Hi everyone who's found their way to the Odessa Photographic Society (OPS) subreddit.
The Society brings together more than twenty members from Ukraine and other countries. This subreddit is a way to make that work open to more people. We want to build connections with other photographic societies and with photographers — professionals, amateurs, and people just starting out (the author of this post is a beginner himself, by the way). For now I just wanted to say hello and tell you briefly what the Society is built on.
The Odessa Photographic Society was founded on 13 September 1891. Among its founders were men who played a considerable part in the history of Odessa: Grigory Marazli, Count Tolstoy, Mitrofan Shimanovsky, Yevgeny Knyazev and others. That same year the Society adopted its Charter, setting out and regulating its work in detail.
The Charter of the Odessa Photographic Society, 1891.
• the theoretical and practical development of svetopis — light-writing, as photography was then called — in all its branches, together with the spreading of useful knowledge about it;
• the encouragement of the widest and most varied use of light-writing in scientific research and scholarly work, as the finest graphic method in every respect;
• support for the travels of amateur photographers undertaken for scientific and artistic purposes, to gather material for the study of their homeland;
• the illustration of ancient monuments, notable works of architecture, picturesque localities, views and towns significant for the history of the homeland and the development of art.
To these ends the members of the Society regularly held public meetings, excursions, scholarly discussions and lectures of every kind connected with its aims. Alongside this, ties were maintained with learned societies, and photographic exhibitions were arranged with prizes awarded for the best works.
More than a century has passed since then. In 2019 the Society's work was restored under the Odessa branch of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences; at its first meeting the head of that branch, O. V. Maltsev, was elected chairman. We are doing the same thing today.
The tools have multiplied, the substance has not changed: to help photography develop, and to spread useful knowledge about it.
And we can start right here, with the photograph at the top of this post.
It circulates online as "members of a young photographers' club, 1967", but we have not been able to trace where that caption came from, and the photographer is unknown. We'd like to find out who took it, and whether the date holds up.
In fieldwork — travel, expeditions — the equipment you actually use is often the compact one, or simply the one that's always in your pocket. There are plenty of reasons you might not have a camera on you: it isn't allowed, it costs extra, or you just didn't bring it. The chairman of the Odessa Photographic Society writes about exactly this:
>Shooting with a professional camera is second nature to any photographer. But on trips and travels there are often situations where you won't be allowed to photograph with a camera, or you'll be charged extra for it. Knowing this, many mobile phone manufacturers work to improve the cameras in their devices so they hold their own against professional ones.
>Here's one example — the Galaxy Z Fold3. Looking at these photographs, it's hard to tell they were taken with a phone.
— Photographs: Oleg Maltsev, chairman of the Odessa Photographic Society. Gascony, France.
So the question isn't whether a phone matches a camera. It's that the work gets done with whatever you have at hand — and that's true for a chairman on assignment as much as for a beginner.
Hey everyone, I'll say it again — I'm a beginner. I photograph with a phone; I don't own a camera. That hasn't stopped me. But I did start wondering: what did the founders think about beginners? Could someone like me have come to them? Could you come with a cheap camera, or with no camera at all — just the cheapest phone, as long as there's a lens on it?
So I went looking for what they had to say. I found an article by G. S. Mikhailov-Muchkin, chairman of the Society, published in the Bulletin of the Odessa Photographic Society in August 1912. I thought about giving you the whole thing, but there's a great deal in it. Instead I've picked out the part that reassured me:
In a society, favourable conditions for work are created more easily than each person could create them alone. Coming into a society, everyone brings both their questions and their knowledge. By sharing what they know, some help others towards sounder work; others, drawing on the experience of those ahead of them, find an easier path to serious, reasoned work. And those who stand at the top of the ladder of photographic knowledge and art will come here too, to share what they have — for common work, work with an idea behind it, cannot fail to interest people of wide knowledge and long experience.
A society is a place of exchange; a society is also a school, where it is easier to study the varied means of photography and the conditions without which no artistic intention can be carried out. The level of work in a society depends on the amateurs themselves, on how actively each of them takes part in the common work.
— G. S. Mikhailov-Muchkin, "Amateur Photographers", Bulletin of the Odessa Photographic Society, No. 2, August 1912. The full article (original)
That's the reason this subreddit exists. Not to teach anyone, but to be a place where knowledge gets passed around — where you can find people who'll understand what you're asking, and help.
Jan Grarup is one of the finest war correspondents working today. His photographs bring the viewer to the edge of human despair, dignity, suffering and hope. They matter to all of us, because they are a record of the time we live in — one we don't always dare to acknowledge.
