Photography: a very short introduction

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Steve Edwards
PHOTOGRAPHY
A Very Short Introduction
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp
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© Steve Edwards 2006
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First published as a Very Short Introduction 2006
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ISBN 0–19–280164–3 978–0–19–280164–7
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For JX B, JW (and G)
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Contents
Preface xi
List of illustrations xiv
1 Forgetting photography 1
2 Documents 12
3 Pictures 40
4 What is a photograph? 67
5 The apparatus and its image 85
6 Fantasy and remembrance 112
Afterword: Digital photography 129
Further reading 141
Index 155
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Preface
I must have been mad to agree to write this book; not least,
because the combination ‘very short introduction’ with
‘photography’ seems like an oxymoron. The three or four standard
histories of the medium are all huge volumes. The problem is
simply that photography runs in all directions, permeating diverse
aspects of society. Indeed, it is difficult to find an area of modern
life untouched by it. (Even the cover of this book, ostensibly an
abstract painting, is photomechanically reproduced.) The critic
John Tagg once suggested that there was no single characteristic,
or practice, that represented the fundamental essence of the
medium. Trying to account for photography as a whole, he
suggested, was akin to attempting a history, or a museum, of
writing: all that could be done was to trace the uses of photography
(or writing) in the institutions in which it was put to work – the
law courts, medicine, advertising, art, and so forth. Even if we
reject a strict version of this argument (it seems to me that there
are powerful ideologies underpinning the uses of photography),
attempting to write an introduction to this dispersed field feels like
a vain task. The quite distinct versions of photography’s history
unravel attempts to tell a coherent story. This is one of the things
that can make thinking about photography so fascinating, and so
challenging.
In this short book I have not even tried to provide anything like a
xi
comprehensive account: some of the most important aspects of
the field – advertising, for instance – barely figure here. Instead, I
have tried to address some constitutive conditions that give rise to
the values we typically associate with photographs. This approach
means emphasizing the division between art and documentary. I
have also adopted a thematic, rather than chronological,
organization for this book; information on the development of
photography, for instance, is scattered throughout the pages. My
aim has been to embed specific information in a wider frame – I
hope this approach results in a livelier introduction to the subject,
but the reader may need to actively look for connections. Chapter 1
takes the theme of forgetting as a way of introducing photography.
Chapters 2 and 3 form a complementary pair, providing a survey of
issues and themes associated with the division between ‘documents’
and ‘pictures’. Chapters 4 and 5 go over some of the same ground,
but with a more theoretical emphasis. The final chapter returns to
the uses of photography, advancing some thoughts on commodity
culture and memory. I felt that I could not leave the book without a
short coda on the ‘digital image’ and its impact on established
photographic culture.
Outside the museum, we rarely encounter photographs in a pure, or
self-contained, form. Invariably, in actual use photographic images
are combined with language and some other technology.
Photographs often appear on the page (of a book, magazine, or
newspaper), combined with text; they figure on billboards (again
with words); in archives and filing cabinets; on personal
identification documents; in family albums (or, their modern
replacement, the reassigned shoe box); on computer systems; and
so forth. Photography is a hybrid medium, and it is worth
remembering that the way we encounter and use photographic
images frequently involves some other system of communication
and organization. I touch on this combinatory relation in what
follows, but in the main, this book focuses on camera-generated
photochemical images, though I have occasionally drawn my
examples from the related family of technologies that share the
xii
determining conditions of the camera (film, television, video, and
digital photography). One final point: anyone hoping to find a ‘how
to’ manual here will be disappointed.
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