The Camera As Historian
The Camera As Historian
Since cameras were invented, one of their great uses has been to capture newsworthy or history making moments. From the first photographs that Daguerre took of solar eclipses to the images we see almost immediately from war or disasters, the SLR camera has played a huge role.
Recording events is a type of recording history. Whether it is a disaster of some kind to crime scene photographs that will ultimately help convict someone, these photographs are seen in newspapers, on television and in the courtroom as evidence that something existed. With original film, it was fairly easy to tell if something had been manipulated but digital photography went through a process that made it hard to tell. This created believability issues for digital photographs but today technology has made it possible to see the footprints of a picture and how it might have changed. The improves the credibility level of digital photography in general. Digital infrared or ultraviolet cameras also help museums and scientists record things that were previously impossible to keep records of. For the average person, an SLR camera keeps records of important family events like weddings, birthdays, births and even death. Since theres not even the worry about a lab technician seeing photographs anymore, the personal camera can really record anything and everything important in ones life. Stored on a computer or a c.d. the one time stacks of photo albums are a tidy stack of files.
There are many arguments that weve become desensitized to some events or scenes because weve seen so many pictures but in many ways seeing digital photographs is similar to reading through volumes of history books. Whether its just a quick memory of an afternoon in a park or a horror scene of war, its still history.
