Photography was invented by nineteenth century artists as an art form for their own purposes These men were seeking a lasting literal record of their visual surroundings and they found it The new combination of illumination lens shutter and flat surface coated with chemicals sensitive to light produced images more lasting more convincing in their reality and more richly detailed than painters could produce manually in weeks and months of effort This alone was enough to throw consternation into the ranks of fellow artists and after their first reaction of pleasure in a new kind of image art critics rallied with the haughty charge that photography was not and could not be an art The actual world in which we live had too strong a grip on photography they said and pictures so dependent upon mechanical means could not be called acts of mans creative imagination