Photographic history took root in the discipline of art history with its focus on pictures, and subsequent critical histories have largely retained this image-centred focus. Yet there is no inherent reason why the study of photography needed to become a history of pictures especially, as in some respects the images might not be the most important aspect of the practice. In recent years there has been a flurry of studies examining aspects of photographic industry and business arrangements. In this article I present some debates from the field of academic business history, which raise issues of relevance for historians of photography. Reese V. Jenkins’s influential study of Kodak, Image and Enterprise (1975), provides the opportunity for investigating some of these issues. A short conclusion on the English daguerreotype trade provides an illustration or coda to these themes.

中文翻译：

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为什么是图片？从艺术史到商业史再回来

摄影史植根于艺术史学科，其关注点是图片，随后的批判史在很大程度上保留了这种以图像为中心的关注点。然而，摄影研究之所以需要成为图片史，并没有内在的原因，因为在某些方面，图像可能不是实践中最重要的方面。近年来，对摄影行业和商业安排的各个方面进行了一系列研究。在本文中，我提出了学术商业史领域的一些辩论，这些辩论提出了与摄影史学家相关的问题。Reese V. Jenkins 对 Kodak, Image and Enterprise (1975) 的有影响力的研究提供了调查其中一些问题的机会。