Photography

The word photography has a sense triple

• This is the technique that can create images for the action of light.
• It is an image obtained by this technique.
• More generally, it is the branch of graphic art that uses this technique.

Etymology

The word "photography" is composed of two roots of origin Greek:

• the prefix "photo" (φωτoς, photos: light, light) - which carries the light, which uses light;
• the suffix "-graphy" (γραφειν, graphein: painting, drawing, writing) - writing, resulting in an image.

Literally "paint with light". The shorter-term photo is very frequently used. Where we speak of a photographic image, it also often employs the terms image, print, view or expansion.

The person using the photographic technique at the stage of shooting is called the photographer. There are many jobs related to the shooting. For example, a person working in a laboratory to carry out the expansion of negative is called the shooter.

The photographic technique: history

Since its invention, it is almost one hundred seventy years, photography has taken advantage of many innovative technologies and techniques in the areas of the optics, the chemistry, the mechanics of the power of the electronic and the computer.

Invention

Point of view Gras, the first positive experience of Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. This photograph is part of the property of Niepce. It was taken in 1826.

The two phenomena needed to obtain photographic images had been known for some time. Since Aristotle, we could put the box in reality; just drill a "small hole (pinhole) in a dark room (camera obscura) to see a mirror image in the white box. On the other hand, the alchemists knew that the light blackened silver chloride. Around 1780 Jacques Charles, best known for his invention of the balloon inflated with hydrogen, managed to freeze, but so fleeting, a figure obtained by the process of the darkroom on paper soaked in silver chloride and anhydrous copper sulfate. Thomas Wedgwood (1771-1805) made similar experiments with silver nitrate; he published a memoir in 1802. For his part John Herschel in 1819 describes the properties of the sodium thiosulphate, which will become the fixer.

Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, an inventor of Chalon-sur-Saone, combines these three methods for fixing images (medium quality) on plates of pewter coated with bitumen of Judea, a kind of natural tar which has the property of hardening in the light (1826 or 1827), the first photograph represents a wing of his property to Saint-Loup-de-Varennes (Saône-et-Loire). This photograph is visible at the University of Texas at Austin since Helmut Gernsheim has donated to that institution in 1963 looking good image, note the special lighting. Indeed, the installation took several hours (estimated lying between 14 and 18 hours) the sun has lit the right wall and then the left one later in the day.

Nikephoros died in 1833 and Louis Jacques Mande Daguerre continued process improvement. By discovering the principle of developing the latent image, Daguerre found a way to shorten the exposure time to a few tens of minutes. In 1839, he promoted his invention to the scientist and member François Arago, who gave him his support.

Thus, the conventional date of the invention of photography was in 1839, the date of the presentation by Arago at the Academy of Sciences of the "invention" of Daguerre, the daguerreotype. It is actually an improvement from the invention of Niepce. The French state acquired it against a life annuity annual 6 000 francs to Daguerre and 4 000 francs to Isidore Niepce's son Nicephorus, then donated "to the world."

With the daguerreotype images are obtained after "only" a half-hour exposure (when the sky is perfectly clear). This slowness is somewhat problematic: the streets of Paris, even at rush hour seem completely empty. But what, photography was invented. The first photograph of human beings will be done later: one is from shoeshine by Shine Street; the pair remained motionless for several minutes.

Uses of photography

Since its invention, the use of photography is intimately linked to the evolution of his technique. It became the first truly popular art.

An objective technique?

The photograph opens a new era in the representation; we are now able to have a real representation of "objective". That is to say that man no longer represents reality as he sees it and as he can but it's real impressive, "only" support. Thus the photograph quickly found its use in reporting in anthropometrics, invented by Alphonse Bertillon. We have the ambition to make an inventory of the world.

But we know now that this objectivity has its limits. Already photography money can distort reality, to add or subtract elements of an image by a patient laboratory work. But with the advent of digital photography, the special effects that were previously accessible only to connoisseurs are becoming almost everyone.

In addition, the choice of a framing of such treatment applied to the photo, the photographer interprets its way to the reality that presents itself to him. Thus, in black and white, an atmosphere can be made dramatic by some techniques when the reality was not so.

Influence on Painting

Until the use of photography is the painting that was part representation of reality. The painters were torn between the need for a faithful representation of reality and the desire to beautify their pictures to make them more attractive. With the advent of photography, visual arts were able to free themselves from reality and turn to the abstract art.

A popular art

Photography has also inaugurated an era where almost anyone could have his picture or representations of objects or places which remained hitherto reserved to an economic elite, when it should ask a painter to make an image. This led initially by approaching some great photographs of the portrait painted classic.

But the taking of the photograph has been rapidly disseminated. And now, almost everyone has easy access to the ability to "take a picture. The representation of the world has been transformed and sociologists do not fail to investigate practices and results of popular photography.

The friendly environment makes it possible to speak of "folk art" by the opportunity thus offered to the wider public to own forms of art and to produce artifacts.

The Eighth Art

In the classification of art derived from that of Hegel, photography receives eighth place (in competition with television and the drama).

Photography is a mechanical and technical means to keep a graphical representation of the moments, objects or people. But it is also a means of expression more or less abstract, signed by its author, photographer, and whose objectivity is equivalent to any artistic work. Long locked in imitation of painting (Pictorialism, seascapes, portraits, etc..) Photography has found its own artistic way with the emergence of surrealism.

• Written by S. Rajalakshmi.
• In category General Reference.
• 15 years ago.

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