The arrival of photography was not, as we conceive of it now, the arrival of the possibility of accurate representations of reality. The eyes of the times were as yet untrained to decipher the "real" within photographical realism. The Duke of Wellington complained that his nose looked too big (never mind that his nickname in the Army had been "Old Nosey"), and many public figures avoided photography as though it were the plague. In the cartoon shown here, Punch magazine satirized the "Interesting and Valuable Result" of a family photograph; to many at the time, the camera's eye seemed a lie, almost an instant caricature of the sitter's worst qualities.
The Daguerreotype, the very first commercial process, was expensive and time-consuming; early sitters had to remain still for at least three minutes, assisted in this task by a metal neck-brace. The cost of the photo was based on the size of the copper plate from which it was made; a "sixteenth plate" was the smallest, and cost the modern equivalent of more than $100; a quarter- or half-plate such as was ideal for a family portrait could cost well over $500. Daguerreotypes were also "one offs," in that the plate was the positive and (because opaque) could not be printed off. Yet at around the same time, William Henry Fox Talbot developed his "Talbotype" process (also known as a Calotype), using sensitized paper to produce a negative image. From this paper negative, any number of positives could be made, although since their medium was paper, the outlines were far less sharp than with Daguerreotypes. Finally, the invention of glass-plate negative processes such as the Ambrotype (also known as a Collodion Positive) created a medium in which many excellent copies could easily be made from a single negative. By the era of the American Civil War, inexpensive photographic processes such as the Tintype meant that very few soldiers went off to battle without leaving a photo behind, and quite often took a family photo with them. The final step in cheapness and availability was George Eastman's invention of flexible celluloid film, which was used both in still and and moving picture cameras; with its inexpensive "Brownie" box cameras and rolled film that could be processed anywhere, Eastman and Kodak (who later merged) made the "snapshot" a part of the American, and the world, landscape.
In the 1880's, the "photogravure" process made it easy to reproduce photographs in magazines and newspapers, and the era of the mass-produced image was in full swing.
reteyertyterter
ReplyDeleteTony Ricci 092017 - On Photography
ReplyDeleteI love photography. I love taking photos and looking at photos. Be they staged, patiently waited for, or snapped in the heat of inspiration, every picture tells a story. Some stories are more interesting than others, but that is how art goes.
I have 12,840 photos in my iPhone, and another 30 or 40,000 in my Photos library on my computer at home. Somewhere I have shoeboxes and old-school photo albums stashed away filled with old photos. I never look at those. I’m lazy. I like my photos to parade as 5 second series screen savers on my computer. I can get very lost in time reliving the events of my life through photos. Some of the stories are better than others, but they all make me think, feel and remember.
The inclusion of high definition still and video photography in modern smartphones has saturated the world (wide web) with photos. Great! I can peruse the curated stuff like award winners, or troll the amateur stuff, like looking for treasure at yard sales on a Sunday afternoon.
Too much of a good thing? Media overload? Then try a walk in the woods without your (phone) camera. I’ll bet you’ll really really wish you’d brought it when you see some natural arrangement of form and color that would make a great memory of your walk.
Portraits are interesting, but so staged. Like a corpse in an open casket funeral. Yikes! I want to see friends and family captured in moments of real life and human drama. Photography will continue to progress, I’m sure 3D, AR and VR will be making major statements soon. Man, I need a bigger hard drive!
Having a BFA in Film and minoring in Photography for my Masters Degree, pictures have been embedded in my very being. It seems sometimes that I interact with my surroundings as if I were the camera, capturing moments with every blink of an eye, or video with every pan left or right.
ReplyDeletePhotography, just like any technological advancement started with the idea of capturing a moment, to be able to see something again and again, whenever you wanted to see it. In other words, photographs were special and meant something to the photographer and the subject. These moments were important to them and needed to be documented in a permenant fashion. Yet, as time progressed and technology advanced, I feel as if the meaning of photographs has altered slightly.
With every passing advancement, it seems that everyone is becoming a “photographer” or what I like to call a “hobbyist photographer”. Everyone has a camera in their hand now and taking pictures has become a new way for our society to communicate with each other. Much as sound became text, so has photography become our new language. In this respect, I feel that photography has lost the meaning it used to have for most people. Instead of remembering an important moment, or capturing a memory, we know capture temporary memories (SnapChat) or add filters to our memories to gain “friends” (Instagram). Although I am happy that photography is becoming something for the masses, I do crave some “punctum” amidst the sea of “studium”.
Capturing a moment in time, creating the sense of a time capsule that will in the future tell a story of things past. Seizing the opportunity to create memories, create art, create fear, create controversy, and to just fill hard drive space. To me this is photography, a portal to another time, another project, and a past love or interest. Photography is a way to manipulate the current state of something, and possibly morph it into something different or abstract. The realism, staging, and imagination are what creates the emotion within a photograph. These elements illicit feelings from the viewer, urging them to create a story to accompany the photo, in order to interpret and make sense of what is being seen.
ReplyDeleteCan the same be said for the cell phone photography that takes place around the world on a daily basis. Doe's this photography have the same effect on viewers? Can it create emotion? What does a selfie say about the current state of your affairs or the experiences you have in life? While photography has changed over the years to be accessible to everyone, the main intentions of photography should stay the same. Where in the sea of emotionless selfies is the real deal, one that tells a story. Photos that peak our interest instead of make us say...oh there is another picture of so and so. Photos that make me feel something about the situation and the person. While we study many photographs and reproductions, where is the heart of photography, does it still exist?