[Plate from Izaak Walton's The Compleat Angler] 1880s

This plate from Izaak Walton's 'The Compleat Angler' is a photograph, a process invented in the 19th century and here put to the service of illustrating a classic text. Rather than engraving or some other hand-worked intaglio, the image is chemically produced. Photography, like other reproductive technologies, was initially viewed with suspicion by artists, who saw their manual skill as essential to the value of what they did. But it soon became clear that the new medium had its own aesthetic potentials, and photographers like George Bankart explored these. What you see is not just a representation of a pastoral scene, but a picture made of light. It's important to recognize the photograph as a crafted object in its own right, a product of careful composition and darkroom technique. Ultimately, this image prompts us to consider how all forms of making, whether high art or seemingly straightforward documentation, are embedded in complex social and technological contexts.