Page 2 - Expanded Photography

Expanded Photography Bob Cotton 2/146
Etienne Gaspard Robinson + Paul Philipdor: Phantasmagoria c1800
EXPANDED PHOTOGRAPHY VOLUME 1:1800-1950
This book traces the ‘expansions’ of Photography - the new medium of the Industrial Revolution - the expansions of technique, content, format, and the effect of photography on the other visual media - drawing, painting, optical toys, animation, motion pictures, graphic design, theatrical presentations - and on the social and research sciences, and on much more.... It goes on to de- scribe photography as a central part of the convergence of media towards the 21st century
The transformative promise of photography emerges from the late 18th century experiments of Thomas Wedgwood (printing photograms on leather - but being unable to ‘fix’ the image, which gradually disappeared in daylight), but the desire to somehow capture the illusive mirror-image or pin-hole projection goes back to antiquity (Plato’s Allegory of the Cave) and to the Medieval Cam- era-Obscura. It is not surprising that the scientific method allied to the entrepreneurial experimenta- tion that characterises the first Industrial Revolution should begin to resolve this issue during this period. There is a kind of resolution or materialisation of ‘magic’ embodied in this activity - of the sciences of optics and chemistry wrenching the secrets of magic from antiquity - that punctuates the invention of modern media in the 19th century - the invention of photography, the Pepper’s Ghost projections, the action-at-a-distance of the electric telegraph and the telephone, the magic immersion of the movies... As early as 1801-1802 theatrical Phantasmagoria ‘performances’ by en- trepreneur showmen like Etienne Gaspard Robinson and Paul Philipdor were based upon using ‘magic’ techniques. This book covers the range of art-forms and content mediators stemming from photography 1800-1950. My coming ebook ‘Expanded Arts and the MediaPlex’ continues this story of 21st century converged media.