Photographic future

L'Envoi

When Earth's last picture is painted and the tubes are twisted and dried,
When the oldest colours have faded, and the youngest critic has died,
We shall rest, and, faith, we shall need it -- lie down for an aeon or two,
Till the Master of All Good Workmen shall put us to work anew!

And those that were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair;
They shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets' hair;
They shall find real saints to draw from -- Magdalene, Peter, and Paul;
They shall work for an age at a sitting and never be tired at all!

And only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame;
And no one shall work for money, and no one shall work for fame,
But each for the joy of the working, and each, in his separate star,
Shall draw the Thing as he sees It for the God of Things as They Are!

Rudyard Kipling

I liked that poem, Curt, thanks!

Erik Petersson said:

What regards the future, I happen to have overheard that a Russian oligarch (won't write his name) will establish the "Institute of Pre-digital Photography", as he wishes to call it. It will be joint venture with one of the Saudi princes and a mega-rich Chinese businessman who is also an art dealer. They plan to hire staff in St Petersburg and Shanghai, about 50 researchers I think, and film coating lines in both cities. Lots of guest researchers will be welcome. There will be grants and scholarships to other manufacturers and to practitioners in the range from 5000 to 5 million USD.

Ooops I forgot, I was not supposed to say anything yet. I hope they don't change their minds now!

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I love it! And, actually, I don't think something like that is an impossible scenario to imagine! More surprising things have happened, especially in art. Maybe it will be located in Bentonville, Arkansas.

dwross said:

Hi jakyamuni,

Fantastic news about your treasure trove of old recipes! Even better is to meet another optimistic practitioner of the the scientific method. The Venn Diagram approach to examining the old darlings is great fun (and, of course, probably more to the point -- very productive.) I look forward to seeing what you come up with. Hope you share!

d

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Oh, that won't be for a while yet. What I'm doing is to strip them apart, one process at a time (right now, it's Salt Printing)... collate, translate, and rediscover these things from the 1860s and before. Nineteenth century science writing is dense, verbose (it takes a full page for them to describe coating by floating) and sometimes wrong (Cyanide is called an element... and the terms "atom" and "molecule" are thrown around interchangeably).

I'm hoping to parlay this into a Master's Thesis though.

Very exciting! Best of luck. It will be a significant contribution.
d