Link to Reading
My notes:
'Naive enthusiasm for the almost magical possibilities of this new electronic medium soon gave way to alarm' - I like the idea of having 'magical possibilities' that you can create something that would be impossible in the real world
- the significance of photography in cultural history, political events, personal memories
two different levels of reality, the virtual and the material
'cameras define reality in the two ways essential to the workings of an advanced industrial society; as a spectacle (for masses) and as an object of surveillance (for rulers)'
the different effects:
'some people experience simulations or TV images while other people, the targets, get burned alive'
'slaughter became a video game, death imitated art'
distrust of the image
by their very nature pictures are so seductive, too easy, too consumerable to be completely trustworthy
change/corrupt our view of reality
cloning - effects: how much can you trust a photo so easily assessable to manipulate
'the digitalization process redoubled the problem by further destabilizing the bond the image had with time, memory, and history'
fragile relationship between photography and reality
if there is no objective reality, questions of 'real' or 'unreal' lose all meaning before even being posed'
photography is not entitled to make any claim to any measure or realism - at best images offer a glimpse of it
photo's form:
- rectangular, tendency to tidy up reality, simplify it, arrange it more clearly,
make it more pretty
- focal point
- editorial selection of pictures
- staged photo
consequence of digital photography = no film, contact sheet, image deleted, lose information, only keeps what photographer think is important
History of photography does not stand still, but this hugely far-reaching evolution had surprisingly little to do with digitization
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