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Before the introduction of photography to society the sole resource to create realistic images was for a skilful fine artist to capture the scene from life using traditional materials. There has been a huge technological advancement in our abilities to obtain images from around the world, in which aids our understanding of the world; from displaying different cultures and customs to viewing astronaut photography that helped us better understand Earth. Photography is a loophole in our traditional definition of art, it not only shows technological achievement, but shows a change in our artistic values and should be legitimised as a piece of art as it uses strategies to show every-day life in a less linear way, however some traditional artists consider it to be ‘the death of art’.
The photograph has not always been considered art.
It first surfaced during the 1840-50s and despite being popular with the public, artists and art critics tried to treat it with a negative bias and not recognise it as a reputable form of fine art.
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This was due to artists seeing photography as a threat to their practice and being created by machines rather than humans and therefore is less authentic. Some artists viewed the invention as a useful tool but did not take it as a serious practice on the level of painting or drawing; despite this opinion, photography became an affluent career. However, photographers emerged and took photographs of such a quality which had to sway the opinion of many critics.
An example of this is Henri Cartier-Bresson who was a French fine art photographer that focused his work on humans and their activities. He studied painting in the 1920s yet only found success in his practice when he picked up the camera. He viewed photography as an instant drawing and worked only in black and white images, using the technical aspects of photography only when it helped him to capture what he was seeing. He finds art in every-day things and would go out with his camera wrapped in black tape, never using a flash, to ensure he remained unnoticed by the public in order to find the perfect candid shot; he was considered a master of this style of photography. This is a feat that could never be achieved by any other medium, therefore being a new innovative way of capturing something that has never been done before.
The earliest known surviving photograph from a camera was taken in 1826 by Joseph Nicephore Niepce, in which is a view from his estate, taking from eight hours to several days of exposure for the results to be of unrefined quality. However, the first ideas of photography came much earlier when scientists began experimenting with optical illusion, or ‘camera obscura’. These ideas of experimenting with how we view things have been going on for thousands of years with evidence of such theories found in Chinese text from as early as 470BC. Even to this day, this way of thinking relates to how art is currently created, and camera obscura is in the first examples of photographic art. An example of this is the gnomon projection on the floor of the Florence Cathedral, Italy, for each year on the summer solstice when the sun is at its highest point in the sky, its light hits the gnomon which projects a beam onto a bronze circle on the cathedral floor. This was created by the Italian astronomer Paolo Toscanelli as a deliberate act to showcase nature’s habits and how human engineering can influence it. This is an ancient art installation that has been inspired by the early theories of camera obscura, showing photography and camera obsucra to be a legitimate art medium and not just a technological breakthrough.
The first commercially produced cameras, the Calotype, created by Henry Fox Talbot, and the Daguerreotype, by Louis Daguerre, were not released until 1840. These original cameras were mainly used for portraits, prior to the commercialisation of photography the only way for people to have visual records of their loved ones was for a portrait artist to be commissioned. Obviously this was a very expensive and time-consuming process, especially if the work was to be of good quality, so only wealthy individuals could afford the luxury of oil portraits. Despite some more cost-effective alternatives being introduced before photography, the silhouette as an example, nothing could compare to the invention of photography. To capture an image on these cameras the photographer would remove the lens while the subjects would remain as still as they can for however many minutes the lighting would require, this could be as long as eight minutes. However it was instantly very popular and by the 1880s, with the creation and mass production of the Kodak camera, it became far more regular than oil portraits.
Since the 1880s, photography has had a huge impact on the world in general as it allowed all people to see around the world through photograph, and for all people to possess pictures of their loved ones. Now a days it is hard to even imagine a world where photography does not exist. When this new technology was created there was many classical portrait painters that felt threatened by the invention, and said it was the end of traditional painting; in 1859 the reputable art critic, Charles Baudelaire, described photography as “art’s most mortal enemy”. Due to these views by the majority of the art world, photography was not seen as an art form for a long time and photographers had to fight through many controversies to earn respect for their craft. An example of this is Alfred Stieglitz, an American fine art photographer and one of the key figures in the success of photography and as a recognised art form by critics. He considered himself as a fine artist and wanted photography to be more respected in the art world. He took these matters into his own hands, and with help from some of his peers, he started a photography exhibition that would be critiqued by other photographers as they understood it to a much greater extent than other artists such as painters. “The Steerage”, 1907, is recognised as one of the greatest photographs of all time in the eyes of many critics. It captures a scene from the lower deck or steerage, of the cruise ship the “Kaiser Wilhelm II” on its voyage to Europe from America. During an era of mass immigration to America this scene has been interpreted to show the people that for whatever reasons were not allowed into the U.S. and were forced back home by immigration officers at the border. This photo is so highly celebrated because it captures a defining moment in history yet also has huge artistic qualities and it is known as one of the first works of artistic modernism. Stieglitz and his work influenced many other photographers and also garnered respect for his practise by artists using traditionally mediums, an example of this is the quote from Pablo Picasso when interpreting this photo. “This photographer is working in the same spirit as I am”. The impact Picasso had on art at this time was huge and his open opinion being in favour of photography could have influenced the opinions of many people and art critics and this could be a factor that would sway our artistic values.
The fears that art would suffer due to the invention of photography and instant photos has now been proven to not be the reality; photography and painting go hand in hand as both mediums influence each other. This is clear in the progression of realism painting since the introduction of photography, it is obvious that the quality of realism that artists are able to achieve has increased dramatically, much of this success can be directly linked to the introduction of photography as working from a photographic reference allows artists to reach incredible feats of hyper-realism. On the other side of this, many artists that use photography as their main medium have been inspired by painting techniques when capturing images through a lens. Early photographers attempted to simply imitate painting as a way to prove to critics they were serious artists but now photographers want to capture scenes in ways we have never seen before using perspective and camera techniques which can be linked back to camera obsucra and the earliest forms of photography. Despite the pushback from artists and critics alike, photography evolved into a legitimate art form due to years of talented photographers fighting for respect in their field by creating works of art through a lens, showing people something they had never seen before and could not create in any other way.
Summary: How Photography Evolved Into a Legitimate Art. (2024, Feb 02). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/summary-how-photography-evolved-into-a-legitimate-art-essay
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