In this week’s novel, Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag, Sontag delves into the world of photography and gives readers a glimpse of how a photo’s meaning is open to interpretation and sometimes perhaps formed by ignorance. Sontag explains how the meaning of a picture can “be derived through a synthesis of artifice, context and experience”. Into the book, readers can begin to consider many ways that war is articulated through photography, especially non-staged photographs. As photography becomes a large influence on the novel, it’s fair to get an even bigger glance at how photography itself has developed over the course of time.
The development of the most basic photography all began with the creation of the camera from around 5th century B.C.E although it wasn’t until the 11th century when this art was born. The actual first permanent images were created in France by a man of the name Joseph Nicephore Niepce and his first experiments kickstarted the process of many differently developed photographs. Although almost simultaneously these different types of photography were being created, most of the time these were only professionals rather than the public. It was in the late 1880s that the public began to see any type of photography ability to take themselves, and this was the typical disposable camera where the consumer would take pictures and send the camera back to the factory to be developed. As we move into the 1930s, the inclination to start photographing real life events rather than staged ones came into play, moving into the war times. During World War 1 most of the images were staged to show the horrors and the aftermath but leading into World War 2 instant images begin to develop to capture these true war events.
Post war times and through the past decade is when photography really hit its stride. By the 1960’s Polaroid became a huge success, and many makes, and models were available although by 2008 Polaroid stopped making their famous film. Reaching into the late 1980’s people began to get a glimpse of what was to come for our modern days today as the introduction of smart cameras came into play and the great development of colored photographs. The automatic camera became very popular for day to day photographers leading into the 2000’s where the electronically stored cameras became readily available for consumers.
Of course, today, thousands of types of cameras are available, and a photograph can be taken at the blink of an eye. It is rather imperative to look at the history of the photograph to take into account the importance a photo takes in recalling historical events, specifically war. The immense success of the technology regarding photography over decades provides ever more insight on the importance of what a photograph can really portray and the interpretation we gain from it.
sources: https://www.thesprucecrafts.com/brief-history-of-photography-2688527#:~:text=Photography%2C%20as%20we%20know%20it,coated%20with%20bitumen%20to%20light.&text=Daguerreotypes%2C%20emulsion%20plates%2C%20and%20wet,mid%2D%20to%20late%2D1800s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photograph