THEORIES OF PHOTOGRAPHY AND VISUAL CULTURE

Submitted by Lalhlimpuia

The word ‘Photography’ literally means ‘drawing with light’. In the

year 1839, almost ten years after photography, or at least ‘drawing with
light’ was born from France, a British scientist Sir John Herschel first
coined the word from the Greek words phos, meaning light, and
graphe, meaning drawing or writing. Many people have defined the
word through the years but the concept or meaning of photography is
maintained; the art or process of producing images by the action of
radiant energy and especially light on a sensitive surface such as films
or an optical sensor.
In the field of art history, photography specialization is fairly new
and is only dominated by a handful of people that came to prominence
in the nineteen seventeen and eighties. In 1980, Roland Barthes, three
days before his death noted, “there does seem to be a kind of
theoretical boom in photography, People who are not technicians,
historians or aestheticians are becoming interested in it”. As the name
photography suggest, its history is well kept and known since it itself is
the main source of information for its history. Throughout the years,
the photos taken has been massively increasing in quality, not to
mention how it is stored, technological improvements have helped
photography in all the way it can. When we say technological
improvement, people born in the early nineties might be the last to
witness how cameras evolve around the years and how different
camera company is advancing. Advanced cameras surely give better
photos and opened up a wider range for the scope of photography, but
artists have different tastes and likes so does the audience, the people
who judge a photo through the photographer. Different scholars have
proclaimed a photograph’s role is discourse, its actual purpose is
dependent on its theorization. As the method of photography or a
photograph historically bound it is impossible to say that there is a kind
of photographic agreement and the fact that its nature varies. Different
kinds and different scopes of photography has arisen due to certain
situations in the society. We will be getting into some of these different
types of photography and how they have managed to play roles with
ease for the society and the culture.
Fine art photography or art photography in general, is one of the
most common, widely appreciated by the society and sticks into the
visual culture. Fine art photography refers to an imprecise category of
photographs, created in accordance with the creative vision of the
cameraman. We will be putting any kind of photography here which
falls under the category of the creativity of the vision of the cameraman
alone. Another form of photography is Advertising photography, which
is more or less very self-explanatory. Products based photography can
be created with aesthetics as the cameraman wants to make it look
more appealing than it actually is. In recent years, advertisements and
or companies have created a huge path for success for photographers
in the industry and has helped particular companies to gain their
income. The third and final photography we will be discussing here is
photojournalism photography. Photojournalism can be explained as the
process of storytelling using the medium of photography as the main
story telling device. A journalist will use pen and paper to take down
notes and tell stories, a photojournalist will use the camera to capture
the emotion in a situation which will give their story. In other words,
photojournalist gave a visual representation of a journalist.
 Take these three images as an example. You can easily tell which
one is which, how the photography wanted to portray a certain story.
There are lots of different type of photography for different things
which we have not mentioned here since photography is a multifold
phenomenon ranging from fine arts to criminal investigations to optics.
Photographs were called ‘sun pictures’ and said to be ‘impressed
by nature’s hand’ during the 19th Century. Camera obscura was the first
device which led to the development of photographs and camera.
 Sun was the main source which made it available for a
photograph. The refraction of light through the hole was painted from
the ray inside and was then reversed. For most people, photograph has
been used to remind ourselves of something in the past or for
memories. Baudelaire held that photography could at best be memory
tool, a record, an archive, but never fine art. This statement declared
that fine art is something valuable or has such an impact for a culture.
Baudelaire has put prioritize fine art as to understand the subject in
general. The 19th century brought many changes to technology and
cameras are significantly improved by the year. This led to the progress
of photographs and how they are used for and by the people for certain
purposes like mass media. Roland Barthes considers the photographer
to be the operator, those of us who look at the photographs be the
spectators, and the person or object photographed to be the target.
Walter Benjamin posits that there are two different values to a work of
art. The first is their cult value and the second is their exhibition value.
He argues that along with our ability to mechanically reproduce works
of art, we have shifted the emphasis from the cult value of the work of
art to the exhibition value. Their existence alone is no longer what is
important, it is their display that allows them to derive any meaning.
Visual Culture as explained by Nicholas Mirzoeff, is perhaps understood
as a tactic for studying the functions of a world addressed through
pictures, images, and visualizations, rather than through texts and
words.
Theorists have debated in so many ways in the past about how or
what makes a photograph or photography special from the real world
and their relations. Edgar Allen Poe argues, “photographs are ‘infinitely’
more precise than any human hand, and no skills of manual dexterity
can compete with them”. As an art, photography is not the
representation of reality, and it is obvious how art can be changed
within an artist perspective. Friedrich Kittler has announced the idea of
relations between photography and death in his books. He debated
photography as establishing a realm of the dead. In his lessons, a
photograph guarantees the object or person being photographed
would be preserved. They induce in the spectator a feeling that the
