Digital Photography in Contemporary Culture: Constructing Reality or Generating Virtual Worlds?

London College of Communication School of Media BA Media and Cultural Studies

Dissertation

Digital Photography in Contemporary Culture: Constructing Reality or Generating Virtual Worlds?

Tiberiu Ciocirlie

2014

Table of Contents

Abstract.......................................................................................... 3 Acknowledgements ..................................................................... 4 Introduction ................................................................................... 5 Chapter 1 – A Historical Account ............................................ 13 Chapter 2 – Transition to Digital ............................................... 30 Chapter 3 – Current Perception............................................... 45 Conclusion ................................................................................... 55 Bibliography ................................................................................. 58 Web Sources ............................................................................... 60 Illustrations .................................................................................... 61

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Abstract

'Today the making of images no longer shares an anthropocentric, utilitarian purpose. It is no longer a question of survival after death, but of a larger concept, the creation of an ideal world in the likeness of the real, with its own temporal destiny.' (Bazin, 1960, pp.6) Photography developed as an objective process of visual representation that mechanically produced accurate recordings of reality, 'without the creative intervention of man' (Bazin, 1960:7). Despite its widely attributed credibility, the analogue photograph is not entirely objective, since the photographer composes the image by selecting the elements to be included or excluded within the frame.

Photography’s transfer to digital provided an unprecedented level of interaction with the image – at the expense of truth. Paradoxically, the way photography is currently perceived is marked by both contrasting stages, resulting in a hybrid notion that attributes the credibility of the former analogue stage to the artificial images of the digital stage.

Offering strong theoretical support, the dissertation sets out to critically analyse both analogue and digital stages of photography, in order to learn how these have influenced public perception within the current socio-cultural context.

Mostly perceived as paradoxical, the digital image sacrifices its connection to reality in favor of interactivity and self-expression, thus becoming increasingly similar with painting as research will further demonstrate.

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Acknowledgements

I want to thank my supervisor, Peter D. Osborne, for his valuable feedback and support throughout the process of researching and writing this dissertation.

I am grateful to Sonia and my parents, for their indefinite support and understanding.

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Introduction

Photography has become an indispensable component of the daily visual content, establishing an 'authority' of the visual, through which it defines our perception of reality. This complex photographical content comprises a variety of types and genres distributed on several channels, which adds to the ubiquity of photography nowadays. However, it is not merely the ubiquity that raises issues, but the representation of 'reality' – which is often altered when photographs are composed, through the selection (inclusion or exclusion) of certain elements within the frame – or, after the image has been recorded, through software manipulation or 'retouching'. Thus, the 'real' in these images is fabricated, sometimes entirely generated by computers, it omits or idealizes, but most of the time, misleads.

Focusing mainly towards cultural consequences, the dissertation sets out to critically assess the contemporary perception of photography, taking into account the new boundaries established by digital technologies, and how these changes have impacted the medium's former status of documenting the real. Photography's initial capacity to record and represent the real persisted in the popular notion of the medium, although the (newer) digital format revolutionized photography in many respects, facilitating not only the manipulation of photographs, but also the accessibility and quick spread of the practice – thus, generating constructed representations of reality. It can be argued that photography initially opposed painting through its accurate rendering of reality and superior image quality: it was an automated process of recording images that required no intervention from human. Eliminating painter's subjectivity from the representation, photography manifested as an independent and objective picture-making process as John

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Szarkowski argued, based on selection rather than synthesis (2007, pp.1). The photographer composes the image to be recorded, and the camera automatically employs an optical, mechanical and chemical process, utilizing light to capture the image: according to Szarkowski, the difference is that paintings are made whereas photographs are taken (2007, pp.1). On this premise, photography had been used as a form of documentation, providing automated recordings of factualities that happened in front of the camera, while painting – the major equivalent in visual representation – was an art form. The notion that photographs are 'unquestioning' depictions of the real became the dominant characteristic of photography in people's understanding of the medium, its objective features being embraced by documentary practices, while technological limitations of that time restrained the possibilities of image manipulation. However, with the arrival of the digital image, photographs were 'de-materialized' and converted to mathematical codes: accessed, multiplied, stored, and manipulated by computers.

