Though acknowledged as a legitimate form of artistic pursuit by the late 19th- early 20th century, photography for the most part was considered a minor medium until the late 20thc. when the critical distinctions based on traditional and non-traditional media came to be blurred. Photography, for most of the19th and 20th century existed in a world of parallel institutions and did not gain a critical position within art's more general discourse until the 1960s.This discrimination was due in part, to the fact that photography had no historical link to traditional art making and therefore, no natural claim to its mantle. This logic, rooted in the 19th - century view of art as conceptually and formally fixed, provided the logic by which stylistic and thematic innovations were integrated into art's history. Consequently, radical challenges such as those initiated by abstract art and the challenges to convention and tradition of the avant-garde came to be incorporated into art's critical and historical narratives, because these stemmed from traditional practices. This model based on a Hegelian (and later positivist) vision of stylistic development of traditional, was not significantly, challenged until, the last decades of the 20 th-century, when artists and critics began to challenge modernism's vision of progress.
So, what were the issues and conditions that lead to photography's recognition as an art form? There is no singular issue that needed to be overcome, but during the late 19th and early 20thcentury, the initial debates rather than focusing on photography's lack of pedigree concerned the fact that as a product of science and technology it was primarily suitable for scientific, and documentary (evidentiary) use, rather than creative ends. Therefore when it came to art, it was photography's veracity that lead artists to use photography to augment their more traditional practices, in the manner that the camera-obscura and other such devices had been previously been employed. The photographic image as the product of light and optics also effected the artists' conception of what can be represented and how. Photography came to be an aid to observation given its ability to freeze and preserve (record) a particular moment (event) or detail that could not be seen by the unaided eye. Thomas Eakins, for example not only took photographs of models and scenes that he used as references for drawings and paintings, but also engaged in making photographs for their own sake. This contributed to the precision, clarity and the intimacy of his painted images. Inversely, Utrillo painted his views of Paris' suburbs not from nature, but from photographic views of these sites, accordingly the photographs constituted source material rather than mere references. Consequently, photography contributed to artists embracing the very type of images of 'everyday life' that were only available to the new medium of photography. If photography was more objectively truthful and scientific, to counter its effect on the public's expectations concerning art, painters to free themselves from realism and naturalism accentuated color the literal flatness of the canvas and painterly process. These were all things that there was no equivalence for in photography. The shallow, layered space, flattened color and mixture of paint handling found in the work of mid to late 19th century artists such as Edouard Manet is an example of photography's effect on the look of painting. Interestingly, Manet was a friend of the photographer Nadar who whose own work beyond that of studio portraits consisted of photographic study of the "mad" and ariel views of Paris taken from a hot air balloon . Likewise, Edgar Degas' by allowing the framing edge to cut through a figure as a way to challenge the traditional conception of the painted image as a self-contained whole also has its origins in photography as does his use of extreme angles and compressed space. Other impressionist such as Claude Monet and then later Seurat, who developed pointillism, applied the latest knowledge of optics and light to painting to challenge photography's claim on being science. By place dabs or dots of primary and complementary colors in close proximity to one another so that they would blend in the eye of the viewer consequently, using the viewer optic as the equivalent to the light sensitive surface necessary to make a photograph. This focus on materiality, and the phenomenal world, played an important role in ushering in Modernism and establishing photography and mechanical reproduction as an important part of its discourse, so much, so that the dialogue between photography and painting continued though the 20th and into the 21st century. Particular examples would be the Photo-realism of artist such as Richard Estes, who in the late 1960s in his paintings of street urban street scenes and store windows he turned the seamless information of photographs into the fractured painting information. A more recent example of the relationship between photography and painting is the work of the German artist Gerhard Richter who works both in figurative and abstract styles. The reference to photography, in Richter's case is not limited to the look of photographs, but particularly the photographic blur, which comes from movement or failing to focus the camera correctly. His representation of the photographic blur occurs in his abstract paintings as well as his figural works. The irony underlying this practice is that unlike photography, painting can never be out of focus, nor is their subject ever in motion, especially when the painting is an abstract one. Not wanting to appear to be a technological determinist, or assert that it constitutes an essentialist and irresistible discourse, in all actuality photography as a mechanical process had a more profound effect on the visual arts than as a source of images, effects