Mechanical reproduction

Some time in the 1980s The Guardian ran an April fool’s article on the ‘first’ photograph. Shown on the front page this was deemed to have been taken in the 1790s by a monk in Japan. It was a joke, they did it to prove a point, when people think of a photograph they assume its a window into the past. they don't think of this when they think of paintings, its a very interesting idea. i think that if somebody was to show me a photograph from the 70's , for instance, i would probably believe what i was seeing as the reality of the time. if somebody was to show a photo today, with all of the photo editing software available to just about everyone these days then i think i would be much more sceptical.

The first authentic photograph is the fixing of a camera obscura image. The means of fixing an image is all that distinguishes a photograph from a projected image. is the camera a faithful representation of what the eye sees? no its not, in my opinion, it is a still image of something that, when the eye saw it was a moving, breathing, living landscape. a photograph cant show you truly how momentous a mountain is. it can show you a scale, even place a person next to it but it cant replicate the sense of scale you would get if you were stood there.

The difference between photographs and paintings is more than a matter of their resemblance to things or even their resemblance to each other. Often a painting is said to be 'photographic' when it is realistic. Yet we know that photographs may not appear to be realistic. To understand the significance of the photograph to the modern age we need to remember that it is a special kind of indexical sign - that it bears the imprint of its subject as light. This being so we can say that the photograph has something in common with other indexical signs such as a footprint in the sand. In this sense the photograph is the equivalent of the cast - and casting, in the tradition of sculpture, was understood as a form of mechanical reproduction.

• conventional signs/ image - letters, punctuation, words etc
• iconic signs/ image - pictures

indexical signs - indicate something: shadow indexical of a man, smoke is indexical of fire, footprint indexical that a foot has been there. 

indexical signs are evidence of presence

simulacrum is a copy without an original.