Table of Contents
- Towards the identification of the medium.
- 1839
- Baudelaire
- Paul Strand
- The Simulacra of Painting
- Critique of realism
- The last piece of the puzzle
- A common ground
Towards the identification of the medium.
Why and how?
I’m always interested in learning more about the beginning of photography.
A recent trip to Italy took me to my old favorite bookstore in Bologna, laFeltrinelli. I noticed a small book, “L’immagine Infedele _ La Falsa Rivoluzione della Fotografia Digitale” by Claudio Marra (roughly “The Unfaithful Image _ The Fake Revolution of Digital Photography”) which I immediately bought. In his book, Marra quotes the French essayist Jean Clair. That quote alone, it’s like a eureka moment for me.
Before that, a few months ago, I read a very good anthology that I would recommend to anyone interested in this topic: “Classic Essays on Photography”.
In the following analysis, along with my understanding of art, I’ll refer quite often to the Classic Essays with the hope of tracing a philological route of how photography evolved throughout time. Just a warning: it’s a long read.
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