Epoch of picture evidence

L 7

Ing. Jiří Šnajdar 2013

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Photography is a process of getting and keeping a picture with help of record of light reflection. It is done by mechanical, chemical or digital devices – photo cameras. Photography belongs among picture technologies and from its beginning is in the interests of scientists and artists and mainly media.

What went before photography ?

Camera obscura (dark chamber), used by painters and sculptors - Aristoteles, da Vinci etc.

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Together were used chemical discoveries. In the year 1725 was discovered sensitivity on light by silver nitrate. Almost 100 years later first chemical picture appeare on the paper. In the same time develops first heliography – glass board, bitumen and picture of pope Pius VII., few years later succeeded the French inventor J.N. Niepce in getting, stabilising and etching a picture.

Up to this day exists the oldest preserved photography from the year 1826 called The view through the window into the yard. Its exposition took 8 hours.

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Successor of Niepce was the painter Louis Jacques Daguerre. In the year 1835 coincidentally discovered that it is possible to develop with mercurial vapours a picture, which is invisibly intercepted on metal plate, affected by iodine vapours.

So was discovered so called daguerrotypie, base of photography technique (on cupreous plate, silver halogens sensitive on light, mercury and iodine). For exposure sufficed few minutes.

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Problem of daguerreotypie was, that each picture was an original and was not possible to make copies. Followed talbotype – picture on glass plate, collodion process – photographed in wetness and so called dry process – exposed on bromine-silver plate with gelatine film greased on.

The American H. Goodwin invents in 1889 the film. His invention used in the year G. Eastman in production of roll film into his portable apparatus Kodak, which he started to produce.

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It was nothing in the way to mass development of monochrome photography.

The promotional slogan of the Kodak firm at the turn of 19th and 20th century was : “You press the button, we do the rest.”

The next step was invention of microfilm, which was used recently in archive (microfiches).

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Also in Czech in the 2nd half of 19th century comes to massive development of photography – in Prague exist 70 ateliers, new branch develops – photography processing in laboratories, in the year 1882 was established Czech Photographic Society.

Photo is always more used by journalists in media. Legendary low-format apparatus for reportage photography were German apparatuses Leica.

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• 1927 – for the first time used flash;

• 1935 - first colour film (firm Kodak);

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• 1947 – Polaroid made so called immediate photography, after few minutes without any other processing was developed quality and true photography, today is this system replaced by digitalisation;

• 1969 – invention of electronic imaging of picture so called CCD;

• 1981 – first digital camera;

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End of the 20th century – Digital photography is another important milestone in photography development. Contrary classical photography uses the electronic device recording of pictures in binary form. This enables their displaying, saving, printing, transferring and filing in personal computers without chemical process.

To the mass expansion of digital photography helped especially speediness of its display on LCD panel of a digital camera, its low costs and sharing with help of electronic post or web albums.

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With start of „digital“ moved the modifications in the computer, where exist more sophisticated tolls for editing, more accurate and especially more comfortable, than before.

CCD is an electronic component, placed behind objective of a camera, sensor replacing film. In laboratory was the CCD evolved already in 1969 and first digital by the firm SONY in the year 1970.

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With digitalisation on the other side was opened the possibility for different services, and this mainly for amateur photographers, which have no available computational technique : Saving/copying of digital photographs from any known memory card on CDs´ or DVD medium, their printing or using of internet for saving or export.

Genre variety of photography – reportage and its modification, sport photography, documentary, art or creative, commercial or promotional photography, photo collages and photomontages, experimental photography etc.

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Development of cinematography was influenced by invention of photography, that intercepted existing things, landscapes, but mainly persons in real. By connecting of Laterna magika and photography originated cinematograph.On its formation participated tens of inventors, including

T. A. Edison in America and his Kinetoskop

In 1895 the Lumiér brothers in Paris – first movie projection for more spectators.

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First movie projection in Czech took place in Karlovy Vary in the year 1896, seven months later after the historical performance of Lumiérs´.

In Prague Jan Kříženecký carried on the Czech cinema on the Exhibition of art and architecture in the year 1898 and on Jubilee exhibition of Commerce and Trade Chamber in Prague in the year 1908 operated for remuneration his so called reklamograf.

Beginnings of cinematography in our region were similar as in other industrial developed countries.

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To the most important wandering cinematographics, who showed films in different towns and villages in our country, belong Viktor Ponrepo, own name Dismas Šlambor. Ponrepo was also the owner of first stable cinema, that he found on September 15th, 1907 in Prague in Karlova street in the house At the Blue Pike.

In the year 1909 started the cinema Lucerna which is working till today.

Mute movie until 30th years of the 20th century – Ch. Chaplin, D. Grifith, D. Fairbanks, M. Pickford and S. Ejznštein (Cruiser Potěmkin),

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Czech movie from the year 1908 was realised in the companies Kinofa, AB film, Lucernafilm and others.

Expansion of film enterprise came in Czech after formation of the Czechoslovak republic in the year 1918.

