"In its nearly two-hundred-year history, photography has continuously reinvented itself while being grounded in two earlier discoveries: first, the image projection of the camera obscura; and second, the observation that certain substances are altered by exposure to light. But it's important to remember that photography has never been fully sui generis. Artists working with the photographic medium have often come from other fields: from science, such as William Henry Fox Talbot; from the theater, if you think of Louis Daguerre and his invention of the diorama;"
"JEFF WALL: My own work has always been in dialogue with other static art forms, such as painting. That static quality is ancient. Visual art begins there, and it'll remain important, though maybe not as prominent or eminent as it once was, historically. With regard to the problem of longevity, it's an issue that is primarily significant in relation to a very small fraction of photography-which is itself an almost infinitesimally small part of humanity's social and artistic output."
Photography originates from camera-obscura image projection and the discovery that materials change under light. Practitioners have brought expertise from science, theater, painting, and sculpture. Static visual qualities link photographic practice to older art forms, and that static tradition remains influential. Longevity and conservation are significant primarily for a small subset of photographic works. For decades photography was primarily disseminated via books, making individual print permanence less critical. From the 1970s and 1980s, photography embraced larger formats, color printing, and painterly scale, which elevated the importance of print stability and conservation concerns as photographs came to be valued like painting and sculpture.
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