Alternative photography

Historical Photography in the Digital Age

I think it is safe to say that contemporary digital photography has already reached its technical perfection, and more or less has nowhere to grow. No one is impressed by the number of pixels that today's photographic sensors are able to accommodate, the perfect sharpness of photographs, the range of brightnesses and shadows, or the brilliance of colours.

Perhaps because of this perfection, contemporary photography is beginning to lack something. Something from the pioneering beginnings of photography, from the days full of enthusiastic discovery, from the procedures full of failures and blind alleys that often gave rise to a completely unique photographic work. One of the main representatives known in the world is definitely Frantisek Drtikol with his oil prints, bromoilprints, or pigments.

I am beginning to discover that the more perfect the photographs are, the more there are photographic enthusiasts who would like to try to make the photograph themselves by hand, the old-fashioned way, so that it breathes something of a hand-made, so that they imprint not only the depicted subject, but ideally a part of themselves.

Timeless photographic images

This is how you can easily define works of historical photographic techniques - they are not photographs - copies, they are originals on which you can see a clear imprint of the author. From the essence of production, you cannot even create an identical work. Every photographic image must be, and is, different. Their other advantage is a significantly longer life, which surpasses classical black and white photography. Among the historical photographic techniques that I deal with are: