Leonardo

The Transcendental Machine? A Comparison of Digital Photography and Nineteenth-Century Modes of Photographic Representation Author(s): Diana Emery Hulick Source: Leonardo, Vol. 23, No. 4 (1990), pp. 419-425 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1575345 . Accessed: 24/10/2013 01:01
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HISTORICAL

PERSPECTIVES

The

A Machine? Transcendental Comparison of Digital Photography Modes and of Nineteenth-Century Photographic Representation
Diana Emery Hulick

ABSTRACT

he development of style in digital photography should be addressed within the new visual approaches it provides. To do this, digital photography, like nineteenthcentury analog photography, must avoid creating false analogies between artistic and scientific progress and instead be seen as a creative, diverse and accessible extension of the human mind. HISTORICAL BRIDGES IN THE OF PHOTOGRAPHY DEVELOPMENT Writing about digital photography at this time in its history is like writing about the development of analog photography in 1845. We can only conjecture the future direction of the medium, and as photographic historians or practitioners we are prisoners of our own biases as we attempt to understand a developing medium based on our connoisseurship of traditional photography. Digital photography is to analog photography what photography was to painting in the 1840s. It is a process in which artists must seek to establish the medium's definitions while acknowledging the aesthetic hegemony of an established art form. Like photography in the nineteenth century, digital photography contributes substantially to our ability to create a reality based on science and imagination. Photography's scientific origins, the use of photosensitive materials and lenses to effect reproducible images, are well known. Yet its basis in human imagination, which is linked to the scientific processes, is of equal importance. Earlylens design was based on the mathematical coordinates of geometry, but the lens is an imaginative construction as well as a mathematical one. The selective framing and tonality of the photographic image permits a new image of the world to be recorded. The right combination of negative, plate, lens and paper can produce detail beyond what the unaided human eye can see. The compelling quality of this detail not only changes our knowledge of the subject but also permits us to enter the picture as if entering another world. Thus photography soon became a way of extending the viewer's experience of a selectively rendered and abstracted reality. Although digital photography does not yet render detail
Diana Emery Hulick (art historian), School of Art, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-1505, U.S.A. Received 6 December 1988. This article is adapted from a paper presented at the symposium Photography: The Second Revolution, 21-22 April 1988, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH, U.S.A.

7TI

in as compelling a manner as the analog image, its framing is just as selective. It also presents the possibility of a pixelby-pixel change or image enhancement. The acid colors of its uniformly glowing screen are also as arbitraryas the blackand-white or color tonality of the analog photograph. Its potential for computer modeling of a two-dimensional reality into a three-dimensional one is essentially an imaginative mathematical projection of the structure of a putative world. Thus the reproduction of the external world via both digital and analog photography places mimesis at the service of the
imaginative experience.

Both contemporary digital andanalogphotogphotography of the nineteenth raphy century at placemechanical representation the serviceof the imagination. Thesemediaarepartof a perceptualcontinuum thatbeganwith the Industrial Revolution andreflectits mechanical andscientific extension of the human to createa ability visual microcosm. Acapacity for literal mimesis also existedat the of artandscienceof that juncture Thisinterdisciplinary relaperiod. tionship gave riseto a beliefthata of reality was a necesdescription condition forthe saryandsufficient existenceof objective truth'. Thus, fromthe beginnings of photogthe objectivity of the photoraphy, was oftenconflated with the graph structure it rendered. of the reality is like Although digital photography its nineteenth-century predecessor inthisregard, its origins incomto the puterscienceandits links artsandconstructivism graphic also helpto defineits content andstyle.

Both of these photographic processes are, in this way,part of a perceptual continuum that began to change in the eighteenth century as the Industrial Revolution increased human control over personal environments and the objects in it. Oswald Spengler sees this continuum and its inventions as defining a Faustian self-conception that is part of Western consciousness. This conception is based on an understanding of the machine "asa small cosmos obeying the will of man alone" [ 1]. In 1829 in his essay, "Signsof the Times", Thomas Carlyle-who became acquainted with photography by posing for Julia Margaret Cameron-said, "Mechanism is not alwaysto be our hard taskmaster but one day to be our pliant all ministering servant" [2]. Thus the central issue raised by the development of photography in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is how it has changed our ability to create our own microcosm and understand the macrocosm. Our visual range in this matter currently encompasses seminal images ranging from Louis Daguerre's 1839 photograph of a human on the boulevard to three-dimensional computer modeling of objects.

