The Genius of Photography

The BBC4 series "The Genius of Photography" is a great example of how television can be the most wonderful resource for learning. The entire series is available on YouTube in convenient 10 minute sections. This website helpfully lists all the links with a brief description of the content of each episode. The opening programme also demonstrates how intimately art and science are bound together. Witness Abe Morrel's amazing camera obscura photographs. It seems to me that technology, in all its forms, is often the most important aspect of the school curriculum because it is able to link apparently disconnected disciplines. It is no surprise that one of the inventors of photography, Henry Fox Talbot, was an eminent scientist. He was frustrated by his inability to draw and began to wonder if there wasn't a better way of capturing the shapes of things on a flat surface. His experiments eventually became a new technology called photography. Literally, drawing with light.

If you haven't seen this series, I strongly recommend you watch the whole thing. You won't be disappointed.