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Funding
The conference from which this Special Issue developed was supported by AHRC funding awarded to Michelle Henning under [grant number AH/R014639/1].
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1. Cophenhaver, “Hermes Trismegistus, Proclus, and the Question of a Philosophy of Magic in the Renaissance,” 103–4.
2. The full set of papers from the conference, in the form of audio files, can be found at the following link: https://backdoorbroadcasting.net/2019/12/light-sensitive-material/
3. Cadava, Words of Light, 5.
4. In the Platonic universe, the sun is seen as the symbol of the transcendental Good in the sensible world. Derrida writes that the sun is simultaneously the paradigmatic natural object and “already and always metaphorical” (53). Since “There is only one sun in this system”, it becomes “the father of all figures of speech. Everything turns on it, everything turns to it”: everything then, is heliotropic. Derrida, “White Mythology: Metaphor in the Text of Philosophy,” 44.
5. See Kingsley, In the Dark Places, 78–84.
6. Catford, Our first 75 years, 50. See also Hercock and Jones on the controlled air systems and filtrations systems used to prevent contamination in Ilford’s factories. Hercock and Jones, Silver by the Ton, 35–140.
7. Collodion, first adopted for photographic purposes in 1851, in Frederick Scott Archer’s wet-plate collodion process, was also deployed in medicine as an “artificial skin”, to heal wounds and cosmetically disguise skin disorders or scars. Celluloid was patented in the 1860s, and adopted for manufacturing the flexible film base for cinematography and photography. Cellulose remains a key ingredient in photography, not only in films but in papers. Elizabeth Howie’s article included here mentions plant-based papers including rag papers made using cotton and linen and papers derived from trees.
8. Barthes, Camera Lucida, 6.
9. Mikuriya, A History of Light, 1.
10. Shiff, “Phototropism (Figuring the proper),”163.
11. Ibid., 164.
12. Gil-Fournier argued that Wiesner’s use of photography, and the application of his work to agriculture (accelerating plant growth) shows how “photography becomes infrastructural in the reshaping of life”. Gil-Fournier, “The Vegetal Calculated Image.”
13. Derrida, Copy, Archive, Signature, 43–4
14. As Mikuriya argues, “These instances of the photographic should not be considered metaphors but rather intimations of photography.” See History of Light, 121.
15. De Mysteriis, III.14, 132.9–12. In fact the history of Western philosophy can be read as the movement of photagogia in which photography is considered as a mode and practice of the latter. See Mikuriya, History of Light, 7.
16. Sarah Iles Johnston notes that “phantaskitē dunamis” can be defined literally as the “ability of the vehicle to receive or process images.” See Johnston, “Fiat Lux, Fiat Ritus,” 17.
17. Marks, “A Radical Indexicality”.
18. For the notion of epitēdeiotēs see Shaw, Theurgy and the Soul, 86 and “Containing Ecstasy: The Strategies of Iamblichean Theurgy.”
19. De Mysteriis, III.14, 12–15.
20. Derrida, “White Mythology”; and Shiff, “Phototropism.”
21. Dos Reis, “Smoke, Steam and Lava” .
22. This use dates to at least the turn of the 19th century: “the knowledge which treats of the sun is called heliography” — Hall, The creation, in six books after the manner and as an introductory. Geoffrey Batchen also points to a 1798 text by Charles Palmer, which claims the sun is made of ice, and used heliography to describe the science concerned with the study of the sun. Batchen, “The naming of photography.” Later, heliography described the practice of using an instrument — the heliograph, sometimes called a sun telegraph, that was developed in 1875 for communicating Morse code messages with mirrors and sunlight. It was principally used in military and colonial contexts, though some histories trace to Southwestern native American techniques, it was appropriated in the US army for use against the Apaches. Sterling, Christopher H., ed. Military Communications: From Ancient Times to the 21st Century. Oxford: ABC-CLIO, 2007, 210.
23. Plato, Republic (516b).
24. “The sun was beginning to regret having done too much for photography, who was becoming impudent.”
25. For a detailed discussion of Nadar’s ventures in aerial photography, see Gervais, “Un basculement du regard.”
26. “Brevet d’Invention de Quinze Ans, au sieur Tournachon, à Paris, Pour un nouveau système de photographie aérostatique,” Bouchard-Huzard, Descriptions des machines, 144.
27. Henning, “The worlding of light and air,” 181–2. As with terms like “heliotropic” and “phototropic”, the term “tropics” comes from the Ancient Greek tropē, and referred originally to “turning” of the sun.
28. Dykes, “Photography in Tropical West Africa,” 310.
29. Derrida, Athènes à l’ombre, 40.
30. Derrida, Athens, Still Remains, 6.
31. Ibid., 29.
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Notes on contributors
Michelle Henning
Michelle Henning is Professor in Photography and Media at the University of Liverpool. She writes on modernism, new media, museums, and the history and theory of photography, and also works as an artist and designer. She has published many chapters and articles on photography, and her book Photography: The Unfettered Image was published in 2018. She recently completed an AHRC leadership fellowship drawing on the archives of Ilford Limited, resulting in several current and forthcoming articles including “The Worlding of Light and Air: Dufaycolor and Selochrome in the 1930s”, in Visual Culture in Britain (2020).
Junko Theresa Mikuriya
Junko Theresa Mikuriya is Senior Lecturer in Photography at the London School of Film, Media and Design, University of West London. She worked as a freelance photographer in the fashion and music industries, specializing in album covers and fashion editorial work in Asia and Europe, including Taipei, Hong Kong and London. She has a PhD in Cultural Studies from Goldsmiths University of London and a Maîtrise de Lettres Modernes from Sorbonne, University of Paris IV. She is the author of A History of Light: The Idea of Photography (Bloomsbury 2016), a book that investigates the relation between photography, light and philosophy.