Since the development of digital photography, the possibility of altering images – and implicitly, their meaning – became accessible to virtually everyone, professionals or amateurs, trained or untrained users: digital cameras can be found anywhere, even integrated in various devices, while image processing software is becoming intuitive, increasingly accurate, and available on multiple platforms. This transition considerably distances photography from its former characteristic, and it could be argued that despite an increase in the quality of images, they fail to represent the truth. In this sense, digital photography shares more similarities with painting – through the allowance of alterations and shifts in meaning, becoming a subjective and artificial medium, no longer committed to faithful representations. It is therefore a paradox that governs the current state of digital photography, as its perception remains linked to photography's former promise of telling the truth, yet becoming increasingly artificial, synthetic. In 6

contrast to its primordial function, photography now conceals the truth not only through interventions in processing, but also through the way the photographs are framed and cropped: they present the viewer only with fragments of the real that would tell, eventually, a truncated version of the event, with a doubtful background and missing information. Figure 1 illustrates how certain parts of an image presented without the rest of the context, can generate new, if not antagonistic meanings. The photograph shows four soldiers, one standing in guard with a rifle, the soldier in center receives water from the third one, and the fourth assists.

Figure 1 – Media Manipulation

By cropping the image and presenting only the left side, the soldier who was given water now appears as a hostage, threatened with the weapon. Conversely, the right part alone shows a soldier giving water to another, of other army. Thus,

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the exclusion of certain elements from an image can dramatically alter the message it conveys. In contrast, renowned photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson would develop his photographs with a thin black outline, showing that the film was developed in full-frame and including a part of the frame as a proof that the image was not cropped: Bresson's framing can be identified in Figure 2.

Figure 2 – Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1975. ROMANIA. In a Train

The new features of the digital format seem to build up a visual tool much more powerful than painting that requires no special skills or training, allowing anyone with a digital camera and through readily available computer software to subjectively alter reality, generating and distributing fabricated depictions of the world we inhabit. Because of the continuous improvement of cameras and software, the intervention on the image is nearly imperceptible and the viewer, 8

although aware of the technological possibilities now widely available, still reads the photograph as a documentation of reality – something that happened for real.

The research piece will analyze both conditions of photography, former and later, seeking to learn what is the current status of photography, how people perceive it since the transition to digital, and if the former property is still applicable.

Research areas include works of Andre Bazin, Susan Sontag, Martin Lister, Fred Ritchin, Leslie Mullen, and Lev Manovich, among others. Andre Bazin's essay The Ontology of the Photographic Image provides an account of the photographic medium and its association with reality, regarded as an automatic and independent process that, unlike painting, has the ability to objectively represent the real and to preserve it indefinitely, as a way of defying time. Susan Sontag's work from On Photography and Regarding the Pain of Others covers a wide range of aspects concerning photography, such as the beautifying tendency of photographs, their capacity to provide evidence, or the authority of photographs in visual representation. Martin Lister's introductory essay in The Photographic Image in Digital Culture was first published in 1995 and revised in 2013. Lister writes about the effects of photography's transfer to digital technology, the dematerialization of the algorithmic image, and the loss of real. In the revised edition, Lister includes up-to-date topics such as the camera-phone or the networked image. Fred Ritchin provides a critical analysis on both the analogue and digital state of photography – with more emphasis on the latter. In his book After Photography, Ritchin stresses the subjectivity of the digital image and gives detailed examples of image manipulation practices. Leslie Mullen's work entitled Truth in Photography: Perception, Myth and Reality in the Postmodern World questions photography's objectivity and truth-telling ability,

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considering the photographic medium a postmodern art form. Lev Manovich observes the effects of the digital technology and compares the two technological stages of photography. In The Paradoxes of Digital Photography, Manovich promotes the digital image for its advantages over the analogue photograph, while concluding that unaltered, 'straight' photography never existed. The aim of the dissertation is to challenge these theories in a coherent approach regarding photography’s current practice and perception.

The chosen methodology is mainly theoretical-based, and visually supported through illustrations. The dissertation contains illustrations that are used for analysis or exemplification purposes, such as historical photographs, portraits from the police archive, photographs manipulated in the pre-digital era, and digitally-processed images. The illustrations will include works of Fox Talbot, Alfred Stieglitz and Henri Cartier-Bresson, as well as photographs I personally took.

The analysis is structured on three chapters presenting the incipient phase of photography and its uses, the conversion to digital, and the current perception in regard to the previous two points, making analogy to painting and realism.

