1826 is the date attributed to the very first known photograph, Nicephore Niepce's "View from the Window at Gras." For traditional historians of photography this date marks the moment when the genius of man was finally able to merge the knowledge of chemistry with that of optics to create the most amazing technology of visual representation. However, those same historians recognize that the two essential components of photography---the camera and the properties of silver halides---had been known for centuries before the first photograph was ever taken. / This thesis explores two fundamental questions: Why wasn't photography invented soon after its major technological components were discovered c. 1650? And why was it invented in the early decades of the nineteenth century c. 1830? This gap of some 200 years separating the feasibility of photography from its actualization has remained largely unexplained. / The answers to both questions is found by situating the genealogy of the invention of photography within the development of the Western philosophy of vision. The fact that photography was invented at the junction of the Classical and Modern epistemes offers a unique opportunity to approach the history of photography from the perspective of the history of thought. Hence this thesis takes its inspiration from the work of Michel Foucault and some of his followers---in particular Jonathan Crary and Geoffrey Batchen. The result of this radical shift from the technical to the intellectual environment allows the history of photography to transcend the narrow confines of technology and formal appearances. From a Foucauldian perspective I argue that photography was invented as a response to the epistemic instability experienced during the transition from the Enlightenment to Modernity.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:LACETR/oai:collectionscanada.gc.ca:QMM.83176 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Delmas, Didier |
| Publisher | McGill University |
| Source Sets | Library and Archives Canada ETDs Repository / Centre d'archives des thèses électroniques de Bibliothèque et Archives Canada |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Coverage | Master of Arts (Department of Art History and Communication Studies.) |
| Rights | All items in eScholarship@McGill are protected by copyright with all rights reserved unless otherwise indicated. |
| Relation | alephsysno: 002269031, proquestno: AAIMR22592, Theses scanned by UMI/ProQuest. |
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