Photography 1910-2010 We Know What

Photography 1910-2010

We know what a photograph is…We have almost certainly taken a photograph, just as we have equally probably been part of one. A photograph is

(simply) an equation of light, time, and space. -- Peter Turner

Photography was first presented to the world on August 19, 1839, at a meeting of the Academy of Science and the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris. While Louise-Jacques Mande Daguerre (1787-1851) was the originator of photography, on the day of the presentation, claiming a sore throat, he left the presentation up to Francois Arago (1786-1853) who later initiated the consensus that Daguerre was, in fact, the originator of photography (Marien 2010). Daguerre was given a lifelong pension from the French government, but only upon the agreement to reveal his method, which he discussed in his booklet, Historique et description du procede du Daguerreotype et du Diorama (History and Description of the Process of the Daguerreotype and the Diroama (1839) (Marien 2010). The text was, of course, translated into many different languages all around the globe. (2010).

While we know certain facts about the history of photography and the society in which it was created, the whole story is a bit complex and it involves half successes and missed opportunities, good luck as well as false starts (Marien 2010).

It centers on basic questions about how the elements of history, especially the history of technology, are reckoned and ordered. The oft-repeated story of the presentation of photography in 1839 says little about the precursor of the medium, the specific course of invention, the social environment in which the medium was conceived, and about others who contributed to Daguerre's work or who formulated different photographic processes (Marien 2010).

The most fundamental elements of photography consist of a light-tight box, lenses, and light-sensitive substances. These are so basic and had been known for hundreds of years before they were brought together. "If the invention of photography had depended solely on the availability of materials, it might have been a late Renaissance invention" (Marien 2010).

From 1839 until 1910, a lot of progress was made in photography. Daguerre went on to perfect his technique while at the same time an English inventor, William Henry Fox Talbot, was working on a different process that included the creation of paper negatives that could be utilized to make positive paper prints. This whole process was called the Calotype (which was called the "imperfect work of man…and not the perfect word of God" (Davenport 1999)) and was the basis for modern film technology; however, Daguerre's type was already sweeping across America.

By 1910, photography had made a huge impact on societies worldwide. In 1909, an international show held in Dresden, Germany, was criticized for doing nothing new or innovative (Marien 2010). In 1910, a photo exhibition in Buffalo, New York at the Albright Art Gallery, exhibited approximately 600 pictorial photographs as a retrospective of Pictorialism. Contributors were asked to show both old and new work. "The show is often cited as marking the historical moment when photography was accepted as an art form worthy of museums" (2010).

After World War I, the idealism that came along with Pictorialism was gone. The style continued to be created, mainly in advertising and amateur work, however, Russian Constructivism, which focused on design as a way that artists could engage in changing society positively, as well as European Dadaism, which questioned the belief in beauty and purity after the horrors that the war brought (Marien 2010).

Experimental photography became all the rage in the 1920s. In one of the last issues of the magazine Camera Work, Stieglitz showed the work of Paul Strand, an artist who came to photography not through art but through social concern (Marien 2010). "…Strand learned photography in an intellectual atmosphere of moral concern for humankind" (2010). This style allowed for more objectivity and "straight photographic means" (2010).

Art photography was influenced by both science and technology as well as travel and exploration of the world, but in the 1920s and 1930s, photography was still set in the mid-19th century (Marien 2010) until the breakthrough of color photography. Dye transfer was developed during the 1920s and 1930s by printing the negatives with a variation of the carbon process (dye transfer), which is now called "assembly printing;" however, this was both tedious and time-consuming -- even though the pictures were beautiful. It wasn't until 1935 that Eastman Kodak came to market with a film that was made up of three-color emulsion coated on a single piece of plastic film (Davenport 1999). This film needed to be sent to away to be developed until 1942 when Kodak and a Germany company, Ansco, came up with films that a photographer could process himself. At the same time, Kodak announced a new negative-to-positive film, called "Kodacolor." By 1947, a photographer could take, expose, develop, and print his own color photos (1999).

Another revolution took place in 1947 when Edwin H. Land developed Polaroid instant photography (Davenport 1999). Chemistry was no longer necessary in being a photographer who developed his or her own pictures. "It was an odd choice of phrases, as the system was based on an idea virtually as old as photography -- that of sensitizing, shooting, and developing film inside a restricted area" (1999). This had a major impact on society at that time as everyone wanted fast everything. McDonald's had just started the world's introduction to fast food and airplanes were the way that people now wanted to travel. The local corner store was now no longer the preferred place to shop; people wanted one-stop shopping (1999).

As early as 1972, people were already thinking about ways in which they could be "green." In 1972, Polaroid came out with a completely waste-free process: the sx-70 system. The process was a self-contained, entirely automatic single-lens-reflex system could be shot and then processed in minutes (Davenport 1999). Kodak was very impressed by Polaroid's invention, of course, and he then wanted a piece of the action. Polaroid was furious and filed ten different patent infringement suits against Kodak within just a couple of years (1999) -- and so begins the creation of our litigious society.

Holography was perfected in the United States during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. Holography is the science of giving images a three-dimensional appearance. These images appeared to actually exist in space even though the actual object does not exist where it appears to be (Davenport 1999). "Split laser beams project the image of an entire object; interact with mirrors, lenses, and each other; and are then recorded on photographic emulsions to produce a holograph" (1999).

Computers must be mentioned in the discussion of photography, technology and society. With computers, photographs that already exist can be "uploaded" into the computer through digitization and can then later be "downloaded" for whatever purposes a person wants (Davenport 1999). Different images can be "cut" and then combined to make completely new images.