The first chapter includes the historical account, presenting photography's former and most prolonged state. The chapter is based on 'fundamental' works on photography, such as AndrĂŠ Bazin's The Ontology of the Photographic Image, Roland Barthes' Camera Lucida, Susan Sontag's On Photography, and Quentin Bajac's The Invention of Photography. Over three decades ago, Susan Sontag wrote in her book On Photography, about photography's status (at that time), of representing the incontrovertible proof that a given thing happened. Andre Bazin, wrote that the photograph was a trace of the real (The Ontology of the 10

Photographic Image): these arguments on photography's former and main quality are part of a wide literature which contributed to the generalization of the idea that photography records reality. Describing the pre-digital era of photography, these works provide valuable information on the practice and perception of the medium at that time. The first chapter introduces the documentary form of photography and its capacity to record the 'real', emerging as an accurate and instantaneous process, as opposed to painting. During this stage, photography gained reputation as a truth-telling medium, notion that remained ingrained in popular perception ever since.

The second chapter focuses on the transition from analogue to digital within the digital revolution, taking into account several changes brought by the digital format, which include a greater accessibility, popularization, distribution over the Internet, and the possibility to manipulate images. The chapter explains how the transition affected photography, since the image became a binary code, highly reliant on computers. Physically immaterial, the digital photograph is a numerical sequence, much easier to store and multiply, but most importantly, to interact with. The convenience of digital format made photography widely accessible to the public, leading to an (over) abundance of photographs of all kinds, in both physical and virtual form. The main point of digital photography revolves around image manipulation, the accessibility of the practice, and how it influenced the initial notion of photography. Another issue is the constructed reality through the distribution of manipulated images over the Internet as well as computer generated images, incredibly accurate and sometimes confused with real ones.

The chapter includes Martin Lister's The Photographic Image in Digital Culture and Fred Ritchin's After Photography as the main works to be discussed, as well as Lev Manovich's The Paradoxes of Digital Photography, and Daniel Rubinstein

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and Andy Fisher’s On the verge of Photography for their account of the digital image as a networked image.

The third chapter gathers the main points from the previous chapters regarding the way photography was perceived in each stage, with emphasis on the current perception and referring to the paradox of the digital image, which acts as a hybrid between the two stages of photography. Accordingly, nowadays photography is largely perceived as representing the real, the characteristic inherited from its analogue stage, but taking full advantage of the convenience and possibilities offered by the digital format which, by contrast, includes the practice of image manipulation. The final chapter also provides an analysis of photography's development in relation to painting: formerly, photography presented a set of objective, documentary-oriented features as opposed to painting, having the ability to record and represent reality. Through its fast development and mostly after medium's digitization, photography became increasingly similar with painting, sharing common aspects in visual representation and no longer representing the real. The main texts analysed in this chapters are Victor Burgin's essays from Thinking Photography, and Leslie Mullen's Truth in Photography: Perception, Myth and Reality in the Postmodern World, as well as fragments from the works of Fred Ritchin, Martin Lister, and Lev Manovich.

Based on a set of resonant theories on photography and providing in-depth analysis of the medium in both its analogue and digital stage, the paper seeks to explain the paradox of digital image and to learn about photography's predominant perception, while determining whether its trajectory is channeled toward art or reality.

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Chapter 1 – A Historical Account

Throughout its relatively short history, photography witnessed a radical development in the past two centuries, which resulted in its rapid popularization.

The medium was introduced as a radical picture-making process, able to record instantaneously the scene in front of the lens, and to accurately reproduce it. Since it required no intervention from human, the process was independent and automated: a characteristic that contributed to the medium's objectivity in depicting the image. In The Invention of Photography, curator Quentin Bajac mentions the introduction of the new photographic process at the French Academy of Sciences in Paris, 7 January 1839 by astronomer and physicist Louis-François Arago, who 'presented a new process that allowed images created in the camera obscura, the drawing apparatus employed by artists since 16 th century, to be reproduced mechanically, without any manual intervention.'

(Bajac, 2002, pp.13) The automated system uses light to create images – hence the term photography, which originates from Greek language: φωτός (phōtos) = light and γραφή (graphé) = writing, drawing. In Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes describes the process of recording images from a technical perspective, which involves two fundamental procedures: 'Technically, Photography is at the intersection of two quite distinct procedures; one of a chemical order: the action of light on certain substances; the other of a physical order: the formation of the image through an optical device.'

