Modern art

Cave art

Victorian ladies immortalised on film

Capturing images for posterity has occurred as long as man has walked this earth.  It started with primitive people carving on cave rock.  We have archaeologists to thank for bringing us huge numbers of antiquities that capture the life of our forebears on murals, ornaments and temple walls.  Development of paints that last for hundreds or thousands of years have long allowed artists to pass their work on down through the generations.

When photography was developed people could for the first time capture an image of exactly what they saw rather than having to draw, carve or sculpt a representation of it.

We are so lucky because we still have this vast historical treasure trove to enjoy plus we have all the same methods of capturing life's wonders.

The additional advantage we have over our forebears is that we can now photograph scenes that we ourselves have not seen and may never see with our own eyes.  Thanks to marvels of telescopes, cameras on space probes and immensely powerful computers to process the incoming data from the galaxy, we are treated to stunning photographs of worlds way beyond our planet.

It's an art form made possible through the application of technology.

Cassini photo of Saturn (false colour composite image)

Check out some stunning space images every day at Wired.com