From wooden cameras to smartphones: The 65-year collection traces evolution of photography

There was a time when taking a photograph required patience. Cameras were pretty large and heavy. Plates had to be prepared, subjects had to sit still, and the photographer had to wait. There was no screen to check the image and no way to know immediately if the photograph had turned out well.

Today, the camera is part of almost every smartphone. A photograph can be taken, viewed and shared within seconds.

In his North Kolkata home, retired government employee Tapas Kumar Basu has spent nearly 65 years collecting the cameras that tell the story of that transformation.

His collection has grown to more than 200 cameras, lenses and other photographic equipment gathered from across India. There are pinhole cameras, wooden plate cameras, box cameras, vintage still cameras, movie cameras and digital equipment.

On World Photography Day, observed on August 19, THE WEEK visited Basu’s collection.

Before the smartphone

Photography’s history goes back nearly two centuries. In the 1820s, French inventor Joseph Nicéphore Niépce experimented with ways to permanently record images formed inside a camera obscura. Around 1826-27, he produced View from the Window at Le Gras, widely regarded as the earliest surviving permanent photograph. Made on a pewter plate coated with bitumen, it was the result of a process Niépce called heliography, or “sun drawing”.

Niépce later partnered with Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. After Niépce died in 1833, Daguerre continued the work and developed the process that became known as the daguerreotype.

On August 19, 1839, details of the daguerreotype were made public in Paris. The process produced a highly detailed, one-of-a-kind image on a silver-plated copper plate and soon spread beyond France.

Photography then changed rapidly. Glass plates gave way to film. Roll film made cameras more portable. The 35mm format gave photographers greater freedom, while single-lens reflex cameras offered more control. Autofocus, electronic sensors and digital cameras followed.

Eventually, the camera moved into the mobile phone.

A collection built over six decades

Basu has followed much of that change through the cameras he has collected. His interest began decades ago and gradually became a lifelong pursuit. He acquired cameras and photographic equipment from different parts of India, often saving objects that might otherwise have been discarded or sold as scrap.

Some have stories attached to them.

One connects his collection to filmmaker Rituparno Ghosh. While making a documentary on Rabindranath Tagore around the poet’s 150th birth anniversary, Ghosh needed an old-fashioned plate camera for a sequence involving Tagore and his wife, Mrinalini Devi.

According to Basu, Rituparno borrowed a wooden plate camera from his collection to recreate the period accurately.

For Basu, such episodes are part of what makes these cameras worth keeping. They show how photographs were made in another era and offer a glimpse into the equipment photographers once depended on.

When a photograph was an occasion

A portrait was once an event. People dressed carefully, went to a photographer and sat patiently while the image was made. Taking a photograph demanded preparation and time.

What was once a carefully planned occasion has become an everyday reflex. Photography now records elections and wars, festivals and disasters, wildlife and fashion, family gatherings and everyday moments. A traveller can document an entire journey with a phone, taking hundreds of photographs along the way.

Basu believes younger people should know what came before the smartphone.

“I want to highlight the evolution of cameras to the current generation. Those who shoot with mobile phone cameras today should also know how this generational shift has reached the point it has,” he told THE WEEK.

His collection can mean different things to different visitors. A young person may be struck by the size of a wooden camera. Someone older may recognise a model once used by a parent or grandparent. A photographer may stop to examine a lens, shutter or other mechanical detail.

Each object has its own place in the history of photography.

What comes next

The camera, meanwhile, has become smaller and far more capable.

Computational photography, advanced sensors and artificial intelligence now handle tasks that once required considerable skill and time. A photograph can be taken, adjusted and shared within seconds.

But people still reach for a camera for the same simple reasons: to hold on to a face, a place, a celebration, a farewell or a moment they do not want to forget.

From Niépce’s experiments in the 1820s and Daguerre’s daguerreotype to film, digital cameras and smartphones, the technology has changed almost beyond recognition.

On World Photography Day, it is worth pausing before taking the next picture and remembering how far the camera has come.