Photography

An old barnyard at Chalons-sur-Saone had the distinction of transmitting its image onto the world’s first photograph. One day in 1826, Joseph Nicephore Niepce succeeded in capturing the image on pewter plate after an exposure of eight hours. Thirteen years later Niepce’s partner, Louis Dagurre (1789-1851), was able to market a photographic system which required an exposure of thirty minutes onto copper plate covered by light-sensitive silver chloride. The Daguerrotype launched a long process of evolution which led to the popular box camera, colour film, moves, sound moves, x-rays, infra-red and miniature photography, and most recently, electronic camcorders.

The impact of photography on peace and war cannot be exaggerated. It helped destroy the raison d’etre of representational art. It transformed people’s visual consciousness of themselves and the world around them. It put a powerful tool at the disposal of every branch of science and communication. Picture of Crimean War brought the realities of military conflict to the world’s attention, just as family portraits revolutionized perceptions of social life. Photography also brought a new dimension to the historical record. Fifty years before sound could be recorded, photographic collections began to amass real images of all aspects of the past.

Yet the realism of photography was deceptive. The art of retoucher in official Soviet photography, for example, was notorious. Stalin removed all traces of Trotsky’s presence from the record; and Gorbachev’s unsightly birthmark was removed as late as 1985. But even the honest photographer’s arbitrary selection of angle, of the momentary snapshot, of light, tone, and texture, and above all, of subject, leaves as much hidden as revealed. The camera, like the historian, always lies.