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Lesson#24
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IMAGES IN MASS COMMUNICATION – INVENTION OF
PHOTOGRAPHY
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IMAGES IN MASS COMMUNICATION – INVENTION OF PHOTOGRAPHY
For almost four hundred years since the invention of printing
press in 1443, the print media was
relying on words for the purpose of mass communication. There
had been also the use of sketches like
cartoons and illustrations but the media was totally devoid of
photographs, something we can’t perhaps
think of in today’s world of print communication.
Since the print media was divided into a number of languages
even within the European continent, the
written communication was not fully serving the purpose of news
media and the analysis on events of
significance reported in newspapers, magazines or even books
produced in one language. The handicaps of
verbal communication were strongly felt.
Though the desire was strong to communicate more effectively
through the print media, there were no
photographs as the world did not know about photography till the
middle of 19th century. Since still
photograph in the earlier part of mass communication through
print and later motion pictures in other
modes of mass communication became an integral part of the
process of communication, we will see in the
following lines how this technique was invented and exploited by
the media so vastly.
What is photography?
Method of recording permanent images by light on to a chemically
sensitive material is called
photography. It was developed in the 19th century through the
artistic aspirations of two Frenchmen,
Nicéphore Niepce and Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, whose
combined discoveries led to the invention of
the first commercially successful process, the daguerreotype in
1837.
In 1826 or 1827, a Frenchman, Joseph Niepce, had secured the
world's earliest surviving photograph (now
lying at the University of Texas at Austin) on a plate
sensitized with bitumen and exposed for eight hours in
a camera. From 1829 until his death in 1833, Niepce worked in
partnership with another Frenchman, Louis
J. M. Daguerre, who in 1839 invented a means of taking
photographs on copper plates lightly coated with
sensitized silver and "developed" over mercury fumes.
Portrait photography
The introduction in 1860 of portrait photographs mounted on
cards--, or visiting-card style upped
to a larger cabinet size in 1866--ended the reign of
daguerreotype photography.
It also led to the creation of the family photo album and to a
new public taste for flamboyantly posed portraits of celebrities,
using dramatic lights and props. As the name Brady dominated the
daguerreotype era, it was Brady carte de visite of president
Abraham Lincoln, widely reproduced and distributed in the 1860
presidential campaign, that Lincoln later said helped elect
him president.
Impact of Early Photography
With the advent of the new process, came mass production and
dissemination of photographic
prints. The inception of these visual documents of personal and
public history engendered vast changes in
people's perception of history, of time, and of themselves. The
concept of privacy was greatly altered as
cameras were used to record most areas of human life. The
everywhere presence of photographic
machinery eventually changed humankind's sense of what was
suitable for observation. The
photograph
was considered incontestable proof of an event, experience, or
state of being.
To fulfill the mounting and incessant demand for more images,
photographers spread out to every corner
of the world, recording all the natural and manufactured
phenomena they could find. By the last quarter of
the 19th century, most households could boast respectable
photographic collections. These were in three
main forms: the
family album, which contained cabinet
portraits and; scrapbooks
containing large prints
of views from various parts of the world; and boxes of
stereoscope cards,
which in combination with the
popular stereo viewer created an effective illusion of
three-dimensionality.
Further Developments and scientific usages81
E. J. Marey, the painter Thomas Eakins, and Eadweard Muybridge
all devised means for making
stop-action photographs that demonstrated the gap between what
the mind thinks it sees and what the eye
actually perceives. Muybridge's major work, Animal Locomotion
(1887), remains a basic source for artists
and scientists alike. As accessory lenses were perfected, the
camera's vision extended both telescopically and
microscopically; the moon and the microorganism became
accessible as photographic images.
Photographs come to news media
The introduction of the halftone process in
1881
made possible the accurate reproduction of
photographs in books and newspapers. In combination with new
improvements in photographic
technology, including dry plates and smaller cameras, which made
photographing faster and less
cumbersome, the halftone made immediate reportage feasible and
paved the way for news photography.
George Eastman's introduction in 1888 of roll film and the
simple Kodak box camera provided everyone
with the means of making photographs for themselves. Meanwhile,
studies in sensitometers, the new
science of light-sensitive materials, made exposure and
processing more practicable.
The power of the photograph as record was demonstrated in the
19th century when William H. Jackson's
photographs of the Yellowstone area persuaded the U.S. Congress
to set that territory aside as a national
park.
In the early 20th century photographers and journalists were
beginning to use the medium to inform the
public on crucial issues in order to generate social change.
