I must admit, I didn’t get too much out of this chapter. He mainly seemed to take a diversion and stat talking more about film, which is still closely connected to photography but is a different subject and the bulk of the chapter was mainly quotes.

But he started by talking about the clash between Photography and Art and how each format can display its own artistic merits. He then goes on to mention:

Much wisdom had already been thrown away on trying to decide whether photography was an art (without asking the prior question: whether, with the invention of photography, the very nature of art had undergone change) (P15)

This question, has art undergone a change with the invention of photography, does need an answer but I feel he hasn’t provided one. But personally I do feel that it has, the paradigm of art in the 19th century did shift and change. Because of photography there was no need to produce visually realistic works, hence the creation of impressionism and then modern art, and the values of art changed. However, it is too simplistic to say that photography bought about this change by itself, there were other social and political events which also had an influence.

History painting had been dominant for about 250 years and was becoming old and stale, so a change was needed. In reaction to this there was a drive for more realism in painting, and as photography could provide faithful reproductions of the visual world, then realism had to emerge from a different direction, which was the need for expression.

But an entire book could be written on this subject, and I’m sure it has, somewhere…