In partnership with Photo Oxford we’re excited to be contributing to this biennial event in 2023 with an online exhibition of some of Alamy’s most iconic photos of the last 150 years. In conjunction with this year’s theme ‘The Hidden Power of the Archive’, In the blink of an eye explores how the news photos of today will become the archive of tomorrow, and looks at what these photos from past times and other places can tell us about the way we experience the world today.
Developing words and pictures
In 1838 Louis Daguerre took 10 minutes to make what could be classed as the first ever documentary photograph with people present. Looking over the rooftops of the Place de la République in Paris he recorded a shoeshine and his customer in the street below. Four years later Herbert Ingram established the Illustrated London News (the first weekly illustrated news magazine) already being wise to the knowledge that newspapers which featured pictures led to an increase in sales.
While Ingram’s paper was using engravings drawn from photos, imagination or life to depict the news stories of the day for much of the 19th century, advances were already being made in the chemical development of photographic processes and printing. By 1848 the French weekly periodical L’Illustration published a news photo of a street with barricades put up by workers on strike with reporting on the June Days Uprising.
"Boulevard du Temple", taken by Louis Daguerre in 1838 in Paris, the earliest known candid photograph including people who can be seen in the lower left of the image.
In time, nearly every publisher of newspapers and magazines realised how important it was to feature a photo alongside the reporting of an event, not only as evidence, but also to make people see at a glance that the worlds outside of their own lives could be quite like, or unlike, their own.
People saw individuals and places far beyond their experience – snapshots of a decisive moment in time distributed to armchair readers. No longer needing to rely on the written word alone, the general public found themselves to be observers of events from abroad and we discovered that we became “…the eye-witnesses of the humanity and inhumanity of mankind.’’ Helmut Gernsheim 1962.
Photography is the only “language” understood in all parts of the world, and bridging all nations and cultures, it links the family of man. Independent of political influence – where people are free – it reflects truthfully life and events, allows us to share in the hopes and despair of others, and illuminates political and social conditions. We become the eye-witnesses of the humanity and inhumanity of mankind.
Helmut Gernsheim 1962
Seeing the world from a glass lens
Since the dawn of photography we’ve become ever more familiar with the world, far beyond civilisations of the past could ever imagine. Few of us have lived over a hundred years ago, and proportionally, in terms of world populations, few of us are physically present at any world changing event.
But thanks to a three-inch glass lens in a small black box we have explored the South Pole with Captain Scott, breathlessly beaten the four-minute-mile with Roger Bannister, stood among the reverential crowd during Martin Luther-King’s dream speech, felt the crack whip of a policeman’s truncheon in the South African uprisings during Apartheid, and witnessed communities torn apart in the partition of India. And in 1945 proof of the enormity of the Bergen-Belsen camp was revealed to the world through not just the written and spoken accounts, but also the visual documentation by the British Army Film and Photographic Unit.
Martin Luther King address a crowd of over 250,000 people during the March on Washington on 28th August 1963 with his "I have a dream" speech.
Throughout the 19th and 20th century these images were recorded on film and are today preserved in physical archives that hold glass plates, 35mm negatives and transparencies in collections belonging to major news agencies, including PA Media and The Associated Press.
Many, but not all of these images have since been digitised. Some will remain unseen preserved in archives, possibly for ever, which makes us appreciate how richer our world is from being able to look back on the historical moments we have captured, such as Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation ceremony in 1953.
In light of these world events, news photographers of today carry a kind of power and responsibility. The power to ‘preserve life’, preserve the world in which we live, through a photographic record. On a global stage where press freedoms have been on a significant decline since 2012 it has never been so important to carry this power alongside a duty and commitment to show people a document of the events that really happen in our world.
East German border guards are seen through a gap in the Berlin wall after demonstrators pulled down a segment of the wall at Brandenburg gate, Berlin on the 11th November 1989.
Now we follow the news and see landscapes transformed due to climate change. We see new cities being raised from the ground where once there were just fields. We watch on as leaders and players on the world stage rise and fall as new political battle grounds and desires for fame continue to be fought.
Photography is fundamental to the continued documentation of life and evolution of this small planet.
Tomorrow’s archive
With digital technologies of today, photojournalists are able to capture these moments and upload images of events as they happen to the Alamy Live News site within minutes. With captions and keywords they can be on sale in under an hour, giving newspapers and publishers almost instant access.
In turn with 400 news contributors from all over the world sending in up to 13,000 photographs per day to Alamy, we’re also holding a rich digital archive of tomorrow, as we add to the millions of images from previous generations on the site. They can easily be found using just two or three keywords to see what people of the past saw, find current events happening in the world today, or even look back on a person’s lifetime, such as King Charles III as a son, father, brother and King.
It’s a truism that ‘far away is close at hand in images of elsewhere’ in both time and place, with images perhaps more curious and often stranger than our imagination could ever envisage.
Hindu youth taking part in a ritual to mark the Janmashtami festival, celebrating the birth of the Hindu deity Krishna, in Pushkar, Rajasthan, India on 22nd August 2022
Being there now
In this online exhibition we present the power of the archive through iconic images of the past, while incorporating the news images of today. In doing so you might be looking back on this in five or even ten years’ time to learn a little more about how some of us saw the world, how we lived our lives, with all our wins and losses laid bare.
No writer could emulate the immediate power of the photo, where its emotive meaning can be taken in within milliseconds. Indeed, the true power of the archive comes from the power of being there now. A flash of a moment in time never repeated but recorded forever for all the world to see.
