Una oscura cámara, una imagen lúcida. Pensando la fotografía como un dibujo

Abstract

The invention of photography generated an intense process of reflection on its characteristics as an image creation system, without its own references and with new forms of production unknown until then. The absence of a specific terminology meant the use of concepts and principles of other traditional artistic means. In early photographic literature, photography was interpreted as a method of drawing or writing light, under names such as Heliography, Photogenic drawing, Photographic drawing or Sun-drawing. Such terms insisted on their "natural" character (it was "the pencil of nature"), spontaneous and automatic (made without human intervention). This paper proposes to contextualize and critically analyze these ideas, reviewing the literary sources of the time in Europe and the United States (treatises, handbooks, histories, essays), to determine the theoretical and aesthetic structure of photography during the second half of the nineteenth century and the process of building an ontological discourse. From a historical perspective, it can be concluded that the nineteenth century was marked by the tendency to relate photography to other arts and the search for hybrid solutions (Pictorialism). However, the evolution of these ideas allowed photographers to define their own space of action, exhibit their differences and create a photographic artistic status.