Archive for the ‘Mechanical Reproduction’ Category
Elspeth H. Brown, ‘Photography and Commercial Illustration’ The Corporate Eye: Photography and the Rationalization of American Commercial Culture, 1884 – 1929, Studies in Industry and Society (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 2005). 159-216 p.160 Advertising matured as a profession in response to a new problem for American business: how to stimulate demand among consumers for […]
Filed under: Advertising, Camera culture, Distribution (etc) of Photographs, Elspeth H. Brown, Mechanical Reproduction | Leave a Comment
Benjamin, Walter, ‘The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction translated by J. A. Underwood (London, Penguin Books, 2008) 1-50 p.3 In principle, the work of art has always been reproducible. What man has made, man has always been able to make again. […]
Filed under: Books, Essays, Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin | 1 Comment
Ectoplasm
Batchen, Geoffrey. ‘Ectoplasm’ Each wild idea: writing, photography, history (Cambridge, Mass.; London: MIT, 2002 [essay originally published in 1994]) 128-144 p.129 This [current] sustained outburst of morbidity appears to stem from two related anxieties. The first is an effect of the widespread introduction of computer-driven imaging processes that allow “fake” photos to be passed off […]
Filed under: Analogue - Digital, Books, Essays, Geoffrey Batchen, Images and reality, Indexicality & Photography, Invention of photography, Magic/Uncanny & Photography, Mechanical Reproduction, Melancholy/Death & Photography, Nostalgia for analogue photography, Peirce, Photograph as Document, Time and photography | 1 Comment
The Distribution of Photographs
Flusser, Vilém. “The Distribution of Photographs” pp.49-56 in Towards a Philosophy of Photography (London: Reaktion Books, 2005) p.49 Nature as a whole is a system in which information disintegrates progressively according to the second law of thermodynamics. Human beings struggle against this natural entropy not only by receiving information but also storing and passing it on – […]
Filed under: Analogue - Digital, Content vs Materiality of Photographs, Context and photography, Criticism of Photography, Images and reality, Mechanical Reproduction, Photography's Materiality, Vilém Flusser | Leave a Comment
Metaphor
Price, Mary. ‘Metaphor’ The Photograph: A Strange, Confined Space (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994) 134-149 pp.134-135 Before photography, according to Ivins [William M, Ivins, Jr.], the syntactical analysis of a picture preceded the handmade reproduction, which became a symbolic representation of its original. references for reproduction are the woodcut, etching, or lithograph that reproduce a […]
Filed under: Ambiguity and Photography, Books, Criticism of Photography, Image Proliferation, Invention of photography, John Berger, Magic/Uncanny & Photography, Mary Price, Mechanical Reproduction, Memory & Photography, Time and photography, Walter Benjamin, Writing/Literature & Photography | Leave a Comment
Danger
Cadava, Eduardo. ‘Danger’ Words of Light: Theses on the Photography of History (Chichester: Princeton University Press, 1997) 47-59 p.47 It is because the question of reproducibility extends far beyond the realm of art that it raises the possibility of the democratization of death. Not only does technical reproducibility change our relation to death, but the incursion of the […]
Filed under: Books, Eduardo Cadava, Mechanical Reproduction, Personal Responses to Images, Politics & Photography, Walter Benjamin, War & Photography, Writing/Literature & Photography | Leave a Comment
Politics
Cadava, Eduardo. ‘Politics’ Words of Light: Theses on the Photography of History (Chichester: Princeton University Press, 1997) 44-47 p.44 What is at stake in the question of technological reproducibility – in the question of photography, for example – is not whether photography is art, but in what way all art is photography. For Benjamin, as soon as […]
Filed under: Mechanical Reproduction, Photography's Art History, Politics & Photography, Walter Benjamin | Leave a Comment
Reproducibility
Cadava, Eduardo. ‘Reproducibility’ Words of Light: Theses on the Photography of History (Chichester: Princeton University Press, 1997) 42-44 p.42 [Benjamin] suggests that technical reproducibility can only be understood by considering the historical relations between science and art – especially in terms of their relation to the historical conditions of production and reproduction. [..] Technical reproduction is not […]
Filed under: "We live to be photographed", Eduardo Cadava, Invention of photography, Mechanical Reproduction, Walter Benjamin | Leave a Comment
Translations
Cadava, Eduardo. ‘Translations’ Words of Light: Theses on the Photography of History (Chichester: Princeton University Press, 1997) 15-18 p.15 The disjunction between a photograph and the photographed corresponds to the caesura between a translation and an original. […] in order to be faithful to what is translatable in the original, the translator must depart from it, must […]