PHOTOGRAPHIC REPRESENTATION THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

IN

Analog photography's nineteenth-century origins are clearly mirrored in the ability to reproduce telling details, a hallmark of the Victorian age. Interest in detail is apparent

? 1990 ISAST
Pergamon Press plc. Printedin Great Britain. 0024-094X/90 $3.00+0.00 LEONARDO, Vol. 23, No. 4, pp. 419-425, 1990

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not only in the drawings ofJohn Ruskin but also in the literary work of such artists as Anthony Trollope, George Eliot and Charles Dickens in Britain and Emile Zola and Honore de Balzac in France [3]. This emphasis on the "concrete, individual and the particular", "this love of literal realism", was part of the scientific consciousness of the age [4]. Victorian novels and French realist writings describe imaginary worlds created out of factual components to produce worlds that were plausible if technically fictional. In painting, Realism, Symbolism and PreRaphaelitism convince the viewer of the reality of their particular vision through detail. Realism, as exemplified by the work of Gustave Courbet and Edouard Manet, was at its height during the first generation of photographic production. This movement did not so much encompass a stylistic change as it did a change in subject matter. Contemporary events and the texture of daily life became the preferred topics in painting. History, including the depiction of heroic figures, was no longer the privileged source of subjects. This abrogation of the traditional hierarchy of subject matter in painting academies not only permitted other subjects to be investigated but also paved the way for the diurnal recording of reality that was the hallmark of photography. It also

may have introduced an increasing arbitrariness into art. Since no subject or event was of particular importance, every aspect of every subject acquired potential importance. This change in attitude also made possible the arbitraryframing and viewpoints evident in both photography and painting of the period. Since, from 1839 on, photography was assessed as an art medium primarily in comparison to painting and other graphic arts, its relative objectivity and ability to reproduce detail were stressed. With the scientific origins of photography, objectivity was to a great degree conflated with the mechanical rendering of space and of detail. Details were compellingly reproduced and the spatial and tonal qualities of photography were graduated in a predictable and automatic manner relative to the graphic arts and painting. Thus, "the nineteenth century began by believing what was reasonable was true and it wound up by believing that what it saw a photograph of was true" [5]. Belief in photography's objectivity survives into the twentieth century. Consider, for example, the critic Andre Bazin's characterization of photography as the only art form that gains its strength through the absence of human touch. Not surprisingly, the French word for lens is
objectif [6].

This love of the literal reflects both the scientific bent of the age and the continuing human need for mimesis. In fact, mimesis stands at the juncture of art and science of this period. John Ruskin saw outline drawing as a scientific process and drawing itself as an investigation of the world. It was Ruskin's aim "to reconcile scientific consciousness, the fidelity to constant external fact, with the belief that art was somehow concerned with individual vision and mystery"[7]. This superimposition of fact on a belief system shows that Victorian notions of truth were generated not only by observation but also by an a priori opinion about the moral structure of the world, as manifested by the telling detail. The works of KarlMarx and Charles Darwin reflect this focus on the facts of a particular time and place in order to generate encompassing explanations that link moral evolution to a series of physical states. England's industrial revolution and the animal life of the Galapagos both represent unusual instances of their respective classes of phenomena: England was the first nation to industrialize, and the Galapagos presented a collection of isolated species. The writings of Marx on the misery of the British working class contrast strikingly with Darwin's treatise on the survivalof the fittest, especially as trans-

Fig. 1. Roger Fenton, Valley of the Shadowof Death, salted paper print, 1855. (Library of Congress, Washington, DC)

