Why Take Pictures?

Wet Plate Outfit, late 19th Century

Back in the 19th century when photographers had to coat and sensitize their own glass plate negatives and then expose them before the coating dried, photography was a real challenge. The wet-plate process was the main technique in photography for over thirty years, starting about the mid 1850s. Owning a camera was only that, having a recording device in your possession. There was a much longer distance to travel to become a photographer.

First Kodak Camera: Flexible Film, 1888 (Duke)

Eventually innovators like George Eastman were able to manufacture a pre-sensitized "dry plate" that made the field darkroom unnecessary; and finally flexible film became a reality. Eastman's first camera (1888) was pre-loaded with a roll of film. When the owner exposed the 100 frames on the roll, camera and contents were shipped back to Eastman Kodak for processing, printing and reloading. "You push the button, we do the rest" was the motto. It was suddenly possible to be an "amateur" photographer with reasonably satisfactory results. The challenges of hazardous formulary and complex procedures could now be avoided: "Let George do it".

Advertising the simplicity of photography (Duke)

It cannot be denied that George Eastman's aspirations for the average person "capturing home portraiture, flash-light pictures of fireside groups, views of the glittering landscape" have been achieved with greater ease than ever in the first decade of the 21st century. The quality of an image taken even with a portable telephone is respectable and little is left to chance with the sophisticated algorithms of automatic focus and exposure.

But what is the driving force behind the recording device of the camera? Why do we like to "take" pictures? Perhaps the reasons are many; but I do not think they are ever analyzed. We take for granted the desire for a record of something, but the photograph provides a genuine insight of the subject that was not possible before the camera. Prior to its invention if a record of something was wanted, it had to be created by hand; and then only if one had acquired the skills of drawing. Then photography came along in 1839.

Abu Simbel by Maxime du Camp

Maxime du Camp, a man of letters, voyaged up the Nile with author Gustave Flaubert from 1849 to 1852. Du Camp utilized photography because, "I had realized upon my previous travels that I wasted much valuable time trying to draw buildings and scenery I did not care to forget." (Newhall-Italics mine) But more than a catalyst for memory, photographs are actually substitutes for the subjects. Having a photograph of a pyramid is, in a sense, having a replica of the pyramid. A photograph of a loved one is an alternative presence of that person.

Groom, c. 1915, Block Brothers Studio, St. Louis

A. D. Coleman would demonstrate this in a lecture by having the members of the group take a snapshot of a loved one from their wallet or purse–one that could be replaced–and then directed them to tear the image apart. Perhaps unsurprisingly, no one seemed to be able to do it. After all, this is my sweetheart, or my child, or my mother. While we know the picture is not the subject photographed, we imbue the image with the persona of the subject. Conversely, at the end of a relationship, destroying a photograph of a former partner finalizes the demise of the romance and would seem to sever the bond irrevocably.

Portrait of a Dog, c. 1915, Nitrate Negative

A second aspect of a photograph is that it provides a form of proof; proof that something or someone existed; proof that that subject was witnessed. Regardless of how faulty photographs are as a type of evidence (see Ambiguity), they seem to be sufficiently accurate to prove what we wish to believe they depict.



The photograph is a manifesto of a symbiosis: two intertwined components that can be characterized as "possession" and "proof".

Pass Interception, John Wm Nagel, 1958

Think about it. Photographs can range in a whole scale of values to you, from a passing reference to a very dear attachment. But the root value of the image is that you can own the subject in some way; and that it can testify to a surveillance about itself and/or verify your observation.

John & Rosemary, 5/25/1963

It is hard to imagine an image in my possession that does not represent this symbiotic relationship. And the best images I have made or own celebrate this combination of features.