 |
| http://www.whattheduck.net/ |
Chapter author Martin Lister, professor Visual Culture at University of the West of England, Bristol (same institution as Michelle Henning, chapter four author on Photography and the Human Body).
Lister notes that in this book’s many editions this chapter has been most heavily edited, reflecting the rapidly changing nature of digital imaging technology. When digital first arrived there was some question as to how it would affect photography. Today digital is the norm, completely supplanting analog, while film has become a niche practice. Among the changes he observes:
- ethics of when and where to photograph
- viewing images on screen rather than paper (bits vs chemicals)
- electronic vs physical archiving
- widespread access to image archives
- images are now more heavily manipulated
- related to the former, what is a photograph
In the early 90’s there was concern about the value of photographic truth, of whether the public would be able to trust photographs as representatives of reality. So far that fear has not been confirmed. Jonathan Crary argued for the emergence of a new revolutionary period in visual culture, in which the point of view was removed from real space. Peter Weibel saw photography as an invention that freed image making from dependence on the hand, and the new digital technologies as liberating image making from the physical altogether.
The initial counter-reaction was to stress that photography has always been selective and manipulative, that unmediated photography has never existed. But since most everyone writing about photography knew this already, why all the stress and fear? Lister cites several writers who see in such anxiety fear for our own subjectivity, the potential loss of a known and comfortable vantage point. Others argued that the new technologies did not represent a break with the past but the continuation of the tradition of trying to understand and control the world through science, “the rationalisation of vision” (Kevin Robins). The new media mimicked, as well, the marketing of early photography as spectacle.
Many assessments about the impact of digital technologies were overgeneralized. The ability to manipulate images, for example, would play to the needs of fashion and advertising. If photography was not monolithic, neither was digital imaging. When examining how digital photographs are received by viewers, the difference between old and new seems largely irrelevant. People relate to digital photos in much the same ways they relate to analog and in fact photographers themselves present them as products of photography, as part of the tradition of photography. The process of digitization of light is no more or less valuable than the chemical processes of traditional photography. Many arguments were also based on theory that had little bearing on practical reality, for example the ability of digital to capture in much finer detail, which is so great it surpasses human need or interest.
The last portion of the chapter is a grab-bag of issues (though nothing about the ethics of public image making, something I expected from the chapter intro). Lister begins with an exploration of the virtual image, noting its realist goals and dependence on the veracity of photographic history. That is, CG images aspire to look real; real is what we have come to expect from photographs. CG images are, in fact, hyperreal, and in order to work have to be dirtied up a bit with photographic artefacts such as noise or variable focus.
The appearance of cameras in phones has resulted in huge numbers of digital images that are only ever seen electronically. Where images most often used to be shared privately in the home, through electronic networks they are now shared semi-publicly in groups. Advances in technology have narrowed the gap between amateur and professional, and the ability to previsualize, to predict the behavior of the camera, is now much less of a concern than in the days before an image had to first be processed in a wet lab. The widespread availability of cameras has also had an impact on news reporting, with many stories now first covered with phone images submitted by citizens at the scene.
The reduced costs of camera technology coupled with fear of political terror has seen the proliferation of security cameras in public places. Many in the first world are photographed several times a day without knowledge or permission. In fact, so many security images are made that new computer software is required to analyze what has been collected.
Finally, there is the issue of archives. Currently two companies - Getty and Corbis - control the market for stock photography, while a number of royalty-free services have arisen to meet the demand for reasonably priced web-based imagery. The latter are unique in providing images produced for the widest possible audience and therefore stripped of most of the particulars that make most images interesting (see discussion in Chapter 5 on commodity culture). The concentration of historical archives has resulted in huge banks of images that can not as yet, because of cost, be digitized. The majority of the 11 million image Bettman archive, acquired by Corbis, for example, lies buried in a climate controlled vault. Only the 225,000 best selling images have been digitized.
#
No comments:
Post a Comment