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This is not the first time when I say this words. However, I decided to gather my thoughts in one and come up with the problem. And the problem is: the crucial moment in history of photography we are living these days: its end.
The conditions which arts must live in today are not promising, under my conviction. I really do believe the art is losing its battle with reality to face with. Adopting a political ideas, the world seems to support an utilitaristic way of being: what is good for the majority becomes the norm. As a not-supporter, to be euphemistic, of democracy, I can agree with the principle. How does the world of arts looks in my eyes then? Say, there is a large terrarium with hundreds of chameleons inside - how can you tell the one who didn’t change its colour and the rest adopted it? This is the art in our materialistic reality. There is a bunch of ‘artists’ which are supposed to represent something with their work. However, there are not many of them who really have a message to transmit to the world. Unfortunately, the tip of the iceberg they constitute, the real artistic world, is sinking, pulled by the chameleons that are not even intending but pretending to be the good ones. And it’s hard to tell one from another frequently.
I believe the reason why I see the state of reality this way is not that the art has decreased in sense of number of people interested in it. On the contrary, the amount of pseudo-artists increased tremendously last century. Due to progress which we like to see as our victory over the whole universe, God included; an apple of our eyes. You type in “how to be an artist” in search engine and you get the receipt. Thanks to the miracle of global communication everyone can be an artist or a specialist in whatever you like. Right… We are becoming so superficial that we will soon be able to compete with a sheets of paper: let’s see which one is flatter.
Photography, in particular, is endangered by some other factors. There are some chameleons too, of course. But the most worrying fact is the huge group of people who shoot photos like they were preparing breakfast. I mean, they don’t even consider photography as an art because they don’t bother themselves with considerations about art at all. As biologists would like all the world to be interested in their domain, sometimes I’d like all the world to be interested in what’s my domain. I know it is impossible and on the second thought I’m glad of world’s plurality. Nevertheless, I cannot accept the fact that the work photographers did and do is slowly becoming directed toward narrow group of recipients like magazines (I mean serious ones, not the glossies and the crap). Maybe I am too demanding, but isn’t the ignorance consuming us gradually? When I put them on the scales together - the ignorance and ‘chameleonism’ - the scales get crazy. I don’t know which one is worse.
But I do know which one is more dangerous. Art kept on surviving for such a long time with its fake side by side that it is impossible to give up now. Photography, then, will make it. But I am afraid it may be lost among the sea of so-called-photography that consists in ’shooting pictures’ and not ‘creating an art’. And its the photography itself that helped it happen. The evolution - or revolution (?) - of digital technologies, the one of the aspects of transforming the world into a global village, implanted in imaging lead to what is happening.
Is it possible that the real photography is maybe not dying, but somehow decreasing into ghetto, a niche for outcasts? No. I would rather say ‘the chosen ones’.

Here goes another one: Nikon retires film cameras lineup. The one of the companies that constitute a core of photographic equipment producers decides to give up on standard cameras. As Konica Minolta example shows, this branch of market is unprofitable. However, the production of high-end cameras F6 and FM10 will continue, together with eight of most popular Nikkor lenses. Nikon statement says that company decided “to focus management resources on digital cameras in place of film cameras.”

After shock caused on me when Kodak materials and Konica Minolta photography section became history, I suffer another heart attack. I like being witness of historical events, it’s inevitable, but not these days. Photography as I liked it is becoming a part of the world that has to do more with past tenses than MY reality. I believe we are able to make reality as we like it to be. If so, and I’m quite sure of it, I’m in minority. I’m not the one to judge whether MY minority is better or not or whether the right is ours or not. What I can say is that I don’t like reality like this one.

Sad but true, the shape of today’s civilization is sculpted by majority. And this fact lets me repeat once again: democracy is rubbish.

Day by day, more digital cameras have RAW format in their standard and it’s becoming more popular. For professional photographers that use digital cameras RAW is nothing new. I will try to explain what RAW format consists of in my own words so you could understand the general idea.

What is the difference between RAW and JPEG or TIFF format? To simplifie, when you are taking picture in JPEG or TIFF format, the camera automatically makes some adjustments as white-balance. The RAW format is… raw. It captures the the same image you see in your camera viewfinder converted to digital data. The rest is left for you to decide: you can reproduce the scene just as you’ve seen it.

The advantage is obvious: you get control over the image all over the time: from shutter movement till the final print. You make photo just as you like it. Camera’s processor works like a film: you can see no image until you enhance it in graphic program. Which one? The story begins here. There is no such thing as RAW standard; it means that each camera producer has its own RAW format. And that complicates the work a little. The positive thing about it is that they offer software that supports it. You can also use a third-party software.

With all the advantages as flexibility and huge image data, it’s not a perfect cure. Your skills are still valid. Even more. RAW cannot fix a bad exposure, you are still the responsable of making the possible as good as you can. Actually, I do not consider this as a disadvantage; more like a come-back to classical photography where you control the whole process. The only difference is that you have all your darkroom in your computer.

