Photography Definitions

Kodak camera

1888. Two camps in photography, amateurs and artists. roll of film, roll holder, produced at mass scale. No more bulky plates, roll is light and durable and portable. Kodak camera preloaded with 100 photos, once full you mail it to Rochester, camera is loaded again and sent back with the developed photo. "You press the button, we do the rest" Now it's just taking a picture. No need for studio or perfect conditions, no more staging, photographer is no longer a skilled worker, just anyone.

Social documentary

A socially engaged, advocacy-minded form of image production. Such images often show us how people deal with a specific time and place, and/or how they are affected by issues that are the result of human actions. The power of these images is to move us and not just inform us. This is what is often meant when people use the term "documentary." Riis, somewhat misguided. FSA, govt sponsored.

Index

A trace of what actually was. Photography acts as an index through its creation through light's interaction with light sensitive material. Documentary, photography is what was actually there.

Albumen print

Albumen silver process enables the proliferation of many paper-based photographic processes and technologies. First commercially exploitable method of producing a photographic print on a paper base from a negative, reproducible. Used albumen found in egg whites to bind the photographic chemicals. Used popularly in cartes de visites. Image suspended above paper, more accurate. Photo books. Allowed for travel photography, people being able to see far away places.

Carte-de-visite

Carte de visite, albumen print mounted on thicker paper, similar to business cards. Collect pictures of friends and celebrities, emergence of photographic album. The immense popularity of these card photographs led to the publication and collection of photographs of prominent persons.

Chronophotography

Chronophotography is a photographic technique from the Victorian era which captures a number of phases of movements. Shows use of photography for scientific purposes. Muybridge, horse movement, precursor to the moving image. Chronophotography gun. Etienne Jules Marey (series of pictures on the same plate, chronophotography gun) Edweard Muybridge (many different cameras)

Photography

Comes from the greek for writing with light. Physical impressions of light on an object. It documents something that was actually there, indexical

Composite photography

Composite photographs, very difficult to capture a monochromatic scene, composite theatrical scenes. Photography trying to be art, precursor in some ways to the painterly aspirations of pictorialism. Sometimes overlayed, ghost photography, criminal photography. Early manipulation processes, push against indexical nature.

Cyanotype

Invented by Sir John Herschel, originally form of entertainment, blue prints. Cheap and accessible. Used by Anna Atkins for first photographically illustrated book "Photographs of British Algae: Cyanotype Impressions"

Magnesium Flash

Invention of magnesium flash allowed him to take pictures of dark corners Scared tenants with explosion, good for documentary, dangerous, flammable.

Lamprey Grid

John Lamprey Grid created by silk string to deconstruct human form. Photograph as form of data. Often a little informal or unhelpful but the thought was still there. Trying to turn photography into precise science. Anthropology (developed in parallel with photography). Focus on visual knowledge.

Magic Lantern

Magic lantern projector with spinning disc Glass magnified with light on wall, practically slide show. Slipping slide, movable glass plate, sense of motion. Muybridge reanimates photograph based on this magic lantern tradition, one of the key inventors of cinema. Used by Riis. Photography as entertainment, stereoscopic tradition of traveling without leaving your seat.

Halftone

Reproduces continuous tone copy that involves photographing the copy through a fine screen of intersecting lines. This creates an image consisting of thousands of tiny dots that create the illusion of varying tones. Photos in the news. People seeing photos all the time. IMAGES WITH TEXT, in news and in book. Reproductive technology, isn't actually a photograph.

Iconic Photograph

Simplified snapshot of an event or idea (but can also stand in for a person, place, or thing) Circulate widely over long periods of time, often through the mass media - they persist, resurface, and are familiar to the point of invisibility. Take on new meanings each time they are shown in a new context; often, the original context of its production and dissemination is forgotten. Have the power to shape collective memory; invested with specific ideas Are culturally and generationally specific. Migrant Mother

Pictorialism

Subject matter is painterly, "eternal" rather than contemporary. Privilege visual sensation over optical sensation Soft focus, made in difficult conditions. The Photo-Secession movement promoted photography as a fine art. Bring back complicated processes, outdated processes. Steiglitz, Camera Work. Interested in platinum print, artistic, expensive. Painterly in sense of symbolic emotion, mysterious.

Stereoscope

Tool used to view stereographs, photos that appear 3D when put into the scope. Photography as travel, showing the world to people who've never seen it, escapism. Holmes Stereoscope was affordable.

Farm Security Administration

US gov sponsored social documentary photography Shooting script- go here, shoot it like this Social documentary takes on more formality, focused more on truth compared to Riis. Eventually this work was canonized by museums. Experimented with color processes, color ultimately distracted from documentary goals We think about history in black and white because that was the preferred mode

Leica

Ubiquity of photography created with new lightweight cameras 35 mm cameras (continuous rolls of film). Bresson, Winnogrand, street photography, extension of body, no longer clunky.

Salvage Ethnography

Widespread idea among Americans that native culture is in decline and that the culture needs to be preserved using modern technology. Malayan Man, The Vanishing Race. Often posed and highlighted otherness, sometimes used for social good but largely as oppressor. Photographer as impartial documentarian, rarely sympathy for subjects

Photo Essay

a visual narrative combining images, text, and graphic elements Photographs do not illustrate the news but tell/recreate the story on their own, ample formal experimentation in the late 1920s-early 1920s in Europe and US. Many snapshots telling a story. Experimented with layout.