Taking as their precedents the work of such men
as Jackson and reporter Jacob Riis (whose photographs of New
York City slums resulted in much-needed
legislation), documentarians like Lewis Hine and James Van Der
Zee began to build a photographic
tradition whose central concerns had little to do with the
concept of art. The photojournalist sought to
build, strengthen, or change public opinion by means of novel,
often shocking images.
Impact of New Technology
The development of the 35-mm or “candid” camera by Oskar Barnack
of the Ernst Leitz company,
first marketed in 1925, made documentarians infinitely more
mobile and less conspicuous, while the
manufacture of faster black-and-white film enabled them to work
without a flash in situations with a
minimum of light. Color film for transparencies (slides) was introduced in 1935 and color negative
film in 1942. Portable
lighting equipment was perfected, and in 1947 the Polaroid Land camera, which
could produce a positive print in seconds, was placed on the
market. All of these technological advances
granted the photojournalist enormous and unprecedented
versatility.
The advent of large-circulation picture magazines, such as Life
(begun 1936) and Look (begun 1937),
provided an outlet and a vast audience for documentary work. At
the same time a steady stream of
convulsive national and international events provided a wealth
of material for the extended photo-essay, the
documentarian's natural mode. One of these was the Great
Depression of the 1930s, which proved to be
the source of an important body of documentary work. Under the
leadership of Roy Stryker, the
photographic division of the Farm Security Administration (FSA)
began to make an archive of images of
America during this epoch of crisis. Walker Evans, Arthur
Rothstein, Russell Lee, and Dorothea Lange of
the FSA group photographed the cultural disintegration generated
by the Depression and the associated
disappearance of rural lifestyles.
With the coming of World War II photographers, including
Margaret Bourke-White, Edward Steichen, W.
Eugene Smith, Lee Miller, and Robert Capa, documented the global
conflict. The war was a stimulus to
photography in other ways as well. From the stress analysis of
metals to aerial surveillance, the medium was
a crucial tool in many areas of the war effort, and, in the
urgency of war, numerous technological
discoveries and advances were made that ultimately benefited all
photographers.
Modern Photography82
After the war museums and art schools opened their doors to
photography, a trend that has
continued to the present. Photographers began to break free of
the oppressive structures of the straight
aesthetic and documentary modes of expression. As exemplified by
Robert Frank in his highly influential
book-length photo-essay, The Americans (1959), the new
documentarians commenced probing what has
been called the “social landscape,” often mirroring in their
images the anxiety and alienation of urban life.
Such introspection naturally led to an increasingly personal
form of documentary photography, as in the
works of J. H. Lartigue and Diane Arbus.
Many young photographers felt little inhibition against
handwork, collage, multiple images, and other forms
that were anathema to practitioners of the straight aesthetic.
Since the 1960s photography has become an
increasingly dominant medium within the visual arts. Many
painters and printmakers, including Andy
Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg, and David Hockney have blended
photography with other modes of
expression, including computer imaging in mixed media
compositions at both large and small scale.
Contemporary photographers who use more traditional methods to
explore non-traditional subjects include
Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince.
Other Aspects of Photography
In the contemporary world the practical applications of the
photographic medium are numerous: it
is an important tool in education, medicine, commerce,
criminology, and the military. Its scientific
applications include aerial mapping and surveying, geology,
reconnaissance, meteorology, archaeology, and
anthropology. New techniques such as holography, a means of
creating a three-dimensional image in space,
continue to expand the medium's technological and creative
horizons. In astronomy the charge coupled
device (CCD) can detect and register even a single photon of
light.
Digital Technology
By the end of the 20th century digital imaging and processing
and computer-based techniques had
made it possible to manipulate images in many ways, creating
revolutionary changes in photography. Digital
technology allowed for a fundamental change in the nature of
photographic technique. Instead of light
passing through a lens and striking emulsion on film, digital
photography uses sensors and color filters. In
one technique three filters are arranged in a mosaic pattern on
top of the photosensitive layer. Each filter
allows only one color (red, green, or blue) to pass through to
the pixel beneath it. In the other technique,
three separate photosensitive layers are embedded in silicon.
Since silicon absorbs different colors at
different depths, each layer allows a different color to pass
through. When stacked together, a full color
pixel results. In both techniques the photosensitive material
converts images into a series of numbers that
are then translated back into tonal values and printed. Using
computers, various numbers can easily be
changed, thus altering colors, rearranging pictorial elements,
or combining photographs with other kinds of
images. Some digital cameras record directly onto computer disks
or into a computer, where the images can
be manipulated at will. |
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