It has always been tradition for history to be viewed as a linear, evolving series of events, one following from the other on some imaginary timeline. In Art, critics inter-weave events and influences to give a seamless, intellectual evolution extending back 15,000 years to the caves of Lascaux and beyond. On this journey, certain milestones are acknowledged - for example the first use of perspective by Giotto, then Brunellesco, Donatello and Masaccio or the advent of oil painting - in the modern sense - by Jan van Eyck in the 16th century.

By MIKE VON JOEL EDITORIAL DIRECTOR

HE SAME EXCERCISE might be used for the photographic art. Whilst noting all manner of optical devices, for example the Ibn al-Haytham invention of the camera obscura and pinhole camera, and Albertus Magnus' discovery of silver nitrate; the crucial stop on this journey was clearly the first fixed image. The Frenchman, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, initially combined the camera obscura with photosensitive paper and then, in 1826, Niépce created a permanent image. However, unlike painting and sculpture, the very art of photography experienced a major technical schism in 1991 - with the Kodak DCS-100 (the first digital SLR, a modified Nikon F3), and the landmark software, Adobe Photoshop (first released in 1990).

Thus, after almost 170 years of often amazing developments in photography, perhaps the greatest of them all split the camera art in two. And it is getting clearer by the day that - although the end result might seem the same in abstract terms - the process by which it is achieved derives from two entirely different sensibilities.

Just like the mobile phone, inexpensive digital cameras are truly a mass market medium rapidly approaching the universal disposability of the ubiquitous Biro. And alongside this instant, erasable format there is a perceptible, parallel attitude to the image it creates - disposable, deleteable, dismissible - detritus in a society where the global language is the image. Whole generations are growing up knowing no other formats, and to whom the wet print process is as antiquated as the steam locomotive. So much so, that the intellectual process involved in creating a film-based image (and all the ‘mathematical’ decisions that must combine with the photographer’s experience) is relatively absent in the taking of a digital shot - which has its own parameters to consider. One is no better than the other - they are two entirely different aktions.

The digital revolution has created a ‘new photography’ where the manipulation of the image is a forgone conclusion and an integral part of the creative process. Photographers have always been able to control the final ‘look’ of an image in the darkroom. Indeed, Frank Hurley, the Australian cameraman on Shackleton’s famous Antarctic expedition (1914) and later official War Artist, faked so many of his Western Front pictures that any ‘photoshopper’ would have been proud of him. It caused a scandal at the time, but Hurley was responding in part to the limitations of the equipment available. But the digital impact has had interesting repercussions even on the generation it caters for. Many young camera artists are using basic, manual devices to create images: the bright plastic Holga, or the revived Polaroid process. Perhaps their response is to the global glut of mediocre images washing around cyberspace and on homepages everywhere?

Meanwhile the old hands claim, as ever, to be loyal to film, the acid bath and the darkroom experience. Perhaps their biggest dilemma is not digital vs. film after all - but simply where to find the ever diminishing supplies of stock and professional papers!