Light and Photomedia

A New History and Future of the Photographic Image

Jai McKenzie

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000213362
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Arte
• Subtopic: Cultura popular en el arte

Light and Photomedia proposes that, regardless of technological change, the history and future of photomedia is essentially connected to light. It is a fundamental property of photomedia, binding with space and time to form and inform new, explicitly light-based structures and experiences. Jai McKenzie identifies light-space-time structures throughout the history of photomedia, from the early image machines through analogue and digital image machines to the present day. She proposes that they will continue to develop in the future and takes us to future image machines of the year 2039. With the use of the theories of Paul Virilio, Jean Baudrillard and Vilem Flusser, featuring artists including Henri Cartier-Bresson, Nam June Paik, Yves Klein, Eadweard Muybridge, Martha Rosler, Cindy Sherman and Michael Snow, as well as their photographic images, Light and Photomedia places the reader in a new history and future which, although mostly overlooked by the canon of photomedia theory, is an essential line of enquiry for contemporary thinking and dialogue in photography.

1
EARLY IMAGE MACHINES: THE INVENTION OF PHOTOGRAPHY C. 1830 - C. 1870

Luminous beginnings

Was the era from c.1830 to c.1838 ‘completely bathed in luminous fluid’¹ as the inventor of the first semi-permanent images, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce² contended? Possibly. Within the radiant beginnings of early photography, an understanding of light was central to the development of the relevant photochemical and mechanical inventions required to realise it. During this epoch, in which the invention of photomedia emerged, light attained a palpable presence within society.

In Western philosophy and science there have been varying historical interpretations of light. However, one constant idea persists: the supremacy of light within the totality of experience. The nature of light is understood in terms of its physical properties, and its theoretical relation to experience. We engage with light in many ways, visually and physically, emotionally and intellectually. Light underpins visual perception and therefore is the critical source responsible for our understanding and orientation in space and time.³

Visual experience is impossible without light; our eyes receive it, allowing the passage of light to travel from outside to inside the body. In simple terms, light enters the eye as photonic information, it strikes and is subsequently collected by the retina at the rear of our eyes. Here the eye functions as a converter, transforming light into a complex series of electrochemical events in the retinal receptors generating electrical impulses that are transmitted down the optic nerve to the brain, which aggregates and interprets the electrochemical information it receives, creating neural constructs that form images in the final process of visual cognition. We see and understand the world through this fundamental relationship between light and visual perception.⁴ Importantly, because of the finite speed of light and the delay that occurs as light is transformed into electrical impulses that move through the brain, we always sense the recent past.⁵ Likewise, photomedia secures light from the past as visual imagery, bringing it to the present for further reception. Both methods of recall occur due to either psychological or physical light characteristics. Through the cognitive processing of light we seek to understand the universe. Through light, photomedia was formed.

Light source: the origin of the image machines

Any discussion on the development of photomedia technology necessarily begins with the camera obscura.⁶ The principles of the camera obscura were first observed by Aristotle during an eclipse of the sun.⁷ This proto camera device, which functioned by using a dark chamber fitted with an aperture, captured light but did not have the capacity to store an image. It required an artist to render the scene by hand. This was a significant limitation that demanded a solution. It is widely acknowledged by historians that for the invention of photography to occur there needed to be an effective control of light through an instrument like the camera obscura working in combination with an appropriate storage process.⁸ As early as 1727 the German anatomy professor Johann Heinrich Schulze⁹ observed that silver nitrate darkened when exposed to light.¹⁰ Although Schulze recognised that chemicals could provide an appropriate storage device for light he considered his observations relevant only in testing for the presence of silver in alloy metal.¹¹ Nevertheless, these observations emphasise the importance of light within the discovery of photography and ultimately form the methodological basis of black and white photography.¹²

Despite this knowledge of both the camera obscura, an instrument for controlling light, and silver salts, the essential chemical processes to ‘store’ light, it was not until the late eighteenth century, at the beginning of what is known as the Industrial Revolution, that the fertile ground for the growth of the image machines came about. Consistent with the growth of industry, and because photography was seen as a mechanical process, in France people spoke of the first general process of photography, the daguerreotype, as la machine Daguerre.¹³ Meanwhile in England, scientist and photographer Sir John Herschel¹⁴ coined the term photography, which literally means ‘light writing’.¹⁵

The first recorded experiments that aimed at producing photographic images were made by Thomas Wedgwood¹⁶ between approximately 1790 and 1802 using a camera obscura and nitrate of silver to produce images. Although Wedgwood made great advancements towards developing a process of photography, he failed to achieve a method of fixing the images once they were exposed. It was not until 30 years later that William Henry Fox Talbot¹⁷ made progress on this aspect of the invention. One of the most well known inventors of photography, due to his substantial output of photographic images,¹⁸ Talbot speculated on the idea of photography while using a camera obscura, remarking, ‘how charming it would be if it were possible to cause these natural images to imprint themselves durably, and remain fixed upon the paper!’¹⁹ Talbot’s understanding of the light-based camera obscura images informed his awareness of the antithetical property of light, the shadow. By 1835, Talbot had developed a photographic system of depicting objects through their shadows, which he called skiagraphy.²⁰ With this working negative system Talbot understood the potential application of the negative object to make a positive print. However, he had not devised a way to fix these images to paper until a month after Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre’s²¹ invention was announced.

