[HN Gopher] When photography was born, fascination, obsession, a...
___________________________________________________________________
When photography was born, fascination, obsession, and danger
followed
Author : prismatic
Score : 55 points
Date : 2025-07-24 01:51 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.washingtonpost.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.washingtonpost.com)
| neonate wrote:
| https://archive.md/mFAIW
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250725134221/https://www.washi...
| echelon wrote:
| This reminds me so much of present-day generative AI criticisms.
|
| > "These innovations were sometimes misguided, occasionally
| obsessive, periodically dangerous, and perpetually fascinating,"
| [Burgess writes]
|
| > Susan Sontag once called [them] "the clever, the wealthy, and
| the obsessed."
|
| > "were exposed to toxic mercury and iodine vapors every time
| they made an image," Burgess writes
|
| > flash powder advertised as "the most powerful light under the
| sun" was the cause of multiple fatal explosions in Philadelphia
|
| Expensive, wasteful, "tech bros".
|
| Yet we wouldn't do without photos, would we?
|
| The technology turned out to be more good than bad:
|
| > As photographs became more accessible -- and more
| commercialized -- they introduced "notions about celebrity
| culture, self-imaging, authenticity, ownership, and
| representation that are deeply resonant today."
|
| > Charles Dickens that described the appeal of the fad in
| surprisingly recognizable terms, marveling at the excitement of
| "distributing yourself among your friends, and letting them see
| you in your favorite attitude, and with your favorite expression.
| And then you get into those wonderful books which everybody
| possesses, and strangers see you there in good society, and ask
| who that very striking-looking person is?"
| codingdave wrote:
| I'd say the good from photography, aside from more options for
| creativity, is documentation. Journalism without photography
| would be of lower value. Photos are highly impactful in
| education, both formal and informal, to get visuals of the
| world beyond your immediate reach. Documentation of history, in
| particular local and family history, is far more powerful since
| photography came along.
|
| I'd say the commercialization of it and the follow-on effects
| you mentioned are the _bad_ , not the good.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I'm thinking of women's fashions in the U.S. -- perhaps
| spurred on by depictions of the latest Parisian-wear from
| _Godey 's Lady's Book_ up to the 1890's. Then the starlets of
| a young Hollywood I suppose kicked off the flapper craze of
| the 1920's in the U.S.?
|
| An illustration of a fashionable Parisian though was probably
| adequate -- a photograph not required. Photography perhaps
| made the latest fashion trends ubiquitous?
|
| That aside, I treasure photography for giving me a glimpse
| into the ordinary lives of my ordinary family going back
| three and four generations. Having captured the arc of an
| entire life from childhood, to graduation from "Normal"
| school, marriage, motherhood... And finally the sadder photos
| where they are old, comforted now by their adult daughter
| until the last photo in the series: their headstone.
|
| I am thankful for all of that. I have found having the full
| span of a life captured in photographs to be sublime ...
| sobering, grounding.
| contagiousflow wrote:
| I don't follow the analogy? Are you just comparing two
| technologies that have had criticisms at their infancy?
| bgwalter wrote:
| > This reminds me so much of present-day generative AI
| criticisms.
|
| I don't think that is a coincidence, it is precisely what the
| article wants you to think:
|
| _In "Flashes of Brilliance," Anika Burgess takes us back to
| the 19th century to showcase the artists and innovators who
| developed the revolutionary technology._
|
| By tying the invention to "artists", the whole piece is framed
| as having the endorsement of artists. The whole article is
| there to frame criticism of new technology as misguided, while
| cleverly not mentioning "AI".
|
| Normally I wouldn't be that suspicious, but the book and the
| article came out in 2025.
|
| Now, how about an article on the miracles of DDT technology,
| which was the best insecticide in the world?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| > This meant toting hundreds of pounds of equipment -- including
| volatile chemicals, a darkroom tent and fragile glass plates --
| to wherever they hoped to snap a scene.
|
| I am something of a "photography genealogist" for the family. My
| father's half-aunt lived to be 103, never had children, and left
| behind a suitcase stuffed with photos -- going back to a tintype
| of her mother from the 1880's. I was lucky the suitcase was
| eventually handed over to me.
