Introduction
In its relatively short lifetime, photography has become one of the most dominant ways that information is visualized and communicated throughout much of the world. Within the field of photography, there have been many technological innovations that have allowed photography to evolve over time and become what it is today. This timeline showcases some of the critical technological advances in both capturing and displaying photographs.
From this timeline I hope to illuminate viewers to the rich and complex technological history of the photographic process as well as give historical context for each milestone. By inspecting this timeline viewers will not only be able to learn, in brief, what the technological advancement is, but make inferences on how processes are potentially linked over time.
Materials
Knight Lab’s Timeline JS was the primary software used to create the timeline which is a web accessible tool that utilizes Google Sheets as a database for the source material. Because all of the software is web based, Google Chrome was the browser used to access both Timeline JS and Google Sheets.
Much of the data and information for the timeline was sourced from Richard Benson’s book and website, “The Printed Picture” with additional information being sourced from Wikipedia articles with primary source citations. Many of the photographs featured in the timeline are from The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s publicly available digital collection or Google Images.
Methods
From the Timeline JS website, I downloaded the Google Sheets template provided and after using the “publish to web” feature, I obtained the active URL for the timeline so that it could be previewed in a browser as well as the embed code so that it could be embedded in a website or blog post. The URL was copied and pasted into a new browser window and, upon refresh of the page, served as a preview of the timeline as data was added to the Google Sheet.
In order to determine what events would and would not be included in the timeline, the development of a working criteria for what would constitute a “milestone of the photographic process” was necessary. First, I defined “photographic” as, “any process by which light interacts with a material via an optical system to produce a stable image.” The term “milestone” also needed a practical definition for which I used, “any technological advancement in capturing or displaying photographic images that significantly improved upon previous techniques and/or had a significant impact on the future of the medium in regards to the clarity with which images could be produced or the efficiency with which they could be disseminated.” Although neither of these definitions are complete or all encompassing, they laid the frame work for the criteria by which I chose events to display in the timeline.
Once a milestone was added to the Google Sheet template, the approximate date of invention and a very brief technical description of the process and why it was significant were added. If two milestones happened to take place within the same year, they were ordered in line with the logic of the written narrative contained in the text column. After this information was in place, images that represented the process were added to the table. The images falls into two general categories which are loosely: images of the result of a process or images depicting the tools used for the process. For example, the entry for Albumen printing displays a digital reproduction of a print made by Carlton E. Watkins using the Albumen process, which falls into the first category, while the entry for Charge Coupled Device displays an image of a digital rendering of a Charge Coupled Device itself, placing it in the second category. After all image links were inserted, the artist to whom the original image is credited (if applicable) was placed into the table. Finally, a title slide was added to introduce the topic of the timeline.
Results/Discussion
Below, you can navigate through the completed timeline visualization as well as view it in a separate window here.
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Utilizing Timeline JS for displaying information regarding milestones in the photographic process has both positive and negative aspects. Below I have summarized the results from using the above methodology.
Positives
Timeline JS is user friendly and a simple way to get data into a table and have it automatically formatted into a visual presentation. Its display in a browser is clean and media forward which is ideal for catching and maintaining viewer attention. It is especially appropriate for subjects that inherently have images associated with them, such as photographic processes. It provides an easy way for users to get a general feel for the topic of the history of photographic processes and roughly when each arose chronologically. From this, it is easy and quick to see for example, that it took approximately 20 years for the wet-plate collodion process (1851) to evolve into the dry plate process (1871). It is also possible, through the presentation of media, to get an impression of the type of print each process yielded as well as roughly see how photographic image quality changed over the course of time.
Negatives
The negatives for displaying a history of photographic processes via Timeline JS fall under two primary categories: accuracy and customization. The question of accuracy is more inherent to single point timelines in general, rather than Timeline JS specifically. When looking at something like the invention of a photographic process, it never occurs at one point in time. Many processes have a long and gradual history from initial concept, through many early permutations and refinements, until it ultimately lands on its fully realized form. Timeline JS enables users to enter a range of dates however there is no way to distinguish this range as the development of a process rather than the entire life of a process. Along with this there is also no way to show developments occurring in parallel. Single point, or ranges with little to no context on a timeline are not overly accurate in providing information regarding the actual nature by which photographic processes develop. Along with this, a timeline of this style gives little information about the life of a process. Some photographic processes have a long life with peaks and valleys of popularity, others are developed but never gain major use, while still others maintain steady use from invention to present day.
Beyond accuracy issues of timelines in general, Timeline JS specifically is very limited in how it displays information. Because of its strict template nature, the creator has little say over how the software constructs the visuals. If one is well versed in coding, they could alter the code directly, however this would be counter to Timeline JS’s user friendliness.
A final negative of this form of visualization for this work is that the end user consumes the information via a digital display. This is potentially problematic when assessing something as tactile, subtle, and unique as a photographic print because rather than seeing the object in person, users are forced to view all objects through the display interface which has a homogenizing effect and lessons their ability to see small variations from process to process.
Ultimately, because of these limitations, utilizing Timeline JS to display a history of milestones in the photographic process becomes an exercise in research and data entry rather than design and analysis.
Future Directions
Future visualizations of photographic processes would need to address both the accuracy and customization issues of utilizing Timeline JS, while maintaining the accessibility and visual draw to its users. Rather than a single point timeline, a more complex timeline could be utilized to display the complicated nature of parallel discoveries and advances in technology coalescing into a final version of a process. To address the life of a process, one could look more carefully at how its use has evolved over time. The primary challenge with this approach would be to define a metric by which one could measure the popularity or frequency of use for a given process over a period of time. One possible metric could be to examine major collection records and sort them via photographic process and the date for when each piece was collected and/or created. This may give an indication of the relative use of a given process for a given time period. The resulting graphs could then be printed via the process for which they are examining so that users could have a much more tactile and potentially memorable experience. This, however, may lead to production and distribution issues concerning the visualization itself.