World Photography Day 2022: the 12 best movies and documentaries to celebrate

World Photography Day 2022: the 12 best movies and documentaries to celebrate

It’s World Photography Day 2022, which means it’s time to do one of two things. You could either dust off your camera and head out to take some fittingly epic snaps – or you could just stay at home and cosy up with one of the best photography-themed movies or documentaries ever made.

We’re not here to judge. We’ve simply presented a tasty menu of the best photo-centric things to stream this weekend, which may or may not influence your decision. There are some real crackers in our list below, from the brand-new Exposing Muybridge (starring Gary Oldman) to the classic Finding Vivian Maier and the all-time great City of God.

Once you’ve decided, you can watch safe in knowledge that you’re doing it in honor of something a bit more significant than National Avocado Day, too. After all, World Photography Day is a genuinely important date – it was on this day in 1839 that the Daguerrotype process was officially gifted to the world (or, in modern lingo, went open source).

World Photography Day 2022: the 12 best movies and documentaries to celebrate

One of the earliest examples of the Daguerrotype process, ‘View Of The Boulevard du Temple’ (above) was taken in 1838 by Louis Daguerre himself. The street looks deserted because the exposure took around seven minutes. (Image credit: Louis Daguerre / Wikimedia Commons)

What’s the Daguerrotype process, other than a great name for a prog band? It was the chemical method developed by French artist and physicist Louis Daguerre, which ultimately became the first commercial photographic process and, you know, pretty much laid the groundwork for 20th century photography. Not bad work for a Monday, as it was on 19 August 1839.