ABSTRACT
L IKE any other visual art, photography is a dynamic practice which is subject tochange and innovation over time. A quick review of any field of photographywill reveal how the photographic image in advertising, fashion, journalism and even the family album has undergone dramatic stylistic and contextual changes over the past 30 years. While some of these changes may be due to technical innovation, most innovations in approach have been determined by the dynamics of photography operating in a changing society. Both factors interact to contribute to cultural change. The relationship between systems of representation and the culture in which they operate is rarely a matter of passive reflection. In this context, photography has provided new visions which have enabled, for better or worse, the transitions from the nineteenth to the late twentieth century. Science and technology, as well as culture in general, demand representational systems to promote and facilitate change. As an example, writing on the role of the visual arts in the broader context of the technical and social change that took place during the Renaissance, Samuel Edgerton predicts that: ‘Scientists and historians of the future…will study the visual arts not as mere passive reflectors of great ideas, but as active promulgators of those ideas’ (Edgerton, 1980:211).
