Abstract

The Camera's Glass Eye

Photography is the most transparent of the art mediums devised or discovered by man. It is probably for this reason that it proves so difficult to make the photograph transcend its almost inevitable function as document and act as work of art as well. The heroic age of photography covered the half-century or more following immediately upon its invention in the late eighteen-thirties. Since the beginning of the twentieth century the procedure of photographs has been made swift, sure, and simple. Two of the most prominent features of latter-day art photography are brilliant physical finish, sharpness or evenness of focus, end declaration of lights and darks and the emulation of the abstract or impersonal arrangements of modern painting. Photography is closer today to literature than it is to the other graphic arts.