Photography is the process whereby light produces an image on a sensitized surface. The precursor of photography and the modern camera is the camera obscura (Latin for "dark chamber"). In its basic form, as developed by tenth-century Islamic scientists, the camera obscura was a darkened enclosure with a small aperture to admit light. The light rays would cast an inverted image of external objects onto a flat surface opposite the aperture. This image could be studied and traced by someone working inside the camera obscura, or viewed from the outside through a peep-hole. In the sixteenth century, the Italian scientist Giambattista della Porta (1538-1615) published his studies on fitting the aperture with a lens to strengthen or enlarge the image projected. Made increasingly versatile through additional improvements, the camera obscura become popular among seventeenth and eighteenth-century European artists--including, perhaps most notably, the Dutch painter Jan Vermeer (1632-1675). The...