Reflecting on critique - Assignment Example

We try to freeze the moment with the help of photography, capture the history that is why photography is something that shows us what happened and will never repeat again. That is why the art of photography as a genre is complicated in terms of time, authenticity, and artistic value. Photographic image is completely different from all the other types of images as it possesses great power and potency. It is capable of telling a story, serving as the evidence of the event or a person and at the same time retrieved from the context it can become a pure visual form.

Traditionally photography served as a means of documentation of social and family life, and as soon as it appeared it became a privilege of certain classes. For a long time any portrait photography remained a luxury, an exclusive thing, a product that emphasized social status first of all and was affordable only to higher classes of society. Miniature or big family portraits adorned bedrooms of those who could afford going to salons to take a picture (Tagg, 1988, 53). In a broader sense documentary photography aimed to depict such events and circumstances that were inaccessible or not easily accessible.

Documentary photography flourished during historically important events initially, such as American Civil War for instance, when whole photography archives were created. That type of photography was based on the principle of objectivity and trustfulness, and photography was and still remains a means of information transfer for a long time. With media empowering photojournalism became a separate type of documentation based on the capacity to demonstrate the information that is unknown or hidden (Stapp, 2007, 691).

Later photography became a pure visual art in which depiction of reality and its documentation has lost its primary significance. Fashion, travelling magazines made artistic photography goods for selling. Photography has turned into a product as people learned how to evoke the