When is a photograph created?

Q.G. · Sep 25, 2009

RalphLambrecht said:
Again, to add more value to this discussion, we need to define what is meant by 'photograph'. I sense that some participants think of print, image, negative or the process of photographing when they mention 'photograph'. This confuses things.

Trying to decide what a photograph is will confuse things even more.

And we all already know what a photograph is well enough to discuss the question about when it comes about: no more complicated than a thing you look at that is created by the action of light. Any more detail is unnecessary.

Once you start singleing different thingies, different steps in the process, out as "the photograph" you find youself in a terrible pickle, needing to explain what the other bits involved then are. Something you will not be able to do.

And it doesn't make any difference anyway.
You can't ignore the "why" something (say, a negative) comes to be. This "why" (whatever it is) preceeds the clicking of shutters, the souping of bits of acetate with a sticky residue on it in chemicals, or whatever other step in the process you may want to single out.
Nobody suddenly finds him- or herself holding a camera pointed at something, or with film in a tank that is about to be filled with liquids, or whatever else you may like to consider as the "defining stage of a photograph", without ever having done anything beforehand to wind up in the situation.

So better not go that route. Forget about the impossible and useless definition.

RalphLambrecht · Sep 25, 2009

Q.G. said:
Chemical based is not the only requirement per dictionary definition.
It talks about making the image permanent too.

If you don't fix your prints, are they not photographs?
According to the Oxford dictionary they are not.
Photography 1 : Dictionary 0.

Well, since nothing is really permanent, maybe photography does not exists! Anyway, you did not answer the question. Why was Talbot's initial process not chemical?

Q.G. said:
I agree (up to a point: dictionary makers like to decide themselves whether usage conforms to what they think is common usage a lot. )

I'd go for it. They do more linguistic research than we do.

Q.G. said:
Anyway: i don't think it interesting what the dictionary has to say.
It will not do even the smallest thing to help decide the question in hand.

Sure it does. Look at this thread. It's going in circles, because it missing a definition. People are talking about a 'photograph' but refer to several to different things. This is going nowhere.

Allen Friday · Sep 25, 2009

I have had a little time to reflect on this question, and here is my additional 2 cents worth.

Creation (the act of creating) in a process. It begins with an idea, desire or intent and ends when we finally realize the physical manifestation of that idea, desire or intent.

Depending on the method we follow to realize the final form the idea takes, different parts of the process will take on more or less significance. Sometimes the seeing will be most important, sometimes the exposing of the negative will be most important, sometimes the printing will be most important. All the steps are necessary to make the final work, some will require creativity, others will be purely mechanical, but they all combine for us to realize the final expression.

There is no clear Moment of Creation, only the completion of the final work. I can say for sure that I completed this photograph on September 21, 2009 at 10:32 p.m., here it is for all the world to see. The creation of the photograph may have taken a few minutes, a few days or even years.

RalphLambrecht · Sep 25, 2009

Q.G. said:
Trying to decide what a photograph is will confuse things even more.

And we all already know what a photograph is well enough to discuss the question about when it comes about: no more complicated than a thing you look at that is created by the action of light. Any more detail is unnecessary.

Once you start singleing different thingies, different steps in the process, out as "the photograph" you find youself in a terrible pickle, needing to explain what the other bits involved then are. Something you will not be able to do.

And it doesn't make any difference anyway.
You can't ignore the "why" something (say, a negative) comes to be. This "why" (whatever it is) preceeds the clicking of shutters, the souping of bits of acetate with a sticky residue on it in chemicals, or whatever other step in the process you may want to single out.
Nobody suddenly finds him- or herself holding a camera pointed at something, or with film in a tank that is about to be filled with liquids, or whatever else you may like to consider as the "defining stage of a photograph", without ever having done anything beforehand to wind up in the situation.

So better not go that route. Forget about the impossible and useless definition.

I'm sorry that you think a clear definition of what's being discussed will confuse things. I beg to differ. It would help a lot.

quote
And we all already know what a photograph is well enough to discuss the question about when it comes about: no more complicated than a thing you look at that is created by the action of light. Any more detail is unnecessary.
end quote

See, that's where the lack of a definition hurts, because people have referred in this thread to a 'photograph' as something you cannot see. I'm sure they meant 'image' and not 'photograph', but I like to know from them.

Defining a photograph is not impossible and it is not useless. A discussion without knowing what we're talking about, however, is.

ntenny · Sep 25, 2009

Q.G. said:
And we all already know what a photograph is well enough to discuss the question about when it comes about: no more complicated than a thing you look at that is created by the action of light. Any more detail is unnecessary.