(1982, pp.10)

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In this respect, the two analog processes of chemical and optical nature are employed in recording the image: optical lenses are used to capture the light reflected or emitted from the photographed objects, light which is projected as a miniaturized image, on a light-sensitive surface – the photographic film – containing silver crystals and other chemicals. It could be added that a third process, of mechanical nature (as Bajac suggested earlier) intervenes between the former two, coordinating them: a mechanical curtain, usually driven by a clockwork mechanism, determines the time of the exposure, during which the image projected through the lens is recorded on the chemical surface of the photographic film. Susan Sontag discusses the limited use of the first cameras and the inaccessibility of the new process: 'The first cameras, made in France and England in the early 1840s, had only inventors and buffs to operate them. Since there were then no professional photographers, there could not be amateurs either, and taking photographs had no clear social use.'

(2005, pp.5) In this early stage cameras were merely a novelty, the process itself being conceptually radical, and only a few knew the principles and how to operate these devices. As Sontag stressed, it was more a scientific application rather than a visual practice: still developing, with several impractical aspects – at a time when being a photographer was not an occupation yet. It was the notion and the 'potential' possibilities of the medium that motivated early pioneers to further research and improve cameras and techniques they used.

An example of early processing is Fox Talbot's “trees in a pond” image created in the winter of 1841-2 (Bajac, 2002 pp.39), as illustrated in Figure 3.

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Figure 3 – Fox Talbot, 1841-1842. ‘trees in a pond’

The novelty of the process and the extensive development carried out, facilitated a rapid development of the medium, as John Szarkowski maintains: 'The history of photography has been less a journey than a growth.

Its movement has not been linear and consecutive but centrifugal.

Photography, and our understanding of it, has spread from a center; it has, by infusion, penetrated our consciousness.'

(Szarkowski, 2007 pp.5-6) Szarkowski describes the ascension of photography as 'centrifugal' rather than having a linear development. Therefore, it progressed in more than one

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direction, encompassing a wide set of applications within the realms of science and the arts (Bajac, 2002), thus becoming ubiquitous – as a part of people's consciousness. Not having the typical, unidirectional evolution, photography facilitated multiple developments simultaneously, which contributed to its exponential popularization. The new process able to record the visual quickly became the major form of documentation, its ability to 'tell the truth' being supported by many theorists, which led to the general assumption that photography is representing reality. In the same light, Leslie Mullen explains that, “because photographs could expose the facts of life behind the façade, the public decided photographs were credible witnesses of reality” (1998, pp.6).

In its incipient stage, photography rivaled painting – at that time the principal method of visual representation, the latter being surpassed by photography's superior set of features, characterized by accuracy, instantaneity, and objectivity. In photography, as opposed to painting, the skills and techniques were learned, requiring no talent since the camera was actually creating the image, which made photography appealing to a wider public. In this respect, Szarkowski argues that the new medium produced a large number of professionals, 'by the thousands – converted silversmiths, tinkers, druggists, blacksmiths and printers. […] Among them they produced a flood of images. In 1853 the New York daily tribune estimated that three million daguerreotypes were being produced that year. Some of these pictures were the product of knowledge and skill and sensibility and invention; many were the product of accident, improvisation, misunderstanding, and empirical experiment. But whether produced by art or by luck, each picture was part of a massive assault on our traditional habits of seeing'.

(Szarkowski, 2007, pp.1-2)

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The movement included people from diverse backgrounds and professions who approached photography from a financial and industrial point of view, without necessarily having an eye for art (Bajac, 2002): these 'entrepreneurs' anticipated the ascension and popularity of photography from its early stage, and invested in photographic studios to make their fortune. The flood of images generated in a short time is regarded as a 'massive assault' by Szarkowski, as it radically changed the way people used to see the world – at a time when paintings dominated the visual representation, the arrival of photographs shook the known boundaries of the 'visual', as it was understood at that time. Photography is often compared or discussed in parallel with painting, an analogy present in a wide range of works – the two may have similar purposes and output (sharing the same visual channel), and yet there is a set of characteristics to differentiate them, even antagonizing in certain respects. In regard to the particularities between the two, Szarkowski argues that photography provided a radically new picture-making process that was now based on selection, as opposed to painting’s process of synthesis. As Szarkowski noted, the difference was that paintings were made, involving ‘traditional schemes and skills and attitudes’, while photographs were simply taken. The new process raised creative issues for it was able to produce clear, coherent pictures that were ‘meaningful in human terms’, despite their ‘mechanical and mindless’ nature (Szarkowski, 2007 pp.1). Instead of intermediating the message which is to be illustrated – as the painter does through synthesis, photography excludes this step prone to subjectivity, and only requires the photographer to select the fragment of reality to be recorded. Through the elimination of human input and automation of the recording process, photography becomes a mechanical, objective medium, able to record the 'real' in its bare form, without nuances or concealments – this could be considered the most prolonged notion of the medium, still embedded in popular perception. Szarkowski also 17

