Culture · 6 pages · 12 min
How photography changed what painting was for
Once a camera could keep a likeness, painting lost its monopoly on the visual record.
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From the opening
Photography changed painting's job by taking a large share of the work of making a fixed visual record, especially likenesses and views a patron wanted for accuracy. Painting did not stop, but it was no longer the only ordinary way to preserve an appearance once a camera could do that faster. The opening covers a lost monopoly on likeness, what a painter can still invent, and photographs used as tools.
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Inside
- A lost monopoly on likeness
- What a painter can still invent
- Photographs used as tools
- Not a straight road to abstraction
- Where the idea stops applying
- A distinction worth keeping
Sources
- Early photographic processes and the portrait studio
- Painting's loss of a monopoly on visual record