History of Photography — Module 12: Postmodernism, Digital Photography, and the Smartphone Era
Photography has always been linked to art, graphic art, and communication. The late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries transformed the idea of photography from a traditional art form into a pervasive, fluid medium driving global communication. The 1970s and 1980s introduced postmodern critiques, where artists challenged photographic truth and originality through appropriation and staged narratives. Digital imaging had been slowly emerging throughout the 1960s in the aerospace industry but, like computers, were constrained by processing power and space requirements. In 1975, Eastman Kodak invented the first portable digital camera with a sensor size of 100 x 100 pixels. Digital photography was not commercially viable in large studios until two decades later. But by 2010, digital had almost entirely replaced chemical/analogue photography. With the integration of cameras in flip phone in the early 2000s, and the later invention of the smartphones combined with social media, photography grew into an instantaneous, interconnected global practice.
1970s
The "New Social Documentary": Moving away from traditional romantic humanism, politically active artists like Martha Rosler and Allan Sekula integrated photography into institutional critiques, pairing images with text to examine social realities like poverty.
Mainstream Art World Acceptance: By the mid-1970s, photography moved squarely into the fine art realm, serving as an essential tool for conceptual, performance, and multimedia artists.
Feminist Critiques and Appropriation: The 1977 "Pictures" exhibition highlighted artists such as Cindy Sherman and Sherrie Levine, who used staged self-portraits and re-photographed mass-media images to dismantle concepts of artistic genius and gender stereotypes.
Martha Rosler, Allan Sekula, and Fred Lonidier: Leaders of the "new social documentary" who integrated photography with extensive text to critique institutions, the mass media, and social oppression.
Cindy Sherman and Sherrie Levine: Featured in the highly influential 1977 "Pictures" exhibition, they used staged self-portraits and re-photographed mass-media images to deconstruct the concepts of artistic originality and gender stereotypes.
Susan Meiselas: Photographed conflicts such as the late 1970s insurrection in Nicaragua, merging documentary photography with history and social science.
Jo Spence, Lorraine Leeson, and Peter Dunn: British activists and members of groups like the Hackney Flashers who circumvented mainstream media by using photography in community campaigns and posters to highlight workplace inequity and public health cuts.
1975 - Steve Sasson creates the first self-contained portable digital camera at Eastman Kodak in Rochester, NY. It had to be plugged-in to the wall, was as large as a toaster oven, and recorded to a cassette tape. It used a 100 x 100 pixel sensor.
1980s
The Directorial Mode: Rejecting the spontaneous "decisive moment," photographers began to construct, fabricate, and heavily direct theatrical scenes and room-sized installations specifically for the camera's eye.
Culture Wars and the Body: The human body became a primary site for political and social opposition, with artists exploring sexuality, the AIDS crisis, and identity in ways that sometimes sparked intense public debates over censorship and public funding.
Early Digital Anxieties: Although high-end digital photography was not yet widespread, early computer manipulation—such as the altered 1982 National Geographic cover—created public anxiety regarding the deceptive, fabricated capacity of the medium.
Sandy Skoglund, Laurie Simmons, and Peter Fischli and David Weiss: Pioneers of the fabricated or "directorial mode," who built intricate, theatrical room-size installations and objects specifically to be photographed.
Andres Serrano and Robert Mapplethorpe: Central figures in the culture wars whose provocative images involving bodily fluids, sexuality, and religious symbols sparked intense public debates over censorship and arts funding.
Nancy Burson: Gained notoriety for her eerie, early computer-generated composite portraits that blended the faces of politicians and movie stars.
Martin Parr and Paul Graham: British photographers who broke away from the traditional black-and-white documentary style by using color and stylized, sometimes satirical, approaches to document social life and the welfare state.
Thomas Ruff, Christian Boltanski, and Lorna Simpson: Used standardized, purportedly neutral imagery, often paired with text or featured in installations, to explore identity and collective historical memory.
1986 - Kodak creates the first one megapixel sensor
1988 - Nikon releases the first commercially available DSLR
1987 - 1990: Thomas Knoll creates digital image manipulation software named "Display", which is licensed to Adobe in 1988 and released as Photoshop 1.0 in 1990.
1990s
Intimate and Diaristic Photography: Photographers turned their lenses inward, creating unvarnished, diary-like records of domestic life, youth culture, and their "re-created" families of friends and lovers.