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formed into social Darwinism by Herbert Spencer [8]. An even more obvious and germane example of observation in the service of generalized statements concerning moral evolution is Adolf Loos's turn-ofthe-century writing on ornament and fashion, in which he hypothesized that since "primitive" people have tattoos and civilized Europeans do not, ornamented art is less advanced than simple attention to form [9]. This reductionist theorizing was typical of the era. Yet, the substantial influence of all these men on contemporary thought indicates that this selectivity was not questioned at the time. Marx, Darwin and Loos, although academically trained, were all amateurs in the fields from which their influence was derived. Marx had a Ph.D. in philosophy, but came to communism as an editor of the newspaper, Rheinische ,eitung, for which he wrote articles on social and economic issues. As Marxism evolved, each of his followers emphasized different aspects of his work. Lenin, for example, emphasized the role of dialectics and the party. In a like manner, Darwin formally studied medicine and divinity, while he pursued the natural sciences on his own. In 1831 he became the unpaid naturalist on the HMS Beagle, whose voyage to the Galapagos permitted him to formulate his ideas on the origin of the species. Loos was a well known writer, but his theories on the relationship between ornament and crime were based on a cursory knowledge of anthropological models. Thus, in each case, the men resembled early photographers, for they came to their chosen fields after training in another. While their knowledge of their new field's structure was selective, their theories struck a responsive chord within nineteenth century Europe's belief in change as a manifestation of social or political progress. Similarly, photography appeared to be part of the increasing mechanization of the century. The writings of Marx, Darwin and Loos also upset the public's understanding of existing hierarchies. In 1848 Marx advocated a coalition of Cologne's working classes and the bourgeoisie. Darwin's theory of evolution was originally (and still is) opposed by the clergy, primarily because it challenges a literal belief in the Bible. Loos's concept that simplicity in taste came from a more evolved understanding rather than from a penchant for decoration ran counter to late

Fig. 2. Julia Margaret Cameron, SirJohn Herschel,Albumen print, 1867.

Collec(Gernsheim Retion, Humanities searchCenter, of Texas, University Austin)

nineteenth-century appreciation of surface ornament. The advent of photography demanded a similar reconsideration of accepted ideas about what constitutes an art form, while it changed the position of other arts in relation to their perceived use. These examples also demonstrate that photography was the product of a world that did not systematically question the relationship between facts as applied to belief and theory. As William Irwin Thompson has noted, "When scientists generalize to tell us what we are, where we come from and where we are going, they ineluctably move from science to myth" [10]. In a like manner, social philosophers and artists of the nineteenth century did not use facts or photography as a method for gathering information about the world but rather as a way of constructing theories or communicating visions of what they believed to be true. Roger Fenton's Crimean War image of the Valleyof the Shadowof Death and Julia Margaret Cameron's portrait of John Herschel demonstrate cases of selective understanding (Figs 1 and 2). The Valleyof the Shadow of Death was named for the site of the charge of the Light Brigade, a military disaster immortalized by Sir Alfred Lord Tennyson in a poem of the same name. Yet, if one looks closely at the photograph, another scenario emerges. First, no val-

ley is depicted, thus there is no evidence the reputed charge of British troops took place there. Second, the foreground mass of cannon balls is densely concentrated and suggests the overturning of a munitions wagon rather than any sort of systematic shelling. The pitting and destruction of the landscape associated with the aftermath of any battle, particularly one where both a bombardment and a massacre took place, are conspicuously lacking. Indeed, John Hannavy indicates the image was symbolic rather than an actual site study of the battle [ 11]. While the nationalist agenda of the British Empire is thus clarified by these inconsistencies between the sobering reality of battle and its representation, so too is a willing suspension of disbelief evident on the part of those who accepted this image as providing information about an actual battle. This unquestioning acceptance of a photographic reality ignores the selectivity of the lens while believing in its objectivity. It is apparent these two characteristics were seen as necessarily mutually exclusive, depending on whether the photographer used the camera in a documentary mode or as a vehicle for the creation of art. The photography of Cameron represents this second application. Her image of SirJohn Herschel is meant to describe the inner man, to reveal the

