. (2023) 'The Connection of History and Photography'. 23 August.
In his essay A Short History of Photography (1931), Walter Benjamin did not seek to chronicle the development of photography; rather, he contemplated the important consequences of the invention of photography for the global culture: "At about the same time as the formation of the technology for reproduction, the conception of great works was changing. One can no longer view them as the productions of individuals; they have become collective images, so powerful that capacity to assimilate them is related to the condition of reducing them in size." The essay introduced several concepts that Benjamin would later elaborate in his most famous piece, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction - in particular, the notion of "aura". The author provided insight into the influence that the early photography technology had exerted on the formation of its aura as well as into separate genres and individual artists such as David Octavius Hill, August Sander and Eugene Atget (the latter viewed by Benjamin as a precursor to Surrealism).
In his essay Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century (1935), Benjamin studied new relationships between art and technology during the era of rapid technological progress. Apart from visual art, he discussed architecture, which had seen the first applications of construction in iron, the invention of panoramic paintings, and the formation of the entertainment industry at World Exhibitions in the 19th century. According to Benjamin, the emergence of photography brought about the renewal of artistic language and intensified formal explorations: "As the scope of communications increased, the informational importance of painting diminished. The latter began, in reaction to photography, firstly to emphasize the coloured elements of the image. As Impressionism gave way to Cubism, painting created for itself a broader domain, into which for the time being photography could not follow it."
As he recognized the artists before the Reformation to be renowned for their work, the post-reformation photography he viewed as focussed on financial gains and bending to the tastes of the masses preferring the manipulated by the brush work, or the gum bichromate process, favored by secessionists for its soft, impressionist results. His negative attitude toward the soft-focus work stemmed from his belief that photography's strength lied in its capacity to depict detail clearly. Like many secessionists he chose his subjects from the surrounding life, unlike them he photographed them in sharp focus. He viewed objectivity of photography to be its contribution as well as a limitation. He feared that the majority of photographers had misunderstood the inherent quality of…
The history of photography in other countries
Megan Haug New Media Junior Seminar Response to The Body and The Archive, Allan Sekula September 25, 2015 Portraiture is nothing new to the visual artist; what is new to the visual artist is the medium of photography. Allan Sekula explores what it means to take a picture in modern society. There are many possibilities within the realm of photography. The power of this art form is a point of view without the interpretation of man. The camera is technically the one creating the photograph, so there are minimal effects from the hand of man in photography.…
Photography, in turn, from the middle of the 19th century onwards, had enormously extended its marketability and, in Benjamin's opinion, eventually separated from art to become a commodity. Attempting to isolate art from the development of technology and prevent the former's surrender to the market, non-conformists created the conception of the total work of art and rallied around the banner of L'art pour l'art.
Argumentative Essay In the foreword to Sacred Legacy: Edward S. Curtis and the North American Indian, Pulitzer Prize winning Native American author N. Scott Momaday posits that, "in the hands of an extraordinary artist", photography can cease to be the "static record" of a moment in time and transcend to a "deeper level" of artistic understanding. Momaday makes these claims when discussing the work of renowned photographer Edward S. Curtis, who spent his lifetime perfecting the art of photography while capturing images of Native Americans. Upon examining Edward S. Curtis's photographic work and the effects of photography on American culture from its inception to its use in the modern age, one can clearly see that Momaday's claims of photography carrying not just a medial value but instead possessing a deeper level of artistic power are completely valid.…
Since the creation of photography it has been used for many different aspects. In a more intellectual manner photography has been used to document, record, and to help educate. While on the more innovative side of photography it has been used to express, to enlighten, and to defy logic and reason. Photography can be both intellectual and innovative concurrently. Throughout history the use of photography can be seen for both purposes.…
History of photography timeline. Photo by: 'Sean Ensch'.
The anthology includes three works by German philosopher, critic, writer, and translator Walter Benjamin, which speculate on photography: A Short History of Photography; Paris, Capital of the Nineteenth Century; and The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. The afterword is supplied by well-known photography historian Vladimir Levashov.
Camera Palaestina: Photography and Displaced Histories of Palestine
Because Niépce's camera photographs required an extremely long (at least eight hours and probably several days), he sought to greatly improve his process or replace it with one that was more practical. In partnership with , he worked out post-exposure processing methods that produced visually superior results and replaced the bitumen with a more light-sensitive resin, but hours of exposure in the camera were still required. With an eye to eventual commercial exploitation, the partners opted for total secrecy.
Welcome to the History of Photography Podcast 2.0!
Niépce died in 1833 and Daguerre then redirected the experiments toward the light-sensitive , which Niépce had abandoned many years earlier because of his inability to make the images he captured with them light-fast and permanent. Daguerre's efforts culminated in what would later be named the process. The essential elements—a silver-plated surface sensitized by vapor, developed by vapor, and "fixed" with hot saturated water—were in place in 1837. The required exposure time was measured in minutes instead of hours. Daguerre took the earliest confirmed photograph of a person in 1838 while capturing a view of a Paris street: unlike the other pedestrian and horse-drawn traffic on the busy boulevard, which appears deserted, one man having his boots polished stood sufficiently still throughout the several-minutes-long exposure to be visible. The existence of Daguerre's process was publicly announced, without details, on 7 January 1839. The news created an international sensation. France soon agreed to pay Daguerre a pension in exchange for the right to present his invention to the world as the gift of France, which occurred when complete working instructions were unveiled on 19 August 1839. In that same year, American photographer is credited with taking the earliest surviving photographic self-portrait.
Knowing whether this photograph is true is of no importance.
Meanwhile, a inventor, , had succeeded in making crude but reasonably light-fast silver images on paper as early as 1834 but had kept his work secret. After reading about Daguerre's invention in January 1839, Talbot published his hitherto secret method in a paper to the Royal Society and set about improving on it. At first, like other pre-daguerreotype processes, Talbot's paper-based photography typically required hours-long in the camera, but in 1840 he created the process, which used the of a to greatly reduce the exposure needed and compete with the daguerreotype. In both its original and calotype forms, Talbot's process, unlike Daguerre's, created a translucent which could be used to print multiple positive copies; this is the basis of most modern chemical photography up to the present day, as daguerreotypes could only be replicated by rephotographing them with a camera. Talbot's famous tiny paper negative of the Oriel window in , one of a number of camera photographs he made in the summer of 1835, may be the oldest camera negative in existence.