Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

From its very beginnings, photography was understood and experienced in terms of its capacity for realism. “It is not merely the likeness which is precious … but the sense of nearness involved in the thing … the fact of the very shadow of the person lying there fixed forever,” wrote Elizabeth Barret in 1843 (quoted in Sontag 1977 , 183). Soon it would be used to record events and document many aspects of the world, not just in people's family albums, but also in science, medical training, police work, military reconnaissance, and many other spheres of activity. Yet photography also developed into an art form, with highly allegorical tableaux vivants that “combined the sensuous beauty of the fine print with the moral beauty of the fine image” (Mike Weaver, quoted in Wells 2000 , 262). In the twentieth century both these aspects of photography would continue to develop: documentary photography and →  photojournalism with masters such as Erich Salomon, Cartier-Bresson, and Robert Frank; and photography as a form of modern art with, for instance, the formal, quasi-abstract landscapes of Edward Weston and the nudes of Bill Brandt. In a similar way film started both as a medium for capturing reality and as a new form of theatre (→  Film as Popular Culture ). As the Lumière brothers sent cameramen across the world to record sites of interest including The Grand Canal of Venice , ... log in or subscribe to read full text