stresses the necessary (and exhaustive) skill-set required in painting which is no longer essential for taking photographs, but most importantly he addresses medium’s capacity to convey meaning. The clarity of photographs is the result of extensive research and technical development of the cameras, lenses, chemicals – but the message embedded in a photograph only becomes meaningful when is decoded – that is, read and interpreted by human. Therefore cameras do not create meaning – only record and re-produce potentially meaningful scenes, being only a conveyor for the message which may be, eventually, received in different ways.

What made photographs superior to paintings was their ability to record the message without any interpretation beforehand. Andre Bazin has an interesting point regarding the objectivity of photographs in relation to painting: 'Originality in photography as distinct from originality in painting lies in the essentially objective character of photography. [Bazin here makes a point of the fact that the lens, the basis of photography, is in French called the "objectif," a nuance that is lost in English.-TR.] For the first time, between the originating object and its reproduction there intervenes only the instrumentality of a nonliving agent. For the first time an image of the world is formed automatically, without the creative intervention of man. The personality of the photographer enters into the proceedings only in his selection of the object to be photographed and by way of the purpose he has in mind. Although the final result may reflect something of his personality, this does not play the same role as is played by that of the painter. All the arts are based on the presence of man, only photography derives an advantage from his absence.'

(Bazin, 1960, pp.7) Hugh Gray, who translated Bazin's work from French, mentions Bazin's emphasis on the objectivity of photographs where even the term for lens, in French, translates as “objectif”. Bazin stresses the 'instrumentality' of photography through the camera, able to form images of the world automatically – however, he does credit the photographer for seeking to express his personality

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through the selections made within the frame. In this light, it might be argued that the only form of expression in photography was through selection – still retaining the objective rendering of images, only the point of view being changed. Bazin also argues that paintings will always be 'in fee to an inescapable subjectivity', regardless of how skillful the painter is – for the fact that a human hand intervened within the process would cast a shadow of doubt over the image. What Bazin suggests then, is that rather than focusing on perfecting a physical process, one should take into account the way the process is achieved (here an automated process) – for an essential factor of photography resides in satisfying our appetite for illusion, created through mechanical reproduction in which man played no part: The solution is not to be found in the result achieved, but in the way of achieving it (Bazin, 1960, pp.7). Therefore, photography responds to this desire by providing visual 'illusions' in the form of automated recordings of a 'reality' that is not present. What counts here most is our perception of this illusion, presented as reality – knowing that, although not there, it was objectively and accurately recorded at a given time, by a 'nonliving agent' as Bazin calls it, and without man's creative input. Similarly, Sontag argues about the subjectivity in paintings, drawings or prose, which are narrowly selective interpretations while photographs, through their native objectivity, provide fragments of reality: 'What is written about a person or an event is frankly an interpretation, as are handmade visual statements, like paintings and drawings. Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire.'

(2005, pp.2) In this sense, photography's principal characteristic was the ability to record, or document reality – in the minutest detail, with incomparable sharpness and

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accuracy (Bajac, 2002, pp.22). Sontag emphasizes the accessibility of photographs, since 'anyone' can handle these depictions of reality, creating, multiplying, and storing them; in fact photography made reality so convenient that one could acquire fragments of reality without even witnessing that particular reality. In the same respect, Bazin maintains that photography and cinema are discoveries that satisfy 'our obsession with realism' (Bazin, 1960, pp.7). Perhaps this obsession to record and consume reality originates from the lack of it, during a time when all renderings were subjectively interpreted and synthesized throughout their creation process. Photography filled this gap and became renowned for its truth-telling capabilities, being perceived as an unquestioning proof of the real. To the foundation of this notion have contributed not only a wide range of theories, elaborated on the idea of realism and objectivism, but also photography's

early

documentary

applications

from

the

19 th

century:

'photography established itself as a medium for recording facts in a constantly expanding number of areas of human activity: industrial, judicial, scientific...'

