Photography: Artist Penny and Machine

Through investigation of strategically-chosen terms from the history and theory of photography this paper argues that while photography is traditionally understood as having unsettled definitions of vision it has also, more importantly, put pressure on beliefs and dogmas that pert ain to cognition, intentionality and creativity. To that end, the Universal Turing Machine as a conceptual model for photography prompts us to interrogate not images but instead, changing structures of relationship between components that comprise an imaging process. For photography, these are electromagnetic, optical, mechanical, chemical elements and procedures. Only an understanding of these as algorithmic can properly characterize photography as a novel artistic form. Further, this conceptual model of photography integrates the philosophy of photography into a richer philosophical framework, most notably that of media philosophy. Therein photography becomes more than just the contemporary sum of its capturing devices, imprinting processes or depiction traditions. Rather it is archetypical of multiple systems of abstraction and classification and various other symbolic processes of transformation.