Ever since its creation as a medium in the 19th century, photography has changed the way we see the world, bringing real-life subjects and places into better focus. Naturally, the art world has had to adapt to the photographic era, with the most recent development being the rise of a trend in painting known as "photorealism."

Back in the second half of the 1800s, photography was becoming popular while the artistic world was trying to get its bearings. In post-Napoleonic France, the traditional style of painting was somber and muted. This resulted in the emergence of the Impressionist school, which painted with an eye for subjectivity and color over trying to stay objective. In other words, these French painters were more interested in portraying things with feelings rather than try to mimic a style that most photographs could do better.

This anti-objective trend would continue through later art movements like Post-Impressionism, Surrealism and Dada, and Abstract Expressionism. In the late 1960s, new art styles like Pop Art and Minimalism led to an experimentation with photographs. Art dealer Louis K. Meisel was the first to coin the term "photorealism," referring to the new style of replicating the objective and precise feel of a photograph through watercolor and oil painting. While the movement reached its height in the Seventies, it continues to be a popular style of painting and has since spread across the globe as a respectable genre. The advent of digital technologies has allowed for artists to capture even more precision in their painting.

A typical photorealist will need a photograph of their subject as the foundation of their work. To recreate its precision, the artist will employ one of two methods. The first is to turn the photograph into a slide and project it onto a canvas; the artist can then paint over the projected image until it is fully recreated. The second method is to the traditional grid technique, dividing up the canvas into perfect squares and filling each one with the appropriate detail until the whole image is complete.

One of the first artists to define the photorealistic movement was the American painter Charles Bell. Although he had no formal art training, Bell made his start working in the San Francisco studio of painter Donald Timothy Flores. Bell is best-known for his still life paintings, often reproducing the image of vintage toys and statuettes on silkscreen. While these objects are not very remarkable on their own, Bell hoped to use the technique of photorealism to make them larger and more majestic in his paintings. The vintage statue takes on the same gravitas as any classic painting of a bowl of fruit, while still satisfying the modern audience's eye for photographic precision.

You can find examples of photorealistic art at museums such as the Guggenheim Museum and Louis K. Meisel Gallery in New York City, and the Naples Museum of Art in Naples, Florida.

Image by slad87 on Flickr