THE PHOTOGRAPHIC AND ITS MEDIATORY SYSTEM: ARTISTIC, TECHNICAL AND COMMERCIAL VALUES AT THE DAWN OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Abstract

The analysis of the agents that took part in the invention, promotion and broadcasting of photography in the XIX century -photographers, politics, scientists, intellectuals and artists- permit us to reconstruct the photography’s space. These agents, their practices, spaces, institutions and relations constitute a mediation system, which participated actively in the construction of photographic value as a cultural product of modernity. However, the most relevant fact is that we can analyse it as a privileged subject to study for understanding the capacity of artistic practice to suit the needs of modern society. The permanent tension and dialogue among the aesthetic, scientific, technical and commercial appreciation, places photography in an unprecedented space between formal valorisation -next to the institutions and norms of the world of high culture- and the utilitarian logic -close to the patterns of progress and democratic access to the culture-. Thus, it is possible to suggest a theory of mediation for cultural products of modernity: intermediaries influence the construction of the value at the same time that they reveal the state of the cultural object and the needs of the society that consumes it.