Category: Reading-1

I’m not very well versed on dark room photography, so the section on emulsions was the most exciting to me because I had no idea there were so many different types, or that you could actually get a different product depending on what you use.

I’ve never put two and two together and realized that X rays are actually just a special type of camera/developer! I would love to test some of these solutions out and see what new things you can learn or feelings you can elicit from the same subject just by using a different emulsion, like the tests we read about that scientists performed to fine tune the best methodology for their experiments and observations.

I was drawn to the discussion of early photogrammetry used to take measurements of a space or building from the photo and photographic setup, and —kind of tangentially — the idea of photographs unintentionally measuring something which may not have been the subject. Although photogrammetry in the form of 3d scanning is pretty commonplace now, I think it would be interesting to take the traditional approach of mapping an environment from a flat photo, and the idea of “…the ability to measure [appearing] to be a useful but unintended byproduct of a photographic image made for other reasons…” (34.) 

A photograph could be made for representative purposes, while also being repurposed in the most abstract sense of photogrammetry where a subject is measured by their environment, vice-versa, or a secret third thing. 

Latticed Window with camera obscura– an example of a photograph which unintentionally functions as a measurement :

Early photogrammetric measurement process:

Completely unrelated document that feels visually similair to the photogrammetry above:

The reading discusses how in earlier scientific practices, scientists believed that combining various examples would create a more comprehensive representation of the subject. They often created “ideal” scientific illustrations rather than strictly adhering to objective truth. An example given was a drawing of the life cycle of an oak egger moth, where multiple stages of its growth were combined into a single image. In contrast, later scientific practices shifted toward using photography to depict specific objects, focusing on capturing “reality” as it appears in a particular moment. I find it interesting how scientists shifted their approach to depicting scientific practices. Later in the reading, it also discusses the early skepticism surrounding photography due to edited, staged, or manipulated images, and how the discoveries of X rays and radiation expanded the possibilities of photographic observation. I think that capturing what is visible or invisible to the human eye, along with the use of image manipulation, creates new opportunities to merge scientific realism with artistic interpretation.

1. Something Interesting or New
I was surprised to learn that photogrammetry was used as early as the 1900s for crime scene observations. I had no idea that such a scientific approach was used so early in criminal investigations, and it’s impressive how these early methods laid the foundation for modern crime scene analysis. Reading about Alphonse Bertillon’s contribution to this process, especially by reducing the manual work needed through orientation points, was interesting.

I’m curious how long it took to set up the process of documenting scenes and capturing images within a grid for precise measurements and accurate scene recreations. I often get measurements wrong, so I can’t imagine the pain of remeasuring and redoing the entire process for the perfect picture of a crime scene.

Album of Paris Crime Scenes, Attributed to Alphonse Bertillon, 1901-8.

Link: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/284718

 

2. Interesting Artistic Opportunity
One artistic opportunity made possible by scientific approaches to imaging is the ability to capture the passage of time, as seen in early photographs of solar eclipses in the 1800s. These images didn’t just record the eclipse but allowed for the observation of celestial movement over time. I’m incredibly interested in space, and if I remember correctly, images around this time period were even used to calculate the measure of distance traveled at the time. The ability to document these distant phenomena so early on, deeply impacted humanity’s understanding of space! Henry Rowland’s 1888 photographic map of the solar spectrum is a great example of how extended exposure and manipulation of light-sensitive emulsions provided a detailed glimpse into natural phenomena otherwise invisible to the naked eye. Technology has advanced so far — we now have solar glasses to observe eclipses and photography tools that illustrate greater detail and color!

I find the idea of observing processes over time, especially in space, fascinating—how light influences these processes and how different stages can be documented. The emulsion process and long-exposure photographs, in particular, offer an incredibly unique way to visualize phenomena that lie beyond our natural perception.

 A long-exposure photograph reveals the apparent rotation of the stars around the Earth. (Photograph ©1992 Philip Greenspun.) Link: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/OrbitsHistory

 

Near the beginning of the reading Wilder writes that soon after the advent of practical photography, the medium was seen as an accurate and unbiased way to capture the world. For most intent and purposes this is completely correct. I focused on this line as for one of my current projects, I am working to remove the camera distortion from pictures taken from a webcam so that the true coordinates of items in the picture can be determined. This is one of the important cases where photography does not adequately capture an unbiased view of the world. The bias can be seen, quite literally, near the edges of the captured image. In this case, I am trying to remove this bias, but I could see artistic opportunities that take advantage of such photographic biases. For example, you could take a set of perhaps twenty pictures centered at the same point at levels of magnification m where m = 0.9^n for n in the range 0 to 19. Then splice together the outermost 10% of each image so that each image of higher magnification is nested within the image of lower magnification. This should create a single image with the same level of high barrel distortion present near the edges of a picture throughout the entire image. This would create something interesting (but I’m not quite sure what).

Something interesting or new: I hear about photography from people who do it as an art medium, but really the main argument I hear for photography there is that “the art is in finding the right shot”. Ex. finding the right moment, right view-angle, & composition. I know I’ve seen people assemble collections of photos, to have treated kind of like a dataset, but I’ve never known anyone who was in photography without wanting the photo/aesthetics of it to be a part of the final work. I think it’s interesting the writing gives “images made to be measured, like earthquake tremors or spectrograms” as types of photography. I wonder what also technically counts as photography— especially that I might’ve seen before & neither me nor the person introducing me to it recognized it as photography.

An artistic opportunity, made possible: I think it’s interesting comparing Raman spectroscopy where the photos are discarded, and visual data-sets where the photos are kept. Like, the difference being the level of abstraction from the human eye, and one being unreadable until it’s converted. I’ve seen a lot of art that exists in it’s documentation (was just looking at Gordon Matta-Clark, who’s building pieces are torn down after). I’m trying to think if there’s a type of photography/adjacent that somehow isn’t documentation. It was interesting to hear about the attempts at standardizing photos of Venus in 1874, in how the photographers had to be militarized in performing the documentation.

(Could not tell if these were 2 different prompts in the phrasing!)