The "Skira History of Photography" series will be released in four separate volumes: 1839-1890; 1890-1939; 1939-1980; and 1980-2010. Each volume is made up of essays by specialists, including a series of short monographic essays dedicated to individual photographers written by a single author, providing a narrative voice that ensures continuity throughout and a historical framework that adopts a strictly chronological approach. This first volume (1839-1890) considers the years of the invention of photography and those immediately following-extraordinary years from both the point of view of history and of the development of the inventions. Including the great early forebears, like Daguerre and Talbot, and the great photographic expeditions that placed the world before the eyes of an ever-increasing number of people, this first volume also stresses the fundamental links between photography and the world of science. The volume concludes by examining the burgeoning relationship between photography and the traditional arts disciplines, a point of fundamental importance in the development of a photographic language