How Did Photography Become An Art

How photography became an art:
Though photography in the twenty first century can be counted as an art, it wasn’t always considered to be one. When the process for capturing an image first made its appearance there were debates over whether it should be counted as a science, or whether it was a tool for anthropology, and the documentation of the ‘dying’ cultures. Never the less it evolved to being an aspect of art, but how? In this essay I will explain how photography became an art of the working class instead of the Bourgeoisie and thus how it became a product of capitalism.
The Daguerreotype was one of the first photographic techniques to be employed. The process of creating a permanent image on a metallic plate was first discovered by …show more content…
Both photography and painting had to learn to co-exist with one another; this was difficult considering they did the same thing. Anything painting could do, photography could to faster, clearer and cheaper, “the daguerreotype has killed miniature painting, and superseded portait painting. The great majority of those who would otherwise be the patrons of portraiture are now content with likenesses that are truer, cheaper, and quicker done.” To begin with painters tried to use photography like they did the camera obscura, as an aid in helping the artist to remember the composition of the scene and play with the aspects included in the photographic image of the same scene. “while argo and the other scientist constantly supplied didactic explanation of the potential of the daguerreotype as a scientific tool, the crowd’s natural expectation was that the process would be an artistic tool.” However there was growing demand for photography to be an art medium not just a tool. Photography’s position in art needed to be re-evaluated; as a result, more increasingly painters can be seen moving away from the traditional goal of creating images that mimic nature perfectly and sought to convey an idea through painting. A large amount of painters resorted to abstraction, famous artist including Pablo Picaso, Georges Seurat, or Salvador Dali, to name a few. Photography became an art by being claimed …show more content…
It wasn’t just people who became iconic images, and in many cases the popularity of the image has been perpetuated into the twenty first century, having created a wonder which is set to last much longer. An example of this iconic image is of the emperor Napoleon who stands stiffly with a thumb tucked into the pocket of his waist coat, not dressed in the royal regalia as would be expected, instead in the attire of the upper echelons of the middle class. This was meant to convey to whoever it was shown to that the emperor Napoleon was just like any of them, that he was no better than anyone else. This was photographic propaganda meant to discourage rebellion of his rule. Not just people were photographed for mass distribution however; paintings were as well, like the famous painting of the Mona Lisa painted by Leonardo da Vinci. The Mona Lisa owes much of its popularity to becoming an iconic painting through photography; after all people could only see the painting previously by actually visiting it in person, now with the photograph it was distributed everywhere until it became known by everyone. This then made not only the painting become a kind of cult, but the place which it is held, the Louvre in Paris. People travel vast distances just to see the Mona Lisa in person