Introduction

I. Before Photography to Invention: c. 380 B.C.E.-1839

Camera/Vision

1.1 Excerpts from the Allegory of the Cave. In The Republic
Plato, c. 380 B.C.E.

1.2 The Function of the Eye, As Explained by the Camera Obscura
Leonardo Da Vinci, c. 1520

1.3 Description of the Camera Lucida
William H. Wollaston, 1807

Art/History

1.4 Excerpts on Linear Perspective. In On Painting.
Leon Battista Alberti, 1540

1.5 Account of the late Mr. [Robert] Barker
Anonymous, 1806

1.6 Description of the Process of Painting and Effects of Light Invented by Daguerre, and Applied by Him to the Pictures of the Diorama
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, 1839

II. Invention to Pictorialism: 1839-c. 1880

What is Photography?

2.1 Some Account of the Art of Photogenic Drawing
William Henry Fox Talbot, 1839 [March]

2.2 The Pencil of Nature. A New Discovery
Nathaniel Parker Willis and Timothy O. Porter eds., 1839 [April]

2.3 Report [on the Daguerreotype to the Chamber of Deputies]
François Arago, 1839 [July]

Art/History

2.4 Upon Photography in an Artistic View, and in Its Relations to the Arts
Sir William J. Newton, 1853

2.5 La Photographie
Antoine Joseph Wiertz, 1855

2.6 Photography
Eastlake, Lady (Elizabeth) 1857

Camera/Vision

2.7 The Stereoscope and the Stereograph
Oliver Wendell Holmes, 1859

2.8 Combination Printing. In Pictorial Effect in Photography
Henry Peach Robinson, 1869

2.9 Annals of My Glass House
Julia Margaret Cameron, 1874

III. Pictorialism to/and/vs. Modernism: c. 1880-c. 1920

Camera/Vision

3.1 Focussing. In Naturalistic Photography for Students of the Art
Peter Henry Emerson, 1890

3.2 The Death of Naturalistic Photography
Peter Henry Emerson, 1890

3.3 The Hand Camera--Its Present Importance
Alfred Stieglitz, 1896

Interdisciplinary Approaches

3.4 Photo-Chemical Investigations and a New Method of Determination of the Sensitiveness of Photographic Plates
Ferdinand Hurter and Vero C. Driffield, 1890

3.5 Logic as Semiotic: The Theory of Signs
Charles Sanders Peirce, c. 1900

3.6 Intuition and Art. In Æsthetic: As Science of Expression and General Linguistic
Benedetto Croce, 1902

3.7 The Cinematographical Mechanism of Thought and the Mechanistic Illusion...In Creative Evolution
Henri Bergson, 1907

What Should Photographs Look Like?

3.8 On the Straight Print
Robert Demachy, 1907

3.9 What is a "Straight Print"?
Frederick H. Evans, 1907

3.10 Photography and Artistic-Photography
Marius De Zayas, 1913

IV. Modernism to Postmodernism: c. 1920-c. 1960

Camera/Vision

4.1 Photography and the New God
Paul Strand, 1922

4.2 Light: A Medium of Plastic Expression
László Moholy-Nagy, 1923

4.3 Seeing Photographically
Edward Weston, 1943

4.4 The Camera's Glass Eye
Clement Greenberg, 1946

What Should Photographs Look Like?

4.5 Aims
Albert Renger-Patzsch, 1927

4.6 A Personal Credo
Ansel Adams, 1943

4.7 Our Illustrations
Frank R. Fraprie, 1943

4.8 Photography at the Crossroads
Berenice Abbott, 1951

Art /History

4.9 Excerpts from Perspective as Symbolic Form
Erwin Panofsky, 1927

4.10 The Age of the World Picture
Martin Heidegger, 1938/52

4.11 Excerpts from Museum Without Walls
André Malraux, 1947

Interdisciplinary Approaches

4.12 Photography and Typography
Jan Tschichold, 1928