Review: Wells, Photography: A Critical Introduction: Ch 1: Thinking About Photography, 4th ed, 2009 CONTINUED

Newhall's 1937 (amazon.com)

Histories of Photography

Until post-WWII, the history of photography, according to Price & Wells, was largely the history of photographic technique, though they note Gasser’s history of histories, in which three types are identified:  the priority debate (who invented photography),  manuals and handbooks of techniques, and histories of the photograph as image. Gasser feels the preponderance of the second has led to the mistaken assumption that nothing else was ever published before WWII.  

Regarding the debate on priority, the antecedents to the camera are noted, included Aristotle's notes on fixing a reflection on a wall by concentrating light through a small hole, the first notes on the camera obscura from the 16th century, and the large number of people working in optics and chemistry in the 18th century whose discoveries contributed to the publications in science journals in 1839 of details on the creation of instruments and processes for capturing light and fixing images.  The authors refer to Mary Warner Marien on the need to examine historical claims carefully, on the need for further research, particularly political, scientific, and cultural contexts. 

Two early 20th century histories are introduced as seminal in redirecting academic discussions toward more art-historical concerns, and of putting photography at the center of it’s own theory (rather than as a branch art theory).

Gernsheim 1955 (photohistories.com)

 Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography, MOMA, 1937.   Written for a general audience as part of a catalog for a 100-year retrospective at the Modern Museum of Art in 1937.  In the first edition Newhall focused on specific trends and developments without mentioning photographers by name.  With the third edition, specific photographers are introduced, as are styles, such as straight, documentary, and instant vision.  By the fifth edition, Price and Wells find the authority of the masters a clear priority.  

Gernsheim, Helmut and Alison.  The History of Photography from the Earliest Use of the Camera Obscura in the Eleventh Century up to 1914, McGraw-Hill, 1955.  German born and educated, naturalized British, their two volume work focused heavily on technique.  More lengthy and less literary than Newhall, written for a more academic audience.  Later editions added more detail on photographers and genres. Price and Wells recommend the 2-volume large format edition for studying 19th century photography.  

Four consequences of the Great Masters approach to photography are identified.

1.  Trends, styles, and practices are obscured

2.  Non-male, non-Western practitioners and practices are largely ignored

3.  Specialist forms are ignored

4.  Vernacular forms are ignored

Basically, this can be reduced to:  anything non-male, non-Western, non-aesthetic is ignored.  Price and Wells then run through a list of contemporary histories that try to redress this imbalance.  They specifically recommend:

Rosenblum, Naomi.  A World History of Photography.  Abbeville Press, 1984, 1989.

Jeffrey, Ian.  Photography:  A Concise History.  Thames and Hudson, 1981.

Szarkowski, John.  Photography Until Now.  MOMA, 1989.  

The concluding section deals with photographs as tools for composing social history. Writers and researchers in the late 20th century began to use photographs to tell the stories of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.  This might include the development of fashion trends, changing landscapes, body posture and mannerism.  In this context, the value placed on aesthetics shifted to provenance - who took the photo, when and where.  The underlying assumption in much of this work is that the photograph is an accurate representation of past reality.  Little is done to examine the cultural contexts that resulted in the production of particular types of photographs.  Price and Wells cite one such example, Alan Thomas’ The Expanding Eye, which investigates how Victorian Britain’s cultural concerns shaped how photos were used, such as chronicling family histories, or investigating working conditions of the urban and rural poor.  Photography also existed within particular power structures and was used as a means of shaping and enforcing categories of social and economic control, from imperial forces and their subjects, to men and women, the races, and the criminal.  

Much of how photographs are understood is related to the ways in which they are collected, stored, and presented.  Price and Wells note that photographs “are weak at the level of imminent meaning and depend for their decoding on text, surrounding, organisation, and so on.”  (p62)  Most of the photographs we see are in advertising contexts, where the meaning is provided.  But once photographs enter the museum, many of their meanings are lost.  They become objects of aesthetic appreciation and appraisal.  (Douglas Crimp, On the Museums Ruins, 1995)  

The recent development of photographic archives, while a boon to researchers, poses different challenges.  By aggregating many kinds of photographs in one collection, the archive blurs distinctions, forcing images into categories in which they might not otherwise belong simply by being part of an archive.  Perhaps even more problematic, the archive may be presented as a kind of photographic theme park (“the past as a site of tourist pleasure”) with often simplistic ways of imagining the past.  

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