Lark
Go ahead, by all means be picky. Certainly one has that right. May I be picky in return?
Thanks...
First, there was no individual named "Eastman Kodak." You're probably referring to George Eastman who coined the name "Kodak" for his camera and photofinishing company in 1888, that's an understandable misappropriation. Edwin H. Land brought us the "Polaroid-Land camera" in 1947. Nice try, but that’s a little like attributing the authorship of the Bible to the Watchtower society. Just because someone provides a service and makes something more available to the public at large, doesn’t give them claim to authorship. Eastman was into marketing, & he “gave” nothing away..
The optical and chemical properties which make photography possible actually go a little farther back. The "Camera Obscura"- the predecessor to the modern camera, can be referenced back to Leo Hebraeus' (Levi ben Gerson, 1288-1344) work, Milchamoth Adonai ("The Wars of the Lord") Further back are references made by Aristotle. Leonardo Davinci elaborated on the principles of the camera obscura in the 16th century. Convergent lenses were adapted to camera obscuras to improve their efficiency by 1568, Daniello Barbaro, professor at the University of Padua, and author of a treatise on perspective is accredited with that.
That light has the ability to change the visual properties of certain materials was a well known fact even as far back as the time of Christ. Luke referred to "Lyida" a seller of purple - when he wrote the Bible book of Acts in 61 C.E. (Acts 16:14) the making of purple required a rare dye to be applied to a fabric and left in the sun. The actual chemical processes of modern photography however can be traced directly back to the un-related experiments of the alchemists in the 17th and 18th centuries. In 1674 alchemist Christoph Adolph Balduin invented phosphorous, and in 1727 when Johann Henrich Schulze attempted to reproduce Balduin's experiments, his nitric acid was impure (it contained traces of silver) and he invented "scotophorous" which also had light sensitive properties. By 1802 Thomas Wedgewood had sensitized paper and leather with silver nitrate & made "sun prints," but since he didn't have any chemical to serve as a "fixer" to stop the process, the images were unstable and could only be viewed in darkness.
In 1816 Niécephore Niépce sensitized paper with silver chloride and exposed the paper in a camera obscura, and though he may have found some way to fix the negative that resulted, he had no success in printing it. In 1827 Niépce began a collaboration with a man named Doguerre, who was already famous in France for his elaborate dioramas. With Doguerre’s financing they continued until Niépce’s death in 1833, after which Doguerre continued alone. By 1837 when Doguerre invented the “Daguerrotype” - a process which used a copper plate coated with silver sensitized with iodine, and developed over mercury vapors- a host of other people were at work on various other photographic processes. These include William Henery Fox Talbut, who was working with paper negatives that he called Callotypes, Hippolyte Bayard working with a direct paper positive process using paper coated with silver chloride and was held to the light, plunged onto a potassium Iodide solution and then exposed in a modified camera obscura, and Hercules Florence, a Frenchman living in Brazil who claimed to have made contact prints of his photographs between 1833 and 37.
Sir John F. W. Herschel discovered a way to “fix” the negative in 1839, using hyposulfate of soda (hypo), and defined the vocabulary photography still uses (negative/positive.) Though we have photographic images that pre-date this time, 1839 is generally accepted as the starting point for modern photography.
Did you miss something? Well my friend, not to be picky, but I’m afraid you have. The optical properties that allow light to bend through a lens and focus on a flat plane behind it, the physics that (according to the photon-theory of light) allows a photon to hit a silver halide particle suspended in the gelatin substrate of todays films, the chemical process by which that positively charged photon affects the covalent bond, causing the silver particles to separate from the other materials within the film, and crystallize together forming a latent image, a cluster of crystals at a molecular level within the “grain” structure of the film which can later be processed to amplify the density of the silver crystals to the point that it is not only visible, but can reveal things that could never be seen with the naked eye... well it’s a pretty amazing process.
The process itself, it’s physical, optical and chemical components, as well as the cognitive and inventive qualities of the people who pioneered the technology testify to some amazing design behind the ingredients which make it all possible.
I am a photographer. My photographs are unique to my way of seeing, they reflect my world view, are shaped by my history, my failures, my successes, my thoughts, emotions, desires. On the other hand I have been enlightened and inspired by others’ photographs, they have opened new doors of thought, shed light on new worlds, expanded my horizons far beyond those I had previously accepted. That’s one of the really cool things about the “creative” process, it reveals something of it’s creator. That shouldn’t be a new concept to anyone living in today’s world. It’s true of music, film, literary works, illustrations, paintings, photographs, architecture.. etc.. Here we go, & I’ll go slowly so you don’t miss it. Paintings imply that there was a painter, & they tell something of who he/she was. Photographs requisite photographers, Architecture necessitates the existance of an Architect.. Art = Artist, Design = Designer.. got it? Creation implies that there was a Creator.
Did you miss something? yeah, kinda...
