The Art of Photography From Its Inception to the Present Day

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Photography the Art of life
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Form the ancient world, photography has been the mode of communication where the photographer speaks out his/her mind in the images taken or drawn. Also, the images says a lot about the person, what she/he is, and one can easily tell who are by a mere look at your photo. They also help in giving information about certain events, places, and directions, therefore our life rotates around photography. Since its invention in 1800, a lot of advancement has been reached from the monochrome, to color photography and the digital ones. Looking at the works of Barbara Kruger and Duane Michals a lot can be understood about photography.
Both their works gives a clear example of mixed media since they include public art, where they create lines of text, sometimes on a large scale to encourage discussions and thoughts through different issues like mass communication, where there works incorporates both image and text (Hirsch, 2012 ). This gives a clear example, on how images on the television appear alongside with words, which gives the detailed meaning of the photograph, and explain the image itself. However, Barbara work is too feminist, she puts much emphasis on the women, and most of her photos can be seen as pornography and not fit for public viewing in the contemporary world.

Looking at Duane Michals work, the early tradition of photography is manifested through his images especially in his small, black and white photos. Also, the explorations of his own morality/mortality is interwoven with and universal themes. In his photo of the fall angel, he explains how wrong doing can cause harm and leading to temptations. Therefore, this images leaves a sense of morality in the minds of the viewer’s seeing him as an upright man, however, his themes on the gay gives a worrying thought even if he did not support them.
The social influences evident in the works of Barbara Kruger can be seen from her photos where she greatly concentrated on the construction and perpetuation of cultural myth and stereotype through visual images and mass media. This images were used in the creative manner to dispel the negative thinking about the female, where women were said that they cannot make good photographers. Also, on the political aspect of life, Kruger in her image and your body is the battle ground gives her detailed view about politics.Also, Duane Michals works, looks at the cultural aspect on how the things are going to turn on, though he has not involved in gay rights, his photographs has addressed gay themes .
With the growth of technology, photography has taken another dimension in terms of digital revolution; which has caused a lot of effects to the photography through manipulation of images. When films are over-or under developed to compensate for exposure issues during developing, and printing may be dodged or burned in various chemicals with different papers. This techniques did not create possibility of leading or misleading through photography (Meyer, 2007). Photographs have for long been used to illustrate preconception, the digital migration has disrupted the familiar practice of image production leading into reinforcement of images.
Finally, photography was and still is one of the most used in communication especially in the media industry. Since the old days where the images were used to communicate, today with the introduction of digital migration, photography has advanced where images used today can be edited and manipulated to bring out the required picture, for example in the televisions, magazines and newspapers. However this is seen as a move to fight to the grave the earlier works of photography.

References
Hirsch, M. (2012). The Generation of post memory: Writing and visual culture after the Holocaust. New York: Columbia University Press
Meyer, E. T., & Indiana University, Bloomington. (2007). Socio-technical perspectives on digital photography: Scientific digital photography use by marine mammal researchers. (Dissertation Abstracts International, 68-10.) Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University.