Read the section entitled ‘The Real and the Digital’ in Wells, Liz. (2009) Photography:
A Critical Introduction (4th edition). Abingdon: Routledge, pp.73–75. You’ll find this
on the student website.
Does digital technology change how we see photography as truth? Consider both
sides of the argument and make some notes in your learning log.
The Real And The Digital (Liz Wells – Photography, A Critical Introduction)
The convergence between computing and audio-visual technologies has, as we all know, produced new kinds of digital media which are transforming the means of image-making together with its social, commercial and aesthetic practices. Here, we need to note that digital media -with its ability to create, manipulate and edit images – has given new prominence to arguments about the nature of photography and taken them into the popular domain. These may briefly be summarised as: questions about the nature of the photographic image; about new ways of defining and understanding ‘the real’ that are brought about by processes of globalisation and postmodern philosophical positions, and, finally, questions about the relationship of photography to other media. It is now clear that images with all the appearance of ‘real’ photographs may have been created from scratch on computer, montaged from many sources, altered in some respects, or radically transformed. Figures may be added or removed and the main constituents of the picture rearranged to suggest new relationships or bizarre conjunctions. Does all this not destroy the claim of photography to have a special ability to show things as they are and raise serious doubts about those genres with a particular investment in the ‘real’ -documentary and photojournalism? We can, of course, observe that, as we have already seen, the manipulation of images is nothing new and that photographs have been changed, touched-up or distorted since the earliest days. But we are not looking here merely at a technically sophisticated way of altering images, but at much more profound changes that challenge the ontological status of the photo-graph itself. If a photograph is not of something already existing in the world, how can we regard it as an accurate record of how things are? Roland Barthes’ influential conception of the nature of the photograph, is that it is the result of an event in the world, evidence of the passing of a moment of time that once was and is no more, which left a kind of trace of the event on the photograph. It is this trace which has been considered to give photographs their special relationship to the real. That is that they function, in the typology of signs offered by the American semiotician, C.S. Peirce, as indexical signs. The nature of the sign within semiological systems is important, but it is interesting to note that we have always known that photographs are malleable, contrived and slippery, but have, simultaneously, been prepared to believe them to be evidential and more ‘real’ than other kinds of images. It is possible to argue that the authenticity of the photograph was validated less by the nature of the image itself than through the structure of discursive, social and professional practices which constituted photography. Any radical transformation in this structure makes us uneasy about the status of the photograph. Not only do we know that individual photographs could have been manipulated, but our reception and understanding of the world of signs may have been transformed. Writing in the French newspaper Liberation, in 1991 the social theorist, Jean Baudrillard famously remarked that ‘the gulf war did no t take place’ (Baudrillard 1995). He was commenting on the nature of the real and the authentic in our time and suggesting that .in t he world of th e spectacle, it is pointless to posit an external reality that is then pictured, described and represented. In his view everything is constructed and our sense of the world is mediated by complex technologies that are themselves a major constituent of our reality. What took place, then, was not t he first Gulf War but a whole sequence of political, social and military actions that were acted out in a new 74
kind of social and technical space. While this may be an extreme way of formulating the argument, it is clear that a complex of technical, political, social and cultural changes has transformed not just photography, but the whole of visual culture. For example, David Campany points out that ‘almost a third of all news “photographs” are frame grabs from video or digital sources’ and comments that: The definition of a medium, particularly photography, is not autonomous or self-governing, but heteronymous, dependent on other media. It derives less from what it is technologically than what it is culturally. Photography is what we do with it. And what we do with it depends on what we do with other image technologies. (Campany 2003: 130; emphasis in original) One significant consequence of this has been a new merging and lack of definition between photographic genres. It is increasingly difficult to distinguish one kind of photograph practice from another. As we shall see later, titles, such as ‘documentary’ are of little use as labels for the new kind of work that is being produced. Indeed, all descriptive titles have been freely appropriated and find themselves used in curious couplings, for example, one sub-genre of photography now well established in the USA is that of’wedding photojournalism’.
Notes taken that I found interesting :
The American philosopher and semiotician John Deely said that “objects” are dosed with human experience – when they are photographed they become “signs” – he believes that photographing objects can never be the truth because of this. As soon as we photograph somethng they become objects of our experience. The interpretation of all objects is affected by human experiences
David Campany has stated that a third of all news photographs are screen grabs from videos or a digital source
“Photography is what we do with it” – David Campany
A consequence of digital technology is a new merging of traditional photographic genres – documentary photography is of little use now as a label for the new kind of work that is now being produced – new terms such as wedding photojournalism and citizen photographer have emerged
Social networks are now acting as publishers of photographers, several informal photographs are taken and uploaded around the world rather than the tradtional way of days gone by – mainstream media are accessing them and using them as events unfold
Foreign news and hard news has been squeezed for resources and squeezed for space by cheaper and more advertising friendly features on lifestyle, products and celebrity – coupled with the fact that some governments restrict formal photographers in scenes of conflict, so the rise in demand for the amateur photographer is a result – to add to this, the photo that appears amateurish may come with more authenticity and credibility than a professional photo
There is still room for professional photos of conflict and hard news images of professional quality but even this changing to the storage and transport in a digital format rather than print
Thoughts and Reflection
I believe that photographs, whether in the digital age or when the first documentary work was made, there is always a version of the truth produced because the person making the work will be affected by his or her own life experiences and this will result in what they choose to photograph and what not to, what they decide to include in the frame and what to omit. These elements can alter the narrative drastically but can still be an image that has not been digitally manipulated.
I believe that eyewitness photojournalism can be a good thing because news is communicated almost instantly and in this world of instant gratification it has become an expectation. Fake news is on the rise and also the amount of time we spend reading short, sound bite news items, this can lead to misinformed paranoia and anxiety.
Mobile phone photography and the use of AI in phone photography will, I believe replace the large pro DSLR cameras in the next 10 years. Current phones can take night photos and bring deatil into an image that is not apparent to the human eye, AI will search millions of similar images and in 4 seconds will rectify the image being taken to produce the best version automatically. Mobile phone companies are currently competing is by the quality of their camera, there are hundreds of experts working to improve this phone feature and not anywhere near that much resource is being applied at Canon or Nikon to improve their product in the same way.
Photography is not about taking a technically perfect shot, it is in the words of David Campany “what we do with it” and this will become even more prominent when anyone can take a technically perfect shot because of the advancement in technology.
Bibliography
Contentstore.cla.co.uk. 2020. Openathens / Sign In. [online] Available at: <https://contentstore.cla.co.uk/EReader/Index?p=RDpcU2l0ZXNccHJvZHVjdGlvblxUZW1wXERDUy1kNzlkNjVkZC1lNjkzLTQ4OTUtOWQ0My04ZTg2Mjc1ZjIzNWUucGRm&o=JnB1Ymxpc2hlZENvbnRlbnRfSWQ9OTQ0ODA3JmNvbnRlbnRSZXF1ZXN0X0lkPTEwMjUxMDcmZG9jdW1lbnRMaW5rPWEyYjcyNDkxLTIzZWMtZTkxMS04MGNkLTAwNTA1NmFmNDA5OSZjb250ZW50SXRlbV9JZD0yODAwOTE=&id=a2b72491-23ec-e911-80cd-005056af4099> [Accessed 12 May 2020].
Jenny Stork: Photography 1: Context & Narrative 