… a success story. For almost two hundred years, it has been used all over the world for all kinds of purposes. According to estimates by the photo industry, more photographs have been produced each year since 2012 than had previously been created in the entire history of photography. What was initially a cumbersome, static instrument, transported with great care, applied with much artistry and requiring chemical know-how to develop, was transformed by the Leica into a lightweight tool and by the point-and-shoot cameras of the 1990s into a super light one and, with the advent of digital smartphones, into an almost casual one that can be clicked endlessly. But does quantity equate to substance? And what about quality? Although the quality cannot always keep pace with the speed and quantity of the output, we still encounter outstanding works time and again.

… a huge, ongoing misunderstanding. Rarely do we see, in any other field, such entrenched positions of rivalry, so sharply defended, as we do in photography. What is photography? What is it meant to be? What is good photography? These are the questions that constantly arise, each followed by a shrill and adamant “This here is photography!” “No, this here!” “Certainly not that over there!” The more volatile the demand for photography became over the years, the more vociferous the assertions about it became. It was almost as though photography were so vaguely defined and underestimated that one and the same image could be elevated on the one hand to the status of high art, while being dismissed on the other hand as utter trash. 

… weakly coded. Just like the world around us in all its organized chaos. Weaker by far than language, the written word, or a well-composed text. There is a corresponding lack of comprehension. In their book Another Way of Telling (1982), Jean Mohr, the Geneva-based documentary photographer, and John Berger, the famous English art critic and theorist, demonstrate how ten photographs, viewed and described by ten people, can generate almost a hundred different captions. Each individual views the photographs through the filter of his or her own inner images and so sees something quite different. We evidently see only what we want to see.

… an apparatus, a machine. It is a tool that enables us to do all kinds of things. For instance, we can photograph the sea, the mountains, a brand new car, our family, our lovers, an historic site, some damage done, proof of a crime, an example of superb architecture before the first inhabitants apparently ruin it. Photography is a tool for almost every eventuality in life, and in each of these different situations, the meaning of the image changes. Landscape photography, family photography, police photography, forensic and medical photography, surveillance photography – and if needs be, or by happenstance, occasionally art photography: photography as art or art through photography.

… an aide memoire and a memory block. Without photography, there are many things from both personal life and public life that we might no longer recall. The moment we open an album or an image file, or as soon as we see a photo, memory leaps at us like a cat with its claws bared: “Aha!” “Yes, precisely!” “That was so amazing!” No amount of exclamation marks can suitably express that wonderful moment of sudden recognition. Yet this trigger, or release, also has a downside in that we often recall the past only with the aid of photographs. What has not been captured in a photograph seems neither noteworthy nor memorable. What has been photographed is remembered only as it appears in the photographic image. And, following that initial recall, unleashed by the photograph, the image relegates our original memory to the past, obscuring it forever. 

… not art, but it can generate art. Ever since its invention, photography has struggled to gain recognition as an art form. In the nineteenth century, painters and poets alike disdained the mechanical consistency and overall precision with which photography captured landscapes, cityscapes and reality, whereas art at the time was very much about composing, clarifying and condensing to embody a sense of oneness, wholeness and truth. According to this, photography could not be art. Even in the 1960s, photography was still being dismissed by theoreticians and aesthetic philosophers as “half-art.”  It was only with the strongly expanded concept of art and the use of photography in art from the 1960s onwards that it became possible at last for photographs to be perceived, collected and exhibited as artworks. Yet collectors did not gain confidence in the durability of color photography until inkjet and pigment prints began to replace the C-prints by Kodak and Fuji. With chemists predicting that they would retain their quality for more than two hundred years, collectors breathed a collective sigh of relief and satisfaction. After all, none of us will live that long. 

… art. Yes, it is now perceived, exhibited and collected as art. Today, photographs are commanding top prices at auction. Museums are setting up dedicated photography departments with their own specialist curators, while others avoid any hint of ghettoization by including photography alongside drawing, painting, sculpture and installation so that not only photography, but art in general, can be perceived more in terms of approach rather than in terms of the respective medium. Clearly, all those decades of striving to have photography recognized finally paid off. But, a word of caution: The photographs acquired by museums and private collectors amount to no more than one percent, at most, of worldwide photographic production. So, what happens to the other ninety-nine percent? Do we throw it away? Is it to be discarded as trash? Are these not invaluable as visual sociology and visual history, without which our worldviews would be all the more impoverished? Do they not deserve to be collected and viewed as pictorial signs of their times?

… a means of documentation, but also of intervention. For a long time, the main emphasis was repeatedly placed on photography’s ability to document events for posterity; in that respect, the performance of photography is indeed often in a class of its own. Until we began to realize that photography also intervenes, generates and changes actions. People tend to strike poses when a camera appears. The lamentations of widows are augmented when a photographer documents them. Scenes are created in the presence of a camera. And what about the self-portrait, or selfie? Between 2011 and 2017, according to a study published by the Journal of Family Medicine, July/August 2018, it appears that 259 people worldwide died taking a selfie. Photography and action could not be more closely linked. In this particular instance, creating photographic images sadly becomes a fatal and tragic final action.

… practically on the way to becoming a road sign. There has been a remarkable pendulum swing here, with photography finding such a firm foothold in the galleries of the 1980s that it practically conquered the museum space. For that to happen, photography had to expand into dimensions reminiscent of architecture or billboards. Think, for example, of the works by Canadian artist Jeff Wall, who hung immense lightboxes in museums. Think, too, of the vast, framed photographs by the likes of Katharina Sieverding or Balthasar Burkhard. For a while, the very term “large-format photography” was used almost as though describing a genre in its own right. At present, we are seeing a countermovement to this. Most photos of the past ten years are usually just 6x6cm in size, appearing on our smartphones, retro-illuminated as though in a lightbox. The difference could hardly be more radical; nor could the difference in perception. Whereas the huge images in museums and on the facades of buildings allow us to immerse ourselves almost physically in the image and wander around in it mentally, these brightly illuminated little gems make that all but impossible. In this miniature presentation, the photos that stand out are those that convey their message as simply and clearly as a road sign. 

… a hybrid. It can be one thing or another. Depending on viewpoint. One and the same photo can be a landscape, family event, historical image, advertising shot or art photography. One and the same photo can encapsulate the truth or blur all certainty, depending on the context in which it is shown. In other words, it switches back and forth and ultimately eludes our grasp. Unless, that is, we use a series of photos to compose a narrative of images, or to build an edifice of images, in order to underpin the meaning more firmly. This ambiguity is both an opportunity and a risk. Photography’s great march of triumph can be somewhat better understood through this sparkling cocktail of opportunity and risk, the colorful and the unclear, the vivid and the void.

… always changing with the times. In the nineteenth century it was an instrument of travel, discovery, perception and the exploration of unknown places and unknown peoples. In the first half of the twentieth century it came to document events. The Leica recorded accidents and crime scenes, reported in the newspapers, as well as political and sporting events and human behaviors. Astonishingly enough, from the middle of the second half of the century, it also came to have a calming effect. There is reassurance to be found in capturing and fixing a world that is spinning ever faster. For what the image captures, it seems the mind can grasp. Photography halts and holds, giving us the impression that we are still in control. And today? Now? Photographs have become internet memes. Together with the brief motion of those little gifs, photography often seems animating and stimulating, formulating a new alphabet in a totally visual world. In museums and books, on the other hand, it is deployed as a serious and compelling trigger for the visual contemplation of existence, truth and reality, and for the perception of different existences and truths, as well as real and fictional worlds. And in the field of science and academia it remains an indispensable research tool. 

... far more than that. Take heart and enter the realm of photography!