Analytical Photography: Portraiture, from the Index to the Epidermis

Abstract

The current abundance of scholarship concerning the technological development of photography has coexisted with a proportionate absence of recent critical analysis of photographic images. Given photography's long-standing embrace of technological advances, even predating the portable camera or roll film, this article revisits some early uses of scientific photography in order to clarify the impact of digital technology on contempo-rary photographic practice. The author uses scientific photogra-phy and photographic archives as the groundwork for photo-graphic experiments into what might be called analytical photography. The essay con-cludes with a reconsideration of the photographic portrait.