Quote of the Day - 2/7/2012
/By 1935 and 1936 the American camera manufacturers and the photographic supply shops found their business booming. Candid cameras were everywhere. - Frederick Lewis Allen in SINCE YESTERDAY - THE 1930s IN AMERICA
~~~~~
When do the candid images start in your family…ones that were not taken in a studio? There may be a few from the 30s in my family but they ramped up considerably in the 40s. When my mother was a young teenager, she enjoyed using her Brownie camera; one of her more memorable pictures was of the head and shoulders of her young twin sisters looking out from the bathroom window (obviously more interested in being outside than taking a bath).
Cameras have certainly improved since the 1930s. There have been incremental improvements in the technology - black/white to color to faster film to better lenses to easier flash lighting to miniaturization to digital rather than chemical images. Many people now have a camera with them all the time (since it is in their cell phone).
The cultural change the candid images of the 1930s initiated is still with us and now the ease with which images can be shared with a very broad audience (i.e. the world via the internet) is causing another cultural change. Our lives can very easily become a lot more public than ever before.
Do we understand the world better with the increase in images? We expect more visuals now in just about every aspect of our life. It is easier for us to absorb but there is no guarantee that we understand what we are seeing. A picture is only worth a 1000 words if we understand the context and content of the picture!
. All the problems I’ve had with it have been self-inflicted (leaving the SD card in the laptop or the battery in the charger). It’s small enough that I carry it in a padded area of my purse or a pocket of my travel vest; it’s always near at hand to capture an image I want to keep in more than my memory. The only extra purchase I’ve made is a second battery for a long day/lots of images captured.
