Long Rumination

Yesterday I got an email from a student at Ohio State with questions on my opinions about Digital Photography. This gave me license to explore some of the ideas about digital vs. analog art making that I've touched on here (always dangerous to give me license!). And I was so happy with the results that I thought I'd paste them here - Jeff

Original Questions

Hi myname is (name withheld) and am a student at the ohio state university and I have been asked to do an interview with someone on my topic for a research paper. My topic is digital photography. I was just wondering if you could answer 2 questions for me. 1. What do you think of digital photography? 2. Would you say deleting pictures can delete our history? thank you so much for your time. Could you please respond ASAP. thank you again.

Lengthy Answer

Hmmmmm, let me ponder....

1) What is Digital Photography?

Well, that one, one would hope, is the easy question. Short answer: digital photography is the capture, construction, and/or modification of photographic elements into a digital format.

Now like any good answer, this has some hidden assumptions. First, you'll notice that I have implicitly expanded the definition from the "capture" of photographic (or "light written", from the Greek "photo-" for light and "graph" for writing) images to the "capture, construction, and/or modification." While this has always been a hidden proposition of traditional photography, the tools and technology for constructing or modifying digital imagery makes it a much more active and explicit endeavor (see the answer to question #2 for more on this).

Second, the transition from an analog format (traditional negatives and printing) to a digital format greatly changes the nature of the photographic image. Because it is digital in nature (binary, on/off data, numerical data), the photograph can be copied, transported, shared, etc. irregardless of what object (art or otherwise) you create for it. In traditional photography, to have a "print," one has to have access to the original negative and often has to be printed by the original artist/technician. For example, Ansel Adams would not only take the photographs but use the darkroom to accentuate areas of his photographs; a print made from the original negatives but by someone else doe snot reflect Adams' original aesthetic intent. The variable nature inherent in the analog process makes perfect replication on any art object virtually impossible - a situation where one tries to come "close enough." However, once a digital file has been completed by an artist, it can be copied with complete digital fidelity ad infinitum. Because the file is broken into exact zeros and ones, the data contained within a digital file can be copied without any loss of data. Indeed, the image itself can be translated into a variety of formats (CDs, Print-Outs, Online Images, etc.) and shared a multitude of times while remaining true to the original file created by the artist. In fact, I would posit that this calls into question the nature of "original" - what is the original piece of art created and what are the copies? I mean, is the Photoshop or digital file the piece of art and the print outs are the copies? And what if I make a back-up of the Photoshop file? Now I have two files that contain the exact same data. Which is the original file? Is that a meaningful question? I've long contended that digital media (photography, music, what have you) call into question basic artistic assumptions about "original" and "copy," and since our current valuation of an art object (both monetarily and aesthetically) depends heavily on the original nature of the art object, this can have subtle but deep implications to our current understanding of what a piece of "art" is. For example, paintings are more valued the posters of the paintings, or a carved marble sculpture is more valuable than cast plaster copies of the same sculpture. But with digital imagery, it is easily imaginable to have the first "printing" from the digital file be exact (or virtually exact) as the 2000th printing. So which one is more important?

2) Is deleting pictures deleting our history? Never thought much about it. I'd have to say yep, but I'd also say that this is no different than the destruction of any "matrix" which enables replication of an image. By matrix, I mean a thing (digital file, copper etching plate, celluloid negative) which enables an artist or technician to make high-fidelity copies of an art object. So a destruction of any matrix, digital or analog, is the destruction of the continued representation of that reproduced object. Now because there is a historical, biased connection between photography and "truth," one would be tempted to say that the destruction of a digital or analog photographic matrix is the destruction of a prior documentation of a historical truth. This perception that photographic imagery represents "truth" is actually, to me, the more interesting question...

