About the museum
This site began in 2001 when I decided to create HTML pages to showcase my camera collection and the photographs I took with them. I also included articles on history and aesthetics as they related to the craft.
At the turn of the millennium, digital photography surpassed the 3-megapixel mark and became a viable alternative for image-making. This shift was accelerated by the fact that images had already been migrating from paper to the screen since the 1990s, as personal computers with graphical interfaces replaced text-based systems.
I had been practicing analog photography simply because it was the only photography I knew and loved. At the time, there was no need for the label “analog”—it was just “photography.” I have had a darkroom at home since the early 1980s (and used friends’ labs before that). For me, it wasn’t a discovery or a rediscovery; I started as a teenager and never stopped.
In 2016, noticing the site was well-visited, I decided to relaunch it with a more refined aesthetic and expanded content—adding tutorials, lab tips, and deeper dives into photographic history. I saw that instead of dying out, analog photography was experiencing a resurgence of interest. Somewhere between vanity and generosity, I wanted to share my discoveries, saving them from oblivion for anyone who might find them useful.
The collection itself remained in the background, guided by a strict criterion: no electronics. I use every camera I own, and I inevitably grow attached to them. Mechanical cameras break, but electronics die, and that bothers me. It worries me to think that I could take perfect care of a piece of equipment, only for it to refuse to wake up one day simply because a circuit failed. Mechanical cameras, by contrast, can almost always be brought back to life with a careful cleaning and fresh lubricant.
My second criterion—one that has guided my choices from the start—is the ability to tell the story of photography through the collection. I am not attracted to experimental or “creative” cameras that were ultimately unsuccessful or out of the ordinary. I am drawn to the tools that made an impression: the cameras that made millions happy, that sat in the homes of ordinary people, or served in the studios of the famous. Photography offers a unique lens through which to view the history of society itself, and it is this perspective that interests me most.
It is with this spirit that only images is being relaunched at the end of 2025 as an online photography museum. This relaunch was born of necessity—a forced transition because my previous WordPress theme had become obsolete—but it provided the perfect opportunity for a total evolution. The site is no longer organized by equipment type, but by a timeline spanning from the birth of photography in the mid-19th century to the end of the 20th. And I will stop there.
As for the name ‘only images’ (in lower case), the reason is philosophical. It touches on the endless debate between “essence” and “appearance.” We often hear that we live in a culture of the visual and the virtual, where representation replaces reality. I like the name because it is inherently ambiguous. In one sense, it can be seen as derogatory: “only images,” mere appearances, non-existences. In another sense, it represents the astonishment of realizing that they are only images—and yet, how they overwhelm us! How dear they are to us, and what an enormous power they have to shape our tastes, our opinions, and our values. In this light, “only” takes on the opposite meaning through irony, and that is a sentiment I cherish.
Wagner Lungov
jan/01/2026