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cerebral peculiarities of his genius. His produce a scientific (read: objective) wearing of a skullcap not only empha- rendition of reality. De Zayas does not sizes Cameron's informal and close re- see objectivity as one pole of a conlationship to the man but also draws tinuum, the other end of which is attention to his head. His hair, as is true subjectivity.For him, the photograph's of many Cameron portraits, is expres- value as information is not determined sive, in effect a headdress, an icon of by context, nor is its aesthetic value her perception of his mental activity. determined by the viewer. Most important, however, de Zayas The white halo-like hair, springing out in all directions, is an apt visual meta- separates the mechanism of photographor of Herschel's scientific stature, phy from what he refers to as the anahis generous contributions to photog- lytic means of modern art. "The more raphy and the particularly eclectic and analytic a man is, the more he separates thesubject and the nearer he multifaceted nature of his intellectual himselffrom to the of the object In and this others, comprehension gets portrait pursuits. Cameron reveals her well-known ability [italics added]". From his vocabulary to reveal the inner character of the and the 1913 publication date of this individual or the situation through article, one may assume that he is referher subjective perception of external ring to Cubism and its non-Euclidian characteristics. Ultimately, however, and relativistic analysis of reality. Cameron provides a context for our un- Although de Zayasimplies that Cubism derstanding of her subjectivitythrough is founded on certain relevant artistic such visual criteria as lighting, short criteria, in his effort to attribute to the depth of field and blurring of detail. machine a significant place in the The Fenton image, in contrast, pre- making of the photograph, he reitertends through its title and its documen- ates the central logical fallacy of phototary style to an objectivity it does not graphy: that it offers an inherently objective way to describe the world. He possess. Cameron's philosophical stance in- states that "only photography started volves using the photographic image man on the road to ... understanding to describe her own personalized vision form as an objective phenomenon". De of the world. The apparent styleless- Zayas understood that Cubism and ness of the Fenton photograph seduces photography had the same goals; what he did not understand was that they the viewer into accepting a depiction that is quite inconsistent with apparent were accomplishing them the same historical fact. The consistent categori- way. Both Cubism and photography are zation of this image as documentary visual means of defining a new sense of within the history of the medium the scientific order [14]. reveals a bias toward understanding the Clearly,since de Zayassees photogradocumentary mode as a kind of style phy as a medium capable of 'indigitaby which the camera creates believable tion' or pointing, he attributes the realities. properties of the rendering system to This dichotomy between fact and fic- the world it records. Therefore, he does tion was well-expressed by Marius de not suggest that the camera creates a Zayasin an article that summarizes our new structure to view the world, a strucassumptions about the objective nature ture based on an a priori set of ideas of photography in relation to its use as that, in turn, give rise to a relevant set an art form [12]. De Zayas states that of criteria. Rather, he assumes that the photography is capable of revealing the visual structure of the photograph is structure of the world as well as the analogous to objective reality. In other inherent qualities of the subject. By this words, he believes that reality has an account, people use this tool for the inherent structure that is simply replirendition of reality, thereby expressing cated by the lens. Thus, he does not their own diverse understandings of the consider the act of photographing to be world. The aim of photography is thus the creation of a visual structure deterto find "the condition of the initial phe- mined by an abstract set of logically nomenon of Form under which the related conditions. He ignores the fact dominion of the mind of man creates that in analog photography the optics emotions, sensations and ideas" [13]. are based on Renaissance perspective This definition suggests that artistic theory and that the random distribuphotography achieves its emotional im- tion of the silver halides varies with pact and style through the ability of changing chemistry and light. artists to invest their photographs with Actually, analog photography is their personal sensibilities. By implica- neither a true nor an unchanging tion, then, one either does or does not facsimile of the world. A true facsimile

would reproduce all the visually apprehensible qualitiesof the object photographed. It would be a complete, one-to-one reproduction. What photography does indeed do is create an approximate analog to certain relevant qualities in the subject. This criterion of relevance is precisely our bias and it informs our technological development by suggesting what characteristics of the hardware bear further refinement. In the nineteenth century, reproducibility, tonality and light sensitivity determined further development. Thus, the photographic image is as much determined by our concepts of its potential usefulness as by the structure of the world. The debate over photography as an art form that emerged with its invention is the product of this criterion seen in relationship to already established arts. An additional component was the nineteenth-century belief in the objectivity of the machine and its ability to respond to the human desire for mimesis. The impetus of this debate was to establish the usefulness of photography by emphasizing its distinctiveness in relation to other art forms, such as painting and the graphic arts.

