Defining photography (Part 2)
DSC_0155, originally uploaded by Fadzly Mubin.
Taken with a Nikon D50 and AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4-5.6G lens
Words change in meaning over the years. No word, just like no art form, is static, existing the way it did over a hundred years ago. That said, it's worth pointing out that Niepce used the word "heliograph," not photograph.
"Vulgar usage". Really? What makes it vulgar? That the photographic community at large accepts the usage. Seriously, this is an attempt to insult and denigrate that has no foundation.
People will use the word "photography" to mean what it now means, with or without appending. Attempting to turn a word into a museum piece doesn't work.
I used vulgar in the sense of common rather than bad. The vulgar tongue is what ordinary people use for ordinary speech in ordinary circumstances.
You are absolutely correct that regular folks use the word "photography" to mean what it means now and therein lies the problem. We had a word which uniquely referred to billions of pictures accumulated over the last 170 years that definitively separated them from all other pictures. The pictures were the ones made via "the chemical rays of light" and the word was "photography".
Now when I want to refer to pictures made solely by "the chemical rays of light" (for aesthetic or historical discourse, say) I can't use "photography" because that word now includes electro-mechanically generated pictures. In effect I've lost a useful word and don't have a effective substitute. As some implied, if I want to use "photography" in its original sense I now have to specify the means; "chemical rays of light for the purpose of pictorial representation".
In language usage always wins over definition but occasionally the users themselves lose when they are unable to say clearly what they could say before.
Labels: AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4-5.6G, Nikon D50, Philosophy of Photography, Photography
