41 of the Most Important Photographs Ever Taken
A series of photos that are not just pictures but genuine milestones in the evolution of photography.
Published 11 months ago in Wow
The first photo ever taken in history was snapped by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, featuring the picturesque view from his window in Saône-et-Loire, Bourgogne, France.
Though it may not seem like much, it took eight hours to capture this momentous image.
While this list doesn't include all of the most iconic photos ever taken, it does include some of the most iconic and era-defining pictures of the last few hundred years.
1
The very first portrait photograph was actually a selfie! In 1839, Robert Cornelius, a photographer from Philadelphia, had the patience and determination to sit still for 15 minutes, the time needed for a daguerreotype. This resulted in the first clear photograph of a person, the first portrait, and the first ever selfie, all at once.
2
Hannah Stilley Gorby, born in 1746, holds the title of the earliest-born person ever captured in a photo. To put it in perspective, she was born a decade before Mozart and 23 years before Napoleon Bonaparte, both of whom didn’t live long enough to experience the invention of photography. However, at the ripe age of 94, Gorby posed for a portrait using this new technology in 1840.
6
Louis Daguerre made history by capturing the first photograph to feature a human being. The photo depicts a street scene in Paris, but if you take a closer look at the bottom left corner, you’ll see two people — one getting their shoes polished by the other. Since they were standing still during the long exposure time, they could be captured while the rest of the busy street was not.
9
In 1860, long before drones were even an idea in some tech genius’ mind, the first aerial photo was snapped from a hot air balloon. It shows the city of Boston from a bird’s-eye view, 2,000 feet up. The artist behind the lens, James Wallace Black, named it “Boston, as the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It.”
15
James Clerk Maxwell, a mathematical physicist, is credited with taking the first color photograph. The photograph, which depicts a three-colored ribbon, was unveiled by Maxwell during a lecture in 1861 and is considered the first durable color photograph. While Thomas Sutton, the inventor of the SLR, pressed the shutter button, it was Maxwell’s scientific process that made the photograph possible.
18
In Santa Cruz, California, tech pioneer Phillipe Kahn made history by being the first to snap and share a photo with his cellphone. He ingeniously combined a digital camera with a phone to create a primitive camera phone. Then he used it to send real-time pictures of his baby daughter to loved ones.
20
On October 24th, 1946, the V-2 #13 rocket blasted off and made history by capturing the first photograph from space. The picture shows our planet in black and white from an altitude of 65 miles. The operators used a 35mm motion picture camera that snapped a frame every 1.5 seconds as the rocket soared higher and higher.
23
The first digital photo was snapped in 1957, a good while before Kodak engineers created the first digital camera. The image is a digital version of a picture originally taken on film and features Russell Kirsch’s son. It had a resolution of 176x176, making it a perfect square for any Instagram profile.
26
In April 2019, history was made as the world got a glimpse of the first photograph of a black hole. This monumental achievement resulted from a team effort by over 200 international astronomers who worked tirelessly for years. They used an array of powerful telescopes and supercomputers around the globe to crunch the petabytes of data to produce the awe-inspiring image.
28
This black-and-white photograph depicts an animal lounging next to a carriage at a cattle market in Rome. It was snapped by the French photographer Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey during his Mediterranean journey, somewhere between April and July 1842. His work also includes many photographs from Greece, Turkey, and the Middle East.
31
In 1926, Charles Martin, a photographer for National Geographic, and botanist William Longley traveled to the Florida Keys to capture the first-ever underwater photograph in color. The shot featured a hogfish and was made possible by protecting their cameras in special waterproof housing and using a magnesium-powered flash.
32
The Trojan Room coffee pot was the subject of the world’s first webcam. Located in the computer laboratory of the University of Cambridge, it was constantly filmed by a camera and transmitted on all desktop computers so that people could easily check if there was any coffee left without having to make the trip all the way to the room.
34
This photo captures Abraham Lincoln shortly after being elected as congressman. The photographer, Nicholas H. Shepherd, was identified by Gibson W. Harris, a law student who worked in Lincoln’s office when the photo was taken. Little did anyone know that just a few years later, in 1861, Lincoln would become the 16th president of the United States and lead the country through the Civil War.
36
In 2019, researchers showed off the first photo of quantum entanglement, a phenomenon between two particles connected through their quantum states, and captured by shooting a crystal with a laser. Definitely complicated for us, so we won’t delve much into it — just know it’s a remarkable achievement.
38
In 2009, history was made when the first digital camera was used to take a photo of the president of the United States. The person behind the camera was none other than the official White House photographer at the time, Pete Souza, who captured a portrait of Barack Obama. Using a Canon 5D Mark II and no flash, Souza brought the advancement of photography to the White House.
39
In July 1950, NASA’s photographers captured the first-ever picture of a launch from Cape Canaveral. The rocket, named “Bumper 2,” was a two-part machine made up of a V-2 missile and a WAC Corporal rocket. The photo also features other photographers lined up and ready to snap their own shots of the exciting event.
40
A group of tech experts from the Smithsonian and the USC Institute for Creative Technologies joined forces to make the first 3D portrait of a president, using Barack Obama as their subject. They used 50 special lights, 8 sports cameras, and 6 wide-angle cameras to capture the shot. The picture was then 3D printed, which you can see at the Smithsonian.
41
There have been debates on which could be considered the real first Instagram post, but here’s the one many consider the actual winner. On July 16, 2010, Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger took a picture of South Beach harbor and shared it on an app called Codename. Fast forward three months, Codename changed its name and became the beloved Instagram we all know and use today.
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