Photography is dead
And we’ve been too busy enjoying our digital cameras and “photochopping” to notice.
These two photographs are Pulitzer Prize winners.
They date from a time when a substantial amount (if not all) of their merit came from the rarity of the moment they had captured. We may look at each image and know that the photographer was in location Lx, with camera Cx in his hand precisely when subjects Sx throught Sy had arranged themselves just so — at hour Hx.
But all of that is gone now.
We are not struck by images in the same way anymore — because they are no longer necessarily “captured moments”. What images we see, whether they are on the printed page or on a screen, cannot escape the pervasiveness of the digital, nor detach in our minds from the possibility (the likelihood) that they’re not real.
Though traditionalist photographers may continue to create images the old-fashioned way, with film, it is the EYE that has changed and, I’m afraid, irreversibly. We simply CANNOT TRUST the images we see.
- Yes, there will be film cameras, and film and people who like to use them for a long time to come.
- Yes, some of these may be judged “exceptional”, perhaps even Pulitzer-worthy.
- Yes, there will probably always be diligent, little men who work all day in shadowy cubicles and can spot a photochop with 99.9% accuracy.
When I pronounce “photography is dead“, I don’t mean that conventional film cameras have disappeared or that photographers have stopped using them. That would be less saddening to me than the change I fear has occurred.
What has changed is simply… US, all of us. We have changed, the relationship between people and the images they see around them has changed. We may consider, judge and ultimately decide a photo is a “good” photo, even using the same old standards of merit we always have. But, because we are now living in a world pervaded by digital simulacra of photographs, we have had to learn (yet again) that seeing is not necessarily grounds for belief.
When I was a kid, I remember leafing through magzines like LIFE and National Geographic with a sense of awe and wonder — because I knew (because my HEAD knew and my spirit FELT) these were “little windows” that gave me active access to One unique, irreproducible, un-fakeable moment in time. There was an excitement in looking at them, an EMOTIONAL INTENSITY, built on FAITH that what I was looking at had really happened.
But, now, even if I IKNOW that an image has not been “post-produced” — SIMPLY BECAUSE I HAVE INTEGRATED THE POSSIBILITY THAT IT COULD HAVE BEEN — my feelings towards it, and towards ALL images are different.
Owing to the unprecedented ease, convenience and economy of digital cameras, we are taking more pictures than ever. This is what I call the “deformalization” of photography. The other end of the spectrum from where we began our PERSONAL relationship with the medium. At one time in history, folks made appointments, got dressed-up, waited hours in a room while the photographer set-up an enormous camera that weighed as much as a man. Then they had to sit motionless for a miserably long time while the exposure was made. This bestowed a preciousness on all photographs. And though advances in film-based photography technology had shrunken the average camera to palm-size and put one in every home, it was the advent of digital that struck a transformative, irreversible blow.
Whenever we see a still image, especially one that we admire, our discernment and discrimination must operate on the image, until we make a judgement, or decide we don’t care. The effects of that are profound. Consider the following “photograph”:
It’s not my best work, but it will make my point. When this picture was taken, tASSy was not looking at the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. The fact that she IS standing in a hotel room in Barcelona, but NOT in sight of the famed Gaudi church only serves to confuse matters further. I added the church to the background in Photoshop, by removing a section of the opposite building. Does the location confer any additional veracity to the image as presented? Would you feel differently about the image if it were all in a studio? What if NONE of it were real? (tASSy Pink)
Even if verification technology has kept up with the many ways it is possible to create digital falsehoods, I don’t believe anyone is working on a pill to restore our lost visual innocence.
The new ubiquity of “cameras” is having as profound an effect on culture, as it is on the individual psyche . Easy upload access to The Network means the point of access is also now becoming a point of instantaneous content production. I can take a picture of myself and send it anywhere, instantaneously. Soon, hundreds of millions (if not billions) of people will be doing the same. How can the various laws that are intent on regulating the flow of digital content possibly keep tabs on all of it? They simply can’t. There won’t be any servers, or web sites. Once the capture, transmit, receive and view functions are all in a single device that fits in your pocket, I don’t see how any content controls can be exerted in the digital realm, without stemming the flow altogether.
Change IS death.
No doubt, we are learning to acknowledge new forms of artistry, new forms of excellence. A NEW AESTHETIC is developing, which will allow for a different (no less rich) relationship between “image makers” and “image consumers”.
But, the truth remains: what it has become possible to do with images in the digital realm has destroyed the power, the resonance photography once had — a power and resonance based on the link between image and moment in time.
But the good news is…
There is a large tract of law in the United States that touches upon photography. Within that, there is much that operates, judges and sanctions based on what a photograph contains or does not contain. How absurd that we are, right now, in the midst of a Renaissance of Censorship in America, just as the long-barking dog is finally about to be shot.
Photography is dead. Sad, sad. But many of her parasites are dying, too.
| photography | digital | cellular | fraud | censorship |
November 9th, 2005 at 4:21 am
[…] The advent of photography in the mid 19th century changed everything — meaning that it changed truth in a fundamental way, very much more so than any other representational art had until then. Try to imagine what it must have been like for humans when there simply were no visual “duplicates” in the world. Whatever your eyes saw, you knew you were seeing it because it was there. There was never any occasion to disregard something you were looking at because it “wasn’t really happening”. […]
November 6th, 2006 at 6:43 am
[…] Photography is dead - seeing has never been believing. Photo manipulation has been around a lot longer than digital photography has. Interesting read however. […]
April 29th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
you need to take photos OFF this page that is inapropiate to young teens and children.they should not be able to witness this until they get older.
September 22nd, 2007 at 4:49 pm
I see what you’re saying. You make a good point. I’d never really thought about it. I think that the solution though doesn’t have to do with technology or content control so much, but with how societies themselves go about their business. The destructive doubt you talk about arises out of the pervasive cultural climate. If instead of the viewer of an image knowing the photo is authentic knew that the world he or she lived in was authentic, that honesty and authenticity were prized as necessary values everyone is ultimately dependent upon, then the opportunity for fraud that a new technology presents wouldn’t cause this problem. The problem exists because the incentive does.