Photography today is seen as who can manipulate a photograph to make people appear stick thin to sell magazines. We often forget the history and roots of photography, that it was originally a very expensive process that took immense amount of time for very little result.
The first iconic photographic process was known as the Daguerrotype around 1839. It allowed the subjects to only need be sitting for a few minutes, rather than the previous processes which took many hours. It created a one of a kind positive image usually on a metal plate which in later stages lead to artificial coloring of the cheeks for many of the wealthy. The processes following such as the Calotype was a very similar process, but brought the photograph to paper, thus making photography much more feasible for the average person. In the following years the process was advanced yet another huge step by the invention of the negative. The negative image allowed for recreation of the image infinite number of times, so the prospects of the application of photography shifted drastically.
It was no longer solely about creating one unique moment to cherish forever, it became more about what can I take an image of and replicate it 100 times and sell them. The possibilities of photographs as a medium of artistic expression became a very real and heated debate.
The invention of digital photography followed not long after, with the beginnings of scanning images into digital code occurring around 1957. The first digital image was approximately 176×176 pixels (one bit per pixel). The image was very harsh black and white with nothing in between the two.
The current problem many photographers are facing is the simple fact that digital photography has a flaw that is inescapable. It is turning the real physical world around you into numbers in a machine. No process, however good, will ever be able to match the real thing. It would be like expecting ice cream without sugar to taste like ice cream with sugar. Because of this flaw, the photography world has seen a booming resurgence and continuation of the film photography craft. Film photography much like the early modes of photography, takes the real three-dimensional world, and using light, imprints an image onto a negative, which is still a three-dimensional object.
Modern society has taken digital photography light-years past its conceived destination, and are not afraid to let it be known. The marketing world has no problem creating illusions of perfection. It has the ability to lie very easily, and no true way to know what is real. In a world where power is measured by who is the best liar, film photography offers one solace of truth. Film cannot be edited (at least in the ways one can edit a digital photograph where there is no longer the “original”) and it will always be there. The technology is centuries old at this point, and has not changed.
Lastly digital photography has changed the social interaction of how society shares photographs. Prior to digital, if you wanted to see a picture, you had to go get one in person, and open your senses to the experience the photograph offers you. With digital, one can simply upload the image to tumblr, or instagram and the context in which you view an image can vary drastically. One would never dream of viewing the Mona Lisa while taking a shower shortly after waking up, but digital photography allows for such things.
We must always remind ourselves what purpose photography serves. The invention of the camera dispelled the belief that the world we saw and experienced, was created for and unique to each and every person individually (that is no one existed outside your own consciousness that you were aware of). The world was only in your mind. The creation of the camera, allowed someone in China, and someone in Brazil to view the same object that may have been located in Paris. The world became a concrete object that existed outside of our minds. Let us try and remember that next time we scroll over images on our electronic devices.