Shortly after the invention of photography, there was architecture photography. Generous natural lighting, a range of scalable details and a pride of place made architecture a primary subject in the understanding of photographic technology during the first half of the 19th century. 

The Daguerreotype was among the first photographic methods when it was invented by Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre in 1839. An image of Paris' Boulevard du Temple taken by Daguerre in the same year is famous for being the first photograph of a person (visible near the lower left corner), but it is also among the first known photographs of an urban scene. Because the photo required a long exposure lasting several minutes, the traffic is rendered invisible while the buildings are reproduced in great detail, allowing them to become the primary focus. 

While Daguerre focused his invention on a wide range of subjects throughout his career, Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey intended to almost exclusively use the daguerreotype for the purposes of architecture photography, arguably making him the first architecture photographer. His first known photos, taken as early as 1841, focused on the significant sites of his native Paris, including Tuileries Palace and Notre Dame.

As the New York Times writes, the photographer, artist, scholar and amateur archaeologist "set out on an epic adventure across Europe and into the Middle East [in 1842], lugging custom photographic equipment that weighed more than a hundred pounds. He returned with over a thousand photographic plates, including the first surviving daguerreotypes made in Greece, Egypt, Anatolia, Palestine and Syria." 

His photos of several significant architectural sites, including the Parthenon, Hagia Sofia and Jerusalem's Church of the Holy Sepulchre have since greatly contributed to the study of both architecture and archaeology.