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Louis Daguerre, inventor of the first successful photographic process,  is born on this day in 1787.  An artist who specialized in dioramas, Daguerre was searching for an easier way to reproduce landscapes  when he stumbled across a way to fix light-sensitive gels on tin plates.  Daguerre was also known for a generosity of spirit. His partner,  Nicéphore Niépce, died six years before the Daguerrotype process became public, but he continued to support Niepce’s family. Daguerre also made his process public and”free to the world” — a gift from France — when the full process was described on Aug. 19, 1839.  Within weeks, photographic studios sprang up around the world.

Robert Capa, one of the great combat photographers, is born on this day in 1913 as Endre Friedmann.  He changed his name to Capa in the 1930s when he worked in Paris with Gerda Taro, and opened a photo company that later became the Magnum Photos cooperative.  His work included the “Death of a Loyalist Soldier” and the first photos back from the Normandy landings in June 1944.  He died in 1954 covering the emerging conflict in Vietnam.

Paul Strand,  a major figure in American photography, is born on this day in 1890.  Strand was known for photo-realism and especially for his composition Wall Street, in 1915.   

Joe Rosenthal, photographer for The Associated Press, is born on this day in 1911.   Rosenthal won the Pulitzer Prize for his photo of the Marines who, on Feb. 23, 1945, raised the US flag on Iwo Jima.  With typical modesty, Rosenthal would  say “I took the picture, the Marines took Iwo Jima.”^[

Bettye Lane, American photojournalist, is born on this day in 1930.  Lane was known for documenting major events within the Feminist Movement, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Gay Rights Movement in the United States.

Walker Evans, American photographer and journalist, is born on this day in 1903  in St. Louis Missouri. Evans is best remembered for his work documenting the Great Depression. He took up photography in 1928 and began publishing  in 1930. He spent time in Cuba with Ernest Hemingway photographing street life and the waterfront. In 1935 he began to photograph work in the south focusing on white tenant families. He later became a writer for Time magazine and a professor of photography at Yale University School of Art. In 2000, he was inducted into the St. Louis Hall of Fame.

First glass plate photo is taken on this day by Sir John Herschel, a British mathematician, astronomer, chemist and inventor. Herschel was part of a scientific community that included other photographic pioneers — especially  Louis Daguerre and Henry Fox Talbot— who were corresponding about the chemistry of light-sensitive materials.  Daguerre had already developed the first practical photographic process in the early 1830s, but his daguerreotype  produced a single unique image on a tin plate that was hard to copy.  Talbot’s  paper process, developed in 1841, allowed unlimited copies but had the disadvantage of a grain pattern in the image.  It was Herschel’s glass plate process, which led to the wet collodion process in the early 1850s, that became the basis of late 19th and 20th century photography.

Abbey Road photo —  Photographer Iain Macmillan takes  a photo that becomes the cover image of the Beatles‘ album Abbey Road record on this day in 1969.   According to a Wikipedia article, the image of the Beatles on the Abbey Road crossing has become one of the most famous and imitated in recording history. The crossing is a popular destination for Beatles fans and the crossing was designated as having “cultural and historical importance” by English Heritage. “This is obviously an unusual case and, although a modest structure, the crossing has international renown and continues to possess huge cultural pull – the temptation to recreate that iconic 1969 album cover remains as strong as ever,” said Roger Bowdler of English Heritage. 

Bernice Abbott, American photographer known for her gritty portraits of New Yorkers, is born on this day in 1898.

Margaret Bourke-White,  American photographer, is born on this day in 1904. Bourke-White got an early start as a commercial photographer and had a gift for solving technical problems that had eluded other photographers. She also understood the language of the medium, as can be seen in her portrait of Mahatma Gandhi, where the symbol of non-violence (the spinning wheel) is placed in front of the man himself, which is a metaphor for how Gandhi saw himself. Among her many “firsts,” Bourke-White took the first photo on the cover of Life magazine, was among the first female photographers in combat in WWII, and was the first western photographer to take photos of Soviet industry.