Module 11 1800-1950
Originally,
photography was appreciated for its ability to replicate exact details. People also
valued photography for being able to help with reproducing artworks for publication.
Besides these uses, photographers were not seen as artists or struggled severely
to be able to be seen as artists. Slowly, photography was climbing its way next
to art. Photography’s potential was then being recognize for its innovative
form of helping artists understand the world around them.
At
first, photography was accepted and valued by people who wanted to document the
world. Instead of wanting to use photography for people, the subject matter began
to change. People were able to document things as they were and movement that the
human eye was not able to. Just like how naturalist artists wanted to depict
the world as it is, photography was able to do so within seconds.
Even
after photography and art were displayed next to each other in Paris’s Universal
Exposition of 1859, a barrier was still noticeable both physically and symbolically.
Photography was seen as an “effortless” medium. Being effortless meant to many
people that there was no imagination, skill, or creativity being used to use
photographs.
When certain
photographers and world figures, like Alfred Stieglitz, started to experiment
with the negatives of photos, the medium gained potential. Altering negatives
to change things like the contrast, people could see that a photograph can have
originality. Umbo was a photographer who demonstrated the ability of
photography to alter our vision of the world. Photography became a medium
artist could use to not only document moments they believed to be important but
also alter how they see the world.
Dr. Juliana Kreinik, "An Introduction to Photography in
the Early 20th Century," in Smarthistory, August 9, 2015, accessed April 4,
2021,
https://smarthistory.org/an-introduction-to-photography-in-the-early-20th-century/.
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