Imagining the Photograph
- History
- Demand Develops to improve lithograph- people project screen and draw
- Newspapers need pictures to be produced rapidly
- Daguerre (1838)- "The daguerreotype is not merely an instrument
which serves to draw nature… [it] gives her the power to reproduce herself."
- Material Side
- Need for the chemistry to capture, fix, and stabilize image
- Need for the celluloid or some backing
- George Eastman (1860) develops fast film- now can take camera anywhere
- Cultural Side- Seeing what has never been seen before
- War- Brady's pictures of Civil War stun a nation and world-
- Civil War as first industrial war, WW1 as the second
- More than stories
- Wealth- Photographs change the nature of privacy
- Thorsten Veblin explores theory of leisure class, conspicuous consumption.
- Images of fancy homes, images of poverty
- Science- Seeing things faster than a human might
- Would develop the motion picture- into movies
- Muybridge- how does a horse trot? All 4 legs on the ground?
- Social Side
- New Occupations-
- News photographer, later advertising;
- Store-front photographer- since camera is expensive
- New Criticism
- Wealth- power of image- who are these wealthy people?
- War- why war?
- Skills
- Take pictures, develop negatives,
- Invent better cameras and film
- Professional societies
- Other Media
- Newspaper- leads to instant pictures that tell stories
- Advertising- leads to emphasize image over textual meaning
- Movies- mechanizing picture taking leads to 30 per second- threshold
- Television- eventually movies linked/merged with broadcast technology
- Painting- did the photograph help develop Impressionist Painting?
- What left out
- How to transmit the photographs rapidly- television?
- How to capture motion- film
Return
to RTF/Com309 Overhead Page