BLOG POST_01: Grace Gutowski

I noticed that the development of photography seems to rely on the methods that make mass production easier. The daguerreotype was popular until the advantage of Talbot’s calotype negative made it obsolete. Each daguerreotype was a unique image that could not be exactly reproduced, whereas Talbot’s paper negative allowed each picture to be reproduced over and over again. Having more than one copy allows the image to be mass produced in a book. Later, a process was developed to make it cheaper and easier to reproduce images in newspapers and books, allowing for even more mass production of each image. More recently, digital photography has made production of photographs even faster and cheaper. Above all, it allows even more copies to be made since the picture never actually needs to be printed in order to be seen by a large and diverse audience. The internet makes photographs more available to more people than photobooks or exhibitions.

The internet is a good venue for discovering individual photographs, but it does not do the same thing for photobooks. Photographs on the computer are not objects. You can only see what the computer screen or the file size allows. You cannot flip through a slideshow or web pages the way you can flip through a book. When I read a book, sometimes I want to flip back and forth between pages or skip ahead. This is more difficult to do on the computer. You cannot get that phenomenon of turning the page and slowly revealing what is on the next spread.

I also think that digital images are not as permanent. They can be lost if a computer or jump drive breaks or is lost. Photography negatives are less susceptible to human error such as accidental deletion or weather damage such as water or cold. I have heard that once something is on the internet, it is always there, but that does not mean it can be found. Web pages can be disconnected and links can be broken. Once a book is out in the world, it can be found again, even if it is broken or in pieces.

It is interesting that photography started out with one main focus, which was to document the world. It was not until many years later, after the technological aspects were improved, that photographers started to see photographs as art. They began to experiment in the art of photographic imagery rather than experimenting with chemicals and light involved in the photography process. Today, photography is used in many different ways including art, science, as evidence for crimes, family portraits, documentation and more.

Technological advancements have allowed photography to be more accessible. Everyone has a camera and many people put their pictures on the internet. Digital photography makes the production of photography faster and easier, which greatly increases the number of pictures taken. There are so many pictures these days that they run the risk of being lost in the crowd, especially since they are all in one place, the internet. Few photographs actually end up in printed form these days. When photography was new, the photobook was the main way they were seen, but today the photobook is rare.