The Era of The Photographic Plates

In 1871, Richard Leach Maddox revolutionised photography when he discovered a way of producing sensitive plates which conserved their light sensitivity durably.  This made them much easier to use, for it was no longer necessary to prepare a plate just before taking a photo.  As a result, they could now be manufactured on an industrial scale.
It was this new type of plate that opened the way to instantaneous photography, capable, in a fraction a second, of fixing movement and thus « bringing time to a standstill ».
Cameras became more compact. They were equipped with a shutter which made it possible to set a precise exposure time and in addition they could be handheld.
Due to the ingenuity of the manufacturers combined with the fact that photographers wanted to capture images without anyone else realising, cameras became more and more miniature in size, resulting in some very strange designs.
This exhibition will remind us of this groundbreaking period in the history of photography with a number of fascinating documents and a display of a great variety of amazing objects, showing the visitor how cameras have become more and more modernistic over the years.