Have you found a way to look at something that's *not* "created by the action of light"???

I should have thought a "photograph" required the involvement of a camera; that's what distinguishes it from a "photogram" in my understanding. (And then we can start to argue about what is and isn't a "camera"...by this definition, the intriguing idea mentioned upthread that what we call a "print" is actually a photograph of the negative becomes difficult to defend, unless you consider the combination of a darkroom and an enlarger to be a camera.)

Then, too, nobody who isn't trying to make a theoretical point would look at a print hanging on the wall and say "That's not a photograph", would they? I actually think the dictionary definition posted gets pretty close to what we usually mean by the word (except for the word "permanent", which is problematic---maybe "persistent" would be better).

-NT

Q.G. · Sep 25, 2009

ntenny said:
Have you found a way to look at something that's *not* "created by the action of light"???

No need to find a way. You are born with the ability.
My keyboard, like myriads of other things, is not made by the action of light, and yet i have no trouble at all looking at it.

Do you?

ntenny said:
I should have thought a "photograph" required the involvement of a camera; that's what distinguishes it from a "photogram" in my understanding. (And then we can start to argue about what is and isn't a "camera"...by this definition, the intriguing idea mentioned upthread that what we call a "print" is actually a photograph of the negative becomes difficult to defend, unless you consider the combination of a darkroom and an enlarger to be a camera.)

See where this "try to find a defining thingy"-thingy leads to? Nowehere.

But you know, in the days before you and i were born, there were these thingies that would both be a camera (stills and motion picture) and a projector too.
So don't be so narrow minded about what a camera should be.

ntenny said:
Then, too, nobody who isn't trying to make a theoretical point would look at a print hanging on the wall and say "That's not a photograph", would they? I actually think the dictionary definition posted gets pretty close to what we usually mean by the word (except for the word "permanent", which is problematic---maybe "persistent" would be better).

Again: how did the process that lead to whatever it is you might like to call "a photograph" begin?
That's when the thing started life.

Q.G. · Sep 25, 2009

RalphLambrecht said:
Well, since nothing is really permanent, maybe photography does not exists! Anyway, you did not answer the question. Why was Talbot's initial process not chemical?

I did answer your question.

Nobody said that Talbot's process was not chemical.
The definition demanded the thing to be made permanent as well.

RalphLambrecht said:
I'd go for it. They do more linguistic research than we do.

There we go: comon usage is not the norm. The learned minds of the compilers of dictionaries are.
Well beyond the thin end of the wedge already.

RalphLambrecht said:
Sure it does. Look at this thread. It's going in circles, because it missing a definition. People are talking about a 'photograph' but refer to several to different things. This is going nowhere.

No, no.
It is going in circles just because people are trying to decide what it is that merits being called "a photograph".

Referring to several things is not a problem. As long as you do consider what the place in the process of these several things is, i.e. where the entire thing begins.

removed account4 · Sep 25, 2009

RalphLambrecht said:
The invention of photography, as outlined in the patent of 1839, was a chemical process. I'm unaware of any Talbot work that was not chemical-based. Please enlighten me. You're right, Niepce's process was not really photography per that definition, but Daguerre certainly changed that.

A dictionary is never the master, it is merely a reflection of the current usage of language. Heck, you got to start somewhere to come to a common understanding, and a dictionary is not a bad place to start.

salt prints are permanent, they just need to be toned ( another chemical ) ...

niepce's process is photographic by your definition ...
it was made using a light sensitive material, and washed in oil of
lavender ( a chemical ) is permanent + on display today at the university of texas ... the image i linked to, is the FIRST photograph.

Q.G. · Sep 25, 2009

RalphLambrecht said:
Defining a photograph is not impossible and it is not useless. A discussion without knowing what we're talking about, however, is.

And there you hit the nail on the head.
We are discussing when the thingy is created.

We need not know what useless definition (see why it is useless in my earlier posts) to use to find an answer to that.

Read Allen Friday's answer. Spot on he is.

RalphLambrecht · Sep 25, 2009

jnanian said:
as for talbot's process:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calotype

niepce's process is photographic by your definition ...
it was made using a light sensitive material, and washed in oil of
lavender ( a chemical ) is permanent + on display today at the university of texas ... the image i linked to, is the FIRST photograph.

Sorry jnanian, but it isn't the first photograph. It was for the longest time thought to be the 'oldest surviving' photograph, but it lost that title a couple of years ago too to another Niepce photograph, which is about a year older.

Do you know what the light-sensitive material was that Niepce used?

removed account4 · Sep 25, 2009

ntenny said:
Have you found a way to look at something that's *not* "created by the action of light"???

