Roland Barthes On Photography

"Western theories of art emphasize the importance of imagination and the insight or genius of the artist. So dominant has this philosophy of art been that literary criticism in academe throughout the better part of the twentieth century has tended to privilege literature of complexity and imagination over realism"
Nancy Shawcross (1997). Roland Barthes on Photography. Florida: University Press of Florida. preface X.

photography is inherently a realist medium, therefore to make photographs of note, one need not make photographs to be realistic, one must use that basis with insight into a message they want to convey, this is what makes photographic projects worthwhile

"Talbot's own remarks about his photographic work convey a sense of delight in the permanent rendering of nature's "fairy pictures, creations of the moment"; a sense of pride and in excitement over humankind's progress and his part in it"

Nancy Shawcross (1997). Roland Barthes on Photography. Florida: University Press of Florida. p32-33.

I guess i somewhat feel the opposite, humankind is progressing at a rate that seems uncontrollable, new technology is ever more expensive and always progressing far beyond the capabilities of its older generation. It doesnt seem dependable, all the fossil fuels being burnt and resources being used up making plastic objects that are used to a couple of years and then go obsolete. I feel disapointed in myself and in the social structure of the UK and the world, that it is unaffordable to be up to date. So in conclusion i do not feel excited to be part of this modern age, just another number, another leech on the world. The history of man has been put into sections - the Neolithic age, the Bronze age, Iron age, and within them subsections, what age are we in now? the plastic age? The age that built so much then lost it all? Humans in the last couple of hundred years, from the industrial revolution to now, made so many advances that we are able to contact the other side of the globe with complete ease, we can even travel to the other side of the globe in a short space of time. If there are historians in the future what will they say of us? When photography was invented this must have seemed as impossible as the clear sharp cameras we all carry around in our pockets, the same cameras that are part of the powerful computers that are able to connect with the other side of the world to share pictures.

"Daguerreotypes were treasured objects as well as mementos. The held the captured light of loved ones and favourite scenes in a device requiring careful manipulation and observation - a process, however, considered magical and thrilling. Daguerre had succeeded in giving the public the ultimate recreation of nature - one that lasted more than just a short while in a darkened theatre: it was, instead, a re-creation to be possessed and kept forever."

Nancy Shawcross (1997). Roland Barthes on Photography. Florida: University Press of Florida. p35

I guess i see my images as closer to Daguerre than Talbot, as although they are made to paper, and are negative, they are one time things that cant, or in my mind shouldnt, be reproduced, they are much like daguerreotypes, to be viewed as is. In this i do not see the daguerreotype as the invention of photography. Although textbooks tell us a deguerreotype is superior in sharpness and tone that a calotype is, the point is that a calotype could be produced more that once. what is interesting to me, is that in this digital age, we never make negatives, a digital camera makes immediately a positive, a recorded representation of the scene we want to share. while these images are immedietly positive without any further work, the key here is the sharing, in this digital age we share images, often instantaniously, and a daguerreotype is not built for this. When comparing a Talbotype (calotype) and a daguerreotype we are really comparing two different things, its like comparing a painting of a chair and a photograph of a chair. both might have been made with skills and both might have been made into a physical object, but there will only be one exact painting, however there can be infinite pictures.

so what i need to ask is am i not making photographs in my process? i am not trying to call a daguerreotype a painting, rather that it is an artform in its own right, something different to photography that uses a photographic process. Perhaps why the thing as a whole is called photography and not dagguerrography. but is this what i am doing? something akin to colourful photograms? but where photograms miss the camera and go straight to the light source, i am still using the camera. so perhaps that must be that they are: somewhere inbetween. something inbetween photography (a calotype), a dagguerreotype and photograms.

"By 1859 Baudelaire has seperated truth, at least as he believes the public to understand it, from beauty. He contends that nature is the only thing in which the public believes, and, therefore, the public believes that only the exact reproduction of nature is what art should be" - Baudelaire 1981, 152

Nancy Shawcross (1997). Roland Barthes on Photography. Florida: University Press of Florida. p53