The Eye of the Sun and the Eye of God

Abstract

The supposedly intimate relationship between photography and human vision has served as an enduring basis for asserting the medium’s proximity to reality. Yet, a number of first generation theoreticians of photography posited a far more ambiguous connection between the two, not least the prolific critic Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894). By imagining photography as superior to human perception in accessing the comprehensive, serial nature of the reality of phenomena, Holmes implied that vision was in fact more akin to the selective judgment of the painter. It is in the representation of objects moving at rapid speed, and the series of photographs required to capture the entirety of this cycle, that photography’s multiplicity emerges as a most distinct counterpoint to the capacity of human vision. The acts of judgment that comprise perception are, in the writings of Lady Elizabeth Eastlake (1809–1893) and others, important bases for infusing representations of social class into the realm of this human ability. The complex constellation of photography, vision, and artistic taste attests to the deeply contested nature of the medium in its earliest years.