National photographic gallery vital

Photographic Art is essentially an instrumentality through which a more wholesome individual can be shaped. The education and transformation of society has long been accompanied and catalysed by the Arts of Photography.
If pointed in the right direction cameras’ lens have the potential of becoming an important vessel for socio-cultural imagery; a vehicle for communication, archival recording and preservation of culture in Zimbabwe.
Brief history of photography
Photography was early in the 19th century termed the science of “holding people in permanency”. In 1839, an artist, painter and chemist, Frenchman, Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre (1789-1851), developed the first photograph which was known then as the Daguerreotype (photo image).
His experiments with chemical solutions led to the invention of the “diorama” and eventually to making the first actual photograph.
At this point in history it is interesting to note that just as in the case of oil painting, the earliest photographers or daguerreotype makers were also the greatest painters.
In fact, most of the early portrait painters became photographers since the new method offered them a better chance of earning a livelihood.
The works of the generation of photographers, which replaced these early pioneers, were considered often of mediocre standards, since they had not gone through the long apprenticeship of their predecessors.
Their works were in fact, regarded as being “merely mechanical and not fit to be regarded amongst the arts”.
Well-trained painters who had gone through a long artistic apprenticeship took almost all the early French photographs.
Hence the outstanding qualities of light, balance, and compositional techniques seen in their photographs.
The advances made in this exceedingly difficult form of art have been quite phenomenal in the last 50 years. Photography has developed from analogue to digital and from gelatin silver prints to laser printing and beyond.
Today much world art schools and universities have a specialised photographic arts degree.
The photography student needs to be versed in the technical, philosophical and practical skills necessary to function as a fine arts photographer.
One of the advantages of a photographic arts degree is the wide range of career choice and rewarding options it offers graduates.
Arts graduates can enter a wide range of professions including journalism, the media, corporate public relations, advertising and marketing, archaeology and museum studies, film making, fashion photography, celebrity photography (paparazzi) and state and diplomatic photography, industrial and architectural photography, medical and scientific photography amongst many others.
As such, photography in Zimbabwe has not developed to the full potential of this medium, neither has it been given academic or critical appraisal.
While there are many so called “practising” photographers, their skills ought to be combined with studies in cultural theory and the creative industries.
Although photography in Zimbabwe is being promoted through the annual Gwanza Exhibitions at the National Gallery of Zimbabwe, it is pertinent for local photographers to study the contemporary history of photography as an art form, in order to advance the current standards of the medium.
It is also pertinent for the establishment of a national photographic gallery, like the English Heritage Photographic Library in Fortress House, Savile Row, London.
Here the library has gathered together a large photographic archive of English heritage, which includes photographs of ancient and modern exteriors and interiors, furnishings and visual culture, socio-political history, botanical and environmental history, of the English.
Photographic history is an important means of preserving indigenous identity, of empowerment, and ownership of the memory of a people.
Zimbabwe should do likewise, and establish a National photographic library/gallery, that chronicles the pictorial history of our ancestral land, independent of the National Art Gallery or Archives.
l Dr Tony Monda holds a PhD in Post-Modern Art Theory and Philosophy and a DBA Doctorate in Business Administration in Post-Colonial Art and Heritage Studies. He is also a practising artist, visual designer and art critic.