Nicéphore Niépce And The Sight Bite

Somewhere in my room – perhaps on my computer – is a photograph of my mother when she was a child. It's a group picture, and in it there are also my grandmother and several of my mother's siblings. I suspect I could figure out my mother's age at the time by determining which of her siblings are present in the picture and which aren't. Perhaps they weren't born yet. And if I can gauge the ages of her brothers and sisters I can guess at hers as well.

But even though I love the picture, determining her age and the date of the photograph are not too important. The sepia color of earlier photographs had been replaced by black, and the clothes of the subjects tell me that it's from early in the twentieth century, and I'm more interested in the picture itself, than in my mother's age. I'm interested in the formality of the pose, the clothing, the facial expressions, and all that tells me a little of the time.  Not that I'm not concerned about my mother, but I have many pictures of her and I prefer to remember the live and loving individual than the pictures of her. For she, herself, was pretty as a picture. No, so much prettier.

And the same is true of a photograph of my father in 1916. He was 13 at the time. It was probably taken a few years after the one of my mother but that, too, is of little consequence. Those pictures, and others, can give us some insight into those we recognize, but they tell us more of the people we don't know, and the times in which they were taken. For example, the sepia photograph of my grandfather standing, and wearing a nice suit of the end of the nineteenth century, in front of a painted backdrop, contains the only visual memory of a man I never met, but who was very important in his time to those in the New York Jewish community, and very important to me since. And I have an elementary-school class photograph showing my wife's mother which tells me a little of a woman I only met many years later, and it illustrates a little of the time in which she lived. And the panoramic photo of me with the entire population of camp during my first year there (1946) tells a different story, as do the three dimensional slides taken at my brother-in-law's wedding. Similarly, the albums of memories of my children's weddings remind me of those joyous events.

We have alwaysⁱ looked for ways to record the world and our experiences for our own information and to convey ideas to others. Long before there was any recorded languageⁱⁱ some form of homo erectus, perhaps neanderthal, was “painting” pictures in caves.ⁱⁱⁱ Whether they were decorations, communications, or spiritual objects isn't clear, but the need to record the world around them is clear.

That's always been the case. Throughout subsequent history people have produced pictures on vessels, jewelry, wall hangings, in book illustrations, and wherever else they found the space. It was their way of showing each other, and future generations, what they saw around them. So the more the picture reflected reality, the better.^iv   It got to a point when paintings were an accurate representation of reality, and we know much of our history because of them, but they took a long time to produce and only resulted from a sincere desire for art, or a commission.  And soon enough the desire for more imaginative images developed, and impressionism was born. And then abstract art. The pictures still represented reality, but the reality was the image that appeared in the artist's mind.

But although paintings were realistic, they weren't satisfactory as evidence or as undeniable representations of what they depicted. Something was needed that took less time and was more accurate, and showed the reality that was lacking with paintings. Concurrently – primarily in the nineteenth century – photography was being developed. The concept of reproduction of permanent images by use of a camera^v and material coated with light-sensitive material goes to Thomas Wedgwood at about the turn of the nineteenth century, but his pictures weren't light-fast. Nonetheless, he had a revolutionary idea.

Many experimenters followed, and Nicéphore Niépce produced what is generally regarded as the first permanent photograph in 1826^vi – a picture taken out his window. Not long after, in the mid 1850's, James Clerk Maxwell proposed a method of producing color photographs^vii using colored filters, and the first example of this technique displayed was by Thomas Sutton in 1861.

