A Moment in Time
Remember in times past, when your mother would possibly take you to have your photo taken in a photographic studio. Perhaps you may have been photographed by a studio photographer as a baby.
Maybe during December you would have visited a Department store to have a photo taken with Santa. Then of course there were the group photos taken at school or at your workplace. Not forgetting the photos taken on special occasions such as the first day at school in your newly acquired school uniform or those of your twenty-first birthday. What memories those snaps would bring back.
Have you ever stopped to think that the photos from the past reveal much more than the subject. When photographing a person or a group of people you are also showing the clothing fashion of the time. If photographing a picnic scene or street scene you reveal the style of cars or other transport of the day.
Have you also noticed that in those distant days many people did not smile at the camera. Perhaps the saying “Say Cheese” was not used so much if at all.
The introduction of the “Box Brownie” by Eastman Kodak in February 1900 brought photography to the masses. No longer did people have to rely on photographers with complicated cameras and images on glass plates.
Most early photographs were monochrome in black and white or sepia although a process was developed in 1850 by Levi Hill of the US whilst the basis of most methods of colour photos evolved from a system devised by Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1855 however colour photography did not come into use by the general amateur photographers or general public until around the 1970s as evidenced by most family albums.
Photojournalism has been around since the 1840s or perhaps earlier although it was rarely used in most newspapers. The first photograph to appear in a newspaper was in June 1848 showing barricades in Paris during an uprising.
This photograph appeared in a French newspaper at the time. The Crimean war in the 1840s appeared as a subject of illustrations later in the Illustrated London News. It was not until the 1930s when it became more widespread and newspapers began to show more and more photos accompanying articles.
Some great Australian photographers from the past were also able to capture the moods of the time. Photographers such as Frank Hurley, Harold Cazneaux, Max Duplain and Sam Hood and his son Ted Hood were famous for their various photographic skills around Sydney and elsewhere.
They not only captured people in various situations but the various moods. I can recall Sam Hood’s photograph of Angel Place in Sydney showing a very west and dismal scene. Harold Cazneaux also produced many similar styled photos.
Max Duplain’s photo of the sunbather on Culburra Beach was also very popular and Frank Hurley’s wartime and Antarctic photos as well as his many scenes of Sydney and country NSW are great to view.
During the 1940s and 50s street photographers would often stop pedestrians on the streets of Sydney and other major cities and take photos of young courting couples walking along holding hands.
Now that most people have a mobile phone with a camera included, the Street photographers and the studio photographers have disappeared or are diminishing in use and photography as an occupation is threatened by the digitalisation of technology.