in roh's essay, he traces the development of photography in comparison with other innovative technologies. roh describes how a novel idea is first snatched by the few educated or affluent, then as technology progresses, the product is available at many businesses for the use of the professional, and sooner or later, the product will be cheap enough and simple enough for the masses to use. "the importance to the history of mankind development of instruments such as the camera, lies in obtaining increasingly complex results while handling of hte apparatus becomes more and more simple. " laziness is the key to survive in our world today, and obviously the trend started over a hundred years ago. if a product is easy to use but has an important function, it will be a hit in the market. people don't want to have to work to use their new product, they want to be able to use it right away.
the argument of whether photographt is art seemed to be an everlasting debate at this point in time. roh stands for the side of photography as an art, however, he does not fail to mention its functionality, "whosoever in 1800 on a long journey wrote a diary of 300 pages, would in the present time take home 100 metres of leika-film-band that contain more complete memories than the word, being charged with contemplation, making use of the international language of outer environment that fundamentally neither changes after centuries nor after countries..." roh is explaining that photography is functional because a picture can capture a memory in more detail than any written document could. have you ever heard the phrase "a picture is worth a thousand words?" a person from any country can look at a picture and feel an emotion, because everyone has felt the majesty of nature, but not all can appreciate it through the use of word.
roh talks about the plastic arts and the inclusion of photography. he states," we can establish a new category without diminishing the aesthetic value of the old." roh recognizes that photography is very mechanical, and untouched by the human hand, but inserts his opinion about what art really is. just because photographs are not comprised of brush strokes taken straight from the soul, or "smelting pot of the soul," as he calls it, that does not mean it is any less of an art. he argues that "personality is required" in order to become a good photographer.
roh then proceeds to talk about the different types of photography such as the reality photo, the photogram, photomontage, photos with etching or painting, and photos with type. he shows the uniqueness of each different category, which helps to explain their place in the art world.
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I, like many of my classmates will choose to write of Franz Roh's essay "Mechanism and Expression". In the beginning I was definitely thrown off my the lack of capitalization at the beginning of different senteces as well as his tendency to capitalize random words throughout his essay. From the beginning I believed that the words were bold because Roh had deemed them more important and thus the topic of the sentence. But they were not. It took me time to overcome the fact that with the lack of capitals it seemed his ideas tended to run together. But this is true. He states over and over that photography is spreading that the practice of photography is not only going to be for those who wish to make a living by creating art but those that take pictures of common reality. I thought it was interesting that Roh predicted the future of photography; "not to be able to handle a camera will sooon be looked upon as equal it illiteracy". Roh seemed to predict the photographic practice was going to spread, even to the masses. Especially to the masses. I thought it interesting when he related photography to the evolution and spread of literacy to the masses. Throughout his essay, Roh praises the photograph and the way that it can pause nature. The way that it, though under discusion, is art. He talks of the way that the potograph combines the artistic touch and the mechanics hand. I enjoyed reading Roh's essay on photography; I thought that it was a very accurate prediction of the direction that photography was going to take. That in the future there would be disposable cameras used by 13 year olds on their 8th grade trip to the east coast. That the newspapers would soon be full of photographic advertisments. Roh predicted the future, without capital letters.
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