Many others made rapid and significant improvements in both the apparatus for taking the pictures, the materials of the picture itself, the length of time necessary for a photograph, and the subject matter shown. Numerous pictures by Matthew Brady during the American Civil War (1861-1865) evidenced the war and the people of the time, including President Lincoln.^viii His work provided actual documentation of the events of the day – not representations filtered through the mind of the artist – and earned him the designation of “first photojournalist.” And the introduction of motion pictures^ix made it possible to see accurate representations of the events of the time. They were very accurate, and they were quickly adopted into our culture and that of countries around the world. They could be used to record reality in a way that was unmatched.^x They served to document an era.^xi

But, in addition to documenting the times, pictures can also mislead. The second commandment^xii makes it clear that the representation of animals and people should be forbidden. The purpose was to prevent any such representation from being worshiped, but it was also recognized that there was no way in which any picture of G-d could actually illustrate His true nature. And, in the eyes of believers, that made any pictures – paintings and photographs among them – inherently undesirable and unacceptable. For others, any photographic intrusion should be avoided.^xiii As did the development of methods to convey misimpressions using photographs. They could be as simple as cropping someone out of a picture so as to misrepresent a situation, or as sophisticated as the insertion of someone into a picture, which was done so often, and with such apparent reality, as in “Zelig.”^xiv

There is also the objection by many who object to the intrusion on their privacy that the medium presents. Those who are prominent hate the paparazzi. For many of the rest of us the surveillance has become so commonplace^xv that it is oppressive. It is incontestable that such surveillance cuts down on crime^xvi and makes the evaluation of those activities more manageable. But it also gives people the feeling that they live in a society in which they're constantly being watched – the world of 1984 and Big Brother.^xvii It gives them that feeling because it's true.

And with Photoshop-type “corrections” and falsifications of manifest and tangible beings and objects, it is no longer possible to believe such reproductions as appear to be genuine. Sometimes they're just selected frames from a longer video or a short strip intended to make a particular point. Like sound bites taken out of context, so are these “sight bites.” Add to that the fact that everyone has a video camera nowadays. They started out as car telephones but they've metamorphosed quickly. Now everyone can document or falsify as he sees fit. It started out with cave paintings over 40,000 years ago and took until only a little over two centuries ago before we got to what we know as photography, and another century and a half before we worked out the kinks. We had gone from representations of what was around us to a medium that we could rely on for truth. How quickly we've learned to pervert it and use it for our own purposes. I can trust the photos of my ancestors. Will my great-grandchildren take pictures of me seriously? I doubt it.

Ain't science wonderful?

Next episode: “Jihad, Rape, And Profiling” – More on our view of reality.

i       Whatever that means.

ii      No way existed to record it. Although some form of language probably developed between a few hundred thousand and a few million years ago – it's a topic of major dispute since there's no way to determine it for certain – it was only a little over five thousand years ago that written language came on the scene as anything other than a device for counting.

iii     The oldest cave paintings are dated about 40,000 BCE.

iv     Sometimes, especially in portraits, reality needed a little help in order that future generations better appreciated the true nature of the individual being depicted.

v       The “camera obscura” had been around for a long time. Chinese philosopher Mo Ti (Fifth Century BCE) had notice the inverted image produced by the pinhole device and traced the image to form a picture.

vi      More or less. Dates of 1825, 1826, and 1827 are found in various places.

vii     As early as 1848, a color photograph was demonstrated but the colors were extremely light-sensitive and could only be seen for a short time and in dim light.

viii    Actually, Brady's first photo of Lincoln was in 1860 while he was running for office.

ix      Movies, not flip-book “moving pictures.”

x       They're also often a waste of both time and space. Facebook et al produce more pictures than we know what to do with. Most are personal or cute and are of little documentary value, except personally. Most are not altered but they're not very interesting.

xi      “Dearie, do you remember when they waltzed to the Sousa Band. My wasn't the music grand. ...”

xii      And its explication in ancient Jewish texts.

xiii    There were other reasons to reject this form of documentation. The phtographing of a party they attended was the trigger event for the Harvard Law Review article in 1890, by Warren and Brandeis by which the concept of privacy was popularized.

xiv     Soon enough, using three D printers and artificial intelligence, we'll be able to keep our ancestors with us as long as we live.

xv      Including units that document all police activity.

xvi     As well as our running red lights.

xvii    It's a little paradoxical that our society has embraced all forms of technology that utilize tracking chips, like GPS elements. Those in control – like the government – can monitor all our movements this way. People disparage surveillance when they think they don't control it, but are eager to adopt the technology when they think it is helpful.