From the first chemical experiments of the 1830s to the digital works of today, photography has fundamentally shaped our modern world. Join photographer and veteran teacher Jeffrey Martz as we learn the varied, complex story behind history’s most consequential revolution in communication.

This is the first 5 of 15 high-resolution presentations. Our series will take place in a salon-style forum with a limited number of participants allowing for maximum questions, input, and sharing. We will supply the stories, images, facts, anecdotes, struggles, and eureka moments animating this amazing subject; you supply the curiosity, insights, joy, and questions. Let’s learn together.

History of Photography – Lecture Schedule

Session 1: The Origins of Photography

Thursday, May 5, 7–8:30PM

In the first lecture of the series, Jeffrey Martz will introduce the figures that created photography. From tinker-aristocrats like William Henry Fox Talbot to Parisian entertainer Louis Daguerre; photography was developed to solve a very particular and age-old problem. This “mirror with a memory” and “pencil of nature” revolutionizes the world.

Session 2: The Pioneers of Photography

Thursday, May 19, 7–8:30PM

Early 19th-century photography develops under the pressure of many imperatives. An intrepid group of dedicated amateurs like Anna Atkins, Hill & Adamson, and Southworth & Hawes explore the artistic potential of the calotype. The public, eager for images of themselves, creates a massive new democratic market for portraiture. The first professional studios respond with pioneering daguerreotype and collodion work that set the course for what the form will become.

Session 3: The Documents of Photography, Pt. 1

Thursday, June 2, 7–8:30PM

The technology of photography develops rapidly in the first decades following its 1839 announcement. Nineteenth-century scientists and image-making pioneers, Eadweard Muybridge, Wilson Bentley, Roger Fenton, and many others, take photography’s first purpose– the document – to new frontiers of human vision and experience. From the macro to the microscopic, from the stars to beneath the waves, photography brings new eyes to a positivist world.

Session 4: The Documents of Photography, Pt. 2

Thursday, June 16, 7–8:30PM
The romantic imperative and a public eager for the truth of the camera image drive documentary photography pioneers Francis Frith, John Thomson, and Jacob Riis to all parts of the globe. From the mysterious orient to the bleak wilderness of the American west, photography in the 19th century simultaneously reinforces and shapes our concept of otherness. Back home, social concerns compel pioneering eyewitness photographers into the streets to record the truth of their times.

Session 5: The Art of Photography

Thursday, June 30, 7–8:30PM

The impulse to create beauty finds new expression in the camera. Academically-trained professionals and avant-garde amateurs, Henry Peach Robinson, Julia Margaret-Cameron, and Peter Henry Emerson push photography into the realm of fine art. A debate stirs around the artistic efficacy of machine-made imagery and the role of its operator. By the end of the century art, itself will never be the same.

Instructor Bio

Jeffrey Martz, M.F.A

A seasoned traveler and fine art photographer, Jeffrey Martz earned his MFA in Photography from Utah State in 1997. He has taught graduate Art History at his alma mater and currently teaches photography & Art History at Archie Williams High School in San Anselmo, California.

Workshop presented by The Image Flow Photography Center, providing photography classes, custom printing services, and fine art reproduction.