Photography

Photography is now almost 200 years old and it is well regarded form of art and expression.

This was not always the case.

there was outright denial and hostility. One outraged German newspaper thundered, “To fix fleeting images is not only impossible … it is a sacrilege … God has created man in his image and no human machine can capture the image of God. He would have to betray all his Eternal Principles to allow a Frenchman in Paris to unleash such a diabolical invention upon the world”[12]. Baudelaire described photography as “art’s most mortal enemy” and as “that upstart art form, the natural and pitifully literal medium of expression for a self-congratulatory, materialist bourgeois class” [13]. Other reputed doom-laden predictions were that photography signified “the end of art” (J.M.W. Turner); and that painting would become “dead” (Delaroche) or “obsolete” (Flaubert) [14]. 

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Many others, however, who had spent years learning their craft, felt disdainful of a commonly-available mechanical device that lacked the painter’s trained discriminating and expressive eye. At the same time they were aware of the challenge that it presented. This mixture of outward disdain and inner dread meant that many painters would often be reluctant to admit to actually using photography in their work. 

Excerpts for the Journal of Art and Society