Photography Vocabulary

Photography

Literally means “writing with light” and is the process of recording an image on light-sensitive film or via digital magnetic memory

Camera Obscura

literally means “dark room” in latin, box-shaped devised used as a drawing aid. It lets light in through a small opening on one side and projects a reversed and inverted image on the opposite side.

Daguerreotype

popular and affordable process that produced a sharp and detailed image on a highly polished silver plate

Talbotype/Calotype

early photographic process produced negative, which allowed for multiple copies of the image to be made

Cyanotype

photographic printing process that produces a cyan-blue print and was historically used by engineers to produce blueprints

Wet Plate Collodion

this process created sharp detailed negatives on clear glass instead of paper, it required a mobile darkroom

Tintype

AKA melainotype or ferrotype, it was a cheap process made on a thin blackened iron plate coated with black enamel, highly common during the American Civil War

Kodachrome

Produced in 1936 and was the first color film, produced a positive image and was commonly viewed as slides

Vernacular Photography

Everyday photographs taken of and for the enjoyment of oneself, friends, and family, rather than for museum exhibition

Carte de Visite

“visiting cards” were small paper portrait prints pasted onto cardboard mounts that people gave away, collected, and placed in albums during the 1850s-1870s

Stereograph

Double pictures that produce a 3D effect when viewed through a binocular viewer known as a stereoscope

Mega-Influencer

> 1 million followers

Macro-Influencer

40,000 - 1 million followers

Micro-Influencer

1,000-40,000 followers

Nano-Influencer

< 1,000 followers

Ephemeral

lasting a very short time

Gaze

refers to the “pleasure in looking” and represents the power dynamic and perspective between the observer and the observed

Panopticon

philosopher Michel Foucault described this as a mechanism of power, a model building that induces a state of conscious and permanent visibility in subjects, causing them to police their own behavior

Male Gaze

visual power dynamic where men are the dominant observers doing the looking and women are the passive subjects being objectified

Female Gaze

perspective where the women depict the world and themselves from their own point of view

Oppositional Gaze

rebellious desire by black individuals and people of color to demand accurate representation and actively push back against a media system that denied them the right to look

Imperial/Colonizers Gaze

represents how white Western photographers historically used the camera as a tool of empire to capture colonized peoples as the exotic “other,” establishing a dynamic of control and ownership

Phrenology

popular 19th-century pseudo-science focused on studying the shape and size of the human cranium

Physiognomy

pseudo-science based on the belief that a person’s internal character or personality could be assessed through the classification of their facial features

Eugenics

the study of how to arrange human reproduction to increase the occurrence of desirable heritable characteristics, term coined by Francis Galton

Anthropometry

scientific system that defined the physical measures of a person’s size, form, and functional capabilities to catalog and track them

Shirley Card

color reference cards used to perform skin-color balance in photography printing

Coded Gaze

coined by Joy Byolamwini, describes the embedded views and algorithmic biases propagated by those who have the power to code tech systems

Censorship

the suppression of speech, public communication, or other information, typically because the material is considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, or inconvenient

Momento Mori

latin for “remember you must die”

New Topographics

Coined in 1975, describes movement of American photographers whose images shared a formal, banal aesthetic that focused mainly on urban landscapes and manmade environments

Citizen Journalism

collection, dissemination, and analysis of news and information by the general public, mainly using the internet and social media platforms

Commodity Culture

the idea that a capitalist society requires a culture based on images, leading to the unlimited production and consumption of images

Simulacrum

coined by Jean Baudrillard, this is a copy for which there is no original, eventually becoming truth in its own right (hogwarts & disneyland)

Hyperreality

form of representation in which mediated images appear more real than reality itself

Meme

forms of internet communication that emphasize the process of meaning-making through hypersignification (highlighting the constructed nature of reality) often taking the form of reaction photoshop, photo fads, or stock character photos

Appropriation

to appropriate the object being photographed by establishing visual knowledge and a power relationship over the subject

Conceptual Art

key component to the postmodernist movement, the idea, art, meaning, or purpose behind the creation of the work is considered much more important than the physical art object itself

The Decisive Moment

capturing a highly specific historical or solemn moment in time

Scopophilia

the erotic pleasure gained from looking at another person or at images of their body

Extimacy

an opposition to intimacy, refers to a state of hypervisibility and community where public sharing is the primary principle

Computational Photography

process that uses software algorithms to alter or enhance photographic images, extending beyond what standard camera hardware can accomplish on its own

Deepfakes

AI-generated or heavily manipulated images to create a state of hyperreality where audiences can no longer distinguish the truth from falsehood

Physiognotrace

instrument invented in france in the 1780s designed to trace a person’s silhouette, serving as an early precursor to photography

Semiotics

study of signs

Symbol

sign where the relationship between the signifier and the signified is purely conventional and culturally specific

Icon

a sign where the signifier visually resembles the signified

example: drawing of a subject

Index

a sign where the signifier is directly caused by the signified

example: smoke is an index of fire

Denotation

refers to the most basic or literal objective meaning of a sign or image

Connotation

refers to the secondary subjective or cultural meanings assigned to a sign or image

Pictorialism (late 19th to early 20th century)

photographers tried to make their images look like paintings

Modernism or Straight Photography (1900-1950)

rejecting the desire to mimic paintings, sharp and in focused

Postmodernism (1960s-Present)

all about breaking the traditional rules of photography and rejecting authority or hierarchy, more focused on the meaning behind the image than the actual photograph