Reflections
Despite the obstacles I faced, I attempted to find the most similar angle and perspective. I organized it so that specific comparisons and contrasts are alongside the photos and the map of the geolocations of each site. Now, in my reflections, I wanted to cover the overarching conclusions that I came to over the course of my project and answer the questions that I had from my proposal.
All of the photos that were covered were landscape, rural, and in black and white. They also happened to exclude human life, or have minimal coverage of people. Contrasting my photographs of the same sites teeming with tourists, the older photos only featured at most two people. It seems like it was both a deliberate and coincidental choice after much research into history and field work. Most likely, there were probably fewer tourists and citizens living there at that time, especially with the then recent series of conquests and wars. On the other side, the lack of life in the photos seemed deliberate because of the technical side of taking a photo in the early stages of its history. It was simply impractical to have people pose for anywhere between 30 minutes and 8 hours to take a photo with the earlier models. However, as photos became the new medium for communication and learning, the photos without people became the norm. So, this originally pragmatic choice to exclude people became a new phenomenon and standard when photographing such monuments. As I was taking photos, I kept feeling the urge to wait for the millisecond where people weren't interrupting my photo, but as I thought about it, this preconception that photos have to only focus on the object really stems from a long enduring standard of photography. Moreover, the exclusion of human life of these iconic monuments seems to have established and characterized Greece as a center of ancient civilization rather than the fast-paced modernization that the nation is actually going through. Personally, I find the lack of humanity in the photographs make the pictures more timeless; here are these photos of landscapes and monuments that have withstood the trials of human wars, globalization, and time.
I believe the change in the visual culture of photography was really pushed forward by the public. As previously mentioned, these photographs were essentially the defining factor for the millions of people in the world that have never seen it before. This hyper-realistic medium that reflected the exact picture at a certain time in a place that could be halfway across the globe became the most common form of communication and really determined the implications of the power of photography. As people say, ' a picture is worth a thousand words.' Thus, photography evolved from a means of archiving and documenting objects, scenes, and events to a powerful means of manipulating public opinion and establishing societal norms.
But, photos are only a product of the specific choices the photographer makes in regards to background, layout, and focus, and essentially it is ultimately the photographer's choice to portray a certain monument or landscape in the way that they had. It seems the earlier photographs' main focus was to fully capture the structure and the layout of the monuments, but later, we see more emphasis on details and personal, artistic touches, such as the photo of the Temple of Olympien Zeus reflected in the puddle of water. However, the certain liberties that the photographers took when first capturing images in the 1800's ultimately established the cultural norms and standards in not only how to take photos, but also the foundational conceptions of classical antiquity.
These photos depict classical antiquity as a connection to the ancient world by depicting these monuments in their entirety without any human intervention. It continues the conception that the ancient world is in a sense, separate from humanity and reality, and highlights the structural continuity of these monuments despite urbanization and restoration and globalization.
