program.