FOREWORD The Impact of Visual Stories
Visual storytelling is the most powerful form of communication. People remember visual narratives nearly five times more than spoken or written words and process images 60,000 times faster than text. This heightened memory and processing ability likely stem from our long history with visual narratives, from cave paintings to art on canvas. Through time, technological advances continually reshape how we communicate visually. In the 1800s, inventors and engineers—created the first photographs. The earliest known surviving image, View from the Window at Le Gras (1826), required over eight hours of exposure and was seen as a technical feat rather than an artistic one. Much like these early pioneers, Indian-born photographer and inventor Baldev Duggal revolutionized visual communication. In the late 1950s, Duggal arrived in New York City with only $200 and a passion for the arts. He began by developing prints in his apartment bathtub. By 1961, he founded Duggal Color in what is now New York’s iconic Photo District, starting with just three employees. In 1962, Baldev Duggal revolutionized film processing with the invention of the first dip-and-dunk machine, transforming a labor-intensive task into an automated process that delivered unmatched quality. Over the next five decades, Duggal dedicated his life to empowering creatives and enhancing visual narratives.
CHELSEA, MANHATTAN, Duggal opens photographic lab in what is now New York City's famous Photo District. 1961
1962 HISTORY OF INNOVATION
Baldev Duggal invents the dip-and-dunk film processing machine, transforming labor-intensive hand processing into a streamlined, automated process.
1982 DIGITIZING FILM
Duggal Visual becomes the first photo lab to offer drum scanning, creating highly detailed digital images from film.
Jim Braden, processing and quality control, E6 120mm film, Chelsea, NY, 1999
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