PHOTOGRAPHY

 The Invention of Photography 

Alfred Stieglitz, The Terminal, photogravure, 1892

Throughout history art was always a form of expression; art can make us feel moods and emotions. It could focus deeply on capturing a subject making art as realistic as possible or even be based on being creative or imaginative to create art that speaks to the viewers; art that’ll make us think. Art paintings have been looked at as a skill or craft and the ideas of these paintings always kept evolving with many forms and eventually really getting a good focus on realism and looking at the world around us to capture in paint. With the invention of photography, the two were considered different, yet they could look so similar; art had to change. We needed something new; something that couldn’t be related to the idea of photography. When we think about photography we get the idea of realism and attention to so much detail; we’ll see that from photography. Photo development naturally took away from realism paintings by becoming its competitor. With the technology of photography we are now able to capture live moments without having to imagine it or capture it through paint accurately. With photography a photo could easily capture much more than one single subject; it can capture everyday life. Live moments are capturable with photography and at the same time it’s a lot faster than painting a whole scene and trying to recreate a live moment. 

As stated in an article called, “An Introduction to Photography” it says that photographs were used to gain more sense of credibility because they could document people, places, and events. Photography was valued for its replication of exact details; this was something painters had to develop into their art through imagination and skill or even looking at live models for their inspiration, and with photography the fact was that photos could easily be a repeated form of artwork for publication, making a good form of connection with the public. When we compare these to art forms we can see a clear difference with how the art is produced on both ends, with painting art it comes from manual handcrafting and talent with skill to create an art piece that can resemble a photo. While photography is technology and it makes the art for you, all you have to do is find your subject and take the photo and you're done. Photography is a mechanical process and it works for the artist. Photo technology helps a lot, art can be made from the subjects, or the compositions within a scene, photography stops focusing on creating realism and focuses on pleasing the eye through the perspective of the camera.

The art work displayed in this blog is photographed by Aflred Stieglitz in 1892 his photography was meant to capture a form of originality especially with this photo as it is in low-contrast and has its warm-tones that capture the viewer's attention. With his art photography he was able to bend the lines of realism using the camera and this image is a great example. The photo doesn’t come off as clear and detailed but more as a blurred and in action art. This formation was to help photos be viewed as “art photography” rather than something so simple and easy that wasn’t considered the same as art but Stieglitz wanted to prove otherwise that photos can be art; they can tell a viewer something important based on the colors, and tones that get revealed in the end process of photography. He makes the viewer look at his photo art and ask what is this? He pushes away from the way photography is portrayed to society and takes his own thoughts of photography and art and he combines the two. Photography becomes a powerful tool by being able to capture so much and being able to appeal to the public in many situations by capturing live people from certain classes or events and then turning it into a speaking point for the public, photography can capture it all from portraits, and the emotions to all the little details but Alfred Stieglitz didn’t focus on what the camera can already do; he made the camera work for him to capture what he wanted and he used the technology to his advantage to make his own play on a new art. On top of all that photography was a new form of technology that was more recently developed  and this helped give it some popularity in the later centuries as technology continued to evolve and change our society. As time continues to go one art will continue to evolve and more technology art is bound to come up in the future for more new ways to create these arts.

SOURCE_

Dr. Juliana Kreinik, "An Introduction to Photography in the Early 20th Century," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed April 2, 2021, https://smarthistory.org/an-introduction-to-photography-in-the-early-20th-century/.