Reflection on chapter 5: Visual Technologies, Image Reproduction, and the Copy

The last chapter in Practices of Looking that the class read was all about technologies and reproduction. A quote right from the beginning of the chapter summarizes it well: "Our discussion spans from the early nineteenth century through the early twenty-first century, considering photography, cinema, television, and digital image techniques. We discuss visual technologies from the mechanical to the digital and the impact of reproducibility on the social meanings and value of images" (183). A lengthy quote, yes, but I appreciate the clarity of the thesis on such a "dis clear" subject. The chapter is divided into seven sections: Visual Technologies, Motion and Sequence, Image Reproduction: The Copy, Walter Benjamin and the Mechanical Reproduction, The Politics of Reproducibility, Copies Ownership and Copyright, and Reproduction and the Digital Image.

In the first section, the author went into great detail about the changes that the photographic camera brought to the world. The text then questions the moment that photography shifted from the individual to the social, "Photography emerged as a popular medium not simply because it was invented, but because it fulfilled particular social demands of the early nineteenth century" (184).

Motion and Sequence, the next section, talked about sequential photography in the 1800's. I find it interesting that there was an increased interest in visualizing movement - something everyone in society today take for granted. With many scientific studies on movement, it is obvious to see that this research foreshadowed cinema (which this section also covers). The one point that I find most interesting about early cinema, is that it was designed for only one very at a time (not a whole theater full!) That along can change the whole way an image is viewed.

Following that history lesson of visual technologies, the chapter talks about the copy, first as a highly revered art form in Egypt, and then once again in the subject of photography. A main point dealing with "the copy" is the factor of value. "When works are produced in a series, reproducibility is often understood within a system of limited works" (190) An example that always pops into my head is prints; my mother loves collection art, and as a child I would always go to art fairs and bizarres with her, and I remember her saying (as she was flipping through a stack of prints) always look for the lowest number, and I was always confused, because to me they all looked exactly the same. Walter Benjamin, a German critic, was highly interested in the ideal of the copy and wrote an essay "about the cultural shift to reproducible forms in art" (195).