But, as Herr Schiendle suggests, we might consider the first inventor of photography to be Johann Bapista Porta who popularised the camera obscura, or as Schiendle states, ‘with equal reason to whoever first noticed the fading of a curtain under sunlight’.²² For on this line of reasoning, ‘the discoverer of a fact is also the discoverer of whatever knowledge that fact may ultimately lead to.’²³

In any event, as Peter Galassi points out ‘the most curious aspect of the race to invent photography is that it was not a race until it was over.’²⁴ Galassi claims there was no clear inventor of photography and that, depending on one’s definition of photography and the characteristics of the medium one finds paramount, the inventor could be Wedgwood in 1802, Niépce in 1826, Talbot in 1835 or even Daguerre in 1835 or 1839.²⁵

Regardless of which one of these educated and financially secure visionaries of the early Industrial Revolution invented photography, they all manifested the sociological, artistic and scientific aim of the era: to accurately transcribe the physical world. In essence, each sought a means of writing with light directly from nature.²⁶

A sociological perspective

For the most part, historical accounts of early photography fail to deal in depth with the multifaceted aspects of photography’s history. In general, these accounts discuss the technical conditions or closely examine the individuals associated with the invention. They do not, however, consider the deeper philosophical aspects of the period let alone the significance of light. However, most acknowledge the importance of the historical period between 1830 and 1839 in the invention of photography. As Peter Galassi states, ‘even the driest technical histories implicitly acknowledge that photography was a product of shared traditions and aspirations.’²⁷

The most thorough contemporary exploration of the sociological aspects which contributed to the impetus for the invention of photography is Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography by art historian Geoffrey Batchen. He argues that photography was brought about by particular cultural and social contexts within European history.²⁸ He states that

photography appears to have emerged as the embodiment of certain Western knowledge rather than as a creative “idea” or technological “discovery” traceable to the actions of any particular individual. Photography, it seems, was a product of (and contributor to) certain shifts and changes within the fabric of European culture as a whole.²⁹

In addition, Herbert Ohlman claims that any invention cannot succeed without certain prerequisites; there must be entrepreneurs willing to fund development, and there must be an unmet need for the invention.³⁰

Jean-Claude Lemagny and André Rouillé suggest in their book A History of Photography: Social and Cultural Perspectives³¹ that the development of photography was, since the Renaissance, driven by a quest for accurate resemblance within Western art; a search for the perfect facsimile that strove to both arrest a gesture and suspend time.³² They postulate that this point in the history of art coincided with a rising middle class who wanted to be able to control everything possible in an effort to discover the potential marketability of all things. The invention of a device for ‘cataloguing the world’, so to speak, was a valuable asset because ‘without this there could be no accurate inventory or any complete investigation of the world which this class was now bent on controlling.’³³ In addition, Peter Galassi points out that the great political and social transformations of the industrialised period fostered many speculative thinkers, whose ideas and output provided answers to such requirements but subsequently introduced further needs.³⁴ For instance, the Wedgwoods benefited from the industrialisation of England and capitalised on it through automating mass produced pottery. As Tim Cloudsley remarks, an ‘increase in population in eighteenth century Britain and a slight rise in the average standard of living, supplied a minimal domestic market for the first mass-produced goods.’³⁵ It is highly probable that Wedgwood’s motivation for experimenting with photography was in part an attempt to assist in his father’s mass production of pottery, by replacing hand painted surface imagery with photographic imagery. Wedgwood would have understood the potential commercial applications of photography and clearly perceived the possibility of a direct application to pottery.

However, the accelerated pace of industrialised society created anxiety; an apprehensive environment in which an opposing desire for stillness developed. Without doubt there was a propensity to try and understand the rapidly changing world through the stillness of an image. Photography satisfied that desire, as it allowed viewers the opportunity to linger over a static image of a moving world. The image was considered to be truth. A faithful, useful and comforting representation of a moment of the real was seemingly found in photography. Laura Mulvey locates this satisfaction within an ‘aspiration to preserve the fleeting instability of reality and the passing of time in a fixed image’.³⁶ But, Mulvey, like Batchen, Thomas and others, fails to acknowledge the importance of the scientific and poetic exploration of light in the invention of photography. As Ann Thomas affirms, ‘a creation of both science and art, photography owes its physical existence to the research of the chemists, opticians and philosophers of light of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.’³⁷

Light-space-time

Wedgwood’s interests in the application of photographic techniques did not arise exclusively from commercial pursuits but also from his research into light, visual perception, education and learning. Wedgwood, when discussing his studies of educational techniques, once said his aim was ‘to find some master-stroke which should anticipate a century or two on the lazy-paced progress of human improvement’.³⁸ Through close study of infants, he observed that most of the information a child received related to light taken in through the eyes. This realisation led him to consider the possibilities of images created by light. Wedgewood’s understanding of the relationship of light and imagery to comprehension and perception was an astute observation. Clearly, Wedgwood was conscious of the power of light-based images to inform our understanding of what we perceive. He saw the potency images had as carriers of visual information and consequently that images could be articles of knowledge. His subsequent quest to bring about a photographic p...