ABSTRACT
In art, or photography connoisseurship appreciation, the use of history is highly limited. A photographer works with materials within a definite social place and time. Historians of photography and specialists on Talbot in particular argue over whether Talbot was an artist or scientist, a schism that defined the discussions of photography in early debates about its use and value. Photographic images form the base of a vast industry and network of visual representations, along with film, television, and the new media dissemination systems. A specific history is one that deals with, for example, the technological development of photographic techniques as a technical and scientific history of the processes involved in producing photographic images; or a biographical history of the personal lives of those individuals who invented, used, and developed photography. The title A History of Women Photographers, for example, implicitly suggests a critique of the previous history of photography.
