1861 | North America • USA | The earliest two patent applications for a photo album in the US were by F.R. Grumel, Geneva, Switzerland on May 14 1861 followed by H.T. Anthony (of E. & H.T. Anthony) and Frank Phoebus with another application for an album on May 28th 1861. (14 May 1861) |
1861 | North America • USA
| Carleton E. Watkins makes his first trip to Yosemite Valley in California with a 100 mammoth glass plate negatives. Each plate weighs 4 lbs and is approximately 18 x 22 inches and captures the grandeur with remarkable fidelity. During the trip he takes 30 mammoth plates and one hundred stereoscopic negatives. |
1861 | Europe • Italian states
| Eugène Sevaistre uses a stereoscopic camera to obtain a faster exposure during the siege of Gaeta (near Naples) during the war between the King of Naples, Francesco II Borbone and the Kingdom of Sardinia. |
1862 | Asia • Japan
| Felice Beato arrives in Japan to produce photos of "native types". |
1862 | Central America
| Désiré Charnay (1828–1915) after returning to France from his travels in Central America (1857 and 1860) publishes Cités et ruines américaines. The book is published in two volumes (1862/1863) and includes forty-nine original photographs. |
1862 | Europe • France
| Guillaume-Amant Duchenne de Boulogne (1806-1875) publishes his findings on facial muscles in the album Mécanisme de la physionomie humaine, ou analyse électrophysiologique des passions. He stimulates different facial expressions in his subjects with electrical shocks and photographs them. This is one of the earliest photographically illustrated medical research reports. |
1863 | Europe • Great Britain
| Julia Margaret Cameron takes up photography after she is given a camera as a present. |
1863 | North America • USA
| Alexander Gardner “fakes” photographs of Confederate sharpshooters by moving a single corpse around to use as a prop after the Battle of Gettysburg. |
1863 | Asia • India
| Samuel Bourne arrives in Calcutta in early 1863. He becomes one of the preeminent photographers of British India and the Himalayas until his departure in 1870 or 1871. He has partnerships with Robertson and Howard but the most enduring was his work with Charles Shepherd and the company they created Bourne and Shepherd still continues today in Calcutta making it one of the longest established photography companies in the world. |
1864 | Europe • Great Britain
| James Mudd photographs the aftermath of the devastating Sheffield Flood in Northern England. (11 March 1864) [Read about] |
1864 | Europe • France
| Louis Ducos du Hauron (1837-1920) patents Chronophotographie which is the first piece of equipment to record animated objects. |
1864 | Asia • Japan
| Felice Beato photographs the Choshu gun battery with the Royal Navy landing party during the battle over the Shimonoseki Strait (Japan). (September 1864) |
1865 | Africa • Egypt
| Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819-1900) takes the first photographs of the interior of the Great Pyramid. |
1865 | North America • USA
| Lewis Powell (aka Payne), David Herold, George Atzerodt, and Mary Surratt are executed at the Old Arsenal Penitentiary in Washington for conspiring with John Wilkes Booth to assassinate President Abraham Lincoln and attempting to assassinate Secretary of State Seward. Alexander Gardner documented the execution his photographs were published as wood engravings in Harper's Weekly on 22 July 1865. (7 July 1865) |
1865 | North America • USA
| Wood engravings of the execution of the Lincoln conspirators published in Harper's Weekly. The photographs of Alexander Gardner taken on the day of the execution, 7 July 1865, were the basis for the illustrations. (22 July 1865) |
1866 | Europe • Great Britain
| The Woodburytype process is patented. Walter Bentley Woodbury of Kingston-on-Thames showed specimens of his Patent Photo-Relief Process to the Photographic Society of Scotland (10 February 1866) Title | Lightbox | Checklist |
1866 | North America • USA
| Alexander Gardner uses his own plates and the works of other photographers to publish Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the War which contains 100 tipped in albumen prints divided into two volumes. It is the most important photographic work on the American Civil War. Title | Lightbox | Checklist |
1866 | Europe • Scotland
| Thomas Annan (1829-1887) is commissioned to record alleys and dismal slums for the Glasgow Improvement Trust and these are published in The Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow (1878) Title | Lightbox | Checklist |
1866 | Europe • Great Britain
| The Cabinet Card (5 1/2 x 4 inches) becomes popular in Great Britain but spreads rapidly around the world. Title | Lightbox | Checklist |
1868 | Asia • China
| John Thomson begins work on his magnum opus Illustrations of China and its People. The book, illustrated by Woodbury-type reproductions from his original photographs, is published four volumes in 1873-74 (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Low, and Searle) |