MIRROR OF MEMORY

MIRROR OF MEMORY

Text & photos provided by Canton 1840 Translation by Leo Photo by Getty Images

Writers record history with a pen. Painters record history with a brush. With the invention of photography, we are able to capture our memories in pictures and relive them like a mirrored image.

The basic idea of photography came from the optical phenomenon of pinhole image formation.

The phenomenon was documented by Chinese philosopher Mo Zi (480-389 BC) and Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC), respectively.

As an important component of the camera, the camera obscura (dark chamber) was described by Arabian physicist and mathematician Alhazen a thousand years ago. In the 17th century, the camera obscura had largely the same form as those in more modern cameras. But it was not until 1824 that the retired military offi cer, Frenchman Joseph Nicéphore Niépce (1765-1833) captured the world's fi rst permanent positive image using a camera obscura. It took eight hours of exposure to get the image.

That is why the walls of two opposing buildings were captured in the image, a case that is not likely using today's cameras. Niépce termed his invention as“heliography”.

In 1837, Louis Jacques Mandé Daguerre (1787-1851), a French artist who partnered with Niépce in the latter's fi nal years, found that the use of mercury vapour in the development of images could lead to permanent and clear images on metalplated sheets. Daguerre named this process of photography as “daguerreotype”. This invention signifi cantly reduced the time of exposure for each picture from 8 hours to 30 minutes.

Daguerre publicly presented his invention in the year of 1839, which also witnessed the world's fi rst camera advertisement. The year is often cited as the starting point in the history of photography.

View from His Window, the world's earliest photograph by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce尼埃普斯攝人類最早存世照片《在勒格拉斯的窗外景色》

記憶之鏡

作家用文字記錄歷史，畫家用畫筆記錄歷史，而攝影術的發明，好像打開了一面鏡子，使得人類可以將記憶完全再現。

攝影術的基本原理來自小孔成像這種光學現象。在公元前300多年，東方的墨子和西方的亞里多德分別記錄了對小孔成像的發現。

暗箱是照相機的重要部件。早在一千年前，阿拉伯學者阿哈桑就描述了一種后來被稱為暗箱的工作器材。在17世紀，暗箱已經在很大程度上具備了現在意義上的照相機的形態。但直到1824年，法國退伍軍官約瑟夫·尼瑟福·尼埃普斯才成功地捕捉到了一個暗淡的永久性的正像。為拍攝這張照片，他用了足足8個小時的時間曝光，因此畫面中出現了東西兩座建筑的墻面都受光的情景。而這種情況在現在的照片中是不可能存在的。尼埃普斯把他發明的這種攝影方式稱為陽光攝影術。

1837年，與尼埃普斯合作研究攝影術的路易·雅克·芒特·達蓋爾發現運用水銀蒸汽來顯影影像，可以在金屬板上獲得永久且鮮明的影像。達蓋爾把這一過程命名為達蓋爾銅版攝影術。達蓋爾銅版攝影術的出現使得拍攝一張照片的曝光時間從8小時一下子減少到30分鐘左右。

一般而言，攝影史以達蓋爾公布發明的1839年為攝影術發明之年，同年，就出現了世界上第一個相機的廣告。

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