I tried to
find what is the definition of a photograph. Before I started university I was
sure what is a photograph, but the more I think about it now the less I
understand. I cannot define what it is. It can be almost everything and I
cannot see the boundaries. "Today, as if struck with a confusion of
tongues, the many conservation specialists who speak for the photograph do not
agree upon a common answer to “What is a photograph?”"(Grant Romer, 2005,
1p.) The Oxford dictionary describes it as a picture made using a camera, in
which an image is focused on to light-sensitive material and then made visible
and permanent by chemical treatment, or stored digitally. However, photograph
can be made without using a camera. The most common example would be photogram.
Probably everyone, who have been to the darkroom have tried it. It is a picture
produced with photographic materials, such as light-sensitive paper, but
without a camera.
The
definition of a photograph gets even more blurry and keeps stretching in today's
digital age. The photograph does not need to be printed on a paper to be called
a photograph. Pictures can be easily stored on any device and viewed on the
screen. Moreover, images can be created using just technology. Pictures can be composed on the Photoshop and we still would call them a photograph. Why is that? Is it because it looks like reality, exactly the way we see, even though it does not exist and is just a creation.
But what separates photography nowadays from all other arts, for example panting or sculpture. "The very
principle of photography is that the resulting image is not unique, but on the
contrary infinitely reproducible."(John Berger, 1980, 291p.) Images can be printed many times and they all going to be the same, contrary to painting, where there can be just one original. However, I could argue my own statement, because there are images that are unique. For instance, daguerreotypes are unique and no copies can be made. And we still can call these images photographs.
The word
"photograph" was coined in 1839 by Sir John Herschel and is based on
the Greek φῶς (phos), meaning "light", and γραφή (graphê), meaning
"drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light". So it is a picture of light and shadows, together it forms something that we can recognise. Photograph records an event that happened. "A photograph
is a result of the photographer's decision that it is worth recording that this
particular event or this particular object has been seen." (John Berger, 1980, 292p.) All photographs are of a past. It is impossible to take an image of a future. but if the event was in the pitch black room with no light at all, would that be still classified as a photograph?
To cap it all, I believe that it depends on a person what he thinks photograph is. Today the definition is so stretched, that there are just a thin lines between photography and other fine arts. Every time when I try to make a point what is a photograph there is a fact that disprove it.
Bibliography:
Grant Romer. (2005). What is a photograph?. Topics in Photographic Preservation , 11, 1-2. Retrieved from: http://cool.conservation-us.org/coolaic/sg/topics/v11/pmgt11-003.pdf
John Berger. (1980). Understanding a photograph, 291-294. Retrieved from: https://www.homeworkmarket.com/sites/default/files/qx/15/07/05/05/understand_photo_berger.pdf