The important person of this time period was Karel Lamač, who concentrated around himself creative personalities and in the year 1926 made adaptation of Hasek's The Good Soldier Schweik with his first theatre performer Karel Noll.

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Karel Anton used the elements of modern film speech in adaptation of Macha's Gypsies (1922) and May Fairy Tale (1926) of Vilém Mrštík. The eminent producer of modernist orientation became Gustav Machatý films Kreutzer sonata and Erotikon. In the Slovakia arose some reportorial and played films. The important act was creation of film version of the story about Janosik (1921).

1927 is made the first sound film film, American romantic Jazz Singer

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In Czech between the wars make films K. Lamač, K. Anton, G. Machatý, J. Honzl and V+W+J, V. Burian, H. Haas, M. Frič, O. Vávra, V. Vančura.

In sixtieth comes new Czech wave : M. Forman, V. Chytilová, V. Jasný, I. Passer, J. Menzel, E. Schorm also the first Oscar´s holders J. Kadár and E. Klos.

Among the authors of Kino automatu, first made interactive film for EXPO ´67 , belong J. Roháč, R. Činčera, V. Svitáček and M. Horníček.

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Animated film and cartoon – in the Czechoslovakia Brothers in trick – J. Trnka, H. Týrlová, but also Jan Švankmajer.

In the world is considered as the most significant maker of animated slapsticks Walt Disney, American producer, designer and director. He made many movies and short slapsticks, he did - Mickey Mouse, melancholy dog Pluto, drake Donald and Popee the Sailor.

After the 2nd world war comes in useful in the movie creation colour and progress continues in future to wide-angle projection, stereo, polyekran projection – (on few screens A. Radok), panoramic projection and Dolby system.

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When, on October 6, 1927, Warner Bros.' The Jazz Singer premiered. It was a smash box office success for the mid-level studio, earning a total of $2.625 million in the United States and abroad, almost a million dollars more than the previous record for a Warners' film.

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The "natural" sounds of the settings were also audible. Though the success of The Jazz Singer was due largely to Jolson, already established as one of America's biggest music stars, and its limited use of synchronized sound hardly qualified it as an innovative sound film, the movie's profits were proof enough to the industry that the technology was worth investing in.

Meanwhile, Warner Bros. had released three more talkies, all profitable, if not at the level of The Jazz Singer

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In March, Tenderloin appeared; it was billed by Warners as the first feature in which characters spoke their parts. On July 6, 1928, the first all-talking feature, Lights of New York, premiered.

The film cost Warner Bros. only $23,000 to produce, but grossed $1.252 million, a record rate of return surpassing 5,000%.

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In September, the studio released another Al Jolson part-talking picture, The Singing Fool, which more than doubled The Jazz Singer's earnings record for a Warners movie.

This second Jolson screen smash demonstrated the movie musical's ability to turn a song into a national hit: inside of nine months, the Jolson number "Sonny Boy" had racked up 2 million record and 1.25 million sheet music sales.

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September 1928 also saw the release of Paul Terry's Dinner Time, among the first animated cartoons produced with synchronized sound. Soon after he saw it, Walt Disney released his first sound picture, the Mickey Mouse short Steamboat Willie.

The first successful European dramatic talkie was the all-British Blackmail. Directed by twenty-nine-year-old Alfred Hitchcock, the movie had its London debut June 21, 1929. Originally shot as a silent, Blackmail was restaged to include dialogue sequences, along with a score and sound effects, before its premiere.

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Before the Paris studios were fully sound-equipped—a process that stretched well into 1930—a number of other early French talkies were shot in Germany. The first all-talking German feature, Atlantik, had premiered in Berlin on October 28. Yet another Elstree-made movie, it was rather less German at heart than Les Trois masques and La Route est belle were French; a BIP production with a British scenarist and German director, it was also shot in English as Atlantic.

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The entirely German Agfa-Film production It's You I Have Loved (Dich hab ich geliebt) opened three-and-a-half weeks later. It was not "Germany's First Talking Film", as the marketing had it, but it was the first to be released in the United States.

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In September 1926, Jack Warner, head of Warner Bros., was quoted to the effect that talking pictures would never be viable:

"They fail to take into account the international language of the silent pictures, and the unconscious share of each onlooker in creating the play, the action, the plot, and the imagined dialogue for himself."

Much to his company's benefit, he would be proven very wrong.

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The American movie industry—already the world's most powerful—set an export record in 1929 that, by the applied measure of total feet of exposed film, was 27 percent higher than the year before. Concerns that language differences would hamper U.S. film exports turned out to be largely unfounded.

In fact, the expense of sound conversion was a major obstacle to many overseas producers, relatively undercapitalized by Hollywood standards.

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The production of multiple versions of export-bound talkies in different languages (known as "Foreign Language Version"), as well as the production of the cheaper "International Sound Version", a common approach at first, largely ceased by mid-1931, replaced by post-dubbing and subtitling.

Despite trade restrictions imposed in most foreign markets, by 1937, American films commanded about 70 percent of screen time around the globe.