LENS BASED: Origins of the lens

Looking back at the origins of technology connected to photography and other lens based tools, it is easy to see how the concept of purely lens based medias are such a popular and successful medium. The ability to capture photographic images, either still or moving has not only revolutionised media in entertainment industries but also have helped form the building blocks of modern civilisation. The use of lenses and how light travels through them has long been a large part of the development of human knowledge and has helped prove the most groundbreaking theories such as Galileo's theory that the earth was not the centre of the universe, something proven with Galileo's use of lenses in his handmade telescope way back in the 17th century.

We continued our look at the development of lenses and their impact on society through the invention of Camera Obscura/pinhole cameras which further innovated the use of lenses and allowed society to capture images through a product which resembled the workings of an actual human eye and the capturing of light through the iris which gives us vision as living creatures and which could now be projected onto film and printed.

With the new ability to capture a still image as it would be seen in the moment (bare in mind the closest one came to an image of a previous time was through drawings and paintings) people of that time were given a great tool to visually present narratives.

This is where photography directly had an impact on the medium of art and idea of art photography came into play. The fact that one could capture any particular moment in time in almost an instant innovated the way we saw the world and gave society a way to teach and project moments in time to those who might not have been present, whereas it would have been impossible before to fully give a visual representation of a narrative beforehand.

The advancement then into moving pictures in photography was innovated by two French brothers, the Lumiere Brothers, who invented a machine which could capture multiple photographic images rapidly which then when put into a projector and played in a slideshow around the same speed would display movement in the images it projected. This creation held quite possibly the largest impact on the world of technology both back then and arguably to present day. The ability to bring photography into the 4th dimension when portraying any type of narrative meant it was now even easier to tell stories and portray events to the truest it could be.