When photography was invented in the 1820s, it brought about major changes in how people perceive the world. By the 1840s, photography had become an exciting new form of business. For example, a large number of photographers began to create portraits for clients. By the 1860s, the commercial aspects of photography developed further. By then, photographers were taking pictures that were used to help sell newspapers and magazines. In addition, advertisers started to use photographs to help sell products to consumers. At first, photography was not generally regarded as a potential form of art. However, this perspective changed during the late nineteenth century. By that time, a distinction had grown between commercial photography and fine art photography. Commercial photography is defined as the use of photographs for business purposes, such as selling products or selling newspapers. Fine art photography, by contrast, is concerned with creating photographs that can be showed in galleries or published in artistic books. This essay will discuss the differences between fine art and commercial photography, as well as the contexts and points of view that gave rise to these two ways of taking photographs.
As noted by Carr (2011), photography has been linked to commerce since its beginnings (p. 12). For example, there was a commercial demand for portraits in the mid-nineteenth century. Many families at the time wanted photographs taken because they saw the photos as "objects symbolic of high social status" (Ramamurthy, 2000, p. 167). By the mid-nineteenth century, a growing number of people adopted the point of view that photography could be used in advertisements. For example, in 1855, a photographer named Disderi claimed that photographs of furniture products would "attract numerous orders to the manufacturers" (Ramamurthy, 2000, p. 168). During the late nineteenth century, companies increasingly included photographic images in thei...