This website started in 2001 when I decided to make pages in html showing my collection of antique photographic cameras and pictures made with them. I added comments about their features, history, aesthetics, resources and the like. By the end of 2010 I opened an art gallery and left the website aside for lack of time to keep it updated. It is a fact also that I stopped buying more cameras and almost stopped using films. Now that the gallery is not any longer with me I decided to relaunch it with more sections and new visual. I was very much encouraged to do so by noticing that for certain important cameras my pages were well rated in web search engines and received many visits.
I decided also to include a section related to technics. As I graduated in Physics and worked for a while as a teacher, I like to write explaining the fundamentals upon which photography is based, digital and film share most of the same principles. Another subject that I found interesting to include are related to darkroom practices also in digital and film. Those are hints that I believe may be valuable for someone starting and I expect also to learn a lot from comments and observation from visitors. The menu item called “aesthetics” will receive content talking about our relation with images, photographic or not, what they are and how we live with them. As the more static and encyclopaedic content starts to build up to a minimum I intend to include more about news, photographers and events. I hope that till the end of 2016 all of the collection items and some basics of photography will be ready.
About the name ‘only images’, just like that, in lowercase, the reason is a philosophical one and has to do with the eternal debate around a dilema between ‘essence’ or ‘appearence’. There is a lot of talk nowadays saying that we are a visual or representation culture, that we cannot tell apart what is real and what is virtual. I like the ‘only’ because it sounds to me always with an intrinsic ambiguity. In one sense it is direct and downgrading, things that are not, only look like, only images, ‘inexistents’ so to say. The other meaning is like wondering about realising that they are only images and notwithstanding that, how they subjugate us. How precious are they to ourselves, what an influence exert they in our lives, how powerful are they in shaping our taste, opinions and values. In this sense, the ‘only’ gets an totally opposite turn, through irony, and that pleases me very much.
Thanks for your visit
Wagner Lungov