Camera During The Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was period in which society moved away from traditional methods of producing goods to more modern, industrialized, and innovative means of production. The Industrial Revolution not only influenced production methods and urbanized many areas but also revolutionized the art world. The rapid change in technology and quality of life allowed artists to focus more on expressing themselves through more advanced and modern means rather than traditional ones. With this major change in quality of life came different movements through the 1800s which evolved art. One of the most influential pieces of technology that came from the Industrial Revolution which impacted art was the invention of the camera. The camera allowed artists to capture a moment in time to document in paintings or other works of art. Artists often times used photos as a

The camera had the ability to document events without being influenced by the perspective or imagination of a human mind. However pro- Romanticism artists would argue that the camera couldn’t express emotion and feeling like a painting could; the ability to express emotion and an individual’s feelings was the center of the romanticism ideals. The Realist movement was counter to the romanticism beliefs, realists viewed romantics as liars and not truthful. The realist’s strong disbelief of the romantic’s ideals was once again due to the camera’s ability to document a real event without the bias of a human mind. One example of a realist painting is A Burial at Ornans by Gustave Courbet which depicts a burial documenting the reality of funeral rather than a romanticized version of an afterlife (Stokstad, Cothren 973-974). You can argue that with the invention of photography and the camera came the Realist movement, which positioned itself against the Romantics in a way to depict unbiased images of society in natural