Rendered visible. A photographic document

Abstract

Since photography was invented in 1839, it has been used to record, narrate, and convey specific ways to understand the world and its fleeting moments. Whilst the camera has changed from the earliest cumbersome complex instruments, its function largely remains the same. Even since relatively early on, following improved processing and printing methodology, it is known that an image could be manipulated to suit purpose. But largely speaking, since the photograph was first used to bring images to the masses via newspapers and other printed media, it had the reputation of bringing true accounts, reports and records of what had been experienced. It was clearly understood the responsibility the reporting from any journalist, scientist, researcher carried with it, however inevitably biased the result could be. To be discredited if an image was found to have been manipulated to support a story, finding, or research, could have been disastrous for any of the above. The eye of the photographer was then considered as a view point that was human in its individuality as much as in its capacity to convey a shared symbolic universe.