Includes bibliographical references and index.

PART I. Rethinking first photograph(er)s -- 1. A sensational story: Helmut Gernsheim and "the world's first photograph" -- 2. What's wrong with Daguerre? -- 3.Omphaloskeptical? On Daguerre, smoke drawing, finger painting, and photography -- 4. The past through the looking glass -- PART II. Multiplying beginnings -- 5. Origins without end -- 6. Notes towards new accounts of photography's invention -- 7. Against photographic exceptionalism -- 8. Sacred stories: photography's indigenous origins -- 9. Seeing ourselves as others see us: Frederick Douglass's reflections on daguerreotypy and racial difference -- PART III. Writing (trans)national histories -- 10. "An American sun shines brighter," or, photography was (not) invented in the United States -- 11. The Bertoloni Album: rethinking photography's national identity -- 12. Photography and its Chinese origins -- 13. Looking into the past and present: the origins of photography in Africa -- PART IV. Tracing scientific origins -- 14. Self-reflections: the nature of Sir Humphry Davy's photographic "failures" -- 15. Natural/mechanical: keywords in the conception of early photography -- 16. A note on the science of photography: reconsidering the invention story.