Technology and its miniature: the photograph

Abstract

The history of communications technology is in part a history of miniaturization. The issue of the miniature is here brought to the fore to demonstrate its centrality within technology and visual culture. The photograph can be viewed as a miniature in terms of its status as a minute visual reproduction and hence distortion of the exterior world that the camera attempts to capture. That the photograph seizes images of the world to render them miniatures is demonstrated through the history of the medium and through the meanings evoked by its process of reduction. The significance of the photograph as a visual and material miniature is viewed against the backdrop of the multiple meanings evoked by the miniature through its status both as a metaphor and as a tangible object.

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