So this is it. The company of the one of the most influence on the photography market retires. Konica Minolta declared to stop the production of cameras till march 2006. The company that developed such innovative things as first auto-focus camera (Dynax/Maxxym 7000, 1985), the fastest shutter (1/12,000 sec. in Dynax/Maxxum 9xi, 1992) or CCD-Shift mechanism (Dynax/Maxxum 7D) resigns as a producer of photographic equipment. Nevertheless, the production of films can continue until march 2007 and company will go on with office equipment and other.
What can I say… It is really sad. All the more, Sony will be in charge of that part of Konica Minolta. So now we can expect that we will not see any SRL camera with Minolta’s spirit anymore. There were some rumours about an SRL which would be Sony and Konica Minolta effort so an SRL can appear under Sony’s name. But no-one believes that Sony will risk to enter the SRL cameras market. They will rather expand their influence on the compact cameras market where they are one of the leaders.
I am still in favour of classic photography but I think I can see an inevitable end of an era.

So, the camera obcura is now known. Where is the photography, then? The fact that the photography waited till 1830s for its ‘discovery’ is somehow surprising. Why? Let’s see what happened…

To make photography possible, two things were needed: an optical and a chemical process. Even though both had been known for some time. First, camera obscura, as we know, had been drawn for Leonardo in sixteenth century. In the same time, first chemical observations had been made.

Robert Boyle notices that the silver chloride turns dark under exposure; unfortunatelly, he sees its cause in the air and not in the light. In 1727, by accident, proffesor Johann Heinrich Schulze discovers photo-sensitive compound noticing a darkening on the exposed to sunlight side of a flask contaning chalk, nitric acid and silver. At the beginning of the 19th century Thomas Wedgwood captures silhouettes of opaque objects placed on leather covered with silver nitrate. Images where very fragiles to exposure them to the light stronger than candlelight, because no fixation method were known.

In july 1827 first permanent picture is made by Joseph Nicephore Niépce. He dies in 1833 leaving his plans to Luis Jacques Mande Daguerre, his partner since 1929. Daguerre, by accident, puts an exposed copper plate in his cupboard with chemicals and finds the image developed some days later. He comes to the conclusion that the mercury vapour from a broken thermometer caused it. The discovery reduce the exposure time from many hours to thirty minutes. In 1837 is able to fix the images. Daguerre, then, makes a kickoff of photography as we know it today.

On 7 January 1839, after gained support from François Arago the invention is announced by Paul Delaroche and named Daguerreotype, from its inventor’s name. French government had bought the rights to the patent from Daguerre, who obtained a yearly pension, and released them free to the people. Daguerreotype image’s quality was suprisingly good with many details, but it had some disadvantage: the image could not be reproduced (which fact can be considerated as an advantage at a time), it was very delicate, it was reversed laterally and the substances used in developing process were highly toxic. It was also expensive: equalled to a weakly wage of average worker. Exposure time, even though reduced a lot since Niépce, it was still inappropriate for portraiture. As you can notice, on the photo below there are only two people, thanks to the period of time they stayed immobile long enough. Daguerreotype required an improvement.

In fact, Henry Fox Talbot obtains permanent negative image in 1934 already. He uses paper soaked in silver chloride and fixed with a salt solution. The advantage of Calotype, as Talbot had named the method, was that it made possible to get image positive copies by contact negative print to another sheet of paper. Its quality, however , was much more inferior to what Daguerre’s technique produced. Nevertheless, it is Calotype that gaved principle to nowadays photography.

Daguerre dies in 1851. His death marks an end of an important period in history of photography. In the very same year a wet collodion process is invented by Frederick Scott Archer.

First, albumen process , with a glass plate and white of an egg as the binding , is introduced by cousin of Niépce, Abel Niépce de Saint-Victor. Though the details and quality increased, it was very slow process. Archer’s Collodion process was much more cheaper than Daguerreotype and the exposure time was increadibly shorter, reduced to few seconds. That changed a lot. Unfortunatelly, it required fairy large equipment where taking a photograph,, because the plate needed to be developed when wet. Attempts to preserve exposed plates to later developement decreased their sensitivity. The most important was the safety question: The chemicals were highly explosive, fact which lead to many injuries and death cases among the photographers. The method was good but its realization caused some problems. A dry process was a must.

Twenty years later, in 1871, Dr. Richard Leach Maddox suggests gelatin instead of collodion, which leads to dry plate process development. Use of gelatin was already suggested in 1850 by Robert Bingham, but the idea failed due to collodion announcement the next year. Charles Bennett experimented with gelatine and revealed gelatin dry plate process in 1878. Though it was slower than the collodion, its advantages – no need of equipment when taking pictures, thus exposure and development process being taken independantly – made dry plate replace collodion totally by the end of the decade.

Earlier, with the invention of celluloid, at the beginning of 1860s, photography is ready to take another turn. Inspired by John Carbutt, George Eastman introduced a flexible film in 1884. The breakthrough is a fact. In 1888 Eastman himself presents first Kodak box camera that uses celluloid film. Photography is now accesible to anyone.