According to the online question and answer site Wikipedia, “The Golden Age of Photography" typically refers to the period of the 1930s and 1940s, often associated with the rise of photojournalism.”
I have heard that statement,“The golden Age of Photography” twice in the last month. Most recently a fellow that had stopped by my shop and was looking at some of the older cameras I have and a couple weeks before from a client at the Vancouver Camera sale.
I expect Photography’s Golden Age depends on one’s point of view. Technology has made photo taking so accessible that I think it’s also correct to have the opinion that right now is Photography’s Golden Age.
As to the “Golden Age” what I find fun is almost everything from what one might call the beginning of photography to the present is available to someone interested in photography.
What that means to me is we photographers can use cameras from the 1920s and earlier to cameras that have just become available. Many of us have had the opportunity to be involved in that changing camera technology.
I remember my father getting out his Kodak folding 620 film camera for family pictures in the 1960s. Then my uncle who lived a much more exotic life than our family’s as an artist in Laguna Beach California sent us a (my dad might say newfangled) 35mm film camera that he referred to as a “slide film camera”. I guess that was the beginning of photography’s golden age for me.
Then an after-school job at a service station gave me enough money to buy a Kodak Instamatic film camera. That was so easy to use, all I had to do was insert the 126 cartridge advance the camera lever and start shooting.
That rectangular little box camera followed me thru High School, my first year of Collage and even into the US Army. I don’t remember what happened to it after that, but while in the military I purchased a much more advanced camera, and I was on the path to camera change after camera change.
Photography is such a technological medium and that is fine with me because I really like to try different cameras.
So, for me the “Golden Age” is also the present time when everything that has ever been made for photography is available for us to use. Since that first camera back in the 1960’s my personal cameras have kept up with the changes in technology. Nevertheless, that hasn’t stopped me from searching out and trying cameras of any time in history. That’s all so much fun but not the only thing that defines The Golden Age of Photography to me.
Both of those people that spoke of "The Golden Age of Photography" were referring to something different in definition and Wikipedia’s is also different than what I think of as the Golden Age. When answering that question I think of photographers like Ansel Adams, Dorothea Lang, Margaret Bourke-White, Edward Weston, Richard Avedon and Eliot Porter. There are many more that I am forgetting, but they are all from a time when photography was just beginning to be taken seriously as an art. That has surely been the Golden Age.
When was (or is) Photography’s Golden Age? Hmm, I am going to leave that up to each individual photographer.
Stay safe and be creative. These are my thoughts for this week. Contact me at www.enmanscamera.com or emcam@telus.net.
