Page 343 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| Paparazz and Photograph c Eth cs

and the editors and news managers who decide what is welcome and culturally
edifying, and what is outside the bounds of often nebulous ethical practices.
Such practices are constantly in flux as ratings pressures and new media, blog-
gers, and the public challenge the constraints of traditional gatekeepers and
expand the universe of image circulation.

a hisTory oF ThE PhoTograPh

Since its invention in the mid 1800s with the first daguerreotype, photog-
raphy has been appropriated for different scientific, cultural, artistic, and legal
uses. In the age of enlightenment and progress, the photograph was seen as
an essential technical tool, one able to probe the world and create represen-
tations more revealing than what the human eye could see. The camera lens
was considered more accurate than the human lens. A series of images dem-
onstrated how horses actually ran and forever changed their depictions in
painting. Colonial photographers circled the globe and used the camera to
capture and quantify other peoples and cultures, often as objectified speci-
mens for scientific data. And early psychologists catalogued everything from
human emotions to abnormalities through photographs, often of the disabled.
The photographic process ultimately advanced to the point where it could
record what humans could not see, everything from x-rays to microscopic
photography.
At the same time portraits, once only the domain of the wealthy that could
afford paintings, became accessible to a more general public through early travel-
ing photography studios. In addition, artists used the camera to create beautiful
images in painterly traditions, many of which became significant cultural trea-
sures. With the advent of mass media in the twentieth century, films, newspapers,
and magazines became dominant visual media. These developments were not
without controversy, especially the introduction of first graphics, then pictures
into the pages of the press, which were often sensational images that boosted the
sale of newspapers. When television added sound and movement to imagery, it
brought visual story telling into American living rooms. By the 1950s, television
became the dominant mass medium, utilizing as never before, first film cam-
eras then video technologies for visual forms of entertainment, sales, and news.
Yet the still photograph and the photomontage remained essential components
of the mass media and with digital technology they have moved easily into new
media formats, including the Internet. These new technologies allow images to
circulate the globe with an immediacy that makes any event or crisis known to
the world, especially through the most dramatic visual representations.

PaParazzi anD CELEBriTiEs
One of the most popular and contested terrains of entertainment practice
and sensationalized nonfiction culture is celebrity reporting, and the candid
photograph frequently leads the prize story. Those considered the most valuable
are images often captured by daring and intrusive photographers willing to do