I should have thought a "photograph" required the involvement of a camera; that's what distinguishes it from a "photogram" in my understanding. (And then we can start to argue about what is and isn't a "camera"...by this definition, the intriguing idea mentioned upthread that what we call a "print" is actually a photograph of the negative becomes difficult to defend, unless you consider the combination of a darkroom and an enlarger to be a camera.)

Then, too, nobody who isn't trying to make a theoretical point would look at a print hanging on the wall and say "That's not a photograph", would they? I actually think the dictionary definition posted gets pretty close to what we usually mean by the word (except for the word "permanent", which is problematic---maybe "persistent" would be better).

-NT

we have to read the writings of maholy nagy and man ray to
see whether they believed a photogram/rayograms were photographs
and from what i remember reading, they believed their cameraless images were photographs.

i make my own cameraless images (nanograms/hybrid prints) and i think they are photographs,
but i have no idea what was going through their heads in the 20s/30s.

RalphLambrecht · Sep 25, 2009

Q.G. said:
And there you hit the nail on the head.
We are discussing when the thingy is created.

We need not know what useless definition (see why it is useless in my earlier posts) to use to find an answer to that.

Read Allen Friday's answer. Spot on he is.

Now you lost me completely. Allen's post made sense to me, but yours did not. Anyway, I'm not interested in a conversation without clear definition. That's a waste of time, because the answer, you're talking about, will not mean anything to me. Have fun.

removed account4 · Sep 25, 2009

RalphLambrecht said:
Sorry jnanian, but it isn't the first photograph. It was for the longest time thought to be the 'oldest surviving' photograph, but it lost that title a couple of years ago too to another Niepce photograph, which is about a year older.

Do you know what the light-sensitive material was that Niepce used?

was the earlier image of an engraving?
he has been experimenting copying engravings onto glass and other materials
using some sort of light sensitive varnish ...

for the image i linked to he used a polished pewter plate coated with bitumen of judea ...
washed with white petroleum and oil of lavender ...

RalphLambrecht · Sep 25, 2009

jnanian said:
was the earlier image of an engraving?
he has been experimenting copying engravings onto glass and other materials
using some sort of light sensitive varnish ...

for the image i linked to he used a polished pewter plate coated with bitumen of judea ...
washed with white petroleum and oil of lavender ...

Yes, it was. I think it was made in 1825, whereas the other was from 1826.

What is light-sensitive about a polished pewter plate coated with bitumen of judea? Does it just harden by the exposure to light, leaving (still) soft bitumen to be washed away with the oil?

Q.G. · Sep 25, 2009

RalphLambrecht said:
Now you lost me completely. Allen's post made sense to me, but yours did not. Anyway, I'm not interested in a conversation without clear definition. That's a waste of time, because the answer, you're talking about, will not mean anything to me. Have fun.

With respect (and i mean that), i too think you're completely lost.

A conversation without (impossible) definition is a waste of time to you.
Yet the answer (Allen's post - without a clear definition) makes sense.

I think you'll find that your way of approaching this is the one that is no more than a waste of time.
Allens' post made sense to you, yet you cannot begin to find an answer because - lacking a definition - you don't even know what a photograph is.

RalphLambrecht · Sep 25, 2009

Q.G. said:
... you don't even know what a photograph is.

Give it up Q.G. It's enough now! I'm really not interested anymore.

Q.G. · Sep 25, 2009

But i am.

What is a photograph, Ralph?
And when, do you think, is it created?

removed account4 · Sep 25, 2009

RalphLambrecht said:
Yes, it was. I think it was made in 1825, whereas the other was from 1826.

What is light-sensitive about a polished pewter plate coated with bitumen of judea? Does it just harden by the exposure to light, leaving (still) soft bitumen to be washed away with the oil?

i think that is what happens ...
and to see it, you have to tilt it to
the side like a dag, because it looks
blank when seen straight on ...

RalphLambrecht · Sep 25, 2009

jnanian said:
i think that is what happens ...
and to see it, you have to tilt it to
the side like a dag, because it looks
blank when seen straight on ...

That's a bit of a stretch for the term 'light-sensitivity' isn't it. After all, it's only accelerated evaporation. We wouldn't call a wet towel 'light sensitive' because it dries quicker in sunlight, would we? I think for 'light-sensitivity' in photographic terms, we need a photo-chemical reaction.

By the way, I think your photographs are 'real' photographs, and they are very special photographs at that. Just had another look.

ntenny · Sep 25, 2009

Q.G. said:
My keyboard, like myriads of other things, is not made by the action of light, and yet i have no trouble at all looking at it.

Do you?

