re: #170 William Barnett-Lewis

Ok, this is for all the people here who know a little about photography and, especially, about it’s history. I saw this at another website a few moments ago and this is so true it’s painful. And yet this truth is why we’ve seen the biggest uptick in pictures taken since the turn of the 20th century. What you say? This:

Embedded ImageWe have some of the most insanely great cameras ever imagined available to us. Yet what are most pictures taken with? Phones.

A few generations ago when the first photo explosion happen it was with a Brownie. Just as limited and just as ubiquitous.

Our generations will not be remembered for all the careful pictures we photographers make but for the snaps of countless phones in the magic of the instant.

I have that exact Brownie Camera on a bookshelf not six feet from where I’m sitting. It was the first camera I ever took pictures with. I was in grade school then and I’m 60 now. I remember how cool it was when instamatic cameras with film cartridges were introduced. My parents bought each of us kids our own camera and the documentation of family stuff went into overdrive.

I have another brownie-style camera that’s even older. It’s basically a wood box with five holes in it and one switch that you flipped one way to take a picture and then flipped it back to take the next.