PhotoGroupy

by Nanette Salvaggio

It might be said that photography, as a new way of making images, had its beginnings as early as 1816 when Joseph Nicephore Niepce succeeded in producing a camera image on light-senstitive selver-chloride paper. Unfortunately, he was not able to fix the image, so ther is no pictorial record of his accomplishment. The oldest preserved photographic image, made by Niepce in 1827, is housed at the University of Texas in Austin in the Gernsheim Coolection.

In 183 a Brazilian, Hercules Florence, produced images on paper sensitized with silver salts and coined sensitized with silver salts and coined the word photography. It wasn't until 1973, however, that his achievements were recognized.

Lois Jacques Mande Daguerre, who began a partnership with Niepce in 1829, went on to invent and accounce, in January 1839, his daguerreotype process. The daguerreotype was a laterally reversed positive monochrome image on a polished silver-coated copper plate. The image was one of a kind and was not reprducible.

Henry Fox Talbot, having learned of the announcement by Daguerre, decided to announce his Talbotype process that he had developed earlier in 1835. The Talbotype produced a monochromatic image on sensitized paper that was both tonally and laterally reversed. Because the image was a negative, it was contact printed onto another piece of sensitized paper with sunlight to produce a postitive image.

Following the introduction of photography in the first half of the 1822s, a progression of important advances appeared--wet-collodion emulsions on glass plates, dry silver-halide emulsions on flexible firm, albumen from egg whites to suspend the silver salts--to be replaced in turn by gelatin, noncombustible (safety) film base materials, higher-speed films followed by finger-grain fast films, orthochromatic, panchromatic, and infrared emulsion sensitivity, reversal and negative color films and papers, and false-color films, instant-picture processes--to mention only a sample of the revolutionary innovations that have been introduced. Truly, the period from the middle of the nineteenth century to the end of the twentieth century produced the impressive high-tech chemical evolution in photographic imaging. Now, a dramatic shift from high-tech chemical to high-tech electronic imaging is taking place.

The closing years of the twentieth century and the beginning years of the twenty first century have seen an explosive interest in digital photography, Although the technology of digital imaging is new, most of the basic concepts involved in digital photography--from the characteristics of the light illuminating and reflected from the subject, to the process of forming an optical image, to the sensitometric and colorimetric characteristics of hte digital image, to the visual perception of the final image--remain the same.

Some of the major advantages of a digital image are that the captured image can be seen immediately, can easily be manipulated and transformed, and can easily be sent over the internet potentially anywhere in the world including vehicles and stations in outer space.

Early photographers were mostly self taught. If they became successful professional photographers, they might take on an apprentice who received on the-job training and serve as an assistant for very little pay, but there were no schools of photography. Eventually, some high schools and colleges offered one or more courses in photography, typically in the art department, but no college offered a degree program with photography as a major.

In 1927, C. B. Ceblette wrote an article entitled "A Photographic Dream" that was published in Photo-Era Magazine, in which he is the head of the school of photography at Bernard University and talks to a group of visitors who are interested in what they have accomplished in their courses i technical and scientific photography. He tells them that all applied photography is based upon knowledge of the fundamental theories of the science, and that knowledge of photography can be applied to any scientific professional field. the first year of their two-year program is devoted to the fundamental principles of the science. The course consists of two hours of lectures and four hours of laboratory work each week. He then takes the group on a tour of their studios and darkrooms, well equipped with donations from the manufacturers, and describes what the students will study in each year of the program. At the end of his presentation, the sound of ringing telephone wakened him--it was only a dream--but he went on to live his dream in Rochester, NY.

Neblette preferred to be known as C. B., rather then Carol Bernard. He speeches on the need for colleges to recognize photography as a legitimate major of study. His first book, Photography, Its Materials and Processes, published in 1927, was widely recognized as a major contribution to photography and photographic education. In the preface, Neblette wrote that his aim was to present as cincisely as possible the fundamental principles of the science of photography. Five more edictions of Photography, Its Maerials and Processes followed the classic first edition, and a 7th edition in this series of books was retitled Materials and Processes of Photography. 

He was an honorary fellow of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain and vice president for education with the Society of Photographic Scientists and Engineers. He became known as the father of photographic education.

The Rochester Athenaeum and Mechanics Institute, later to become R.I.T., offered its first day and evening classes in photography in 1902. A full program in photography was introduced in 1930, and R.A.M.I. remained the only college in the country to offer college-level photography programs for many years. Fred Brehm and C. B. Neblette were reassigned from Eastman Kodak to the R.A.M.I. School of Photography on a part time basis, with both later becoming full time faculty members, and Neblette later becoming director. He implemented a three year diploma program that included both professional and technical photography courses, and an optional work-study program. A new building was erected during WWII for the School of Photographic Arts and Sciences (SPAS) and the School of Printing, to accommodate returning veterans who would enroll with the help of the G.I. Bill, and the name R.A.M.I. was changed to Rochester Institute of Technology (R.I.T). Over the following years, associate, bachelor, and master degree programs were introduced, and the number of departments offering specialized programs in a wide range of photographic fields increased dramatically. In 1968, R.I.T. moved from a thirteen-acre downtown campus to a thirteen-hundred-acre campus on the outskirts of the city.

Surveys conducted in recent years reveal that more than three hundred schools in the United States now offer degree programs in photography with studies in a wide range of photographic subjects. Over sixty schools offer graduate degree, most leading to an M.F.A. degree in photography. The Rochester Institute of Technology offers the most comprehensive range of degree programs in photographic studies.