March 2013 – The camera has often been described as a sort of mechanical extension of the artist’s body. Or, as critic Paul Rosenfeld once described it, “a machine in perfect obedience to the human spirit.”[1] Sharing this sentiment in 1902, the legendary photographer Alfred Stieglitz formed a movement he called Photo-Secession, which reevaluated photography not by the subject, but by how the individual artist manipulated the image according to his/her subjective visions. These were early steps in the progression that defined photography as an essential link between art, invention, and the human psyche. Throughout the 20th century, and into the 21st, photography has experienced steady and relatively rapid growth as a serious art form. Because of its late recognition as an art form, as compared to painting or sculpture, and its wide accessibility as a mechanical, and nowadays digital, process, some may prescribe photography as a ‘safer’ art, both in terms of production and interpretation. But photography, by its very nature, has occurred completely out of artists’ ingenious and technical sensibilities, and as such, is the only art form that is completely open to a vast range of experimentation. full story
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