The Initial Impacts of Photography
Through the power of photography we can bring back and recall a moment from our childhood. We can recall a moment of joy or sadness and share that moment. Because a picture captures the quintessence of a single moment and makes that moment permanent, we can look at it over and over again.Through a picture we have a record not only of our past, but of our present as well.The influence of photography through the years has been immense in influencing public opinion, documenting disasters, and showing us war in all of its frightening aspects. The inception of these visual documents of personal and public history engendered vast changes in people's perception of history, of time, and of themselves. The concept of privacy was greatly altered as cameras were used to record most areas of human life. The ubiquitous presence of photographic machinery eventually changed humankind's sense of what was suitable for observastion. the photograph was considered incontestable proof of and event, experince, of state of being.
It is hard to imagine what the world would be like without photography. It is used in all most evert activity that is of interest to people. Photography records events that make world history. It shows far away places and people you have never met. It also records your history and the history of your family. Photography preserves yesterday's documents and today's findings. It illistraits schoolbooks, magazines, and every other kind of publication.
Prior to photography war was documented by painters and sketch artists who depicted their side as heroic and the opposing side frequently as lowly, dirty, poor, cowardly etc. The painters also frequently left out the human cost of war. In the early days of photography, the exposure times were to slow to capture action so photographers could only photograph before and after effects of war. For example, civil war photographs often showed dead soldiers left to rot on the ground. Those photographs showed only the cost of war. This greatly changed the public opinion about war.
Photography embedded journalist were credited with bring the Vietnam war into American's homes by putting the images from the ground on TV and newspapers. That changed peoples perceptions of war. So much so that there was a ban that made it illegal to show caskets of American soldiers, much less anything else. Photography is a tool of propaganda. The images we are exposed to change our perceptions of things and therefore change our reactions and therefore change the world. The rat picture affected the psyche of "The clean German," The boys shooting out of helicopters in the Vietnam war, the lady covered in dust in the streets of New York; if we didn't have images we would never know what was going on for real.
Since ancient times, people have sought to creat likenessof people, objects, or sences they thought were worth rememberin. The urge to creat pictures has led people to concentrate on how to capture and image directly formed by light.
It is hard to imagine what the world would be like without photography. It is used in all most evert activity that is of interest to people. Photography records events that make world history. It shows far away places and people you have never met. It also records your history and the history of your family. Photography preserves yesterday's documents and today's findings. It illistraits schoolbooks, magazines, and every other kind of publication.
Prior to photography war was documented by painters and sketch artists who depicted their side as heroic and the opposing side frequently as lowly, dirty, poor, cowardly etc. The painters also frequently left out the human cost of war. In the early days of photography, the exposure times were to slow to capture action so photographers could only photograph before and after effects of war. For example, civil war photographs often showed dead soldiers left to rot on the ground. Those photographs showed only the cost of war. This greatly changed the public opinion about war.
Photography embedded journalist were credited with bring the Vietnam war into American's homes by putting the images from the ground on TV and newspapers. That changed peoples perceptions of war. So much so that there was a ban that made it illegal to show caskets of American soldiers, much less anything else. Photography is a tool of propaganda. The images we are exposed to change our perceptions of things and therefore change our reactions and therefore change the world. The rat picture affected the psyche of "The clean German," The boys shooting out of helicopters in the Vietnam war, the lady covered in dust in the streets of New York; if we didn't have images we would never know what was going on for real.
Since ancient times, people have sought to creat likenessof people, objects, or sences they thought were worth rememberin. The urge to creat pictures has led people to concentrate on how to capture and image directly formed by light.