An annual, worldwide event that honors the art, craft, science, and history of photography. Share your best photographs with #World Photography Day! This celebration originated from the invention of the daguerreotype process developed by Frenchmen Louis Daguerre and Joseph Nicephore Niepce in 1837. On August 19, 1839, the patent for this groundbreaking invention was purchased by the French government and declared as a “gift free to the world.”