In the novel “One Hundred Years of Solitude”, Nobel prize winning Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the daguerreotype or photograph, is mentioned several times as the multiple lives of the Buendia family is unfolding in the village of Macondo where life takes fantastic forms as the world was new and many things were recently invented and had no names.
It was therefore necessary to point at them in order to indicate what they are. The daguerreotype was the name for photograph which was a new invention in the time of the fictional events and it was necessary to point at the family pictures hanging on the walls in case people forgot their names or who they were.
The invention of photography is one of the defining moments of technological advances as it ushered in an era of artistic expression through the medium of the camera. According to Wikipedia dictionary, “photography is the art, application and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film.”
This is obviously a technical definition of photography. Yet, the history of photography goes beyond technicality. It has its own history, social implications and impact our lives both as individuals and families. In this age of selfies and amateur photography everyone of us has become a photographer or a photojournalist depending on the case, despite differences in the talents involved while taking pictures.
According to some sources, “the concept of photography has been around since about the 5th century B.C.E. It was not until an Iraqi scientist developed something called the camera obscura in the 11th century that the art was born. Even then, the camera did not actually record images, it simply projected them onto another surface.” The technical evolution of photography is amazing indeed when we look at it from the point of view of the technological evolutions it underwent until the present stage of its growth involving digital technology.
According to an article about photography written by Liz Masoner and published on the blog page of the Spruce Crafts, says that, “Photography as we know it today began in the 1830s in France. Joseph Nicephore Niepce used a portable camera obscura to expose a pewter plate coated with bitumen to light. This is the first recorded image that did not fade quickly. Niepce’s success led to a number of other experiments and photography progressed very rapidly. Daguerreotypes, emulsion plates and wet plates were developed almost simultaneously in the mid to late 1800s.”
There were many outstanding photographers in history. One of the best known is Robert Capa who was “a Hungarian photojournalist and co-founder of Magnum Photos. During his career, he covered five different conflicts including the Spanish civil war and is especially famous for his visceral images, of the D-Day landing of 1944. He was killed when he stepped on a landmine while covering the first Indochina war.” Capa’s artistic and shocking photography is immortalized with his shot of a soldier during a war who was hit with bullet and his legs were stretched into the air while he was holding his gun in one arm. It is hard for anyone not to feel pity for the soldier after seeing that iconic picture.
Alberto Korda is a great Cuban photographer who took revolutionary leader Che Guevara’s iconic pictures that have captured the imaginations of revolutionaries around the world. Che Guevara was also the darling of the Ethiopian student movement in the 1960s and 1970s and his pictures appeared on campus where “class struggle” was taking place against the monarchy. Che Guevara’s pictures became widespread and more popular after the Ethiopian Revolution of 1974 when the Derg regime adopted “proletarian internationalism” as its foreign policy principle in its relations with socialist countries and with Cuba in particular.
Che Guevara’s pictures are still visible everywhere in Ethiopia and the young generations around the world whenever there is rebellion against oppression. In some Latin American countries, Che Guvara’s pictures have created in the imagination of the masses a kind of divine being like Jesus Christ in catholic Christian societies where the distance between a holy being and a celebrity might be shorter than we can think. Argentine soccer icon Diego Maradona is sometimes considered “a saint” by Argentine footballs fans and his huge portraits on walls in the Italian town of Milan are still symbolizing the critical time in the player’s when he shined as a Milan attacker.
In the late 20th century, photography joined the world of art and there have been many famous photographic exhibitions taking place everywhere in the world. Here in Ethiopia photography started to be taken seriously rather lately. There are now many young photographers who take their craft seriously and organize occasional photographic exhibitions to bring their works to the public.
Photography and photo shops have been around in Ethiopia ever since the first camera was introduced to the country by the Europeans, and the first photographs involved members of the royal family and the aristocracy. After the Italian invasion, photography was one of the modern crafts introduced in Addis Ababa by the Armenians and Italians who opened the first photographic studios that operated with the rudiments of the crafts and attracted many fans of photography to their shops. The then fashionable and famous square “Piazza” hosted many photo studios where the beauties and handsome young men of that period went to get their pictures taken as part of their time together on a weekend.
Photography later on became a serious business and bread earner to thousands of people in the towns and cities across the country. Having a photo studio was considered a prestigious and chic job that generates good incomes as the owners were stylish and prosperous looking. These photo outlets were sought on all occasions. It was not rare to see newly-weds go first to those studios to get their pictures shot before the wedding ceremonies started.
Later on, they started to hire people with cameras to cover the entire wedding ceremonies upon payment of a lump sum. Originally the cost of having one’s picture taken at a studio was very low. You could get four passport-size photographs by paying one Birr. With time and as the cost involved in making those pictures rose with the rise in the materials that went into the production of the pictures, the overall cost rose sharply but most people afforded it.
The magic of photography started by showing us the external world around us and grew to penetrate our internal organs and things invisible to the naked eye. It has invaded such professional areas as medicine, the deep sea, astronomy, and the inside of volcanoes. It all started with the invention of a small and rudimentary gadget more than a thousand years ago and improved itself in its long existence and has now come not only to individual homes abut also to individual pockets. There is no limit to the growth and re-invention of photography. From a tool of copying reality, it has been transformed into a tool of artistic expression and imagination.
There was virtually no occasion that avoided the camera lenses: birthdays, graduations, weddings, school reunions, street events and football games were all photographed and handed over to posterity. Those of us who still have their photos of childhood or younger years are nostalgic about their past and look and wonder whether the handsome young man or girl in the pictures could really be their own portraits because they have changed so much with the years. This can be taken as another magic of photography: it allows you to see your youth in your older days. Whether with the old daguerreotypes or with the latest smart phone the business of photography remains the preservation of memories in all its forms and manifestations and make people happier or sadder of their past lives.
The 21st century technological innovations have turned everyone into an instant photographer with the invention of the smart phone. It has also turned anyone with a smart phone in hand into an instant photojournalist who can impact events and even history. The death scene of George Floyd was caught on video by a passerby and caused one of the largest and most important “Black Lives Matter” events that shook America for days and continues to impact race relations as the legal proceedings against the killer is still in the process of unfolding.
Smartphones with cameras are a huge technological innovation; maybe the last stage in camera development. They do not only bring the camera closest to the person but also make millions of people around the world amateurs of the craft of photography. Human beings are by their very nature fond of their own images or looks. The smart phone has given them the opportunity to be their own photographers instead giving this task to another person. They can take their photographs as they like them. This in itself might be taken as one aspect of empowerment that technology has created.
It is now more than ten centuries since the camera was invented. Yet at no time in the past has the very existence of the traditional camera put into question by the advent of the smartphone. The basic question now is: will the smartphone lead to the disappearance of traditional cameras? According to a recent article by fashion photographer Illiya Dvachar, entitled, “Are Phones Making Cameras Extinct?” the writer says that, “some think that cameras will be extinct soon enough, while others argue that cameras will still have place in the market, albeit not a large one. So, is the future dull for cameras or is it not? If you want a quick answer to this question, the answer is yes. I believe there will come a time when smart phones have reached and overtaken cameras.”
He goes on to say that historically, cameras were used to take holiday pictures and to capture fun memories. Not as many people were interested in photography as an art as they were in a medium that allowed for easy capture of memories. He goes on to say that smartphones are very powerful tools and seeing how they have evolved in the past makes me wonder if they can really replace amateur cameras. However, before that is possible, technology has to evolve to the point of being able to accurately replicate the results that a camera would give.
BY MULUGETA GUDETA
The Ethiopian Herald June 5/2021
