ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the nature of the products, processes and practices of photography. Photographic images appear to show the world as it is, in some kind of mimetic process offering a mirror-like reflection of objective reality. There is a cultural consensus that modernity relies strongly upon vision; its truths depend upon seeing. Contemporary life is richly permeated with visual imagery. It has been argued that the development of photographic technologies in the early nineteenth century offered a more accurate way of representing the world than previous artistic technologies and that a positivist scientific ethos came to claim the photograph for its own. The composition of a photograph may be the most important influence on what the image comes to mean. The image itself may be described, interpreted, evaluated and theorized. It has long been recognized that along with other pictorial images photographs carry multiple meanings and are therefore subject to matters of politics as well as aesthetics.