The "Post-Photography" Debate: With the rise of computer imaging, some critics prematurely declared traditional camerawork dead, though thinkers like Joan Fontcuberta argued that digital tools were simply sophisticated new accessories for artists.
Globalization and Identity: As global economic networks expanded, art increasingly reflected hybrid cultural identities, capturing the experiences of immigrants and displaced populations hovering between two cultures.
Larry Sultan, Tina Barney, Richard Billingham, and Sally Mann: Turned the camera inward, creating intimate, diaristic, and sometimes controversial records of their own domestic lives, wealth, poverty, and children.
Nan Goldin and Wolfgang Tillmans: Photographed their "re-created" families of friends and lovers, heavily influencing the diary-like snapshot aesthetic as well as alternative fashion photography.
Joan Fontcuberta, Pedro Meyer, and Aziz and Cucher: Engaged deeply with the "post-photography" debate, exploring the creative, philosophical, and dystopian potentials of computer-assisted digital imaging.
Jeff Wall and Yasumasa Morimura: Used sophisticated digital tools to stage, construct, and alter images that recreated historic paintings and mass-media icons.
Sebastião Salgado: Reinvigorated socially concerned documentary work with beautifully composed, yet sometimes controversial, images of global manual laborers and refugees.
1994 - Phase One creates a raw image converter for their camera systems, released publicly as "Lightphase Capture" in 1998, renamed "Capture One" in 2003 to include support for other camera systems.
The tools that define post-production today (Capture One, Photoshop) were all commercially established in this period. They are the foundation of every professional photography workflow. scottparkerphoto.com/headshots.
2000s
War and Digital Transmission: The rapid, global transmission of digital files profoundly shaped the public's understanding of conflicts, most notably through the 2004 release of amateur digital photographs showing prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib.
The Radiant Screen: Luminous screens replaced printed paper as the primary setting for viewing images, while early internet photoblogs and self-service digital kiosks multiplied rapidly.
The Past in the Present: As a counter-reaction to digital imaging, many photographers and artists embraced tedious nineteenth-century techniques—like the daguerreotype and wet-plate collodion—to capture unique aesthetic flaws.
Luc Delahaye, Suzanne Opton, and Tyler Hicks: Explored the realities of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, focusing on the intimate perspectives of individual combatants, casualties, and the psychological toll of conflict.
Thomas Demand and Andreas Gursky: Created massive, highly constructed, or digitally manipulated prints that rivaled the scale of nineteenth-century history paintings.
Gregory Crewdson and Anna Gaskell: Directed large-scale, cinematic photographs that explored the psychological anxiety, supernatural elements, and eerie rituals of suburban life and youth.
Rineke Dijkstra and Ryan McGinley: Focused on youth and beauty, capturing the awkward transitions of adolescence and post-AIDS, guilt-free sensuality.
Alfredo Jaar: Investigated the power of the "radiant screen" and the control of public information through immersive gallery installations.
Chuck Close and Vik Muniz: Pushed back against the digital wave by reviving tedious historical techniques like the daguerreotype or recreating historic photos with unconventional materials like chocolate syrup.
2003 - Adobe release Adobe Camera Raw as commercial competitor to Capture One
2007 - Adobe releases Lightroom with an emphasis on database management
After 2010
The Smartphone Revolution: The escalating use of camera-phones and platforms like Facebook and Twitter turned ordinary citizens into photographers, fueling an explosion of visual diaries and citizen photojournalism.
Pre- and Post-Production Dominance: Software tools became deeply integrated into everyday image-making; innovations like the 2011 Lytro camera adopted the slogan "shoot now, focus later," making post-production the defining step of the photographic process.
The Dematerialized Archive: With an estimated 4.5 million images uploaded daily to sites like Flickr, the definition of the photograph shifted from a lasting physical object to a fleeting, dematerialized digital file stored on memory chips and the cloud.
Doug Rickard: Exploited the dematerialized digital archive by capturing images directly from Google Earth's Street View to explore American alienation and the post-production readymade.
Walead Beshty: Continued Conceptual experimentation by creating abstract "Color Curl" images produced by exposing folded light-sensitive paper to colored light without a camera.
Ai Weiwei: Embraced the smartphone and blogging revolution by streaming continuous digital pictures and commentary, effectively using social platforms for citizen photojournalism.
Mark McLoughlin: Used pinhole cameras to deliberately de-skill the process, presenting a conscious retreat from the overwhelming technological options of the digital era.