Today photography is an extremely popular medium across the professional and amateurs alike. However, admits it’s popularity it contains huge diversity with genres from weddings to war. With this photography has been able to capture nearly every part of the planet and even ventured outside of it. For the majority of us we encounter photography or the photographic image on a daily basis.
Today taking a photograph is an easy process, as simple as pressing a button a couple of times on our mobile phones. During the 19th century fixing an image became possible. From the camera obscurer; Henry Fox Talbot, Niépce and Daguerre created similar but different process to produce a photograph. Fox Talbot used positive negative process, which is still very similar today, providing near identical copies. However the Daguerreotype spread across the world, as a gift from France.
https://blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/find-out-when-a-photo-was-taken-identify-daguerreotype-photography/
Three of the very earliest photographs taken including windows. Today the camera looking out and capturing the world is a common metaphor. From the very beginning the camera always crops the world into a small frame, decided upon by the action of the photographer. Just like a common window our view is cropped and determined by the placement of said frame. The photographic window offers two views; one of the world unfamiliar to our own but also one of the photographers own vision and / or interpretation. In 1978 John Zakowski curated an exhibition for MOMA titled ‘Mirrors and Windows, American Photography since 1960’. The photographs selected can be linked with subjective (mirrors) and objective (windows) photographs. “The two creative motives that have been contrasted here are not discrete. Ultimately each of the pictures in this book is part of a single, complex, plastic tradition. Since the early days of that tradition, an interior debate has contested issues parallel to those illustrated here. The prejudices and inclinations expressed by the pictures in this book suggest positions that are familiar from older disputes. In terms of the best photography of a half-century ago, one might say that Alfred Stieglitz is the patron of the first half of this book and Eugène Atget of the second. In either case, what artist could want a more distinguished sponsor? The distance between them is to be measured not in terms of the relative force or originality of their work, but in terms of their conceptions of what a photograph is: is it a mirror, reflecting a portrait of the artist who made it, or a window, through which one might better know the world?”
— John Szarkowski, 1978
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Fox_Talbot
Susan Sontag’s essay Plato’s Cave discusses the link and impact of the photographic window. In the essay she discusses a group of children who have only seen the reality that lies outside of the cave via shadow puppets. Other people are controlling what these children believe is a truthful encounter. This is extremely true with photography, as the photographer controls what the viewer sees. Highlighting the use of a photograph to communicate and educate.
With the daguerreotype being a popular early form of photography, many people owned or collected these items. Often being portraits of oneself or loved ones but during the late 19th century publishers or picture houses started to create and sell topographic views. These were in the form of postcards or stereo cards. The cards allowed others to see a view that would otherwise not be likely for them to see. Over the years this has grown and photographers have used there own window to create images that provoke change or reform.
Photography as a medium is able to offer extremely realistic imagery in both stills and moving. The work of Hine and Riis used stills to prove change. The image below by Nick Ut of the 1972 napalm attack also has a moving image counterpart. Yet it is often argued the still image can hold the viewers attention for longer. As a still the viewer can study every part of the frame. A singular image traditional can be published in the media, mostly newspapers to aid it’s attention over the moving image. Yet in the 21st century the aid of the internet and social media the moving image is becoming increasingly popular.
https://allthatsinteresting.com/napalm-girl
I believe the power and influence of the photograph is not overrated. The use of the photograph has rapidly increased over the past century, especially with the addition of the internet and social media. The increase can lesson the impact of the photograph. The ethical challenge that will always have a relationship with images that can inspire unity or change will always be evident. Below is a series titled Diary by Corrine Day. The work highlights the struggles that can be faced when coming of age. Yet this work is often viewed in a gallery by people who are a higher class to those who are in the images. Even though photography today is viewed more widely, it is still galleries who can heavily dictate this.
Steven Butter MA 