Image transformations

The most important transformation in the journey of photography was related to stepping out of the moment of dreaming. Stepping out of that narrow hole through which light passes to reflect the images of objects, just as it reflected the intentions of the first human in discovering photographic images—from the first shadow on cave walls to light refractions and the discovery of dark rooms. Before the existence of the rules and standards of photography that we know at the beginning of the nineteenth century, humans, preoccupied with light and its reflections, and dreaming of fixing their image on the walls of life, had already begun. Scholars differ in pinpointing the starting point of the earliest signs of the idea of photography, but what concerns us is their agreement on the existence of the idea within the realm of dreaming in the distant human history. Between dreaming and reality, a long bridge was crossed by the idea of photography before it was granted its first device at the beginning of the nineteenth century—an device we had awaited to be born in the world of physics and optics, and its news came from chemistry laboratories. Generous chemistry entered with us initially into the moment of black and white through a mixture of salts, emulsions, and filters before we reached the thresholds of color in the first half of the twentieth century. This book traces the (transformations of the image) and the early beginnings of the history of the process of perceiving the image, along with studies that addressed the art of drawing and photography as a language, with its rules, models, and pioneers (creators)—photographers and their photographic works. The author also raises questions related to designs, the relationship between the image and drawing and sculpture, the relationship of the eye with what is seen and what is not seen in the photographic image, and other modern image techniques today; and, like others, debates whether the photographic image is a form of art! Author: Atheer Al-Sadah Number of pages: 158