The reading After Photography discussed the transitions seen over time that led to digital photography. Fred Ritchin exemplified the evolution of painting into photography, compared the Internet to society’s fascination with fast moving cars, and also demonstrated the influences that a new medium obtains from its predecessor (TV from the radio, early photography from painting etc.). The reading seeks to demonstrate the increasing rapidity in which mediums are changing “for the better”. It seems to come across that the digitalization of photography (along with the internet) means a different experience aesthetic and artistic experience.
The tone seems to be split between critical and embracive regarding digital photography and what it means for the art world. On the one hand the possibilities are endless and on the other, it’s too easy. Photography, which threatened the success of painting, has now split into 2 categories: Analog and digital. The latter seemingly farther removed from painting than the former. As a student of photography developing my skills in the digital age, I have a world of options and tools available for any type of approach I want to take with my photography. It’s not like the original masters who were experts at the fundamentals of photography. They had fewer chances to get it right and therefore had to be as precise as possible. Today, the discipline is much more lenient and could arguably be considered less specialized. The easy access to cameras, editing programs, publishing sources and the ability to self teach photographic skills, makes it much more difficult for photographers today to set themselves apart and create the unique, specialized images of the past.
Chapter 2 discusses how photography parallels and, in a way, conditions society towards manipulating the natural. Comparing Photoshop to plastic surgery and genetic engineering, Ritchin demonstrates the abundance of fabrication for a more desirable product. He mirrors the questions that seem to be dominating the societal understanding of photos today, namely the level of truth that they contain. I think the overall theme of this chapter addresses the value, authenticity, and credibility of photography and the realm of post-photographic processes. The creativity and mastery once lied in the framing and setting up of an image where it now seems to be in editing (as exemplified in the National Geographic’s manipulation of the pyramids for the cover image). Even journalistic photography is losing credibility as more and more people are beginning to question whether or not it was manipulated to show something different. How will manipulated news affect historical recollection? This digital revolution has given rise to efforts aimed at detecting fabrication, known as digital forensics. Looking at a photograph now includes evaluating the underlying architecture of it. While reading this chapter I couldn’t help but feel motivated to reject post-photographic editing and concentrate on mastering and manipulating my work before I hold down the shutter button. What’s almost scary is that the digital revolution has changed societal expectations on what is acceptable and what is real. Everything that we see in the media and advertisements are, more likely than not, adjusted. How is this priming the value and potential of my work as non-journalistic photographer? It is certainly less significant that my work could be photo-shopped or falsified, but that changes the innate understanding of it none-the-less.
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