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Bernard Shaw, ‘Unmechanical’ Photography and unconventional science

Abstract It certainly is true that George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright and essayist, was fond of provocation and paradox. Yet, as our epigraph suggests, his writings always build on a core of truth. For Shaw, truth was defined by his socialism as well as by relations among art, science, and religion. These ideas merge in his provocative essay of 1902, ‘The Unmechanicalness ofPhotography’,2 written when the focus of his photographic criticism was shifting from primarily political! economic concerns to a synthesis of social, aesthetic, metaphysical, and scientific ideas. Although his essay has been reprinted since 1902,3 the broader context that lends meaning to Shaw's otherwise peculiar remarks about painting and photography has not been explored sufficiently; that is our goal here.