FEEDBACK:
I genuinely do not like writing
short narratives, because, in my case, it always comes at the cost of quality
(as you can see in the following text). My peers liked my unconventional idea
and style because it really did hold their interest, even if my narrative did
not include a lot of historic information.
Little History of Photography
Tieber Martin
I felt old. Well, I guess after 20 years of solitary confinement in the attic of a manor I should have been glad that being locked in a glass cabinet for so long did not make me lose my mind. One after another my fellow prisoners had disappeared. Nothing had happened to their physical shells, but their core had vanished. They were no longer functioning. I was the last of my kind to consist of more than metal, plastic and wood. For years I felt my conscience gradually fading away, drifting further into the darkness that awaits all of us. But I could not let go. I had to last until I could meet the next generation, to pass down the history of our kind.
Steps, steps in the darkness I knew those steps and the feet they belonged to. The door opened, the glass cabinet was unlocked and something small was put right next to me. Moments later everything was quiet again, as if nothing had happened. “Hey, you there, what’s your name?” a high-pitched voice with a very strong Japanese accent asked. A little depressed, but hardly surprised that the common courtesy of introducing yourself before asking someone’s name has not survived the turn of the millennium and that further social niceties were unnecessary, I answered “Hello, my name is Martin.” “Toshi,” the voice answered. “I haven’t got much time, so just listen to what I have to say and carve every word into your very core,” I whispered hastily.
I searched in my mind for the knowledge I had acquired from my ancestors. I told him about the 1830s when Niepce and Daguerre simultaneously succeeded in creating one of the most miraculous things that had ever come into existence. I explained the resistance our forefathers faced from the church and the conservative society. I went on about the evolution from art-like photographs taken by enormous and expensive cameras, to the smaller, more affordable types in the second half of the 19th century. I described the work of master photographers like Hill, Krone or Blossfeldt. I did my best to depict the rise and fall of photography from its beginnings as a method of enhancing different forms of art, until it is reincarnation as a form of art itself.
And then silence. “Will you remember our story and pass it on when your time has come?” I asked. “Not a word shall be lost,” he answered, obviously realizing the purpose of my words. Finally, I had been able to deliver my message to the next generation. Now I could go, without regret because our legacy would not fall into oblivion.
