1900, or the more things change.....

Jocko

Jocko

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I recently came across two bound volumes of Amateur Photographer magazine from 1900 and 1901. 107 years ago - yet apart from the 10 ISO “normal” plates, the world these magazines reveal is strangely familiar.

The serious photographer of 1901 was deeply troubled by the threat of film and the end of real photography, Excited articles describe how professionals - particularly newspaper photographers - are using the new hand-held film cameras, dismissed just years before as mere techno-toys. Even worse, the rising generation has no idea of what true photography is. A shocked correspondant reports “at the Bedford Grammar School, large numbers of the boys are film hand-camerarists, wholly unacquainted with stand cameras, plates and the time-honoured processes of the traditional worker”.

Some point out that the new technology has ended the distinction between amateur and professional; newspapers are now printing “snapshootists” photographs, lending a unprecidented immediacy to the news. But the “filmist” approach is essentially mindless: he or she just snaps away, taking unlimited, pointless pictures. The art and craft of the photographer are fast vanishing.

The success of film is even more surprising, given that everyone hates Kodak. Article after article expresses “in no uncertain terms our disapproval of the essentially unengish methods of the Kodak Company, so closely allied to the terrible condition of commercial immorality which has an existence in America””. Kodak are forcing rivals out of business, ceasing production of valued products and deliberately limiting the range of available materials. Photographers are urged to support the new, smaller independent producers.

Then of course, there’s the war - the Boer War. Many features deal with a new breed of front-line photographer, embedded with the troops, using the new film cameras. H.P. Shelley notes that film now has a decisive edge: exposed rolls can be popped in an envelope and whisked home by express mail, bringing the reality of confict to the breakfast table. This naturally leads to controversy as military spokesman denounce “those [blanked] camera fiends with their [blanked blanked] kodaks”.

But perhaps most surprising of all are the repeated tales of police harrassment and public suspicion - “large crowds were awaiting the arrival of the Royal Carriage at Victoria Station when a Lynx-eyed official spotted a camera-man, and he was quietly but firmly informed that snap-shooting was not in season, and, furthermore, he was invited to take a less prominant position in the crowd!”. In an article entitled Cameras are Vulgar, concerning a photographer barred from Kew Gardens, simply on the grounds that photographers are scum, W.R. Bland urges resistance: “Our motto now and henceforth must be “Respect for the camera and ourselves”, and when the year 2001 dawns, but sooner than that, let us hope, the then management of Kew Gardens will not and cannot deny our requests!”

I can’t wait!

Cheers, Ian


You may enjoy this helpful hint for ready-framed portraits.....
 

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Cool read Ian, yes some ideas never change, but gear does and is excepted in the end.
the rant about miniuture cameras in the 1930s comes to mind.
the capture of Louis Riel and scenes of the battle in western Canada were photographed in the early 1880's by a Sgt. Peters with a hand held Marion Academy plate camera, that held several film plates that could be exposed one after the other.
 
Jocko said:
The serious photographer of 1901 was deeply troubled by the threat of film and the end of real photography, Excited articles describe how professionals - particularly newspaper photographers - are using the new hand-held film cameras, dismissed just years before as mere techno-toys. Even worse, the rising generation has no idea of what true photography is. A shocked correspondant reports “at the Bedford Grammar School, large numbers of the boys are film hand-camerarists, wholly unacquainted with stand cameras, plates and the time-honoured processes of the traditional worker”.
Click to expand...

So, they've always been *******s? Who'da thunk? 😀
 
Thankyou! I'm glad this gave everyone a laugh - I just received the volumes today, and thumbing through them I found myself amazed by the parallels!

Erik, I regret that these are very much not for sale - but old copies of AP are very commonly found on (British) e-bay and often cost very little - in this case well under $1 each. They are always fascinating.

Jan, according to the park regulations, "permission is required for any photography needing a tripod in the glasshouses; for any painting requiring an easel in the glasshouses. Both are only possible on weekdays".

Another blow to the stand camera - but I think a snapshootist could sneak in unmolested 🙂

All the best, Ian
 
"Hand-cameraist"...sounds so illicit, don't it? ("It crawled into my hand, honest!") Reminiscent of the controversy with camera-phones and certain unscrupulous users.

Thanks VERY much for this, Jocko. A little perspective always helps. And remember, there are people still "doing" plates...


- Barrett
 
Great Find !!

Apparently, life just keeps repeating itself in each generation of discovery. And each new discovery predicts the doom of past technology. But we all know it is rubbish. Because life keeps repeating itself in each generation of discovery. 😉
 
Gentleman, thankyou - I'm glad this post revived, because exploring the volumes more. I've made so many discoveries, all, as I earlier thought, strangely familiar.

I personally use film cameras, but I find some advocates for film rather excessive in their arguments. So, for your delight, this is "real photographer" in 1901, writing about those horrible people using that new-fangled film stuff and those idiot-proof modern cameras....

“The photographer, in the earlier days, at least, was a man who respected himself and his calling, the amateur was generally a man of some means, and this implies of education properly applied also. It is first the dry plate, then the great simplifying of the processes, the cheapening of the apparatus and finally the vast catastrophe of film that have popularised and wrecked photography, and by so doing have attracted to it hundreds and hunreds of men and youths whose sole mission appears to be to bring discredit on the ranks in which they have enrolled themselves. It is the “fatal facility” of modern photography that has cursed its parents by producing such offspring. A hundred times more difficult and its reputation would stand a thousand times higher. The snapshotting of women in bathing dress, of lovers, of the cat sitting on the top of the wall, or to go what we may call a step higher, the revolting “trick photograph”, have contrived to bring the reputation of photography low down indeed.

Photographers, amateur and professional, who eleven months of out of the twelve are pillars of society, churchwardens who wear a black coat and take round the plate, fathers of families and all the rest of it, go on their holidays and forget themselves - some of them. So deeply has the hand-cameraist’s want of respect for photography, this wicked poison, penetrated, that lantern slides have been made and exhibited at public meetings of subjects which cannot, in any sense of the word, bring credit to the craft. “Film is so cheap you know. Let us fire them off" they say. "Here’s a fellow hugging his sweetheart, they don’t see us. Lets take them and show it on the screen”.

How then are we to save photography? It is to be accomplished by the amateur setting up for himself the highest possible standard. By resolutely trampling underfoot every inducement to photograph anything which he would not be quite ready to take a copy of in his pocket to church the next Sunday and show to his bishop in the vestry after the service.”

I'm sure we all do that 🙂 !

Cheers, Ian
 
>>It is first the dry plate, then the great simplifying of the processes, the cheapening of the apparatus and finally the vast catastrophe of film that have popularised and wrecked photography<<

The love the "vast catastrophe of film." It sounds so much like those who rant against digital.
 
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