Perspective can alter the perception and the view-
ers’ experience of what is possible within the
terms of photographic space and vision. In res-
ponse to social, cultural, and political points of
view, it can alter the intellectual interpretation of
the image. Understanding perspective is critical
to understanding how to master the expressive
control of photographic technique and the com-
munication of ideas through photography.
LaneBardenSeeAlso:Bauhaus; Camera: An Overview; Lens;
Modernism; Moholy-Nagy, La ́szlo ́; Perspective;
Pfahl, John
Further Reading
Adams, Ansel.The Camera. Boston: New York Graphics
Society, 1991.
London, Barbara and John Upton.Photography. 6th ed.
Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Educational Publisher,
1998.
London, Barbara and Jim Stone.A Short Course in Photo-
graphy: An Introduction to Black-And-White Photo-
graphic Technique. 4th ed. New Jersey: Prentice Hall,
2001.
Stroebel, Leslie.View Camera Technique. Boston: Focal
Press, 1993.IMAGE THEORY: IDEOLOGY
Since its establishment as both a practical and fine-
arts application, an ideology about photography’s
nature has been developed that contains varying
sets of dictums describing what should be consid-
ered legitimate or even ideal in photography, as an
art and as a craft. This set of assumptions has
alternately bound and freed photographers to cre-
ate images for societal consumption. The consump-
tion of the images is itself within another set of
assumptions, with political considerations looming
large, as a medium so widespread and having such
a clear impact on society cannot fail to have deep
political implications.
The phrase that served as the title of William
Henry Fox Talbot’s pioneering 1844 book The
Pencil of Natureremains at the center of all ideo-
logical discussions about photography. From the
idea of photography being a means by which the
existing world is faithfully depicted two main ques-
tions arise. The first question asks if photography
is an objective medium; the second question deals
with photography’s status as a means of artistic
expression. These questions both arise, however,
from the chemical, optical, mechanical nature of
photography which seems, in a commonsense view
of things, to endow the medium with a ‘‘natural’’ or
‘‘automatic’’ (objective) manner of reproduction.
Photography’s early success owes much to the
needs of nineteenth century society of such a pro-
cess. Even if the ‘‘natural’’ and ‘‘automatic’’ part of
photography worked against its successful recogni-
tion as an art form, photography was able to pro-
duce the kind of images western artists, using
devices such as the camera obscura, had been
searching for since the fourteenth century. The
scientific or natural part of the photographic pro-
cess was seen as a way to escape human subjectiv-
ity, a very desirable idea in the nineteenth century
as astonishing strides in the sciences were made.
As the camera was developed and refined in the
late nineteenth century, especially with lenses mod-
eled on the human eye, the camera and the eye were
seen as functioning very much in the same way. The
resulting ideology was that photography was per-
ceived as tantamount to human vision, that is,
human vision ‘‘frozen’’ in time and neutral in its
capturing of the image. In this sense photography
could be considered a universal language, an idea
that can be found in many nineteenth and early
twentieth century texts on the subject.
Yet defining photography as at base neutral and
‘‘scientific’’ did not resolve whether or not it could
be considered art; in fact, paradoxically, its very
‘‘objective’’ nature allowed some artists to theorize
that by hand-manipulating these optical, chemical,
mechanical processes, true artistry could arise, a
viewpoint at the base of the Pictorialist movement
of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.IMAGE THEORY: IDEOLOGY