or irony. It was this aspect of photography that challenged the western artistic tradition's identification with the hand-made and the view that true art was the product of an artist's ability to skillfully transcribe and interpret what they observed. As already pointed out this trajectory was established in the mid-19th century, when photography due to its ability to reproduce appearances momentary threatens the supremacy of painting. This contributed to the causal chain of cultural, political and technological events that resulted in artists in the name of "modernity" nihilistically espousing a rejection of art's conventions and traditional aesthetics. The successive schools of Realism, Impressionism, and post-Impressionism rejected the stylization and idealism of Neo-Classicism and the virtuosity and reverie of Romanticism. The new generation was instead committed to proving that there was more to art then merely a skillful rendering of appearances or the novel construction of imagistic narratives. For the modern artist, "Art" was to be honest and real, a thing in itself that did not rely on illusion or history. Therefore, they focused not only pictorially, but also materially on the modern and scientific perspectives that were altering 'everyday life.' Though modern by its very nature - the images and concerns of artist's photographers were decidedly different discourse then the Modern artists who continued to react to photography's introduction and popularity. Beyond this initial disengagement, two traditions arise within the practice of photography - one interpretative and expressive whose subjects early on, was predominately "nature" and the manipulation of the photographic process itself and is perhaps best represented by the impressionistic works of Mary Devons (-----). The other, grew out of photography's early use as a form of documentation, these photographers such as William H. Rau while committed to recording the world of people places and events, were committed to the idea that the photograph was an unmodified though authored document. Therefore, almost from the beginning the divide between external reality and inner vision defined photography's discourse. Within the context of fine art photographers often exploit this opposition to produce hybrids consequently, blur their agendas with those of commercial and journalistic photography. Photography's history is decidedly different then that of art, because unlike art history, which has consistently sought to define a dominant discourse photography's short history, given the diversity of the practices that come under that heading consists of numerous parallel and conflicting accounts as pure and applied photography continue to differentiated. This later problem arises from the problem that many of the best commercial photographers such as Stiechen, Beaton, Avedon, Penn,etc. have also been successful fine art photographers. Photography's history is less a record of stylistic changes and innovations, as it one of evolving attitudes, approaches practices and sensabilities. The adherence to one proposition or the other has never been a guarantee the perception of a given photographer's work. Many a journalist or commercial photographer have made important contribution to defining photography's expressive potential, while others who whole-heartedly adhered to its ideals as a medium of art would be shunted aside because their work was not photographic enough. Yet, those who sought to make photography an art might equally adhere to the view that all manipulation undermines the mediums truthfulness or that the ability to manipulate the image by various means advanced the goal of making photography more expressive and aesthetic. This indeterminacy, actually lead to the emergence of differing practices holding opposing views while claiming setting the same goals. In the United States, one of the leading advocates of photography as an art form was Alfred Stieglitz (18-- 19--) a progressive thinker and a talented "amateur" at a time when the photography world was predominantly, made up of amateur photography societies and clubs. At this time, the only true professionals photographers those who maintained portrait studios, who produced landscape photographs and sentimental scenes for commercial consumption and those engaged in documentation. Stieglitz was not only aware that photography as a pictorial art, needed to be differentiated from the mix bag of amateur interests, and those of distinctly commercial but that the camera represented a problem to other artistic media. To achieve this goal and resolve this problem, Stieglitz believed that fine art photographers needed to define their criteria for photographic art and establish their own institutions. At the center of a circle of photographers that the general photography community viewed as elitist because of the views that they held concerning photography as an art, Stieglitz worked tirelessly to legitimate photography. Rather than being interested in limiting photography to its technical ability to capture a (picturesque) moment, these photographers were committed to expressing a depth of emotion that was dependent on temperament and aesthetics rather than the generally accepted view that veracity was photography's quintessential characteristic. Yet, Stieglitz also opposed the practice of many fine art photographers of altering the photographic image by hand. In his view, the resulting image was not a photograph. From his perspective, photography and painting were distinctive art forms and each must follow their own course. ____________________________________________ Saul Ostrow | Visual Arts & Technologies Environment Chair, Sculpture Voice: 216-421-7927 | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | www.cia.edu<http://www.cia.edu/> The Cleveland Institute of Art | 11141 East Boulevard, Cleveland, OH 44106
