room with a view

"The polymath Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (ca.965-1041 CE), known in Latin as Alhazen, was born in Basra, Iraq. After completing his studies in Iraq, he settled in Egypt, wherein he was commissioned by the Fatimid imam caliph al-Hakim (1021 CE) to design a dam on the Nile. Although his prolific contributions covered a variety of disciplines in mathematics, astronomy, and mechanics, his impact was greatest in the field of optics. [...]
      His ocular observations were founded on anatomical examinations of the structure of the eye, as well as being supported by experimental installations devised to detect errors and illusions in visual perception and to explore phenomena like the camera obscura (the darkroom principle behind the pinhole camera)."
— Dr. Nader El-Bizri, The Institute of Ismaili Studies
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"The Italian artist [Caravaggio] has long been suspected of turning his studio into a giant camera obscura, punching a hole in the ceiling to help project images on to his canvas. But new research claims that [he] also used chemicals to turn his canvases into primitive photographic film, 'burning' images he then sketched on to for works such as St Matthew and the Angel. [...]
     'You get the image by turning the whole studio into the camera obscura, but you need darkness, and the problem is you cannot paint in darkness,' [Roberta Lapucci, conservation chief at Florence's SACI institute] said. 'X-ray fluorescence shows the presence of the mercury salt in his canvases. That is not uncommon because it was used in glue, but we are awaiting proof he was using it on the surface, in his primer.'"
— Tom Kington, The Guardian
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"Long before the first public announcements of photographic processes in 1839, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, a scientifically-minded gentleman living on his country estate near Chalon-sur-Saône, France, began experimenting with photography. Fascinated with the craze for the newly-invented art of lithography which swept over France in 1813, he began his initial experiments by 1816. Unable to draw well, Niépce first placed engravings, made transparent, onto engraving stones or glass plates coated with a light-sensitive varnish of his own composition. These experiments, together with his application of the then-popular optical instrument, the camera obscura, would eventually lead him to the invention of the new medium."
— Harry Ransom Center
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