The first photograph ever taken took place in the 1830’s which was a revolutionary technological advancement because, prior to this people would strictly rely on portraits created by artists through paint. The process and seeing the technology evolve to where it is today is simply astounding to me as a photographer / film maker especially because it allows me to appreciate the art form to an entirely different degree. As simple as it is for us to snap a photo in the blink of an eye on devices that fit in our pockets or DSLR’s is surely taken for granted. Let alone the simplicity we have today but the cost, back when the first photograph was taken that single exposure took around 8 hours and was taken on a massive foreign device called the camera obscura and was a fairly expensive feat and also faded away not too long after being taken. However not too long after in 1834 Fox Talbot created the first exposure that didn’t fade away over time, and many more advancements came soon after this.
Sticking to this time period and relating photography to the provincial town of Middlemarch we can assume that some families could have afforded and taken advantage of this luxury. In the historical novel Will Ladislaw and Adolf Naumann are both painters and Naumann is intrigued by Dorothea Brooke and wants to have her as a subject for a painting. This caught my attention and got me thinking when the first photograph was ever taken and made me wonder if new rich families similar to the Brooke’s would have been able to afford a portrait of themselves at the time. This would have piqued their interest because it would be a new way to obtain an image of someone in a different form than a painting at the time, which would help newer generations of the families understand who their relatives were. "accurate and trustworthy visual records from across the world became available to a wide public for the first time, and over the following decades photography increasingly dominated the graphic media." (British Library, 1)