Natürliches, Künstliches und Photographisches (Nature, Art and Photography)

The history of photography is characterized by an insistent
determinism to interpret it as a linear process that has its
origins in the ancient world and leads up to the invention of
photography in the 19th century. Comparative historical theory,
however, allows us to gain a foundation which is both more
subtle and meaningful. By examining the particular quality of
botanical illustrations for example, an anlysis of the
relationships between biology, photobiology, photosynthesis and
photography certainly helps to broaden the perspective of the
approach by dealing with photographic and non-photographic
images. Preparing the ground for the photogenic drawing of the
19th. century, natural prints, as already known to us since the
Renaissance, thus turn out to represent a pictorial base of
photography. The development of printing techniques since the
late middle ages also allowed for new forms and kinds of
botanical knowledge. Though as also emphasized by Linneaus
pictures then became more important, nomination remained
dominant: the process did not cause a paradigmatic change in the
relationship between text and image. Current investigations into
scientific photography have dealt with (botanical) nature
photography only very marginally. A thorough analysis of this
field would certainly yield new insights into the relationships
between image and photography and between nature and society,
and an adequate interpretation of the order of both the visible
and the readable. The Spanish photographer Joan Fontcuberta's
work shows a new approach: no longer representing ""nature'' but
""artificiala'', his botanic images succeed in reformulating the
conept of nature photography and thus touch on the ""nature'' of
photography from an epistemological point of view. (magazine
summary).


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Marbot, B.: Sur le chemin de la découverte (<1839)
Eder, J.M.: Geschichte der Photographie (1932)
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Blossfeldt, K.: Urformen der Kunst (1928)
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Fontcuberta, J.: Herbarium (1985)