JOBO

About JOBO

Quality, commitment and professionalism have brought us to the top of the photographic world. Our mission is to always challenge ourselves for the best possible image.

In the year 1969 mankind made its most meaningful step into space when NASA launched the first manned space mission to the moon, code-named Apollo 11. When NASA planned to photograph man’s first steps on the moon, they decided to rely on a Hasselblad camera and Carl Zeiss lenses to take the images that would document this historic moment. Of course, this was before digital photography was a viable option, and so the images were taken on celluloid film with a silver halide coating.

But in photography, and from the materialistic point of view, everything depends on a "visible picture". Therefore, "real pictures" needed to be produced from the latent images recorded on film.

So when the time came to develop this film and show the world the visible pictures, NASA opted for JOBO development systems from Gummersbach near Cologne, then West Germany, and entrusted them with the task of turning latent, as yet invisible images into actual pictures. The iconic images of an astronaut gingerly stepping down the ladder of the lunar landing module with planet earth rising in the background, the salute of the mission’s flag and man’s first footprint in the lunar dust offered tangible proof that the events had really taken place and the West had consequently won the space race.

Thus mankind in its striving for eternity had managed to reach the moon for the first time. This fact also carried a vital political message in the context of the cold war: free man with unleashed enthusiasm and seemingly unlimited economic capacity, epitomised by "the West", had managed to put a man onto the moon, thus justifying the Western claim of embodying the superior political system.

But the West was not alone in mankind’s quest to conquer space, they were simply the first to reach the moon. And space exploration continued to gain in importance, both for mankind, and for JOBO, the small photo manufacturer from Gummersbach. The East later set their own standards by putting MIR space station into orbit. And MIR actually carried their own photographic laboratory on board. No prizes for guessing correctly that our JOBO photo-development systems were now set up in space, orbiting earth!

...

So, actually, we should say: We love images. Fly me to the moon … and back. To the moon and back!

To celebrate our ventures into space we digitalised some of the old colour transparency reproductions developed with our equipment and made them available for you to enjoy: TO THE MOON AND BACK.

Ref: https://www.jobo.com/