The original blipper?

I have been reading Adam Thorpe's book Ulverton which I picked up somewhere thinking it was called Ulverston! Then I heard extracts on the radio and thought I would read it anyway. One of the characters who 'writes' it is a Victorian woman photographer who manages, among other things, what we would now call street scenes by hiding her camera under her crinoline! It made me think of Retroman.
However this is the piece which made me think of blip:
Herein is the principal task of this new art of the lens: for,what other purpose must we serve but the bettering of mankind in bringing to its attention that miraculous system which is all about us but which we too easily take for granted. Time hurries us on and our needs make us blind.