An Engineer / Not a Camera

forthcoming

In the 1820s French inventor Joseph Niépced developed a photographic process using a variety of minerals and exposed them to light to create detailed images and patterns. This was the beginning of the science of photolithography: photo (light), litho (stone), and graphy (writing). Some decades later in 1878 in Palo Alto, California, Leland Stanford employed the English photographer and engineer Eadweard Muybridge, to develop a photographic method to capture and study the motion of Stanford’s galloping horses as means to assess their breeding prowess. This was the beginning of the science of the moving image or cinema (kinema, movement). In the 21st century the science of photolithography remains integral to the science of the moving image. Silicon integrated chips, central to modern technologies – from digital cameras and smartphones to massive computer server networks – are all made possible by cutting-edge optical lithography systems. Yet as these image-making technologies appear evermore ephemeral, the material demands of the infrastructure that makes these images possible demands ever more earthly resources.

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