Photography

1. Photographer and art critic Andre Bazin argues the importance of his art: “Besides, painting is, after all, an inferior way of making likeness, an ersatz of the process of reproduction” (360). In what ways did the introduction of photography simplify the psychoanalysis of the creative process of art?
Photography removed artists’ negotiation between symbolism and realism. It also removed the artists’ creative interpretation; the model is the process and the product.

2. In the second paragraph of “Photography,” Kracauer writes of the photograph, “Since photographs are likenesses, this one must have been a likeness as well” (365). This statement caught my attention because of the author’s choice of wording: must have been” (365). I wondered how much we as viewers can take for granted the credibility of photographs. Especially today with Photoshop and other editing programs, any image can be recreated or edited. Without another present eyewitness (besides the photographer), how do we know the photograph captured an actual event? In that case, are paintings still the most accurate form of creative reproduction?