Even the briefest study of photography leads to the conclusion that the greater ability to express, and the expanded modes of expression are intimately tied to the evolution of the ways and means of taking and making pictures. While the subject of the image is often a child of its age, an expression of the attitudes and social mores of its times, the mechanics of camera, film and printing is often as much a part of the image as the idea communicated in the image itself. Though new ways of seeing are at the core of the evolution of photographic art, the defining principles of that vision are greatly determined by the equipment and chemicals used to manifest that vision.
Arguments have been made that portraits made in the first thirty years of photography surpass in beauty, charm and revelation of the human spirit those made today. Perhaps those images were even more startling to their contemporary viewers than most photographs are to us today, if only because the medium was nowhere near as prevelant as it is now. Yet the revelation of character in today's fine portraiture, with all the layers of meaning we bring to the image, could only be achieved with today's equipment used by today's photographers.
Just as with the early photographs, admittedly viewed through the filter of the ravages of time, the images created today are subject to the matrix of vision that is bounded by our ability to manifest that vision. That is why with each progression in technology there is so much more visual expression to explore.
Photography emerged within the context of the industrial revolution, with its concommitant alienation and dehumanization. Yet it was also the darling of the age of discovery, and grew alongside other profound changes in the visual arts. The vigor with which it grabbed the human imagination can be traced to its serving both masters so well. Essential to its understanding is that it addreses most directly the very human need to communicate through images, and plays upon the human ability to empathize with abstract forms. Thus, the mechanical serves the artistic, which in turn creates communication on virtually every level of visual perception.
The linkage between the art and craft has its roots in those people who pioneered modern photography. Many of the early explorers were artists seeking new and more efficient ways to create images from nature. Many were men and women who were grounded in the scientific method of discovery, yet who were also practising artists, or associated with circles concerned as much with aesthetics as they were with experimentation.
Photography sprang from a time when the lines between science, art and craft were not so clearly drawn, and when curiosity went beyond pre-packaged solutions to meaningless problems.
