Though it had been practiced earlier, photography was introduced to the world in 1839. Its significance for art was immediately recognized. On the one hand it could supply artists with “sketches” from Nature of a fidelity previously unknown. On the other it threatened to render obsolete those artists who sole function was to reproduce literal appearances of the physical world. Not only did photographs  provide a vast amount of visual information, but in their peculiarities of form, imaginative artists discovered new means of representation. Photographers were not content to be designated merely factotums to art. Not only were many of them practicing painters and sculptors as well, but their talents as artists were brought to bear in the manipulation of the camera. They conceived of their medium as an art. 

The photographer today  has at his/her disposal a large number of technical means by which he/she may control or manipulate the medium. No less than the painter in his/her craft, the photographer can literally-speaking render works expressive. Though photography may predominantly be employed in a documentary way, to record rather than to interpret the external world, in one degree or another, much photographic imagery is the product of conscious choice, deliberate control and the application of special techniques. The craft and aesthetics of photography are bound up inextricably with those of painting.