Photography between Moulding and Modulation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.54103/2039-9251/32296Keywords:
photography theory, moulding and modulation, Gilbert Simondon, parameter-imageAbstract
This article rethinks photography through Gilbert Simondon’s distinction between moulding and modulation. While photography has long been theorised as a moulding medium – an instantaneous imprint of reality, a decisive moment fixed in time – it is equally constituted by processes of modulation: continuous adjustments of exposure, development, calibration and computation. Drawing on examples from nineteenth-century composite printing to contemporary computational and synthetic photography, the article shows that moulding and modulation are not historical stages or rival media, but heuristic poles that illuminate the technical dynamics of photographic individuation. Photography, the article argues, is best understood as a parameter-image: a field of potential variation that continually modulates the very concept of what photography is.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Tomáš Dvořák
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