|
| That started my obsession with collecting all the family photos I
| could find. And starting with that suitcase, I scanned every
| photo and embarked on cleaning up and adjusting levels (etc.) for
| every interesting photo in the lot.
|
| Sometimes a few lines of text on the back or border gave me the
| date or subject of the photo. Often there was nothing though.
| Nonetheless, I was slowly able to recognize people in the photos,
| associate a name to them (from also doing traditional genealogy
| with Ancestry.com). Stories emerged in some cases (my great
| grandmother's big road-trip vacation in 1925 after the divorce
| from her unfaithful husband, the mysterious young woman in the
| Denver photos that I was eventually able to trace to a teen
| daughter who died in Mexico, Missouri while away at music school,
| etc.)
|
| And as I was able to figure out the photos, order them, I got to
| also see the progress of photography and cameras. The tintype and
| early collodion photos were all in a studio setting (perhaps a
| single photography studio in Kansas City in 1880? She was only a
| young girl, her father a farmer -- he must have been putting on
| airs to have a studio photograph taken of his young daughter).
|
| And then the Kodak Brownie (I assume) makes the scene by 1920 or
| so for the family and photos start to appear taken in the field,
| on the farm -- no longer in studios. The quality though suffers
| immensely.
|
| Better Kodaks (or similar) come into the family by the 30's and
| candid, amatuer photography now rivals the quality of the earlier
| studio photos. Somewhat.
|
| Suddenly in the 1950's square color photos appear in the
| collection and the quality is actually some of the worst of all
| the family photos. So sad that we traded fast lenses and film for
| color. I am not sure the quality ever quite caught up again to
| the better B&W until we get to modern digital.
| bugsMarathon88 wrote:
| Please upload these photos to Commons, especially if you own
| the rights to them; photos taken in the US before 1930 can be
| shared even if they are not yours, too. These stories and
| associated artifacts are interesting and deserve to be shared,
| if you're comfortable with it.
| bgwalter wrote:
| More training material? Why not upload them under the most
| restrictive copyright possible?
| bugsMarathon88 wrote:
| Because Commons won't allow you to. Hilarious anyone thinks
| a license wards away scrapers, too.
| bgwalter wrote:
| You can obviously upload them to some other place. You
| mentioned Commons, I did not.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I haven't yet switched over to the view that training
| material is bad. I'm neutral at this point.
|
| Instead I would rather it be accessible to other relatives
| that may not be aware of the photos (or are yet to be
| born).
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I've posted already to ancestry.com, findagrave.com, etc.
| (But I am inclined to do up a blog post about it so I can
| talk about it and embed the photos.)
| johnmaguire wrote:
| > So sad that we traded fast lenses and film for color. I am
| not sure the quality ever quite caught up again to the better
| B&W until we get to modern digital.
|
| Can you explain why color film would be a tradeoff against fast
| lenses? Can't you use the exact same lens with color or B&W? Or
| what you mean by "traded film for color"? After all, color film
| existed decades before digital.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Maybe someone else knows why black and white film looks
| sharper and has more detail then. Was there a race to the
| bottom in terms of optics when color film showed up in the
| consumer camera? Is it because they moved to a smaller film
| stock than the medium format 120 film that was common in B&W
| cameras before color? Or is color film, with three layers of
| gelatin, an inherently "noisier" film stock?
|
| I don't know. I only observe the quality fall off when color
| arrives. Worse, I am not even sure. that my mom's 35mm camera
| (Canon AE-1) in the 70's shot as good and crisp photos as the
| B&W cameras in the family in the 40's (before she was born
| though).
| _aavaa_ wrote:
| There's multiple things going on.
|
| The larger the film stock, the easier it is to get a
| certain final resolution. Both because the film itself
| needs to be magnified less when creating the final print
| and because the lenses don't need to create as small of an
| image.
|
| And BW film even today is still MUCH sharper, even if just
| perceptually, than color film.
| brudgers wrote:
| No one has ever looked at a photograph and wept because
| it was so sharp...
|
| ...of course many photographers have wept because a
| photograph wasn't sharp.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| > And BW film even today is still MUCH sharper, even if
| just perceptually, than color film.
|
| Maybe perceptually - due to stronger contrast and perhaps
| also the fact that B&W film often comes in higher speeds
| and probably incurs less motion blur of the subject
| overall.
