On and beyond the white walls

Photography is ubiquitous as a means of visual communication. But the history of photography as art has focused not so much on photographic communication as upon photographs as objects, reified for their aesthetic qualities. Historically, tension between the photograph as document and artistic interpretation has been at the heart of debates as to the status of the photograph as art. Photographs have been exhibited right from the inception of photography. For aesthetic philosophers post-Renaissance art relates to the sensual, the beautiful and the refined; thus, questions of taste are centrally related to expressive practices. Understanding the relationship between photography and painting in the nineteenth century involves a number of interconnected considerations. Photography, first announced in Britain and in France in 1839, was initially heralded for its technical recording abilities. Courbet and Manet were prominent among artists associated with nineteenth-century Realism within which photography was implicated as an aid to painting.