When is a traditionally-produced image not a photograph?

I don't think we shuld be so side-tracked by a discussion of technologies or techniques that we forget consciousness. Maybe my definitions are too narrow, but I think there is a photographic way of seeing, and there are many people making imitation paintings, using photographic materials because they can't; or at least, don't, paint. I have seen large color prints, done with various textured papers, and fancy matting and framing; I can't think of these as photographs; rather, they are pseudo-paintings, aided by the camera.
Ultimately, I guess it's like the comment on pornography; I'll know it when I see it.

If I hear this again I think I just might hurl.

In the mid 19th century an alternative term was "heliography." I can just imagine if the name had stuck, AHUG would be full of lame threads fretting about whether strobe-lit pixtures were "really" heliography.

Words do not provide some narrow constrained fence around a meaning -- they are signs pointing toward a meaning. And certainly not just a meaning based on the word's linguistic roots. Words always come after the thing which they attempt to name. They are only guesses at what the Actual Thing might be. Time and taste may swing the sign or move the thing, while convenience leaves the sign standing.

Click to expand...

That's not what i was about, and i'm sorry if you misunderstood my intentions. I'm not trying to enclose what i believe as "photography" in a definition and tell you that everything else is not photography. My point was: words were made to describe something, right? And the word "photography" has been made to describe "writing with light". That's what i believe that photography is, even if that definition "comes after the thing which it attempts to name". And photographs that have been retouched are still photography, though retouched photography. So what seems to be the problem?

I find your definition kind of funny. so if i make a negative without a camera, enlarge it with an enlarger onto a piece of photo paper, put it through developer, fixer &C - the end result is not a photograph?

Click to expand...

The ending result would be... a photograph! Where exactly do we argue? You used light to write a picture on a negative, without a camera, right? So... why shouldn't that be photography, according to "my definition"?


Please forgive me if my oppinions annoy you, but remember they are still my opinions. Cheers,

-Sino.