The Minimalist Photographer

Early Advances

The roots of photography can be traced back to the fourth and fifth centuries BC, when the Greek philosopher Aristotle and the mathematician Euclid described a pinhole camera, and the sixth century AD, when Anthemius of Tralles used a camera obscura in his experiments. Even though these early forerunners of today’s cameras were only capable of projecting an image, they were more than mathematical and scientific curiosities. The 18th century painter Canaletto was known to have used a camera obscura, and it is widely thought that Vermeer, the 17th century Dutch master, used one as well.

It wasn’t until a means of fixing the image was developed, to make it portable and permanent, that photography really took off. This was the real ...