|
| But I don't think it's actually objectively sharper per
| se?
| smogcutter wrote:
| Your square color photos are almost certainly made from
| medium format film!
|
| The most common frame size used in 120 is a 6x6cm square,
| especially in consumer cameras of the time. 6x6 cameras
| stayed popular for snapshots because they could be contact
| printed straight from the negative, without an enlarger. A
| whole roll of 120 can be contact printed onto a single
| sheet of paper and then cut. Much cheaper and faster than
| enlarging 35mm negatives.
|
| With film there's no such thing as a b&w specific camera.
| The difference you're seeing is probably down to the glass
| in whatever cheap & cheerful 6x6 rangefinder they took
| those 1950s family snaps on, vs the photos from the AE-1
| which is an all time great camera & lens system.
| devb wrote:
| Black and white film retains the developed silver
| particles, whereas color processing discards the silver
| entirely and leaves clouds of dye behind to form the image.
| The silver has higher acutance, of course.
| brudgers wrote:
| [I am not agreeing with the grandparent comment]
|
| Color film typically benefits from optical coatings on the
| lenses and coated lenses are common from about 1950 onward
| and uncommon before WWII.
| bell-cot wrote:
| > Suddenly in the 1950's square color photos appear in the
| collection and the quality is actually some of the worst of all
| the family photos.
|
| Could part of the problem be that color photos, especially
| early ones, did not age as well as B&W?
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| That's a good point. I do digitally correct the scans --
| which often does pull up the more faded colors getting the
| color balance often very close to something that looks
| neutral or normal.
|
| Detail though never appears.
| contingencies wrote:
| Did something similar with postcards after inheriting some from
| the late 19th century, but expanded beyond the family. There is
| a very interesting evolution in printing technologies including
| inks, printing processes, and paper stock that parallels that
| of the imaging techniques. In many cases, the clarity obtained
| with turn of the 20th century techniques, particularly in
| countries like Germany and Japan, clearly outdo popular modern
| systems. Good museums for this sort of thing include the
| _Narodni technicke muzeum_ (National Technical Museum) in
| Prague, Czech Republic and the _Musee de l 'Imprimerie et de la
| Communication Graphique_ (Museum of Printing and Graphic
| Communication) in Lyon, France.
| https://plasy.ntm.cz/en/exhibitions/permanent-exhibitions/pr...
| https://www.imprimerie.lyon.fr/en/edito/museum-english-speak...
| cr1895 wrote:
| That's a really neat project! Thanks for sharing.
| api wrote:
| The discourse around photography and art reminds me _exactly_ of
| the discourse around AI and art too:
|
| https://medium.com/@aaronhertzmann/how-photography-became-an...
|
| In some cases pieces I've read on AI and art contain phrases or
| paragraphs that are almost word for word identical to photography
| and art discourse. There were moral panics around photography
| too, especially its obvious use in pornography. There was of
| course pornographic drawing and painting before (we've found it
| in ancient Egyptian structures!) but photography took it to a new
| level.
| lblume wrote:
| A counterpoint: photography enabled integrity and authenticity
| of images, which fueled journalistic credibility, in general
| becoming one part in fostering a high-trust society. AI image
| generation leads to these advances being slowly eradicated as
| generated images increasingly cannot be differentiated from
| unfabricated evidence. In this light, photography was socially
| progressive, while AI generation of photorealistic images could
| be seen as regressive.
| MattJ100 wrote:
| > photography enabled integrity and authenticity of images,
| which fueled journalistic credibility
|
| Countercounterpoint:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies
| chazeon wrote:
| Recently, I visited the Pennsylvania Railroad Museum and was
| fascinated to learn that when steel railcars were first
| introduced--despite being far safer than their wooden
| predecessors, which could easily be crushed--many people feared
| they might attract lightning. It's such a good analogue to our
| movement into AI reality.
| k__ wrote:
| Photorealism gives the impression of capturing the truth, but any
| reasonably skilled photographer knows this isn't the case.
|
| Text generated by LLMs has similar properties.
| 75345d4c wrote:
| Photo-receptive chemical immitations will never be real art
|
| Commission a painter
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2025-07-27 23:01 UTC)