How Photography Began in Academic World

Photography is the production of visible images by the action of light. Millions of photographs are taken each year,the purpose of getting souvenirs of family and friends, and places of interest. Because they result from the desire simply to obtain a recognizable image, informal pictures usually involve only the most casual concern with technique and require only simple equipment.

Photography is divided into three major sections: Techniques of Photography covers the taking of photographs and darkroom processing; The Art of Photography describes the
historical development of photography; and Technology of Photography explains how photographic materials and processes work. The term photography, from Greek words meaning "to draw with light," is used in this article primarily to refer to image-making processes that are based on photochemical reactions such as those that take place in the making of conventional prints and slides.

Several other image-making processes rely primarily on electronic, electrostatic, or other nonchemical responses to light. These processes, including television, xerography, and thermoplastic recording.

Most other photographs fall into two broad groups: illustrative, reportive, and artistic photographs, on the one hand; and scientific and technical photographs, on the other. The first group consists mainly of editorial and advertising illustrations for newspapers, magazines, and books. Artistic photographs, however, are often acquired by individual collectors and art museums, like other works of art. For all these photographs the choice of equipment is based on the qualities desired in the final image, the degree of mobility needed by the photographer, and the photographer's personal preferences. Similarly, photographic techniques are selected for their contribution to the expressiveness of the picture.

Photographs of the second group, intended to provide accurate scientific or technical records of their subjects, often demand the greatest degree of control over all aspects of the photographic situation. They may require equipment of sophisticated design, materials of the highest quality, and techniques of great precision.

The Status of Photography

Since about 1970, photography has attained an unprecedented academic status. The technical instruction and private workshops of the past have in part given way to university courses in both the practice and the study (history, aesthetics) of photography. Photography as a serious art and as a proper subject in art history has been academically legitimized.

The first museum devoted solely to photography was the American Museum of Photography, founded in 1940 in Philadelphia; it closed in 1966. The International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, N. Y., opened in 1948 and is an active museum of photography, photographic equipment, and cinema. The International Center of Photography, New York City, opened in 1974 and continues to exhibit serious photographs. Many general art museums have collected and exhibited photography, notably the Museum of Modern Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the San Francisco Museum of Art, and the Chicago Art Institutethe National Gallery Washington, D. C.

This increase of academic and public interest has been paralleled by a rise in the value of art photography. A Julia Margaret Cameron portrait, for example, increased a hundredfold in value within a few years. This growth has spawned an increase in auctions of photographs as well as in sales galleries devoted to photography. Galleries like the Lee Witkin Gallery in New York City, Graphics International in Washington, D. C., and The Photo Album and the G. Ray Hawkins Gallery in Los Angeles are constantly discovering and presenting new and vintage photography to public and private collectors.