Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography [Hardcover]

Geoffrey Batchen (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 25, 1997

In an 1828 letter to his partner, Louis Daguerre wrote, "I am burning with desire to see your experiments from nature." In this book, Geoffrey Batchen analyzes the desire to photograph as it emerged within the philosophical and scientific milieus that preceeded the actual invention of photography. Recent accounts of photography's identity tend to divide between the postmodern view that all identity is determined by context and a formalist effort to define the fundamental characteristics of photography as a medium. Batchen critiques both approaches by way of a detailed discussion of photography's conception in the late-18th and early-19th centuries. In this refiguring of the traditional story of photography's origins, Batchen examines the output of the various nominees for "first photographer," then incorporates this information into a mode of historical criticism informed by the work of Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida. The result is a way of thinking about photography that accords with the medium's conceptual, political, and historical complexity.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If, by 1725, all the chemical and optical necessities for the practice of photography already existed, why wasn't the art form invented until 1839? Geoffrey Batchen, an associate professor of art history and author of Burning with Desire, has an interesting answer: people simply weren't ready for it. Along with a blossoming in literature, philosophy, music, and science, the 18th century was also host to a whole new way of thinking about nature and landscape. The camera obscura, a portable box equipped with a lens or a mirror, was a popular tool that people used to first capture views and then trace them. The ability to reproduce a scene--however imperfectly--whet people's appetites for more exact methods, leading first to what Batchen calls the "proto-photographers," and then sometime later to the invention of Louis Daguerre's daguerrotype and Henry Fox Talbot's photography in the same year.

Batchen's history lesson is filled with eccentric characters and fascinating insights into passions and obsessions of the Age of Enlightenment. The book becomes controversial, however, in Batchen's assertion that the early photographers, rather than trying to capture reality, were, in fact, attempting to decontruct it--long before Jacques Derrida created the theory of deconstruction. Whether or not you end up agreeing with Batchen, Burning with Desire is a unique look at photography's roots, one sure to engender heated discussion among enthusiasts of the art form.

Review

This weirdly ahistorical argument that 19th-century photographers were in fact proto-deconstructionists serves a purpose, it turns out.... Batchen wants to save photography from an untimely death. In the last chapter of his book, titled "Epitaph," he discusses the threat to photography from computerized imagery.... Batchen suggests that the only way to save photography is to believe that real photographs are, like fake ones, nothing more than representations of representations. -- The New York Times Book Review, Sarah Boxer

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Mit Press (July 25, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262024276
• ISBN-13: 978-0262024273
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,380,030 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting and different, to say the least, January 24, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Burning with Desire: The Conception of Photography (Hardcover)

Batchen's book is full of information and introduced me to several potential inventors of photography of whom I was unaware from reading the standard monographs in the field (e.g., Eder, Gernsheim and Gernsheim). This, however, is probably the least important of the book's many themes delivered on so many fronts. The idea that people somehow had to be ready for photography is thought provoking and different, but I still think greater weight should be placed on the conceptual leaps that had to be overcome. It is true that the optics for photography existed as early as 1685; it is equally true that the chemistry or photography was fully developed around 1775-1780. True, people were not rich enough to afford photographs and thus make the medium into a popular success, but there remains the lingering question of putting the chemistry and optics together, and if the book has a flaw, it is that Batchen gives this short shrift - but this material is available in abundance elsewhere. On the whole, for the interested (and already fairly well informed) layperson and specialist in the history of photography, this is excellent, eye opening and, yes, even mind bending reading. Someone wiser (and much funnier) than I said that he disliked arguments because they are always vulgar and often convincing - and much of what Batchen says is convincing. Even if I ultimately disagree with a lot of Batchen's conclusions, at least he has introduced me to some alternatives I did not think of on my own. Beyond this, questions arise regarding the nature of technology, innovation and invention. Ultimately, what is the purpose of technology? What prompts invention? What leads one to make the conceptual leap that links optics with chemistry and yields something as earth shaking as photography? Batchen's book seems as good a place as any when approaching questions such as these, at least on a serious, scholarly level.