Each author in “Reflections on the Medium: What it Means to Photograph” emphasized the value of photography. Alexander Rodchenko, as an example, highly stressed the different perspectives that photography can capture. For hundreds of years, painters created work at the “belly button level or from eye level”. Rodchenko argued that in a world where everything is changing so rapidly, documenting an object from one perspective is not sufficient in portraying it vividly and realistically. He believed that photography, instead of being a substitute for paintings, should be more experimental. It is wrong to take photographs of people posing or a landscape from eye-level because it does not provide a new perspective for something already known. He described his experience with the Eiffel Tower to compare what photography is to what it should be. Seeing it from a distance, he was not amused. But standing below it and looking up, he saw a completely different scene.
Bernice Abbott, in her piece titled “Photography at the Crossroads”, shared a similar perspective to that of Rodchenko. In its early stages, photography did not seek to imitate other mediums of art. It captured the candid, everyday happenings. By the mid 19th century, “artificial props with phony settings began to be used”. Photographers leaped back to the time when perfect was the standard. Retouching, brushwork, props, and backdrops began to be used to create a more surreal imagine. It was all an attempt to correct the real and natural. Abbott believed that a photographer should have a motive for capturing a moment in time. The photograph’s message should be clear and powerful.
Both photographers took their work to be more than an art form: it was also a means of educating. They did not seek to perfect the subjects and landscapes that they photographed, but instead wanted to show them from different, more realistic perspectives. Looking at the misuse of photography from a sociological standpoint, they wondered how photos could change the way people viewed the world.
Photography Terms:
- Bracketing: Taking several photographs of the same scene at different exposure settings to ensure a well-exposed photograph.
- Grainy: description of an image that looks speckled because the particles of silver on the sensitized paper are clumping together.
- Aperture: the opening of a lens that controls the amount of light that enters the camera.
- Emulsion: Light-sensitive coating on film or paper (on which photograph will be produced).
- Reticulation: Cracking, scratching, or damaging the emulsion of a photograph during the developing process.
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