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Chapter 14 - Cameras

from Part II - Developments

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 November 2023

Adam Hammond
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Summary

This chapter takes up the literary reverberations of two types of photography – still and moving – in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The invention and popularization of still photography in the nineteenth century posed a challenge to all existing forms of representation, visual or otherwise: Whereas earlier forms offered necessarily imperfect, inexact, and approximate renderings of depicted subjects, the detached “camera eye” promised total transparency, accuracy, and objectivity. With the invention of silent film and, later, talkies, the camera extended its dominion of objective representation into further dimensions and modalities. Carver reads work by William Empson, William James, W. H. Auden and others to argue that cameras served “not only to make the visible world familiar, as early inventors hoped they might do, but also to make it strange.”

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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  • Cameras
  • Edited by Adam Hammond, University of Toronto
  • Book: Technology and Literature
  • Online publication: 30 November 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108560740.017
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  • Cameras
  • Edited by Adam Hammond, University of Toronto
  • Book: Technology and Literature
  • Online publication: 30 November 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108560740.017
Available formats
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Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Cameras
  • Edited by Adam Hammond, University of Toronto
  • Book: Technology and Literature
  • Online publication: 30 November 2023
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108560740.017
Available formats
×