Recent decades have seen a flourishing interest in and speculation about the origins of photography. Spurred by rediscoveries of first photographs and proclamations of photography s death in the digital age, scholars have been rethinking who and what invented the medium.

"Photography and Its Origins" reflects on this interest in photography s beginnings by reframing it in critical and specifically historiographical terms. How and why do we write about the origins of the medium? Whom or what do we rely on to construct those narratives? What s at stake in choosing to tell stories of...