Photography and Painting

Yesterday we had a lecture titled 'An odd relationship: Photography, painting, the problem of originality and the life and death of mediums.' I found it quite difficult to follow, but I got some small bits of knowledge from it:

The invention of photography changed the purpose of paintings. Painters began to move away from recording in a realistic style, and became more self expressive. Then photography became not just a method of recording things, but an art form with focus on composition of the image. e.g. light and shade, shapes, conceptuality and artists style. So photography influence painters at the time, but painting also inspired the way photography was used.

Also, with the invention of photography came the problem of originality, because although an original painting can be reproduced as a print, it cannot be reproduced as an exact copy in its painted form. Whereas a photograph can be reproduced as an exact copy again and again from the original negative.