Abstract

Pictorialists prefigure contemporary photographers for whom there are no holds barred when it comes to making an image from a recording event. The difference is that the inventory of image rendering tricks is now colossal. Liberal use of this inventory characterizes the third, lyric, art of photography. In lyric verse, the authors find heightened attention to the musical qualities of language, to the materiality of the sounds of speech, and to their emotional resonances. Lyric photographs tweak the variables of the photographic process as it is characterized by the new theory of photography, whereas the traditional theory of photography does not welcome lyric photographs with the same warmth. By expanding the conception of pure photography to include lyricism, the new theory runs head to head with the traditional theory but also with the proposition that purity implies uniqueness.