(Bajac, 2002, pp.71). Bajac continues the idea highlighting photography's principal features discussed earlier (mechanical process, instantaneous, objective and accurate, to sum up) - all combined in the practice of photography, presented to the public as a valuable aid in documenting, testifying or proving certain facts (Bajac, 2002, pp.72). Thus, 'the interest of the public institutions was particularly evident in the realms of the police and the army, where the authorities were very quick to realize photography's potential' (Bajac, 2002, pp.74), photography being used for portraits (of prisoners or wanted men) and to create identification documents – as presented in Figure 4.

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Figure 4 – Police Archive, 1864. Judicial identification

Photography was also used in architecture, industry and science for various purposes, but all taking advantage of the medium's capabilities to record reality.

Supporting this idea, Sontag writes: 'Photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we’re shown a photograph of it. In one version of its utility, the camera record incriminates. Starting with their use by the Paris police […] photographs became a useful tool of modern states in the surveillance and control of their increasingly mobile populations. In another version of its utility, the camera record justifies. A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that a given thing happened. The picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which is like what’s in the picture […] a photograph—any photograph—seems to have a more innocent, and therefore more accurate, relation to visible reality than do other mimetic objects.'

(2005, pp.3) The statement confirms, once again, the functional aspect of photography, employed by the authorities from early stages, not only as an analytical tool, but also as an irrefutable proof that a given thing happened. Sontag puts emphasis on

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the medium's capacity to 'furnish evidence', where simple statements or written accounts may raise doubts for anyone could relate from a personal and therefore subjective angle, while a photograph could eliminate these suspicions by providing a detailed, objective account of the event. The credibility of the photographs reached an unequaled level, Bazin arguing that the objective nature of photography guarantees for the authenticity of the scene depicted. Despite the objections we might address, ‘we are forced to accept as real the existence of the object reproduced, actually re-presented, set before us, that is to say, in time and space' (Bazin, 1960, pp.7-8).

Through a circular development, the medium advanced on two important directions: recording reality and popularization. As already mentioned, photography's capacity to record and re-present the real became a highly valued feature of the medium, used to document, analyze, prove certain aspects that were added credibility through visual representation. The medium also witnessed a fast popularization, encouraged not only by its radical features, but also by an unrivaled accessibility, making it a visual medium much more approachable than painting. Cameras were mass produced and marketed with several automatic features in order to appeal to a wider public.

A Kodak advertisement from the 1960s stresses the ease of use of a 35mm camera, that adjusts the exposure automatically, the user having only to aim and shoot: New Kodak Automatic 35 Camera has Electric Eye The electric eye reads the light, sets the lens automatically. In bright sunshine, the lens opens up ... in shade, the lens closes down – just as your eyes do. It's the easiest-to-use 35mm camera you've ever seen!'

(Figure 5)

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Figure 5 – Kodak Automatic 35 Camera Brochure

According to Sontag, popular taste expects an easy, invisible technology (2005, pp.10) – which is exactly the way cameras were sold: automated and easy to use. By gaining sizable influence, photography also impacted our perception of the world through establishing new visual codes, in which photographs decide what is worth looking at, and becoming ‘a grammar and, even more importantly, an ethics of seeing’ (Sontag, 2005, pp.1). In this respect, photographs gained a level of credibility that came to define reality instead of re-presenting it.

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Therefore, they established an authority of the visual: 'Instead of just recording reality, photographs have become the norm for the way things appear to us, thereby changing the very idea of reality, and of realism' (2005, pp.67). In the same light, Sontag concludes: 'Once an object of wonder because of its capacity to render reality faithfully as well as despised at first for its base accuracy, the camera has ended by effecting a tremendous promotion of the value of appearances. [...] Photographs do not simply render reality—realistically. It is reality which is scrutinized, and evaluated' (2005, pp.67) It can be argued that photography actually changed the way we perceive reality. Through its evolution and wide spread, photography became the principal form of visual representation, able to re-present the world and determine what is real. In becoming an authority of the visual, both produced and consumed, it secured the general notion according to which photographs were unquestioning representation of the real, an impression that remained deeply rooted in popular perception.

It would be wrong to assume that, despite photography's strong statement, photographs were flawless renderings of reality, free of any external intervention.