LEGACY AND INNOVATION IN DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY In all likelihood the first analyses of digital photography will follow this pattern of comparison in relation to analog photography, emphasizing the visual differences between them rather than their similarities in reflecting human and, in particular, artistic biases and needs. Yet digital photography is part of a continuum that reflects photographic history. Initially, there is the notion of photographic selectivity. In analog photography, this selectivity is accomplished primarily through framing, timing and manipulation of tonality. In digital photography, pixel-bypixel selection is also possible. The enhancement of certain aspects of the analog photograph made possible by the manipulation of tonality can now be done more specifically. Thus, image enhancement is possible with both types of photography but the interconnectedness of analog tonality means that larger areas are subject to change which is often related to other changes within the image. We have come to recognize and accept these qualitative changes in analog photography, but we are less

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Fig. 3. Susan Ressler, Heart in the Hara, digital image reproduced using a Targa 16 graphics board, TIPS software and a Fuji Laserjet inkjet printer, original in color, 24 x 30 in, 1989. While still constructivist in structure, both Heart in the Hara and Earth I (see Color Plate B No. 2) represent innovative and sensitive use of the computer by a person whose primary training is in the arts.

amenable to believing in the objective rendering of a medium where extremely specific image enhancement is possible. Yet, in reality, the ethical or of any image objective importance is dependent on what enhancement the viewer needs to know and what consequences the information might have. The greater the importance of a subject, the higher are our standards of verifiability. Our current bias, however, which is based on a long-standing acceptance of analog photography, will probably generate a false belief in the greater veracity of this older form. Just as painting was seen as more artistic in the nineteenth century, analog photography will be seen for some time as more objective or 'true'. The pixelation of digital photogra-

phy also heralds a change in the way we think about the medium. Like silkscreen dots, the pixel is part of a mechanically distributed yes/no binary system whose pictorial tradition, although linked with the graphic arts, is essentially tangential to analog photography. Michelangelo once characterized the difference between sculpture and painting as the difference between an emerging form and an applied one. Thus, modeling in claywas to him a form of painting rather than sculpture. In contrast, digital photography combines the overall recording of

form with the pixel-by-pixel control of the computer. The change in structure that computer modeling can produce might be compared to the application of form in painting. Very soon, it will have the capacity for resolution found in analog photography and will produce hardcopy with the same amount of detail as that found in analog variations of the medium. Ideally, digital photography's development should not be directed or limited by a desired resemblance to analog imagery. It is perhaps relevant to look further at the hybrid nature of the digital photograph. The binary structure of the digital system is an abstract mathematical process that is amenable to visual interpretation but is inherently time and memory based like the computer. Both television and music have been successfully digitalized in part because these characteristics are intrinsic to these media whereas the rendering of immobile and accurate visual detail is not. Computers also challenge the synthetic reality of photography in yet another way. While analog photography has one- to three-point perspective depending on the angle of view, computers can generate multiplepoint perspective using any two given coordinates. These mathematical biases involving time, memory and geometry are not

surprising given the involvement of mathematically inclined individuals in the generation of computer art. Computer experts have been the primary developers of digital imagery and computer artists have been, at least until recently, its primary practitioners. The computer artist's tradition appears to
have developed from constructivism. There is the constructivist tendency

toward the use of mathematically derived forms, with the concomitant stripping away of traditional historical
iconographic contexts. For example,

using a contemporary interpretation of her imagery, one may discern three levels of awareness in Susan Ressler's
The Heart in the Hara (1989): the uni-

verse as clouds, the human torso as its

biological aspect, and the triangle as concept. Seen together, these images become a metaphor for the human

mind and its varied states of consciousness: observation of the world, self, and

the capacity for analysis and abstraction. Since the computer is often compared to the human mind, this image can be interpreted as a modern meta-

phor for our mental processes (Fig. 3).

Ressler's Earth I, 1989 [Color Plate B

No. 2] is part of a series entitled Earthkeeper,in which the circle becomes

a symbol for the earth, as well as for a created sacred space. More importantly, the image uses technology to

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increase our awareness of the environment. Although it is an intuitive and interactive use of the computer, it belies its mathematical and mechanical origins by its repetitive imagery. Like the graphic arts, whose twentieth-century development has been integrated with and influenced by constructivism, computer art shares an aesthetically generated tendency toward anonymity that is in part the product of its uniform range of colors and tones. The regular qualities of the pixel, as shown in Ressler's work Restoration (1988), contribute to this effect as well (Fig. 4). In fact, visible pixelation is now becoming the hallmark of computer-generated fine art as distinguished from its commercial use. Fine artists, unlike their commercial counterparts, do not always have access to the most advanced technologies, nor is it necessary for them to generate imagery which hides its origins; for its purpose is not the seduction of a large and undifferentiated audience, but the engagement of interested viewers. As is a personal response such, Restoration to AIDS and confronts the viewer with what the artistbelieves to be the healing power of art. Conversely, digital photography's commercial uses, advertising and cinema, are costly and hence directed toward a large audience. Because of this costliness, a uniformity of

