The Engine of Visualization: Thinking Through Photography

In this philosophical text on photography, Patrick Maynard attempts to dispel some of the basic persistent confusions of thought by treating photography as a technology - a way to enhance and filter human power. Once photography is understood as a kind of technology, Maynard suggests, insights about technology may be applied to provide the general perspective on photography which has been missing. Photography extends our human ability to produce images, which are understood as surface markings - here induced by light. Through an approach to photography which he intends as both analytic and consistently sensitive to photo-history, Maynard places photography among modern imaging technologies, such as those familiar in medicine, and addresses some provocative questions. Technologies amplify but they also suppress, he says. What does photography suppress? How should we think about depictive fidelity? What problems do the new digital technologies bring in their wake? What accounts for the persistent ambivalence regarding photographic art? Although Maynard’s particular focus is photography, much of his discussion seeks to illuminate issues concerning other technologies and other kinds of images.