Looking for something to blog about this week, I came across
an article in Time magazine by
Stephen Mayes that takes a critical, somewhat philosophical look at the future
of photography. With the arrival of
digital technology, Mayes argues that much of what photography was and what its
intent was is no longer true.
The original character of photography as an objective
record-keeper of the visual world has been replaced with the coming of digital
photography and post-exposure editing capabilities like Photoshop. The capabilities for manipulation of images
both in-camera and on a computer that were not possible before the digital era
tempt photographers and ultimately diminish the objectivity of
photography. Beyond this, however, Mayes
points out that the digital camera itself inherently reduces the objective
reality achieved by traditional photography, severing “the optical connection
with reality, that physical relationship between the object photographed and
the image that differentiated lens-made imagery and defined our understanding
of photography for 160 years.” Mayes explains that only one-third of the
photons in an environment are recorded, meaning that two-thirds of an image is
interpolated by the camera. This, in
effect, presents reality in a way that we have never really observed.
While I don’t disagree with Mayes on much of what he says, I
think his article brings up an important distinction in photography. As photographers, we must ask ourselves: Are we
presenting our photography as a display of art or as a display of reality? No matter what, the photographs can never be
fully objective. The very act of
creating an image means that some amount of objectivity is lost, that some sort
of interpretation of a scene has occurred and must occur again when viewing
that image. Yet, this was the case even
before digital photography came on the scene.
Every photograph, no matter the manner in which it was obtained, gives a
somewhat unreal, subjective view of reality.
Link to Stephen Mayes' "The Next Revolution in Photography is Coming:" http://time.com/4003527/future-of-photography/
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