by Boris SHAPIRO, Dr. Sc. (Chem.), President, Russian Union of Scientific and Applied Photography Now, at the turn of the century, it would be no exaggeration to say that most, if not all of us, are shearing a common temptation of taking a daring look into the future. Into our common future in general and into the future of our personal pursuits and occupations. For me, personally, the question is what will happen to the technology and art of photography after 160 years of its development. In order to answer such questions one should, of course, try and trace the main stages of this progress so as to make some viable assumptions for at least the next 3 to 4 decades. The prominent Russia geneticist, Nikolai Timofeev-Resovsky (1900-1981) once said: "Why make it simple, if you can make it more complex?". What he had in mind, of course, was the process of natural evolution, but in my own interpretation this striking wisdom can be applied to the progress of photography. And, come to think of it, this analogy is really not surprising because photography is a human product and as most things human, it has been evolving in the direction of growing system complexity. Having said that, let us take a closer look at this situation on the example of the two basic "components" of photography: light-sensitive elements-micro-crystals of silver halides (AgHal) and organic chemistry. The development of above monocrystals started from random experiments in which they were produced in random forms and combinations. These results were obtained by lone-wolf enthusiasts and kept in secret. Microcrystals of the last generation are anisotropic structures of very complicated nature and unusual shape, and the men who produced them deserve credit as microarchitects. As it was, the initial particles of homogeneous silver halide participles, of cubic, spheric or octahedral shape, were replaced, first, with similar ones, but of onion shape (with layers of different properties), and then with m ... Читать далее