Mary Warner Marien Response

To start off, I really like the title that Marien choose (What shall we tell the children?), I think it's very clever in relation to the topic. This article discusses how the history of photography was formed, or even is being formed. She focuses a great deal on Beaumont Newhall, and the many revisions that he has published on the history of photography. What I find interesting about the changes that many of these revisions hold is that they are simply an enhanced version of the previous text, but instead they contradict each other. Newhall expands and detracts what he considers art, and what is the importance of photography based on the times. for example, his feelings about photo-montages: "I did not feel that photo-montage was a kind of photography...I now feel that it is important to include a passage on photo-montage because it wouldn't exist without photography..."(213). In that very same paragraph Marien also notes that Newhall recognized that a historian must "reserve the right to change his mind." What I think is interesting about this concept is the fact that it makes it so that history becomes whatever one designated 'historian' interprets it to be. And because it is only one persons interpretation than it makes sense that it would change over time because based on circumstances peoples thoughts and feelings change and therefore their interpretation of something might change. I think that another reason that the history of photography can be open to interpretation is because of the mechanical aspect of the medium. The mechanical aspect leaves room for the machine to change/upgrade as the technology allows/evolves. For example when the camera was first invented, they could never dreamed of the type of cameras that exist today.