Photography- Chapter 2, Identity of photography:

The word photography comes from the Greek words ‘phos’ and ‘graphy’ translating to ‘writing or drawing with light’. Photography’s first existence was in 1839. However, it could be said that photography was discovered with the use of the ‘camera obscura’ which is Latin for dark chamber. It projects inverted images of the world outside into the box as sunlight goes through small holes.

In the enlightenment period in the 17th and 18th centuries, the western world where discovering the rest of the world and wanted to record it, members of the new-middle class where travelling the world too and wanted to document what they saw. The artist William Henry Fox Talbot began to experiment with coating the surfaces of images with chemical compounds, to permanently fix the image projected. Talbot printed his images onto paper which could be turned into both negative and positive images due to light. This allowed for an infinite amount of copies.

Szarkowski states in his book 'The photographer’s eye' that a photograph has the ability to record, they draw attention to detail to tell a story, the framing/composition and its relationship with the image to speak out about something in reality, exposure and different affects in can create on time and the vantage point the photograph is made. The photograph was used for providing evidence, such as: that galloping horses can have all four hooves off the ground at once and that the pyramids in Egypt existed.

Andre Bazin stated in his essay ‘the ontology of the photographic image’ that; ‘no matter how fuzzy, distorted, or discoloured […] it shares […] the being of the model of which it is the reproduction, it is the model.’ This idea of the photograph displaying reality can also be described as ‘indexicality’ which links to semiotics or the process of signs. There are three categories of signs in terms of photography which are: indexical, iconic and symbolic. A sign that is indexical is seen to have a direct link to its object. Batchen states that ‘the camera does more than just see the world; it is also touched by the world. A blurred image of a person is still indexical to the subject. Once into the digital world many people worried that photography would lose its way, such as ‘Mitchell’ claiming ‘from today, photography is dead’.

A photograph was published on the 1982 National Geographic cover depicting two images of the pyramids, but they had been digitally edited so that they were closer together to fit on the cover. The images where provided for a western audience which produced a threat to a photographs ability to accurately record an event. To Batchen digital images depict what photographers always do, display the world as an altered version.