Reading Response #3

1. Identify the article you have selected and why you chose it.

I chose the article “The Art of Instant Gratification” by Stephen Joel Trachtenberg in which he goes through the history of the camera from its modest and mystical beginnings in 1839 all the way through today where photography has become just an ordinary daily activity. I chose this article because I really enjoy photography and find all the different forms of photography from film to Polaroid to digital and its different effects that these styles of photography have.


2. What are the main points of the essay?

Trachtenberg’s main point in his essay is that photography has lost much of the reverence that it once had. When cameras were first produced for personal use, it was still a mystical process that took processing and time and left you with a tangible final product. As photography technology advanced, the process became faster and faster and soon there was the Polaroid camera, which took a picture and developed it all at once. With the digital revolution of photography, the process lost much of its mystic. Many times there are no tangible pictures made from digital pictures and you don’t even have to wait for a Polaroid to develop to see a picture, you just have to push a button immediately after taking the picture. Pictures are also more expendable now that there is no physical representation of them. According to Trachtenberg, digital pictures are too easily deleted.


3. How are the ideas or arguments in this article relevant to your own practice as a media artist?

I found the article very interesting and it made me really want to print all my digital pictures that I have on my computer. For art purposes, I have never liked digital photography as much as film and this article helped to solidify that view. With digital all the challenge of capturing and developing a picture is taken out with technology. It is interesting to learn about early cameras and to see the advancement of the field. Knowing the history opens up new things to experiment with. I really enjoy the challenge of using old or unique cameras such as pinhole cameras, and this article has given me new ideas and cameras to try out such as the Brownie camera from 1900.