Photography's history in pictures

Julia van Haaffen. From Talbot to Stieglitz (1982) A survey of the photography collection held by the New York Public Library. I skimmed and sampled the text, which appears to be a thorough if brief history of photography’s first century or so. The well-printed plates will give the casual reader a good overview of how photographers learned to exploit the medium. As the technology improved, so did the range. Photography has I think become the dominant medium. No matter what the medium used, the maker now must take into account what photographers have done with similar contents, compositions, or intentions.
     Photography reduced the price of pictures, which in turn changed the way we use them. The first major use was recording and documenting, which enabled the spread of at least visual knowledge of the world beyond the viewer’s immediate surroundings. This continues in, for example, our reliance on video and still imagery to bring us the daily and hourly news, which in turn affects our political and economic decisions in ways we are hardly aware of.
     Recording the family was once the preserve of those rich enough to pay a painter to paint their portraits. By the nineteenth century’s third quarter, most people could afford to have their pictures taken at least once in their lifetimes. This aspect, too, continues, multiplied a billionfold by posting our “status updates” on the social media.
     It took a little while longer for photographers to understand the artistic possibilities of the medium. From the beginning, photographers cannibalised the other mediums and genres, and in return showed how content and composition of the images could be manipulated in new ways, which other artists adapted to other media.
     Photography’s improving technology eventually reduced the skilled craft component of image making, and so shifted attention to the content and composition of the images. We now expect all art to be first and foremost an image, and only secondarily an example of craft skill. Or rather, we now expect the image maker’s skill to show in the composition and content of the image, not in the manipulation of the materials that go into its making. We also expect the image to somehow express its maker’s personal point of view, which may even be more significant than any depicted content. Or perhaps better, which may give significance to content that would otherwise be ignored, overlooked, or misunderstood.
     All this and more will I think occur to anyone who looks at the pictures in this book. ***