A Reduced History of Photography
Faster Than The Speed of Light presentation by Andy Vaines
Expert photographer and former studio manager, Andy Vaines MA, who has been teaching Photography at College for fifteen years, delivered a fascinating talk tracin
g the steps since "photography was emerging as a discipline combining physics, chemistry and mathematics." This made all photographers appreciate the volume of scientific discoveries and inventors who had contributed to the development of modern photography, as well as understanding lots of the technical terminology.
Setting early photographic advances in their historical context, Andy traced progress from the 1830s when William Fox Talbot announced his discoveries and Bradford College first opened it doors. Andy emphasised that alongside the acclaimed pioneers there were numerous forgotten inventors.
In an A to Z he gave a comprehensive view of people, processes and products as they appeared over the years - everything from Heliographs and Daguerreotypes to Polaroids and Photoshop - and all in 40 minutes!
Andy concluding with a timely reminder to the audience, "You are the practitioner. You are the image maker." He stressed that all the technology they would be introduced to in the forthcoming presentations was irrelevant until they picked it up and used it with their own creativity.