A photograph, an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, derives its name from the Greek words for "light" and "drawing," a term coined by Sir John Herschel in 1839. The journey of photography began with Nicéphore Niépce, who produced the first permanent photograph in 1822 using his "heliography" process, followed by the first real-world scene captured in 1826.

After Niépce's death, his partner Louis Daguerre developed the revolutionary daguerreotype, announced in 1839, which significantly reduced exposure times and made portrait photography widely popular, despite its fragile and unique nature. This process eventually gave way to more practical methods like the collodion and gelatin processes, which became foundational for black-and-white photography for many years. Although early experiments with color photography date back to the 1840s, it only became a widespread commercial reality in the mid-1930s with the introduction of user-friendly multi-layer films such as Kodachrome and Agfacolor Neu. Today, most photographs are created digitally using smartphones or cameras.