Walter Benjamin posited that photographs were, in effect, windows which transport the viewer into a prior place in time. That is, when I look at, say, a Matthew Brady photograph of the Civil War, I'm looking at a historically accurate snapshot of that one moment in time. The image fixes that moment in perpetuity, or at least until the photograph and it's matrix (the negative) are destroyed and thus lost (i.e., deleting history). However, this opinion is based on a false premise, namely that the taking of the photograph is a purely mechanical process that is neutral. But the photograph is composed, developed, and printed by a human being, and all of these processes can be manipulated by that said same human. Again, go back to the Matthew Brady photograph. The implication of the photograph is that it shows exactly what that moment in the battlefield looked like. But it is well documented that Brady composed the bodies of the dead to make more aesthetic statements; already, before the shutter has been clicked, a level of artifice enters as Brady rearranges limbs, moves bodies, or adds/subtracts props. Next, light values can be changed during the developing process; depending on how the chemistry is applied and manipulated, a day shot can become a dusk shot, dusk a night shot, or the opposite. Likewise, within the darkroom Brady can manipulate the printing process to accentuate or de-emphasize certain elements of his photographs, or even combine multiple negatives to make larger composite photographs. But because we (you, I, the culture at large) has in the past had an implicit belief in the "truth" of the photograph, we believe what Brady (or any photographer) presents, irregardless of what changes he/she may have made.

Now I don't think this is a bad thing, just a mistaken impression by the public at large. Interestingly, it is the offshoot of photography, film, that has helped disabuse people of the impression. Movie FX, both visual and otherwise, has grown extensively over the last 40 years or so, coming to a point where realities are created which we as viewers know are patently false - ALL modern Sci-Fi films come to mind. Yet because we allow films a certain leeway, we assume that the images we see are true, but only within the confines of the film. I get scared every time I see the "Aliens" movies, but I don't expect to stumble across the acid-spitting villains once I walk out of the theaters (except, maybe, during Halloween). Slowly this understanding of the artificial nature of photography is percolating up from film. People don't necessarily "believe what they see" anymore, or at least not to the same extent as 50 or 100 years ago.

So what does this mean to digital photography and our understanding of "history." Well, digital images are many times more "malleable" than their analog cousins. In analog photography I'm confined by many physical limitations; in digital photography I'm confined only by the resolutions of my images and the computing power of my tools. A good story illustrating this can be found in the story of the making of "Finding Nemo." One of the original assignments given the animators was to animate from scratch clips that replicated some footage of aquatic flora and fauna (things like whales breaching the ocean, fish swimming, coral reefs). The idea was to see how close the Pixar animators could get with the tools they already had. To everyone's surprise, the animators had both the skill and the tools to create virtual duplications of the video clips - trying to tell which clip was genuine became impossible. In the end, they had to limit their animators so that they didn't create an animated movie that was "too real." Stories like this illustrate that digital photography, at least at the highest levels of film, can create virtual objects, scenes, etc. that are indistinguishable from real life objects. So the question becomes, how do you know what is "true" when everything can be created virtually (or in other words, "faked)?

How does this effect our concept of history? Well, my gut tells me that it subtlety but significantly changes it. As long as we assume that a photo is "true," the digital techniques enable us to reconstruct our history. For example, I spent Xmas with my in-laws in Texas, and one of the goals of the stay was to take a family photograph. So all the family shows up, dressed well and nicely groomed. All, that is, except for one brother. He got called away to do some work in another city and couldn't make it. Now this irked everyone present, since there are few times when we can gather the family together, and thus he should have come to be photographed before leaving the city. His response? "I'll just Photoshop myself in later." Assuming he has the skill and tools to do that, what we could have left as a family heirloom is a photograph showing everyone in the family, in a pose/situation that never truly existed. It is a fictional photograph, not a historical one. But again, unless you were there, how would you know? So it seems to me that digital photography doesn't only open the possibility of "deleting" history (which, as I said before, isn't an issue confined to the digital only), but it also greatly expands the possibility of "constructing" history, manipulating the appearance of events so that a believable but entirely fictitious memory can be created. Interesting, if not a little scary, but this is what happens when digital tools make visual recording a malleable material...

Hope this helps, Jeff