Oldal 18 [18]
16
Dagnostaw Demski in cooperation with A. Kassabova, I. Sz. Kristöf, L.Laineste and K. Baraniecka-Olszewska
about how everyday life was influenced by transmission in media and, moreover,
by developed and multiplied ways of creating and shaping those transmissions. As
Mirzoeff (2016: 10) suggested, the starting point of a message is in fact not a tech¬
nological phenomenon but the link between social practices using new technolo¬
gies with changes in the social and cultural world.
Photography and Photographic Effect
“Photography is a first new medium which introduces passage from meaning to
senses” (Kemp 2014: 19); its perception seems to be more sensual and direct. All
discussed media—photography, cinema, film, and television—end with represen¬
tation of impersonal processes, which often are a way of describing reality. They
all have one and the same goal: to embrace the world not only in words but in im¬
ages and words and, thus, offer a chance to touch what was happening and what
is reported now. The image makes it possible to “see” the world in the meaning
suggested by Nicholas Mirzoeff (2016); that is, images give ways of understanding
the world, and the images themselves are an integral part of reality and, even, one
of its main components.
The history of photography is long and has expanded in different directions,
turns and switches. It is difficult to generalize since both the presentations and in¬
terpretations of approaches to photography—for example, reporting from the early
1920s in daily newspapers, and in utilitarian and artistic photography—were of
great variety and complexity. However, as Kemp writes after WWII, photography
was already treated as a particular language (Kemp 2014: 95).
To compare with other new media, note that the photography in the time of
WWIT was doomed to reality; its primary objective of communication was to cap¬
ture a “piece of reality”, to crop the right frame, to register a fleeting moment most
characteristic to the particular time and situation. As Mirzoeff noted, photography
is determined by the time during which the light-sensitive medium—film or later
digital sensor—is exposed to light. And as soon as the shutter closes, the moment
becomes past tense (Mirzoeff 2016: 38). Examples of such moments we see in
the chapters of Demski; Libera & Sztandara; Vaseva; Czarnecka; Lorke; Seljamaa;
Baraniecka-Olszewska.
Kemp says that the year 1972, in which the fallen American magazine Life,
was a new opening in the history of photography (2014: 118). Until this period,
photography was recognized as a cultural resource. The accuracy of the description
of the event depended on the choice of a set of concepts that were transforming
events into facts of a particular kind. After that, photography became more like an
object of art. It was not treated as mostly an information container.
Our strong belief is also that photography is much more than information;
however, we propose that Steichen’s words—that “the task of the photographer
is to explain to people who the human being is and to assist him or her in self¬
knowledge” (quoted by Kemp 2014: 117)—can be, however, equally well applied