Abstract

This chapter traces the path of skepticism about photographic art through the history of thinking about photography. Flower 009 is a photogram, made by placing plumbago blossoms directly onto a photosensitive surface, then exposing it to light and developing the print. Flower 009 gives a glimpse of the four arts of photography that are to be found by taking a close look at the history of photography and the history of thinking about photography. The early theorists’ skepticism about photographic art provoked a defensive reaction in pictorialist photography. Pictorialism was loudly, unremittingly denounced by the straight photography movement that succeeded it. The pictorialists expanded photography to include painterly touches that allow scope for artistic expression. One response to the early theorists’ dialectic remains, and that is to take up a stance of ambivalence. Ambivalence relegates the dialectic to the background without resolving it.