attitude toward the subject emerges in much traditional commercial graphic art and its computer applications. Yet, it is precisely an individual's attitude toward the subject as well as the choice of the subject itself that defines personal style in photography. We separate, say, Richard Avedon from Ansel Adams on the basis of the predominance of landscape in the work of Adams. Even when Adams does portraiture, his sitter is contextualized in an environment rather than shot against a neutral background such as seen in the work of Avedon. In general, the lighting and tonality of the images, even in reproduction, separate artists' works as well. A distinctive angle view, use of a particular lens type and depth of field can also contribute to the cumulative differentiation of one artist's imagery from another's. Much of the sense of the subject in front of the camera is thus conveyed through the details of the image as they record minute changes in focus and tonality and define the visual appearance of the image's iconography. In this manner we are presented with hard copy that has a certain individual presence separate from the actual printing method used. If we believe that a medium mirrors its origins, it is instructive to compare Louis-JacquesDaguerre and Henry Fox Talbot, both of whom independently

discovered photographic processes at approximately the same time. Note that although Daguerre was trained as a draftsman and Talbot came to photography as an amateur, it is Talbot's work that has received the greater acclaim. This may in part be due to Daguerre's shorter history as a photographer. After inventing photography, Daguerre returned to mural painting. He was simply not interested in making photographs given his preference for creating convincing images of a personal reality rather than examining the external world. Although his writings indicate he appreciated photography's capacity for detail and its apparent faithfulness to appearances, he apparently had less understanding of photography's characteristics than did Talbot. In contrast, Talbot understood not only the need to make multiple copies but also, as his framing suggests, the arbitrariness of photography and, by extension, the arbitraryquality of characteristics such as point of focus, depth of field, tonality and grain. The wide range of his work, from photograms, to artificially lighted phenomena, to images of his home and of ships in the harbor, indicates that he had a very modern conception of photography as a vehicle for investigation of the world. He also understood that in order to involve the viewer, photography had to

Fig. 4. Susan Ressler, TheRestoration, digital image reproduced using a Targa 16 graphics board, TIPS software and a Fuji Laserjet inkjet printer, original in color, 24 x 30 in, 1988. Here the pixel is visually acknowledged as the puimnay structure of the digital photograph.

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go beyond mimesis and provide infor- teurs. We tend to forget the amateur's mation about the nature of things. capacity for innovation and with it the Mike Weaver's analysis of Talbot's sym- need for people who can approach the bolic use of objects in his images development of an imaging system demonstrates Talbot's broad educa- from the viewpoint of its ability to tion and interests in this regard [15]. address constant human interests. Talbot's scientific photograms of plants is another example of his capacity for investigation. It is also instructive to note that much CONCLUSION of what was visually interesting in Digital photography and computer art nineteenth-century photography was also point to the need for a reexaminascientific in nature. The annals of the tion of how we define style and connoisof this period seurship. If we accept George Kubler's RoyalPhotographic Society are replete with scientific images and definition of art as an inventory of culbad art. Many of these scientific images, turallysignificant artifacts,we must also including Talbot's, are aesthetically accept the possibility of an apparent strong. They are in many cases aestheti- lack of traditional stylistic elements in cally strong by accident, but they are new artifacts [ 16]. Although critics such not meaningful by accident. These as Susan Sontag and Janet Malcolm images demonstrate that the logic might argue that stylelessness is already of applied theory can create pictorial a characteristic of analog photography, structure, and that therefore the best this characteristic is also a matter of artistic and scientific photographs are perception and degree [17]. However, possessed of a clear visual logic. While at present, computer art appears to the worst scientific photography is visu- offer few traditional criteria for conally banal, the worst artistic photogra- sideration. Therefore, historians and phy is devoid of meaning, since it may critics must reexamine the criteria by exist for no other reason than a desire which computer-generated images are to make art. Thus, photography's scien- judged, while maintaining an intellitific origins have made the communica- gent relationship to the past. Our sention of information a relevant criterion sitivityideally should extend toward recby which to organize the meaning of a ognizing the essentiallyhybrid nature of photograph. Most of the significant dig- the medium, while encouraging the ital photographic works made today fol- highest standards of form and content. low this pattern. Much of this work is John Ruskin recognized the false scientific and its specific use in such parallelism between industrial and sciareas as thermal pattern rendition sup- entific progress and artistic progress. plant analog photography's wealth of We should too. Like our nineteenthdetail with information measuring such century predecessors,we need to involve phenomena as the radiation of heat. humanistically educated contributors There is, however, one major dif- in the development of a conceptual ference between the development of ergonomics of digital machinery so that digital photography and its nineteenthtechnology does not drive art, but also century analog. Although the aesthetic so that the need to make art contributes qualities of both were discovered to the technology. Digital imagery through practical application, advanced should function as an extension of the technology alone is determining the mind and computer art should condevelopment of digital hardware. The centrate on the development of the expense and complexity of the equip- imagination as a type of creative ment have made the participation of epistemology. We thus need to look at educated amateurs in the design of the digital photography's characteristics as machinery less and less likely. So too, they are linked to a varietyof media, not science is no longer the amateur enter- just photography. Finally, we need to prise that it was in the nineteenth cen- see what unique contributions it can tury. Charles Darwin, Michael Faraday make to the subjective and symbolic and Henry Fox Talbot were all ama- aspects of human understanding.

