ABSTRACT
Photography would never even have been invented without theories of chemistry, geometry optics, and theories of light. The consequences of all these theories remain within contemporary thoughts about photography, but in different ways. The longstanding Romantic belief in the special ability of human imagination is required to make a modern technology like photography “creative.” The emergence of mass democracy and mass media reproduction of photographs in the 1920s and 1930s were bound up with one another, when photography and cinema emerged as key modern mass media tools. The outbreak of theory, including the theory of photography, coincided with these new movements, in their sense of critical social purpose. Art galleries and photography books are perhaps one notable exception where concentration on specific pictures is more common. Focus is used in photography and film to indicate relevance and importance.
