Amongst the many characteristics of the photographic medium, it is perhaps the introduction of the flash bulb that has separated it entirely from any other similar medium, including the continuous frame film and video camera.    In 1814, Niepce took the world’s first photograph and due to the extremely slow emulsion surface at the time, the exposure took eight hours to leave an impression of light strong enough to produce an image on his glass plate.  In 1851, Frederick Scott Archer would go on to create the Collodian Process, requiring only two to three seconds of exposure to daylight to produce an equal image on paper.  It wasn’t until 1927, however, that General Electric produced the first modern flash bulb (a few less effective, though important chemical-based alternatives had proceeded it), and time behind the lens of the camera began to slow to unparalleled speeds.   With the instantaneous bursts of bright light, it was found that the camera could stop time almost entirely - the ability to record even the fastest bullet as it traveled through the air was possible, and the world began to be photographed in an exciting new way.   

(The flash bulb: oxygen filled bulb in which aluminum foil was burned, with ignition by battery)

For many years, even before the electronic variant was popularized, flash photography had played an important role in revealing the unseen world around us.  In perhaps the earliest and most illuminating example, writer and photographer Jacob Riis acquired a job as a police reporter in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, publishing the book, “Flashes from the Slum: Pictures Taken in Dark Places by the Lightning Process,” in 1888.  He photographed what he called ‘the other half’, in other words, the less fortunate during the depression of the 1870’s. 

(Jacob Riis, From: Flashes from the Slum, 1988)

Using magnesium flash powder, an immense white light illuminated the darkness and surprised his subjects – the shock that registered on their faces would come to stand, at least at the time, as candid and objective photography.