Noorderlicht Photofestival (Holland)http://www.noorder
licht.com/index.html
Odense Foto Triennialhttp://www.brandts.dk/oft/sidereng/
eintroduction.htm
Paris Photo http://www.parisphoto-online.com/PP04/ENG/
PP-introduction.html
photo-londonhttp://www.photo-london.com/
Photolucida (Portland, Oregon) http://www.photolucida.
org/default.aspx
PHotoEspan ̃a (Madrid)www.phedigital.com
Pingyao International Photography Festival (PIP)http://
http://www.pipfestival.com/pysy1.aspx
Recontres d’Arleshttp://www.rip-arles.org/
Rhubarb-Rhubarb (Birmingham) http://www.rhubarb-rhubarb.
net/00-home.asp
San Antonio Photography Festivalhttp://www.safotofestival.
com/about.html
Terre d’Images (Biarritz)http://www.terredimages.com/
Togher International Festival of Amateur Photography
(Cork, Ireland) http://homepage.eircom.net/ ̃togherfest/
index.html
Visa pour l’image (Perpignan, France)http://www.visapourlimage.
com/francais/index.php3
Xposeptember (Stockholm) http://www.xposeptember.se/
index.aspFILM
Photography literally means ‘‘drawing with light.’’
If light is the pen, then film is the canvas on which
the artistry unfolds. Before film, events were ‘‘cap-
tured’’ over time and with an artist’s pen, subject to
the bias of memory and drama of the artist. Events
in history, faces of the famous and of loved ones,
faraway places; all could be brought quite literally
and realistically to the viewer’s doorstep. The inven-
tion of flexible roll film, allowing cameras to be
lighter and more portable, meant that photograph-
ers could now capture events more dynamically, no
longer restricted to the confines of a tripod.
Film is made up of a light-sensitive emulsion
supported on a flexible base, and must remain in
complete darkness until the image is to be made.
Compounds in the film react as they are struck with
photons of light, creating a microscopic chain reac-
tion within the film’s emulsion. This reaction is
then amplified by development, and made perma-
nent with fixing. Without both of these steps, the
image captured by exposure to light would be fleet-
ing, destroyed by the light needed to view it. The
concept of film as a sensitized material has re-
mained remarkably unchanged since the origins
of photography.
History
Thecamera obscura(‘‘dark room’’ in Latin) was an
early device dating back to ancient times that
allowed artists to literally draw from life via a
darkened room and a well-placed hole in a shaded
window or wall facing a scene. The artist could set
his subject outside this room in front of the hole,
hang a canvas or paper from the opposite wall, and
sketch the upside-down image of the subject pro-
jected there. This device was later modernized and
made portable with the help of lenses and mirrors.
The camera obscura was a boon for artists strug-
gling for the realism of proper perspective and
proportion, but took some time to execute.The Daguerreotype
In 1826, a Frenchman by the name of Joseph-
Nice ́phore Nie ́pce was experimenting with a novel
way of making the images projected with the cam-
era obscura permanent without the help of an
artist’s pen. Using the basis of a graphic process
known as lithography, Nie ́pce captured the first
known photograph outside the window of his
country home. Grainy and lacking in fine detail,
this image required an exposure of eight hours in
bright sunlight.
Louis-Jacques-Mande ́Daguerre was also expe-
rimenting with light-sensitive materials when he
heard of Nie ́pce’s accomplishments. Daguerre con-
tacted Nie ́pce in 1829, and soon after, they became
partners. Together, they found that by using silver
iodide compounds that were known to react toFILM