target of photograph is real, and this reality we equate with being alive.
Barthes argues “because of that delusion which makes us attribute to
reality an absolutely superior, somehow external value; but by shifting
this reality to the past which, for instance “this-has-been”, the
photograph suggests that it is already dead.”
Theorists like McLuhan says that the camera has the capability to
represent people. He states that the camera can, “turn people into
things, and the photograph extends and multiplies the human image to
the proportions of mass-produced merchandise. The movie stars and
matinee idols are put in the public domain by photography.” In the late
1800’s, photography was mainly categorized as an industrial art rather
than a fine art, due to its mechanical nature. However, in 1889 a fine-
art photography movement was initiated by photographer Peter Henry
Emerson. He termed it “naturalistic” photography. His position was that
“a photograph could be a work of art, irrespective of its genetics, if it
occasioned ‘aesthetic pleasure’ in the spectator… the artistic value of
some photographs in the prints themselves and in the habits and
expectations of spectators–not in the way photographs came into
being.” The medium of photography in the twenty-first century
could be seen as having four primary estates: “fine art, advertising,
amateur photography, and journalism.” There is no longer a clear line
between photography as a fine art and photography as a practical art.
Today we can see many photographs that would be regarded as fine art
in advertising and journalism. Equally still place the emphasis on the
exhibition value of the photograph. The images in the photographs take
on new meanings with new references. Advertising uses these images
to represent cultural fantasies and illusions. Journalism uses it to
portray a historical event or to allow the world to travel to a new
destination through watching photographs of it. It is the display if the
image and the photograph that makes these four estates possible.
According to these theorists, the growth of visual culture in
modernity has been exhibited by works among various forms and
techniques of knowledge. Vision itself as a source of knowledge has
been challenged, and alternatives to the dominant, braver ways of
seeing have been insulted. Yet we have seen in recent years a “pictorial
turn”, including a shift in cultural theory towards a forceful
denaturalization of vision. Seeing is no longer taken for granted as
natural, but instead is generally understood to be formed through
cultural processes. This means that straightforward descriptions of
what and how we see are no longer possible; vision itself must be
problematized, redirecting inquiry into how particular ways of seeing
have been formed and why. In particular, the authority ascribed to the
dominant western mode of vision and its products is undergoing an
intense deconstruction. The attention to “visual culture” since the early
1990s is one aspect of this process, and a clear sign that the struggle
over the centrality of vision in our constructions of knowledge and
power is not yet resolved.
But alongside all the animosity and loathe which certain theorists
or the masses has decided to get informed about, the nature of
photograph has been in a better position and is imagined to be staying
in this place. From processing and developing photographs with
chemicals, the journey of photography has reached its peak in our
generation; the ability to take a photo and instantly store it on any
device we might want. Technology has proven ease of accessibility in all
aspects, we can say. Photography has become an essential component
of many areas of science. Ever since the U.S. Surgeon General's office
compiled a six-volume record of Civil War wounds shortly after the war,
it has played a crucial role in the study of anatomy. Photographs can
provide an objective standard for defining the visual characteristics of a
species of animal or a type of rock formation. But photography can also
illustrate things the human eye cannot see at all. Hours-long exposures
taken through telescopes bring out astronomical details otherwise
unseeable. Similar principals apply to some photos taken through
microscopes. High-speed photography allows us to see a bullet in flight.
In 1932, the existence of neutrons was proven using photographs, as
was the existence of viruses in 1942. The planet Pluto was discovered
through comparisons of photographic maps taken through telescopes.
X rays taken at hospitals are really photographs taken with x-ray light
rather than visible light. Similarly, infrared and ultra-violet photographs,
which detect invisible wavelengths of light, can be used for various
ideas including astronomy and medicine, and the detection of cracks in
pipes or heat loss from buildings. In all these cases, evidence and
experimental results can be easily exchanged between scientists using
photographs. These importance of photograph in science is only one
point and there are lots of other areas where photography had played
the most crucial role in a particular system for their growth and
development.
As these progresses, younger people became more interested
through enthusiasts or through peers, and there have been many
young photographers who are really talented and has already made
marks through their portfolios. Paving its way, a photograph can now
be restored to look more ‘21st century’. This means a photo taken in the
early years which is stored and well preserved can get colors to their
black and white nature. Below is an example of such method.
 The medium of photography is known most for its reproducibility,
its ability to communicate with the masses, its idea of reality that is
induced in the spectators, and its ability to eliminate time and space
and allow for anyone to feel they have witnessed an historical act, been
to a faraway place, or communicated with the realm of the dead. We
must not forget the aesthetic and artistic value of photography. It is not
merely a mechanically reproducible medium with many functional
purposes and purposes. It is also an art form created by a more modern
and methodical type of artist (the photographer) who wants to depict
the world in a different way than the painter or the sculptor. The artist
gives us in a sense a kind of glazed reality of his construction that can
only be transmitted through a photograph.