Burning with Desire: The Conception of PhotographyIn an 1828 letter to his partner, Nicéphore Niépce, Louis Daguerre wrote, "I am burning with desire to see your experiments from nature." In this book, Geoffrey Batchen analyzes the desire to photograph as it emerged within the philosophical and scientific milieus that preceded the actual invention of photography. Recent accounts of photography's identity tend to divide between the postmodern view that all identity is determined by context and a formalist effort to define the fundamental characteristics of photography as a medium. Batchen critiques both approaches by way of a detailed discussion of photography's conception in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. He examines the output of the various nominees for "first photographer," then incorporates this information into a mode of historical criticism informed by the work of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. The result is a way of thinking about photography that persuasively accords with the medium's undeniable conceptual, political, and historical complexity. |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
Account aesthetic appear argues artist Calotype camera lucida camera obscura claimed Claude Claude Glass Coleridge conception copy criticism culture Daguerre's daguerreotype Davy Davy's described desire to photograph Diorama discourse discovery early eighteenth engraving Essays example French Gernsheim Gilpin glass Hippolyte Bayard History of Photography Humphry Davy idea of photography Invention of Photography inventor Jacques Derrida John Krauss L. J. M. Daguerre landscape Larry Schaaf light London Louis Daguerre means medium metaphor Michel Foucault mirror modern Morse Museum Newhall Nicéphore Niépce Niépce's nineteenth century NOTES TO PAGES object Origins of Photography painting paper Paris philosophy Photogenic Drawing photogra photographic experiments photographic process Photography New York photography's identity photography's origins pictorial picturesque portrait positive postmodern produced proto-photographers reference representation reproduced Science shadow silver space Szarkowski Tagg theory thing thinking tion trans University Press Victor Burgin Wedgwood words writing