Life and Nature in Photography - Essay Example

Daguerre believed that photography was art that needed to embrace as it showed life and nature as it really was.

            In his early years, Morse like Louis was interested in understanding the workings of nature and whether a naturalistic image could be captured on paper. He was able to successfully produce negative images but did not understand that negative films could be used in making positive photographic prints. Morse improved the Daguerreotype by attaching a mirror in the camera lens, and this rectified the error. Morse like Louis believed that photography “was a teaching tool that could visually educate the public” (Morse 221).

            Charles Baudelaire on the other hand disagreed with Louis's view that photography was an art he was in fact appalled by the definition of fine art as an accurate representation of some external reality. He considered men fools to believe photographs as “mirrors of physical facts” (Baudelaire, 83). He believed that photography was meant for record-keeping and should not be defined as art because it just represented what existed in nature.