An Aesthetic History

Broadly speaking, aesthetics can be defined as critical reflection on art, culture, and nature.

The thing about histories, especially for such subjective topics as art, is they are not true. People, especially artists, do not wake up one day with a master plan for the rest of their lives and then faithfully execute it until the moment they either retire or die. Rather, they start projects, finish some, shelve others, and change their minds often. Photographers contradict themselves a lot and are often capable of complete about-turns with regard to artistic philosophy and aesthetics. These changes of heart don’t happen as a Hollywood movie would have us think—there is usually no grand moment with a date and time stamp—but rather it is a process that often involves two steps forward, one back, and three sideways. What I present here is not the complete aesthetic history of photography, but rather a history comprised of the elements that resonate with me.

Up until around 1890, nothing much of interest happened regarding photography aesthetics. It was all about the mechanics and simply recording what was in front of the camera. The photographers of the day presumably worked hard to get a satisfactory composition in terms of balance, but the priority was the recording itself, the capturing of the likeness of the people, the scene, or whatever else was in front of them.