Yeah, I can't see your keyboard at all from here! But in all seriousness---well, OK, in *some* seriousness---I'd suggest that you're not seeing your keyboard, you're seeing the image of it projected on your retina.

(Your retina is light-sensitive; the persistence of vision and your memory both involve an assortment of chemical processes; and it's pretty easy to argue for the eye as a camera. Maybe *anything* you see is a photograph!)

See where this "try to find a defining thingy"-thingy leads to? Nowehere.

In full seriousness now, I'd respectfully disagree. It's possible to take a discussion about definitions to ridiculous places, as we've just done, but that doesn't mean that discussing definitions is necessarily useless.

In this case, I think definitions came up because some people's answers to the original question assumed "the photograph is the negative", some people's answers assumed "the photograph is the print", somebody said "what about slides", at least one person proposed that the photograph exists in some platonic form even before the shutter fires, and it was kind of clear that we weren't all talking about the same thing.

I think this has been an interesting discussion thus far, though I'll stop thinking that if we get too much more "meta" about it and disappear down the philosophical rabbit hole. I've been down the philosophical rabbit hole; the cafeteria sucks and there isn't enough light to shoot handheld.

-NT

Vaughn · Sep 25, 2009

Quote:
Originally Posted by ntenny View Post
Have you found a way to look at something that's *not* "created by the action of light"???

QG -- No need to find a way. You are born with the ability.
My keyboard, like myriads of other things, is not made by the action of light, and yet i have no trouble at all looking at it.

Ahhhh, that is something I discovered that changed my photography forever. And that discovery is the simple fact that it is the action of light that allows us to see. We do not see objects -- chairs, keyboards, etc. We see light and light only. We only "see" the keyboard because of the way light reflects off of the keyboard.

I don't photograph things, I photograph light reflecting off things -- a relatively minor change of viewpoint, but it resulted in a major change in my photography.

Vaughn

PS...some people need firm unchanging definitions, rules, conventions, etc to operate within their comfort zone. Others are more comfortable with more fluid definitions. And there is no right or wrong way -- but people will still bump heads over it.

PS #2 -- dang, Nathan beat me to it. I had to go help a student who for some strange reason loaded his 35mm film on a 120 reel and had already did the presoak step!

removed account4 · Sep 25, 2009

RalphLambrecht said:
That's a bit of a stretch for the term 'light-sensitivity' isn't it. After all, it's only accelerated evaporation. We wouldn't call a wet towel 'light sensitive' because it dries quicker in sunlight, would we? I think for 'light-sensitivity' in photographic terms, we need a photo-chemical reaction.

i see what you mean about accelerated evaporation and the wet towel ..
maybe there is something else that happened that i don't understand ...
it explains better here: http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/wfp/heliography.html
but still sounds a bit more like what you said. :rolleyes:
wet towel sound like a great concept for an installation ..
maybe i can come up with some sort of "art-speak-BS" harkening back to the early days of 1824
should i make the royalty checks out to you ralph ?

By the way, I think your photographs are 'real' photographs, and they are very special photographs at that. Just had another look.

thanks ralph ... i appreciate the look+comment

john

RalphLambrecht · Sep 25, 2009

Vaughn said:
...some people need firm unchanging definitions, rules, conventions, etc to operate within their comfort zone. Others are more comfortable with more fluid definitions. And there is no right or wrong way -- but people will still bump heads over it.

Vaughn

Thanks for the reminder. You are absolutely right with that.

RalphLambrecht · Sep 25, 2009

jnanian said:
i see what you mean about accelerated evaporation and the wet towel ..
maybe there is something else that happened that i don't understand ...
it explains better here: http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/exhibitions/permanent/wfp/heliography.html
but still sounds a bit more like what you said. :rolleyes:
wet towel sound like a great concept for an installation ..
maybe i can come up with some sort of "art-speak-BS" harkening back to the early days of 1824
should i make the royalty checks out to you ralph ?

thanks ralph ... i appreciate the look+comment

john

The article says that he did it by photochemical means, but I don't see how.

Vaughn · Sep 25, 2009

John, from what I understand, and it is backed up in the link you provided, that there is an actual chemical reaction happening between the light and tar (bitumen of Judea). It was used because this property was already observed in the tars use as a resist for engraving.

Light (probably the high energy UV portion) chemically bleached and hardened the tar, allowing the less exposed tar to be washed away with solvents. I make photographic prints the same way, but instead of the tar I used gelatin treated with ammonium dichromate (carbon prints). UV light hardens the dichromated gelatin and I develop in hot water to melt away the unexposed gelatin.

Vaughn

When is a photograph created?

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