ABSTRACT
All photographic images are also objects. Whether a print, a slide, magazine cover or digital selfie—photographic images always have some sort of physical presence. Talbot's patent did not, however, extend to Scotland, which meant that photographers there, professional and amateur alike, were free to use this paper method. In order to better understand the presumed superior artistic capacity of photography on paper, the people must focus upon the paper's own specific actions and consequences: its impact upon the image-content, its impact upon the viewer, and its impact upon the photograph's object-capacity. It is somewhat incongruous that the standardization of materials represented a victory for detail over ambiguity, but a loss for the material surface that had best produced that detail. In photography, owing to the vast number of material forms possible, those physical components are seemingly endless and extend well beyond the metal versus paper debate put forward in the chapter. .