Filed under: "We live to be photographed", Eduardo Cadava, Mechanical Reproduction, Melancholy/Death & Photography, Walter Benjamin | Leave a Comment
History
Cadava, Eduardo. ‘History’ Words of Light: Theses on the Photography of History (Chichester: Princeton University Press, 1997) pp.1-5 p.1 [In ‘Theses on the concept of History’] Benjamin’s consideration of the historical and philosophical questions suggested by the rise and fall of photography can therefore be understood as an effort to measure the extent to which the […]
Filed under: Eduardo Cadava, Mechanical Reproduction, Photography as Historical Witness, Politics & Photography, Walter Benjamin | Leave a Comment
Making Meaning
Willumson, Glenn. ‘Making Meaning: Displaced materiality in the library and art museum’ Photographs Objects Histories: On the materiality of images ed. by Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart (London: Routledge, 2004) 62-80 p.62 Although they are initially treasured for their ability to reproduce a person, an event or a location, the passage of time is not […]
Filed under: Archive & Photography, Edited Books, Elizabeth Edwards and Janice Hart, Essays, Family album, Glenn Willumson, Mechanical Reproduction, Performance & Photography, Photography's Art History, Photography's Materiality, Role of Museum/Library, The Archive, The Collection, Touch/Tactile Perception, Vernacular Photography | Leave a Comment
In Our Image
Morris, Wright. ‘In Our Image’ Time Pieces: Writing, Photography and Memory (London: Aperture, 1999) 1-10 [Originally published in The Massachusetts Review, Winter 1978] p.4 The multifaceted aspect of reality has been commonplace since cubism, but we continue to see what we will, rather than what is there. Image making is our preference for what we […]
Filed under: Anonymity/Authorship & Photography, Books, Criticism of Photography, Essays, Found photographs, Image Proliferation, Invention of photography, Mechanical Reproduction, Moving Image & Photography, Photography's Art History, Vernacular Photography, Wright Morris | Leave a Comment
The Technical Image
Flusser, Vilém. ‘The Technical Image’ Towards a Philosophy of Photography (London: Reaktion Books, 2000) 14-20 p.14 The technical image is an image produced by apparatuses. As apparatuses themselves are the products of applied scientific texts, in the case of technical images one is dealing with the indirect products of scientific texts. This gives them, historically […]
Filed under: "We live to be photographed", Books, Essays, Images and reality, Invention of photography, Magic/Uncanny & Photography, Mechanical Reproduction, Photography's Art History, Vilém Flusser, Writing/Literature & Photography | Leave a Comment
In Plato’s Cave
Sontag, Susan. ‘In Plato’s Cave’ On Photography (London: Penguin Books, 1979) 3-24 p.3 In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe. They are a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing. Finally the most grandiose […]
Filed under: "We live to be photographed", Ambiguity and Photography, Books, Content vs Materiality of Photographs, Context and photography, Essays, Images and reality, Mechanical Reproduction, Melancholy/Death & Photography, Nostalgia for analogue photography, Photograph as Document, Photograph as object, Photography as Historical Witness, Susan Sontag | Leave a Comment
Batchen, Geoffrey. ‘Dreams of Ordinary Life: Cartes-de-visite and the bourgeois imagination’ Photography: Theoretical Snapshots (Oxon: Routledge, 2009) p.80-97 p.80 […] the search for imagination in the carte-de-visite must be directed elsewhere, away from the usual focus on photographer and subject, and instead onto the minds eye of their viewers.[?] p.82 Compared to earlier processes such as the daguerrotype, […]
Filed under: Banality & Photographs, Essays, Geoffrey Batchen, Identification & Photography, Mechanical Reproduction, Observer & the Photograph, Photography's Art History, Touch/Tactile Perception, Vernacular Photography, Walter Benjamin | Leave a Comment
Claudia Angelmaier
From http://www.claudiaangelmaier.de/index.php The play with the images of art and their history is at the heart of Claudia Angelmaier’s work whereby particular focus lies on the pictures and their mechanical reproduction, material image and contextual situation. The protagonists of Angelmaier’s large-scale photographic works are books, postcards or transparencies and slides which show copies of “the […]
Filed under: (re)constructing photographs, Archive & Photography, Claudia Angelmaier, Materiality, Mechanical Reproduction, Nostalgia for analogue photography, Photograph as object, Photography's Art History, The Archive, The Collection, Touch/Tactile Perception, using found photography, Vernacular Photography | Leave a Comment