Any photograph is subject to interpretation, carrying a message that can be altered in several ways through framing, cropping, captioning, or manipulation. Geoffrey Batchen makes a rather combative statement on the truth rendered in photography, questioning its objectivity:

[T]raditional photographs – the ones our culture has always put so much trust in - have never been "true" in the first place.

Photographers intervene in every photograph they make, whether by orchestrating or directly interfering in the scene being imaged; 24

by selecting, cropping, excluding, and in other ways making pictorial choices as they take the photograph; by enhancing, suppressing, and cropping the finished print in the darkroom; and, finally, by adding captions and other contextual elements to their image to anchor some potential meanings and discourage others.

(1994, pp.48) Accordingly, from the very moment of composing the image, the photographer subjectively 'selects' the elements to be included or excluded within the frame, producing a partial recording of reality. In Figure 6, renowned photographer Alfred Stieglitz reports that he stood three hours during a blizzard on February 22, 1893, “awaiting the proper moment” to take his celebrated picture, “Fifth Avenue, Winter” (Sontag, 2005 pp.69).

Figure 6 – Alfred Stieglitz, 1893. Fifth Avenue, Winter

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Stieglitz’s photograph cannot be regarded as an objective 'snapshot', for the process of recording was instantaneous, but the composition was highly subjective, reflecting photographer's views in the greatest proportion. Moreover, despite photography's statute of incontrovertible proof of the real, image manipulation and retouching practices have been carried out from early times.

Sontag relates how a German photographer invented the first technique for retouching the negative, which he presented at an Exhibition in Paris, back in 1855. The fact that the camera could lie made getting photographed much more popular according to Sontag. Unlike painting, a ‘fake photograph (one which has been retouched or tampered with, or whose caption is false) falsifies reality’ (2005, pp.66). In this respect, Figures 7 and 8 illustrate the practices of image manipulation in Soviet Union, as an attempt to falsify not only reality, but history as well. In both cases, political figures were 'removed' from the proximity of Soviet leaders, and renegade.

According to Lev Manovich, all photographs published in the Stalinist era were not only staged but also heavily retouched ‘that they can hardly be called photographs at all’. These images maintained the unity of space and time and they existed ‘somewhere between photography and painting’: the Stalinist visual culture, as Manovich writes, ‘eliminated the very difference between a photograph and a painting by producing photographs which looked like paintings and paintings […] which looked like photographs’ (1995, pp.10).

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Figure 7 depicts Lenin in 1920 giving a speech to a crowd in Sverdlov Square, Moscow. Leon Trotsky was removed by censors from the image since he became an Enemy of the State – not only assassinated, but erased from history.

Figure 7 – 1920. Lenin in Sverdlov Square, Moscow

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In a similar manner, in Figure 8 Nikolai Yezhov has been removed from standing next to Stalin after the former fell out of Stalin's favor.

Figure 8 – Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov

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It is therefore a paradox in perception, since photography's promise to faithfully represent the truth becomes subject to alterations and interventions, which questions photography’s earned prestige and predominant notion in popular perception. An altered photograph does not only misrepresent a fact: it actually alters reality. The subjective character of the photograph has been repeatedly reported, and the practice of manipulation appears to distance the medium from reality even further. Not all photographs are to be considered fabricated, but the practice of manipulation co-existing with the prevalent perception of a truth-telling medium generates a paradox that ultimately depends on the interpretation of images. Perhaps it is the desire – or obsession, according to Bazin – in our culture that forces photography to be perceived as a rendition of reality, instead of simply providing evidence on the basis of resemblance or trace.

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Chapter 2 – Transition to Digital

The Apollo 11 spaceflight, famous for landing the first humans on the Moon in 1969, relied on Apollo’s Command Module Computer built by IBM, which ran at a frequency of 1 MHz (1.024 MHz more precisely) featuring a virtual machine and performing simultaneous operations such as guidance and telemetry calculations. Today, the latest iPhone features a processor with a frequency of 1300MHz which will certainly not take anyone to the moon. According to Moore’s Law, formulated by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1970s, the overall processing power for computers will double every two years: the previous example illustrates the considerable impact of

the

Digital

exponential

Revolution

development,

and

its

through

the

Figure 9 – Tiberiu Ciocirlie, 2012. CPU Negative.

transfer of ‘all types of information – voice, text, video, pictures, and music – into digital formats, which can be manipulated by computers’ (Kung, Kroll, Ripken and Walker, 1999, pp.2). