Medium Rare. Photography and Media Theory

Abstract

Photography’s definition as a distinctive medium has often been contested, but seems increasingly challenged in foundational terms in the 21st century. This article will explore photography’s rather unsettled relation to media and media theory by drawing on the writings of Vilém Flusser, Friedrich Kittler, and Bernard Stiegler, who have all — albeit in different ways — positioned the emergence of photography in the 19th century as a signal event in the history of media. Photography marks the point at which cultures long organized around ‘writing’ began to cede ground to cultures in which ‘technological images’ play a growing role. In the 21st century it has become increasingly common to ask whether photography remains faithful to its past or has become something else. My approach here is slightly different: what does the historical transformation of photography tell us about how we understand ‘media’ in the present?