Photography: Between Discipline and Indiscipline

An unruly medium that has denied any easy categorisation, photography bridges the apparent gap between the arts and the sciences, either by accepting both into dialogue or denying the correlation between the two. Early on, photography was seen as uncomplicatedly both art and science, then merely science, then asserted as art (sometimes), then seen increasingly as a compromise or dialogue between two or more worlds. It is exactly this dialogue that has moved the medium fruitfully onwards. But it is not only the medium that has moved. Just as photography purportedly saw the world around us in much the same way we saw it, it has shifted as human perception about it has shifted. Photography took up important roles in the art world while retaining every ounce of its applications to science. This chapter walks photography through decades of self investigation to show how it became relevant to art and stayed that way.