Towards and beyond Photography… the Era of Victorian Photography Photography is a ubiquitous phenomenon. In less than 200 years it has absorbed and adsorbed all other imaging technologies and media. Photography is now, itself, passing through the process of remediation (transformation); even though its phenomenal and functional characteristics are still today little understood. The aim of our intensive short course is to examine its technological, cultural and societal roots: including the specificity of its impact to enable participants to better understand and anticipate the nature of future change.1 The process (which for now we will call Digital Capture) initially appears to encapsulate and contain all photography’s essential characteristics. That is, without the possibility of being able to create any form of system-independent origination. No physical form of lightrecording is created; all is subsumed and contained within the virtual domain. Thorough participation in this course student-participants will closely examine and study historically important negative and positive photographic specimens, the characteristics of which provide markers of the quality and achievements of the early exponents of the art and science of photography. This will, at the end leave everyone (students and teachers) with more questions that answers; it is our responsibility to preserve the past and to make part of the future. We will examine the physicality of 19th and early 20th century images created from calotype, collodion, waxed paper negatives in conjunction with salt paper, albumen and POP prints made during the formative years of photography. As part of the course participants will be taken step-by-step through William Henry Fox Talbot’s salt paper positive print process. Through doing so they will gain insight into the medium of future possibilities contained within the digital domain. Michael Gray and José Pessoa | Lamego | November 2012
1
The organisation and storage of digital imaging technologies necessitates the development of a range of critieria to ensure and maintain tlinks between each and every digitally captured image and its related metadata. Ongoing worldwide discussions and studies show that all forms of physical storage chave critical drawbacks and cannot be relied upon to provide a) safe long-term storage and b) immediate on-line access. For the moment most, if not all responsible museums and archives, have set up, or are in the process of setting up RAID storage systems.