Did photography affect paintings?

Did photography affect paintings?

In 1939, when photography was discovered, people thought that it was the death of painting. Even though people thought that it actually was the death of painting, painting is still a medium that is used till this day. Before, when portraits, objects or landscapes were painted instead of photographed, artists were limited to what they could draw.  Their painting were not as imaginative as they are today, they just copied what they saw. Portraits were drawn by these artists, using a camera obscura but it took them a lot of time to do so, in fact only wealthy people got their portraits painted.  After, when photography was invented, painters were free to not be realistic.  They could draw anything that they could imagine.

Now that photography is invented, portraits can be taken in a split of a second. People do not have to sit in a chair for hours to get their portrait painted. Basically, nowadays, nearly everyone owns a camera, it is not something that only rich people have.  Pictures can be taken continuously and a lot of different moment can be recorded, not like before. When people got their portrait painted, the painting only showed one moment, with one expression, were as today, different pictures can be taken at the same moment, with different expressions and poses. Also, if one does not like the photograph, one can easily delete the picture, were as before, this cannot be done, because only one picture is painted.

I would say, yes, photography did affect paintings, but in a good way because nowadays paintings can be much more imaginative and unrealistic. Photographs are seen much more nowadays than paintings but now moments in our lives can be remembered more because of photographs.