One of the earliest known daguerrotypes.

Where did photography come from? It is one of those things we all take for granted, and its discovery unmistakably altered our world, but of course, it hasn’t been around forever.

In fact, it is less than two hundred years since the first photographs were taken; 1839, to be precise. And as a new exhibition at London’s British Library makes clear, the earliest examples bear little resemblance to the twenty-first century version.

‘Points of View; Capturing the 19th Century in Photographs’ is a whirlwind tour through a phenomenal collection of early photographic images. Walking around the gallery, you see the changes in photographic methods and the mixed, confused reception the ‘pencil of nature’ was given.

As is logical, the shows starts from the beginning, revealing how frustrating early experiments with a contraption called a camera obscura led to momentous discoveries on either sides of the channel. We go to France for Louis Daguerre’s so-named invention of 1839, the daguerreotype and to England to see the product of dedicated research by William Henry Fox Talbot, the calotype print, announced to the world three weeks later. Both methods were revolutionary in their fields, and both had a long way to go.

Whilst both Daguerre’s and Talbot’s photographic methods emerged concurrently, the procedural differences meant that the resulting pictures varied immensely in quality and appearance, and so were anticipated to have different uses. And as with all technologies, natural selection rooted out the less viable alternative; the daguerreotype. In this at least, the French lost out to the British.

And this being the British Library, examples of daguerreotypes, even from the height of their reign in the 1840s and 1850s, are thin on the ground. However an early portrait (ironically of Daguerre’s rival Talbot) is mesmerising. The image, which emerges on a chemically treated copper plate, is a shimmering delight. At first glance you’d take it for an engraving but such is the accuracy, you know it could not be.

'The Ladder' by William Henry Fox Talbot, 1845

Largely we follow Talbot’s trail, which was the starting point for the photography we see today. On display are Talbot’s initial experiments with photogenic drawing, where he lay plant specimens on light sensitive paper and exposed them to the sun’s rays. The early studies are fascinating, not least the first negative print of Lacock Abbey from 1835, a brownish blur that requires intense study to make out any details.

It is astounding to look at these first attempts and then consider others of a decade later, such is the stunning difference in clarity. We often observe the fast pace of change in modern society, but as Fox Talbot’s work proves, such speedy progress is not unprecedented.

Talbot noted in 1944, “How charming it would be if it were possible to cause these natural images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper.” Although many establishment artists shunned the new technology as inferior or even degenerate,  many enthusiastically greeted a new era.

Travellers such as Francis Frith and Maxime du Camp brought illustration to the wild and exotic cultures they described to those back home, photographing Egyptian treasures, foreign peoples and magnificent natural landscapes. One, a phenomenal view of Istanbul, which patched together several albumen prints from 1870, shows the panorama of a city in a way that it could never have been displayed before.

Through the exhibition it is made clear how in the fields of science, entertainment, travel and history, photography vividly brought to life the ideas, events and people of the nineteenth century. Feast your eyes on a magnificent early image of the moon’s surface, a shot of crowds undertaking the pilgrimage in Mecca, or portraits of creative luminaries like a languidly posed young Oscar Wilde and a darkly intense Charles Baudelaire. Baudelaire, who said photography was a refuge for failed painters, is proved wrong time and time again with pictures displaying a fantastic appreciation for lighting and composition.

'Portrait of Oscar Wilde in New York, 1882'

There are some long-forgotten treasures; the tiny postcard photographs of aristocracy that became popular collectors items, and the dainty Carte de Visite prints of the 1850s which depict all stages of life, from an infant swaddled in fancy clothing to a graduate in cap and gown. Visitors can take a look at an image through the eyes of a Victorian audience, by peeking at one of Charles Wheatstone’s mind-boggling three-dimensional stereoscope images.

A posing stand from the 1880s reminds of the staid nature of Victorian life, while prints of old-fashioned shop fronts remind of a different era. There are some gorgeous shots of daily life. Such mundane ‘caught in an off-duty moment’ poses, for example ‘Breakfast Time At Crystal Palace’, 1852-4, or Peter Henry Emerson’s ‘A Fisherman At Home, 1888 may be standard photography today, but were novel back then.

The exhibition touches on – barely – some of the more sinister pursuits photography was appropriated for. Inspired by Darwin, many used the technique for pseudo-scientific cataloguing of ‘otherness’, as is evident from the tragic but fascinating ‘Brazilian types’ by Albert Henschel in the 1860s-70s, or Reijlander’s studies of humans in different stages of emotion. Unfortunately, there is isn’t enough space given to photography’s role in perpetuating race and mental health related stereotypes, but then it is a topic worthy of an exhibition itself.

But I’m being picky. This is a phenomenal exhibition; a whirlwind tour of a century as tumultuous as they come, and of the development of a new and important social mechanism. Appropriately (and no doubt intentionally), you leave by seeing the early Kodak No. 1 Camera of 1888. With that, photography moved in to the public domain, where it resides today, taken for granted.

But as I left, I was struck by how, as a sign in the exhibition stated, ‘The announcement of photography in 1839 changed the way we see the world’. After witnessing so many of early photography’s functions and uses, it really hits home how much of an understatement it is to say that, because everything – TV, film, aspects of the internet, even social nuances, tourism, war and political culture – can be traced back to our ability to capture a moment in this way. A wonderful gem of a show. For anyone London-bound, this is not to be missed.

‘Points of View; Capturing the 19th Century in Photographs’ runs until March 7th 2010.

Find out more information and explore the exhibition online on the British Library’s website.