World Photography Day: Through the eye of time

By:- Asem Bhakta Singh *

The Photo Academy Manipur will be celebrating the 21st World Photography Day at its premises in Film Care, Yaiskul Police Lane on Thursday, 19th August 2010. August 19th was chosen for the special day in the world of photography since the first announcement of a photograph was made on August 19th, 1839. The announcement was made in a brilliant speech before the members of the Academie des Sciences and Academie des Beaux Arts by Francois Arago.

Photography as we know it today is a result of various independent discoveries. Starting with the Camera Obscura to the pinhole camera to the first box camera (the Brownie), to the film compact and SLR camera right down to today's digital cameras, it's been a journey that has often seen much debate, disbelief and a lot of innovation.

"Photography" as we know it celebrates its 171st birthday on this day, in a manner of speaking. Sir John Herschel first used the term back in 1839 when the process became public. As we all now know, the word is a combination of the Greek words for light and writing. When it started, photography swept up the world and has since gone on to become an essential part of our everyday life today.

From being a record keeping device for family life, events, personages and curiosities, the camera became an indispensable tool in ethnography, philology, anthropology, historiography and, indeed, in every sphere of scientific inquiry. Journalism, as we know it, would have remained boring plain-sheets if not for the advent of photography and now - photojournalism.

Very early days

There are references to Camera Obscura-like devices as far back as the year 4 BC. But the first permanent photo created using it dates back to 1826 when Joseph Nicéphore Niépce used a Camera Obscura to burn a permanent image of the countryside at his estate in Le Gras, France onto a chemical-coated pewter plate.

The first photograph of a person, though, came only 13 years later when Louis Daguerre accidently captures a man. Daguerre was originally photographing a Paris street scene from his window using a Camera Obscura and his newly invented daguerreotype process and the long exposure would mean that moving objects would not make an 'impression' in the image. However, an unidentified man who stopped for a shoeshine remained unmoved or still long enough to unwittingly become the first person ever photographed.

With time, there were of course, many more firsts that photography saw. 1847 saw the first time lightning and war were captured. In 1858, Felix Tournachon, aka Nadan captured the first bird's eye view when he shot Paris from a tethered balloon. The earliest photographs taken in Manipur and her neighbouring areas of British India's Bengal and North-east Frontier are encountered in the photolithographs of E.T. Dalton, a British colonial ethnographer who, along with H.H. Risely, did extensive descriptive documentation of the people and tribes of India in the mid and late 19th Century.

During Major J. Johnstone's first sojourn in Manipur as a political agent, some of the earliest photographic records of the people, land and monarchy of Manipur and the British Residency were kept. Some of these precious photographs are part of the Alkazi Collection of Photography in New York today.

Black and white photography came into the hands of the natives of Manipur much later after the Meitei ningthou (kings) from 1850 to the 1950s (Chandrakirti aka Ningthem Pishak, Surchandra, Kulachandra, Churachand, Buddhachandra) and their families began to take to photography. After the "Japan Lan" (World War II that saw one of the fiercest battles between the Imperial Japanese and Allied armies in Manipur), many locals began to take to photography professionally or as a hobby.

Internationally, although colour photography didn't become commercially viable until the late 1900s, there was an instance of a colour photo being created in 1861. Scottish physicist James Maxwell created a very basic colour image by superimposing three black and white images onto a single screen. How did he achieve this? Each image was passed through three filters-red, green, and blue.

A bigger revolution, though, was on the cards as George Eastman had introduced the Kodak Brownie and photography was just about to become accessible to everyone.

Development speeds up

World War II and the ensuing Cold War were periods of extremes. What these eras did foster was a great spirit of innovation. And photography was a necessary benefactor during both periods. The late 1930s and 1940s saw a spurt in activity that led to many major innovations. The 135 film cartridge was introduced, making 35mm easy to use in 1934 and this pretty much triggered the modern photography format. The development of the Kodachrome multi-layered reversal colour film (1936) also furthered the progress of photography.

The 1940s were a time of progress across the world and photography was certainly a part of it. Print film from Kodak (Kodacolor, 1942), holographs (1947), the Hasselblad (1948) and another decade later, the first SLR from Asahi Pentax were all efforts started in the '40s and '50s.

Innovation, ease and standardization

While photography was becoming commercially viable, more companies were now interested in getting involved in manufacturing cameras, making film or paper and even enlargers and other photographic accessories and products. The development of photography next saw a marked improvement in the quality of optics. Starting with the Nikon F in 1959, the emphasis was laid on improving the quality of photos. And this naturally meant the development of film, dyes, paper and even lighting equipment.

It was during this time that cameras became more standardized in their formats and film started to be produced in a wide variety of flavours. As time went on, these flavours would increase varying in speed, colour saturation and even the type (negative or positive). But the biggest step in photography perhaps went unnoticed in 1957 when Russell Kirsch at U.S. National Bureau of Standards produced the first digital image ever on a computer. Digital cameras were still almost 30 years away at the time.

When time came for digital cameras to start their lifecycle, it was with small steps - obviously. But the development of the world's first megapixel sensor in 1986 would trigger two decades of major changes that would see the very inventor of the megapixel sensor, Kodak, exit the consumer photography business in most continents.

While the history of photography has been a punctuated by some path-breaking work, the current developments focus on how to get more out of smaller cameras. As the debate continues to rage over which form of photography is 'purer', the concept behind the art and science - drawing with light - remains ever relevant.

Who knows that the next wave of development might bring along....

*** We are thankful to and acknowledge the fabulous writings of Aditya Kuber, Debabrata Laifungbam and many other sources for making this article possible.