Acknowledgment
I wish to acknowledge my colleagues Joseph Marshall and Daniel Boord who provided me with insightful ideas, helpful references, and lively discussions on this topic.

References and Notes

1. Oswald Spengler, TheDecline Abr. Ed., of theWest, Charles Frances Atkinson, trans., Helmut Werner, ed. (New York:Alfred A. Knopf, 1962), pp. 410411. 2. Thomas Carlyle, "Signs of the Times", in A Carlyle Reader,G. B. Tennyson, ed. (New York: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1984), p. 53. 3. The work of these authors manifests realism in different ways. For example, both Dickens and Balzac had a fine ear for vernacular language as well as an ability to describe the lives of the lower and middle classes of the period. A historical and realist orientation is also shown in the very titles of the books written by other realists of the period: Silas Marner,the Weaver of Raveloeby George Eliot and Les RougonMarquart: Histoirenaturelleet sociale d 'unefamille sous la secondempire[The Rougon MaA Natural and SocialHistoryof a Familyunder quart's: theSecond Empire] by Emile Zola are two well-known examples of such title choices. 4. Jerome Bump, "ManualPhotography: Hopkins, Ruskin and Victorian Drawing",TheTexasQuarterly 16, No. 2 (1973) p. 106. 5. William Ivins, Prints and Visual Communication (New York:Da Capo Press, 1969) p. 94. 6. Andr6 Bazin, "The Ontology of Photographic Image", in What Is Cinema?Vol. 1, Hugh Gray, comp. and trans. (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1967) p. 13. 7. Sir Humphrey House, All In Due Time:The Collected Talksof SirHumphrey House Essaysand Broadcast (London: Hart-Davis, 1955) p. 144. 8. The philosopher Herbert Spencer was the first to use the word 'evolution' in reference to Darwin's work and the social philosophy that developed from it. 9. Adolf Loos's first mention of the connection between a lack of ornament and civilized progress appears to be in the "Neue Frie Presse"of 21 August Into the Void, 1898, reprinted in Adolf Loos, Spoken Collected Essays, 1897-1900 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1982) pp. 101-102. 10. William Irwin Thompson, The TimeFalling Bodies Take to Light (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981) p. 62. 11. John Hannavy, RogerFenton (Bosof CrimbleHall ton: David R. Godine, 1975) p. 61. 12. Marius de Zayas, "Photography and Artistic Photography", Camera Work 42/43 (April/July 1913) pp. 13-14. 13. De Zayas [12] p. 13. 14. De Zayas [12] p. 14. 15. Mike Weaver, The PhotographicArt: Pictorial Traditions in Britainand America (New York:Harper & Row, 1986). 16. George Kubler, TheShapeof Time(New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1962) p. 9. 17. Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York:Farrar Strauss and Giroux, 1977) pp. 88-89; Janet Malcolm Diana and Nikon:Essayson theAesthetic of (Boston: David R. Godine, 1980) p. 65. Photography

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