Camera Obscura

Camera Obscura

Cameras have been around for a long time. In their most basic form of image projection, it is said that they may have existed as long ago as 500 BC with the first one taking the form of pinholes in tents where light came through and was cast on another tarp or tent surface. Some go so far as to say there may have been similar Stone Age versions that gave rise to some of the strangely-shaped cave drawings of animals that have been found on cave walls. But on the assumption that anything before a specific structure intended to project light into a darkened space to cast a specific image is not really a device, it seems fair to say that the first camera was what is known as a camera obscura, which translates from the Latin as “dark chamber”, which seems to imply a degree of intentionality to the project. It took almost two millennia for someone to figure out that if you used this projection technique on light-sensitive surfaces or materials, you could create a “permanent” image that could rightly be considered an early version of a photograph. I will skip the early history of photography and all the chemistry that would be required and just leap forward to the silver halide photographs that were created by capturing a negative photographic image on celluloid film put into a dark camera, which would then get processed and projected in a dark room (another form of a camera obscura) onto photographic paper that is coated in silver halide to create an even more permanent image.

When I was in high school, my friend Tom was a photo nut who not only took lots of photographs, but also processed his own film and developed his own pictures. This was not such an unusual thing in the 1960’s and basement or garage darkrooms were not uncommon. It all required a fair bit of chemical knowledge as well as some expensive equipment to create photographs that looked reasonably professional. Tom took the time to show me how this all happened and taught me how to both develop film and make prints. The old scenes of hanging and drying prints on metal wires strung across a dark room were more or less the way it was and it all seemed fairly cool at the time. Naturally, this was all being done in black and white. While color film did exist, it was a vastly more complicated thing to process and print. Color has been around a long time but it was less likely to get self-developed. And then came digital, which was invented in 1975 but didn’t become ubiquitous until the 1990s. As we all know, that whole thing went ballistic with the introduction of the iPhone in 2007. There were other “before their time” inventions like Simon by IBM and iPhones, which have fallen in market share to 55% of smartphones, but that doesn’t matter because virtually all smartphones have cameras as standard issue equipment and they just keep getting better and better.

I am a much less avid user of my cell phone camera than others and I have almost 10,000 photos on my phone. I just recently sent away a lifetime of photos for digitization and had only about 1,500 in my files, so I think its safe to say that my camera usage is accelerating based on a combination of digitization and inclusion on my smartphone. I think that makes me mainstream normal. So what has happened to professional or even high-end amateur photography? It’s not exactly a small niche group…they are a large and important group of active professionals and enthusiasts.

About twenty years ago after I bought a house that screamed for some black and white photography art, I went out and bought 10 rolls of ASA 400 B/W film and a modest Nikon 32mm camera. I went around New York City in the early morning and took a bunch of “artistic” pictures that I framed and have used them for wall filler (in back hallways and such). That was an involved as I ever got in photography and to say the least, that makes me less engaged than most. I can convince myself that there is nothing so special in the art of photography, but then I see the photos of a master and I have to admit that I could not be more wrong about that. Our friend David Taggart would be an example. We have probably fifteen of his best photographs (mostly color, but a few B/W) and consider them some of our best artwork. But despite all that, I still wonder about the artistry and that is probably because there are just so many people now with a handy camera in their pocket at all times and that never happened with a paintbrush, did it?

In our 27 years of motorcycle group riding there have been three or four members that considered themselves good photographers (compared to the rest of us hacks). One of them was Steve, who is on this trip with us here in Spain. Today, as we all wandered through various Gaudi homes on the Passeig de Gracia, Steve had his big old single-lens reflex (SLR) camera with him to record these unique architectural wonders. I have no idea what he was planning to do with the photographs, but I presume they were for general memorabilia purposes. We had a leisurely day planned, so we were just sitting on one of the benches in front of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel killing time until our group gathered to go off to find a lunch spot. Kim returned from a shopping errand getting me a small duffle bag to use for daily overnighting purposes rather than dragging the big duffle on and off the van each night. Meanwhile, Steve and Maggie decided their purchased lunch pizza was not worth eating and that they would join the group for lunch. Steve thought to take his SLR camera and sweater up to his room, but we were having enough of a challenge hearding the group off for the lunch call, and it was getting later by the minute. I told Steve he could put the camera in my new duffle since I would keep it with me until we got bask to the room after lunch. That struck him like a fine idea so he wrapped the camera in his sweater and placed it in my otherwise empty duffle and off we went to find a restaurant.

We walked about one city block and found a cafe that served a modest sandwich and French fries lunch. It was a pleasant day and we had lots of time so we just sat there telling tall tales. The duffle sat next to me throughout the lunch in our little isolated outdoor seating area. It was not too busy, so we were in no rush. Then, when we finished, we wandered back over the cordoned-off block back to our hotel and went up the ramp into the lobby. There I casually handed Maggie the duffle and she opened it to extract Steve’s things for him. She found the sweater, but there was no camera. We stood there looking at each other as we realized that we must have been pickpocketed (or whatever its called when a bag gets unzipped and the contents extracted only to have the zipper then closed to avoid immediate detection). It had been perhaps 90 minutes since we had sat on the bench and placed the camera in the duffle. It had been with me 100% of the time. That meant someone had most likely come up behind me while I walked the empty block from our hotel to the cafe. I was pretty sure it had happened before lunch rather than after.

The funny thing was that while Steve and I sat on the bench as we sorted out our lunch plans, I had asked him about his camera, specifically wondering whether he would replace it today if something happened to it, given that his iPhone was likely as good as the SLR. Rather than answer that directly, he explained why he had it from his more active journalistic days. The subject was dropped, but it was freakishly omniscient when I reflect back on it. After speaking with the Mandarin Oriental concierge, Steve determined that a trip to the central police station to file a report was simply not worth the trouble. Nor was it likely to yield any results, since the camera really was a dozen years old at that point and dispossessed of most of its value. So, he would just give up his old but comfortably familiar camera technology to the gods and let it go. Therefore, his voyage from camera obscura to a dark place without even a pinhole of light was involuntary, but all too real. Given the circumstances, I suspect that Steve will have to be very specific and not the least bit obscure about the events of the day with his insurance company.