One way of looking at it (i.e. "The Photograph")
Pasar Kedai Payang, originally uploaded by Fadzly Mubin.
Taken with a Nikon D50 and Nikon 70-300mm f/4-5.6G lens
A photograph is a picture made by photography. The term "photography" is not a reference to an idea or a picture making style. It is the invented name for a particular process. Sir John Herschel gave the world the word "Photography" out of thin air in front of the Royal Society at Somerset House, London, on the 14th of March, 1839. The key phrase is recorded in the minutes and it goes "Photography or the application of the chemical rays of light to the purpose of pictorial representation...".
That is where the matter lay for the next 170 or so years. All the works of Talbot, Weston, Adams, Cartier-Bresson, and millions of other sat neatly, certainly, and unambiguously within that understanding.
Now, of course, highly detailed pictures can be generated by painting machines (inkjet), or laser writers (Lambda) controlled by electronic files. These files may be derived, a lot or a little, from the digitisation of a lens image. Vulgar usage appends the term "photography " to this work even though it is a very different thing, technically and philosophically, from original photography.
In ordinary speech folks use the word "photography" to mean what it means now: any process that makes realistic looking pictures. That's not what "Photography" was invented to mean and therein lies the problem.
Now when I want to refer to pictures made solely by "the chemical rays of light" (for aesthetic or historical discourse, say) I can no longer 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. It is tedious to have to specify the means every time; "chemical rays of light for the purpose of pictorial representation". And it is tedious to have to listen to that mantra every time as well.
In language usage always wins over definition but occasionally the users themselves lose when they are unable to say clearly and think clearly what they could before.
Labels: AF Zoom-Nikkor 70-300mm f/4-5.6G, Animal, Nikon D50, Philosophy of Photography, Photography
