It was almost a spiritual experience, being there in the darkroom. Especially if you had the darkroom all to yourself, there in the quiet dimness, taking the time with what your eyes had seen before — often times weeks before, or longer. And there it would appear to you again, on that sheet of paper in the pan of liquid, back and forth, sometimes exactly how you had imagined it, other times, nothing like when you saw it in your mind’s eye, through the small square of your viewfinder. The making of a photograph.
By the time I came on the scene, the process had greatly improved, by those early 1980s. The chemicals were better, the cameras were more automated, we had film on rolls and the negatives were smaller.
But the art of photography began much earlier, with the early optics of it dating back to the early 16th century. That is when the amazing artist, scientist, and inventor Leonardo da Vinci sketched out diagrams denoting his vision. It came in the way of the camera obscura. In these papers, he included instructions for its use, and not just pinholes but also simple glass lenses.
It would take a few more hundred years until the first photograph was made. That happened in 1827. It was just one in a series of experiments. The work is called “View from the Window at Le Gras” and is the earliest surviving photograph. The artist, scientist, inventor this time was Nicéphore Niépce. He used a sheet of metal with a film of chemicals spread on it —light-sensitive chemicals. But, it wasn’t very sensitive at all. It took 8 hours to record the image.
Two hundred years later we’ve moved into another dimension. Everyone, and I mean everyone, has a camera in their hand, all the time, everywhere. Where once before, the photograph was a thing of great planning, vision, and patience, it has now become an instantly observed object, not just to the photographer, but to the entire reaches of the planet. Instantly.
I’m thinking of this because on today’s date in 1888, George Eastman patented the first roll-film camera. He registered the name “Kodak” on this same date. It was that beautiful, unmistakable, golden yellow box, blazoned with the name Kodak in bright red letters. During my youth, the top drawer of our dining room buffet always had a roll or two of Kodak film in there, along with batteries, and of course, the latest “Instant Camera.”
Growing up, the camera was in our lives frequently. The Kronenberger siblings may be the most frequently photographed children in the course of human history. Our mother, Lucy, was the buff. She snapped our pictures, not only on our birthdays, or holidays, but also when we had a tooth pulled, got the chickenpox, scraped a knee, built a go-cart, played softball, visited a cousin, or found a turtle.
My parents were married in 1947. My mother started collecting photographs of their lives together on that day and didn’t stop until (probably) 2010. She didn’t just shoot the photos and forget about them. No. She put them in chronological order, in albums, with labels on the events. She amassed nearly 100 albums. It is a collection of magnificence. I say that not because I am in them. I didn’t come onto the scene until Album 16. I look at those images now and see a detailed history of our family’s lives. But those albums were an act of love, of thought, of timing, of patience. They were, and still are, a huge gift.
Photography, like so many other things in this world, has indeed changed. I am torn between the old and the new. The old way was a thing of great intention, and purpose. If you wanted to make a photograph, you had to commit to the process. It took thought and planning. It was personal. The new way is spontaneous, immediate, and oftentimes, instantly global. The technology is superior. But the process is gone. The inner procession.
We all see the world with different eyes. No one looks it the way you do, the way I do, the way we do. But beyond the looking, much beyond the looking, is the seeing. Not in what we see, but how we see it. We can see the world with good, good, eyes, if we want. And then — we can share that good vision — in whatever way we choose.
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There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.
— Ansel Adams
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What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.
— Karl Lagerfeld
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There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph.
— Robert Heinecken
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