Introduction:
Photography can turn something ordinary into extraordinary, photography transforms what it describes. Early origin’s of photography starts with Camera Obscura, this is when you have a blacked out room, with a tiny hole from the outside world showing the light into the room. After around 1-2 hours of patiently waiting, there will show an upside down natural photo of exactly what is on the other side of the hole in the wall. A darkened box with a convex lens or aperture for projecting the image of an external object on to a screen inside, a forerunner of the modern camera. In the modern world, images can act as (emotions, memories, and identities), suchlike humans, offering a view into lives, places, and perspectives outside of our own. These dual roles make photographs complex and multi-dimensional objects and allow photographs to explore so many options. As mirrors, they allow us to see ourselves and our experiences through images. Whereas windows, they expose us to ideas, cultures, and ways people live their life’s, fostering a deeper understanding of the diverse world we live in. The balance between these two functions reveals how photographs can be both personal, but also explore the outside-world, intimately tied to the viewer’s own journey, while also broadening their view beyond them. The Daguerreotype and the Calotype are two early photographic processes, each with distinct characteristics and technical methods. The Daguerreotype uses a copper plated sheet with a thin coat of silver to create a detailed image on.
The Calotype is the original negative and positive process which was invented by William Henry Fox Talbot. This process uses a paper negative to make a print with a softer, less sharp image instead of the daguerreotype.

In my opinion and view, I feel like this photo is clearly classed as a ‘mirror’ photo instead of a ‘window’ photo because firstly, you can tell it’s staged with the young boys face being in one of the windows with the crack on it. But, also the fact that where a bullet or rock hit the window, (that’s what the shatter and damage looks like it could of been hit by), is exactly where the boys eye is, to perhaps symbolise the hurt within him or the struggles he has to live through everyday. Also, the fact that the photo is in black and white, also adds more thoughts and feelings on to the overall photo, whereas instead of it being in colour, being able to see the boys bright, vibrant clothes, with the house through the window which could’ve had a bright orangey/red roof or if there was grass on the floor. This would make the viewer not feel as bad and wouldn’t express the photo as sad as it should be. But, it is in black and white, to help persuade the viewer of the time, place and even the struggles that the boy had to live in everyday. Finally, a good factor that helps this photo, is that the boy is also very young, which helps photographs and ideas to showcase sadness and struggles from a young age.

“Photography was easy, cheap and ubiquitous, and it recorded anything: shop windows and sod houses and family pets and steam engines and unimportant people. And once made objective and permanent, immortalized in a picture, these trivial things took on importance.” – John Szarkowski.

“Authority and Freedom. A defense of the arts.” – Jed Perl

These quotes relate to each other with Szarkowski’s meaning how unimportant people are to be made as objective and permanent, immortalised people inside a photograph. Which is similar to Perl’s with his quote meaning that people aren’t free and do not have authority and so they are used in photos as well and that the lack of authority and freedom – objective and immortal, these circumstances act as a defense of the arts.

Paragraph 2 (250 words): Choose an image that in your view is a window and analyse how it is an objective expression rooted in a sense of realism. Choose one quote from Szarkowski’s thesis and another from Jed Pearl’s review and follow similar procedure as above ie. two opposing points of view and commentary to provide a critical perspective.

Conclusion (250 words): Refer back to the essay question and write a conclusion where you summarise Szarkowski’s theory and Pearl’s review of his thesis. Describe differences and similarities between the two images above and their opposing concepts of objectivity and subjectivity, realism and romanticism, factual and fiction, public and private.