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Basic knowledge about photography
[...]... simple appearances: the look of a volcano erupting, or a close-up of a dragonfly’s wings; the pattern made by a drop of water, or the record of a daft outfit worn at a party The world would seem much less knowable in the absence of these images: our familiarity with tropical islands and deserts, anacondas and aardvarks, stems, in the main, from lens-based imagery (Perhaps zoological and botanical gardens... furnishing our apartments with elegance According to Academicians, any art based on copying endangered the practice by proximity to the characteristics associated with the artisan or ‘rude mechanic’ In this Academic tradition, the presence of detail, because it suggested copying, had to be avoided at all costs In contrast, Academic art stressed broad or general effects and idealized forms Art was characterized... ‘the architect and engineer it supersedes and far surpasses in many cases drawings made by hand’ Photography had an important place in law: reproducing documents and ‘pursuing the criminal’ For manufacturers, it ‘depicted designs, patterns or workmanship’ And lastly, Diamond claimed, ‘more ambitious still, as if the globe were too narrow a sphere for its resources, it travels into space, seeking and taking... Photographic art, in contrast, lays claim to intention, subjective expression, spiritual uplift, and aesthetic effect Rather than snooze, photographic artists must be alert Some commentators have argued that a serious study of photography should abjure any consideration of art and focus on the instrumental forms and mass practices that are the mainstay of the medium Photographic art, it is suggested, is an invented... culture and memory I felt that I could not leave the book without a short coda on the ‘digital image’ and its impact on established photographic culture Outside the museum, we rarely encounter photographs in a pure, or self-contained, form Invariably, in actual use photographic images are combined with language and some other technology Photographs often appear on the page (of a book, magazine, or newspaper),... Photography took its place within the established cultural antimonies In an important essay written in 1857, Lady Elizabeth Eastlake suggested that what photography did best ‘was beneath the doing of a real artist’ Photography made exact copies of things: it saved artists’ effort, labour, and time, and it freed them to concentrate on imaginative or creative work Those who wanted to dismiss this new image-form... image-form argued that it was just a mindless, automatic means of copying But art-photographers also repeatedly echoed this distinction, arguing that it was necessary to wrench photography away from the automatic imprint of the apparatus, to imbue it with intellectual characteristics; to reject details, copies, and documents Within photography itself, then, the same division evident in the Academic tradition... photography transformed into art, he encountered just more of the same The participants in the Society came up with one mad scheme after another: a camera, called a pointer, wound up and sent in search of views; steam proposed to raise photography to new heights; and so on Mudd was aghast to find that photography had not really changed in all this time; still no one 1 Photography seemed interested in art... lowly artisanal (or mechanical) trade Artisanal labour was viewed by the elite as demeaning Those who worked with their hands – displaying ‘mere’ skill, facility, or imitation – were said to be ‘servile’, because they followed a plan established by others rather than demonstrating their own ingenuity In contrast to the artisan, the liberal gentleman, who wrote poetry or engaged in geometry, was thought... from inaccessible places are also made available 4 by photographers (not many of us are likely to explore the depths of the ocean) Satellite photographs of the Earth and its weather systems, or images of distant planets, are only possible from a point of view that is literally ‘out of this world’ The ability to make pictures at a fraction of a second (or in film to slow down motion and freeze frame) brings . Chapter 1 Forgetting photography The question ‘Where is the photograph?’ presupposes that we have lost sight of photography or that photography is somehow. for photography as a whole, he suggested, was akin to attempting a history, or a museum, of writing: all that could be done was to trace the uses of photography