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An Essay On The History Of Photography
History of photography and photojournalism
Kodak and the digital revolution
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It is considered that photography only became widely available to the public when the Kodak Eastman Company introduced the box shaped Brownie Camera in 1900. (Baker, n.p.) Its features became more refined since its original placing on the market; one of the reasons why it has become considered the birth of public photography is because of the processing. Using a similar image capture system, the brownie exposed the light to a 120mm roll of film, which could be wound round, meaning six photographs could be taken before the slides needed removing. The first Brownie used a six-exposure cartridge that Kodak processed for the photographer. (Kodak.com, n.d.) Realistically, the armature photographers did not need to understand darkroom processes, they could simply use capture the subjects, and send it to be developed. The cameras were relatively affordable, targeting many different markets, which is apparent from their advertisements. Figure 2 Is an advertisement from for the Eastman Kodak Company’s Brownie Camera; It states in bold lettering “Operated by any school boy or girl” which emphasis how it was targeted for amateur use.
Figure 2. Eastman Kodak Company Advertisement (Undated)
Leica introduced a small format 35mm camera in 1925. This smaller machine revolutionized the way photographers could transport the camera, as they could photograph discretely in all situations. (Uk.leica-camera.com, n.p.) Leica are considered a premium brand camera, well built and precise ensuring the images they create are quality. Leica, who are still a camera maker, have photographic galleries in Frankfurt, Los Angles, New York, Salzburg and Tokyo, alternating exhibitions of work that the Magnum Photographers captured. But from here, the 3...
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... qualities, and focal ranges, meaning the camera could calculate the appropriate settings, which before, were a educated and process.
Mary Price commented in her 1994 novel The Photograph: A Strange, Confined Space that the image is a product of the photographer. The photographer taking every kind of decision into consideration to formulate the outcome, she writes;
“The camera may be thought of as a comparable to the eye. The difference is that the camera is not more than an eye. It does not think. Any connection with judging, choosing, arranging, including, excluding, and snapping has to be with the photographer.” (Price;1994.4)
In many ways, the camera is an eye, they both gather information, which is then determined into a visual image by other components. She confidently states that the camera cannot think, making it only the photographer’s work.
Having such an image before our eyes, often we fail to recognize the message it is trying to display from a certain point of view. Through Clark’s statement, it is evident that a photograph holds a graphic message, which mirrors the representation of our way of thinking with the world sights, which therefore engages other
" The main and essential thing is : the sensory exploration of the world through film. We therefore take as a point of departure the use of the camera as a keno-eye, more perfect than the human eye, for the exploration of the chaos of visual phenomena that fills space."
Camera lucida: Reflections on photograph (R. Howard, Trans.). New York: Hill and Wang. Original work published 1980. Bleckner, R. (1992).
“Alternatively it might be the case that an every day observation, some small ordinary event, which when isolated, framed in the camera and re-presented to the viewer, can take on a different and worthwhile quality.”
Kodak and Fujifilm are two of the most historically recognizable and iconic names in the world of photography. Kodak was formed in the early 1880’s by George Eastman in Rochester, New York, under the name Eastman Dry Plate Company. Eastman had spent the previous few years of his life trying to improve on the way images were transmitted once taken on a camera. When Eastman first became interested in photography, the images that were taken on a camera were done so by using wet film plates. He spent the next couple years trying to develop film on dry plates, obtaining a few patents along the way, but it wasn’t until 1883 that he made a huge discovery. That year, Eastman developed film on rolls, instead of plates, and by 1885, he had developed the first transparent photographic film. The now famous Kodak name first became registered in 1888, and over the next few years Eastman continued developing new types of film, adding transparent movie film, and daylight loading film by 1892, when the company officially became Eastman Kodak Company. By the turn of the century, Kodak was becoming increasingly popular through their sales of portable cameras, mostly through the sales of their Brownie camera, and their ability to continually develop new types of film. When Eastman died in 1932, Kodak was arguably the most recognizable names in the photography and film industry. Kodak was initially able to build off the success that it achieved under Eastman, developing the 8 mm film and 16 mm film, giving the average consumer the ability to record home videos. In 1958, Kodak released the first automatic, color projector, the Kodak Cavalcade, and followed that with the more popular Carousel line of projectors.
...ndividual subject in the image, and perhaps by putting themselves in their shoes, deepen their understanding of their own autonomy. Once one is able to find the application to themselves, they have successfully filtered the subjectivity of the photographer, and established their own subjectivity towards the image.
In 1943, Edwin H. Land, founder of Polaroid and his family were on vacation, he took a photo of his daughter and she asked him to see the photo of her right after it was taken, because of the curiousness of his daughter on that day inspired him of the instant camera (Linderman, 2010). Four years later, at the Optical Society of America meeting, he amazed the audience by demonstrated of the instant camera for the first time (Polaroid, 2017). Christopher Bonanos, an author of the story of Polaroid gave a definition that it is an instant photography at the push of a button. The new technology by Land was very fancy and wondrous to the world. “This is the first published photographic history of the Polaroid company”
She starts by bringing a pessimistic view to photographs of nature, by describing what may or may not lie just outside the boundaries of the picture. Mockingly she leads the reader to assume that there are no real nature photos left in the world, but rather only digitaly enhanced photos of nature wit...
The camera is presented as a living eye in her work, capable of bending and twisting, contorting reality in its own light. It is at the same time a sensuous device, one that exp...
...el through time and show newer generations of the events of the past and the rich history of a particular country. With the use of all the technology over the years, photography has now become a major part of everyday life and the photographer behind the camera.
I believe that in able to see the world we should photograph life at a certain moment in time so we can capture reality, and able to look back at it. Susan Sontag expresses, “Although there is a sense which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are” (Sontag 6). Interpreting this quote can go a different way such as, that the photographer is capturing the world by the lenses, not the eyes. I believe that if we’re experiencing the world through the lenses, or rather
Photography is traced back to France in the 1800’s where the camera obscura was invented and in the late 1820’s to the 1830’s where a French inventor by the name of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, invented the first camera and printed the first photograph on paper he is also credited with taking the first photograph1, but he wasn’t the only one working on this new invention, there were many others during this time period inventing different parts and making the camera better with each invention. It took time and many different inventors over years to create a process where they could turn a negative into a photo. By the late 1800’s photography was rising in popularity due to more families wanting portraits done and not being able to afford an artist for a sitting or being able to sit for such long periods though this wasn’t very favourable because it was so fragile and expensive to use and carry around.
The industrial revolution created the societal circumstances necessary for photography to be born. The first and most obvious condition is that of technological advancement. Industry was advancing and expanding so rapidly that history appeared to be distancing itself from the present with unusual speed. Up until this time period life had not changed much from decade to decade or even from century to century. Photography’s popularity during the industrial revolution was, in large part, a result of people’s desire to slow down the perceived acceleration of history (McQuire). It has been argued that the acceleration of historical time is “leading to the possible industrialization of forgetting” and that “we will not only miss history…we will also long to go back to space and times past.” (Virilio)
...an take better photographs, even while daily activities. Now when people go on walks, they can bring their camera and take pictures of the beauty around them. The deer with her fawns eating the meadow grass, a bench in a park, or a picture of the orange, luminous sunset. The beauty is all around, people just have to go out and snap the picture.
“When photography was invented it was thought to be an equivalent to truth, it was truth with a capital ‘T’.” Vicki Goldberg