Photographic Techniques
Approaches that turn light sensitive material and the darkroom itself into the expression, including ways of printing without a camera and of folding time into a single sheet.
Dictionary entry
- Cyanotype 1842– / Technique
Fixes the outline of a light-struck object directly into deep blue, making record and lyric the same image.
- Photomontage 1910s– / Technique
Cuts and rejoins photographic fragments, assembling relations and critical meanings that never existed in the original reality.
- Photogram 1830s– / avant-garde revival / Technique
No camera is involved. Objects laid on the sensitive surface and exposed to light turn contour, transparency and distance into the picture.
- Solarization 19th century– / 1920s revival / Technique
Re-exposes the print mid-development, reversing part of the tonal scale into glowing edges and metallic light.
- Chronophotography 1870s–1890s / Technique
Decomposes movement into successive instants, making the structure of time visible in one or a series of photographs.
- The Decisive Moment 1932- / Technique
A way of shooting that waits for the event and the shape of the frame to coincide, then releases once. Cartier-Bresson set it out in his 1952 book and made using the whole uncropped frame part of the method.
- Daguerreotype 1839–1860s / Technique
The first practical photography, fixing an image directly onto a silvered plate. A one-of-a-kind picture reversed as in a mirror and housed in velvet like jewelry is where the experience of owning an image begins.
- Instant Photography 1948– / Technique
Polaroid made the picture appear on the spot. The white-bordered square, the soft color of chemical development and the fact that only one copy exists became a language of intimacy that outlived digital and carries on in Instax.
- Stereograph 1850s-1930s / Technique
Two views of one scene taken from slightly separated positions, mounted side by side and sent to each eye through a viewer so the scene reads as depth. Placing an object large in the foreground to force that depth was the standard move.