The
most straight forward explanation of what a photograph is that it’s an
image/picture that has been produced by a camera through a digital or chemical
process. but there are many different opinions on what a photograph actually is
for example people believe that it’s a form of art and a way of people
expression themselves, a document and a way of capturing a moment or memory and
even a science, with the process and how the camera actually produces the photo.
Photography as a Science
Photography has a very different element to
it compared to other arts because the artists/photography isn't fully connected
to the photograph/piece of art, this is because in between there is a
scientific element, in modern photography it’s the digital and print and back
when photography first started it was darkroom and the pinhole technique. Even
before this there was a technique which uses silver nitrate to change colour
once it was exposed to light, this was a technique discovered by Johann
Heinrich Schulz in 1727. around 100 years after this a man called Joseph Niepce
created the camera obscura but wasn’t the greatest thing to uses for
photography as it took 8 hours to produce an image which is why a man called
Louis Daguerre created the Daguerreotype which decreased the time down to 30
minutes, even though 30 minutes are a much shorter time it was still hard to
capture a moment which is why the collodion process was created meaning a
photography could be created in seconds. the
science of photography i think can be used both positively and negatively,
negatively because it can be the only thing some photographers focus on and not
the actual outcome of the photograph, i think it can be used positively because
it can help improve the outcome of the image if the photographer is knowledgeable
in the and about the science of it. when photography was first created it was
more for the scientific side off it because it was the first time anything like
this had be created and there were a lot of people who wanted to learn and know
about it although once figured out and learnt about, it was then pushed towards
the artistic and documentary side and what could actually be captured rather
than what the process was to actually capture the image.
(1)
Photography as a Document
Documenting
out of all the uses for photography is the most popular. it can be used in many different situations for example it
can be used commercially in newspapers, magazines and in television documentary's where something needs to be clearly shown, it can be
used for personal uses such as weddings and events where family members and
people want to remember things. there are also a photographers that purely focus on
documentary photography which makes it very useful for photographers
trying to tell audiences a story and inform an audience, it is also a type of
photography which can focus on many different subjects it doesn’t have a select
focus which I think makes it very popular compared to some of the other
photography categories. documentary photography is a form a photography that came
about at the start of the twentieth century, it was big during this time because
people were starting to hear about photography and it was a form of visual
communication that was just becoming popular, this meant that photographers
were using the popularity of photography to show situations that they think
needed to be exposed and people needed to be educated on. Some of the early
documentary photographers are people such as Jacob Riis, Henri Carter-Bresson,
Tim O'Sullivan and Robert Capa.
(2)
Photography as a Art
(3)
Photographic art is a category of photography
that is slightly harder to recognise than the rest, because its usually down to
the viewer or the actual photographer when capturing the image or viewing it,
there also might be a lot of opinion towards a certain piece of art for example
one person might see it as a photograph documenting something and telling a
story or another person could see it as a very beautiful image and think it’s a really attractive
piece of art, for example a photograph by Steve McCurry called "Afghan
girl" is a originally a photograph that was supposed to document what was
happening in Afghanistan and the people of the country but others like myself
look at it as a piece of art because of the colours, contrast and details. Photographic
art started to come about in the early 1900's after people had explored the
camera and the processes to take a photo, photography was starting to be used as
an art form and a way to express emotions and feelings, this can be seen in certain
art movement’s ones like expressionism, DaDa and surrealism, i think one of the main reasons it was used as an art form in some of these movements is because it hadn't been used for art or a way of telling a story which is what got audiences attention. some famous photographic artists in my opinion are artist/photographers like Ansel Adams, Irving Penn and Martin par.
(3)
My conclusion
I feel like photography doesn’t has a specific category I think that
it’s mainly down to the photographer themselves to decide what path the
photography going down and it’s up to them to add certain techniques and styles
to show what category the image is in but I also feel that the a massive
decider on this is the actual viewers opinion and what they think the image is.
I think some photographs obviously have a direct route what they
were intentionally made fore for example a photograph in a newspaper
of a burnt house, that is a photograph that is there to document the
event. I also think that a photograph can have multiple categories and
shouldn’t need putting into a certain one, I think that because there are many
different opinions on it that’s one of the reasons it’s such a great visual
communicator and art form because it speaks to different audiences in different
ways and appeals to a lot of people very differently.
bibliography
(1)http://aub.ac.uk/wp-content/processed/background/50,50,2095999482/2012/04/Photography-Dark-Room-AUB_photography_7u5c5387.jpg
(2)http://shooterfiles.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/henri_cartier_bresson_bicycle.jpg
(3)http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/staticfiles/NGS/Shared/StaticFiles/Photography/Images/Content/afghan-girl-portrait-article-phot-127438-in.jpg
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