The first camera can be dated back to back to the Book of Optics in 1021. However, it wasn't until 1826 that Joseph Nicéphore Niépce produced the first permanent photograph using a sliding wooden box camera made by Charles and Vincent Chevalier in Paris.
The gelatine dry plate was invented in 1871 and, for the first time, cameras were able to be hand-held. George Eastman's “Kodak” went on sale in 1888. It was a very simple box camera which had to be returned to the factory for processing and reloading when the roll was finished. He followed this up with the Brownie, a simple and very inexpensive box camera that introduced the concept of the snapshot. The Brownie was so popular various models were still being sold in the 1960s.
Oskar Barnack's Leica I 35mm went on sale in 1925. It was immensely popular, but it wasn't until 1936 when Kodak released the inexpensive Argus A that 35mm cameras became easily affordable.
If you were to take apart one of these cameras, you would find most of the inside is merely dark, empty space. It is only when the shutter opens for barely a moment and allows light to pass through the lens onto the film, that a picture is formed. Imagine living inside the camera, in complete darkness, sometimes for months on end, and then, suddenly, a flash of light suddenly bursts upon you. That split second reveals a glimpse of what must appear to be heaven, extraordinarily beautiful images of the world outside your cavern. You are overwhelmed by paradise, the memory lingers, and you yearn to be overwhelmed once again by the light and the beauty of that ‘outer’ world.
Such is your experience as you open Jeff Grigor's ‘Baches and Cribs.’ It instantly overwhelms you with moments in paradise: wonderful photographs of baches and cribs throughout New Zealand. These are not what are now loosely termed modern ‘holiday homes.’ The photographs have been sent in by people all over the country with short descriptions. These are the genuine articles: mostly isolated, small, run-down in appearance, predominantly wooden and corrugated iron buildings. The book is a treasure of holiday life in paradise that will never be forgotten thanks to the invention of the camera.
However, some of these baches and cribs are now in threat of destruction by various bureaucrats, and some are being encroached on by developers. The book, therefore, is not only a celebration of the wonderful country in which we have the priviledge of living, it challenges us to ensure this book is not a collection of memories, but a call to ensure that generations can enjoy these special moments and take their own images, in whatever form technology facilitates in the future. For if nothing is done, the bursts of light captured through the lens of the future may not so much reveal paradise, but a paradise lost. The book summons us to enjoy what we have, but also to ensure it is a treasure we don't lose.
Wheldon Curzon-Hobson