Vision of the Gods: An Inquiry Into the Meaning of Photography

hotography is ubiquitous within global culture, but we hardly understand its meaning. And we have only a dim comprehension of its origin. Unlike cinema, which contains the complexities of motion and montage, the photograph is simple and, for the most part, brutally realistic. Perhaps the photograph has seemed too obvious to merit prolonged scholarly attention. Histories of the medium abound, but their authors follow a pattern exemplified by Alison and Helmut Gernsheim’s distinguished History of Photography, first published in 1955. By the standard account, the first inklings of photography appeared when a 5th century scholar noticed a camera-like phenomenon, and culminated in the 1820s, when Nicephore Niepce doped a pewter plate with light-sensitive chemicals and exposed it within a camera obscura. At their most comprehensive, standard histories include references to the mediaeval scientists who experimented with pinhole optics and ultimately invented the camera obscura. Though the standard account is correct in its details, it neglects the broader context of photography. Photography is an evolutionary phenomenon, not a fixed process, and it has drastically altered society at each stage of refinement. Starting with simple devices, the medium has branched into an enormous family of technologies that includes cinema, television and digital imagery. Individuals use cameras, but the medium is far more powerful in the hands of corporations and the state. Optical media entertain and inform, impress and oppress; they permeate everyday life, yet cultural theory does not approach this variety from a coherent base of understanding. What ties together snapshots and surveillance? Theorists perceive the social effects of mass media, which range from liberation to abject dehumanization, but the origin of these effects has not been outlined. We need a paradigm that captures the common thread of photographic technologies, one that matches the sophistication of contemporary engineering. Current theory of the photograph depends on the camera, but the physical device is insufficient t