Painting and Science: What Photography and Impressionism Teach Us About Innovation

Before Photography: Painting as a Window to the World

Before the invention of photography, painting was humanity’s most powerful visual storytelling tool. Whether capturing the grandeur of royal courts, recording historic events, or preserving the likenesses of loved ones, painting served as both documentation and interpretation. Artists held a vital role as visual historians, and great technical skill was required to faithfully represent reality on canvas.

But painters were not entirely alone in this pursuit of realism. For centuries, many had turned to an ingenious optical device known as the camera obscura.

Camera Obscura: The Artist’s Secret Assistant

The camera obscura, Latin for “dark chamber,” was an early imaging device dating back to antiquity, but it became especially important in the hands of Renaissance and Enlightenment-era artists. It worked on a simple principle of optics: light entering a darkened space through a small hole or lens would project an inverted image of the outside scene onto a surface inside. In the 17th and 18th centuries, portable versions were developed, allowing artists to trace the outlines of landscapes, architecture, and people with impressive accuracy.

Far from being seen as cheating, the use of camera obscura was celebrated by many for aiding in the quest for realism. Artists like Vermeer and Canaletto are believed to have used it to achieve their remarkable detail and perspective. It was not just a technical tool, but a bridge between art and science, an early demonstration of how optics, mathematics, and creativity could intersect.

Despite the help of such devices, however, the process of painting was still painstaking. Creating a single portrait or scene might take days, weeks, or even months. And no matter how accurate the drawing, the artist still had to build light, texture, and emotion through their own hand.

The Disruption of Photography

In the early 19th century, pioneers like Nicéphore Niépce, Louis Daguerre, and William Henry Fox Talbot developed ways to chemically capture light on a surface, fixing an image directly from reality. What once took a painter hours to observe, and render could now be caught by a lens in seconds.

By the mid-1800s, the daguerreotype portrait studio had become a booming business, especially in urban centers like Paris. By 1849, over 100,000 Parisians were sitting for portraits each year. Thanks to innovations by photographers like André Adolphe Disdéri, these portraits could be reproduced multiple times, shared, mailed, and cherished widely. Portraiture, once the privilege of the elite, became available to the middle class.

For painters, this technological leap was existential. If a machine could now do the work of recording faces, light, and landscape with unmatched precision, what purpose was left for painting?

Critics, patrons, and even certain artists feared that the rise of photography would render painting obsolete. Many believed that the emergence of this new technology marked the death of painting.

But history would soon prove otherwise.

The Birth of Impressionism: A Creative Response

But instead of dying out, painting evolved. Artists like Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and their contemporaries turned away from competing with photography’s realism. Instead, they leaned into what photography couldn’t yet do: capture the fleeting light, the feeling of a moment, and the subjective experience of seeing.

Impressionism, which emerged in the 1870s, focused on light, color, motion, and emotion rather than detailed likeness. These artists were inspired by the visual effects of photography such as blurred movement caused by long exposures, but chose to paint how a moment felt, not how it looked through a lens. In fact, the first Impressionist exhibition in 1874 was held in the studio of Nadar, one of Paris’s most famous photographers. Art and science were already in deep conversation.

Photography freed artists from the burden of perfection. It encouraged experimentation, spontaneity, and ultimately, a revolution in artistic thinking.

Lessons for Today: AI and the Creative Future

Today, we are facing a similar moment with the rise of artificial intelligence. Just as photography once challenged painters, AI now raises questions about the future of programmers, designers, and writers. If a machine can generate code, write prose, or create artwork in seconds, what happens to human creativity?

But history offers us a hopeful answer: technology doesn’t kill art. Instead, it transforms it.

Rather than replacing human ingenuity, innovations like AI could free us from repetitive tasks and open new avenues for creative exploration. Just as photography gave rise to Impressionism, AI might usher in new styles, new questions, and new forms of expression.

Maybe It’s Not the End

When faced with radical new tools, we have a choice: resist or evolve. The Impressionists chose to evolve. In doing so, they changed the course of art forever. We now stand at a similar crossroads.

So instead of fearing that AI will kill creativity, maybe it’s time to ask:

What new forms of beauty will we create once we let go of the need to replicate reality?