It is almost impossible these days not to include photography in a course on the history of art. I disagree with people such as Walter Benjamin who suggest that technology and art don't go well together. Photography, with its realism, its accurate representation of the thing in front of you, initially deprived many artists of their subject matter, forcing them to look in new ways - no bad thing. True, mass produced images of, say, the Mona Lisa, obviously can't provide the same experience as seeing the real painting. On the other hand, there are photographs which, to my mind, are far more thought-provoking and have greater emotional impact than a painting of the same subject could. Some people say that the traditional idea of an artist with a trained hand and eye is old-fashioned. They no longer believe that an artist needs specialist knowledge, but rather that he or she can simply point a camera at a scene and record it. However, on the one hand, that ignores the creative skill involved in producing photographs. On the other hand, it also ignores the fact that even in the past, painters used various technological aids. For example, the Dutch painter, Vermeer, used a camera obscura to help him create his images.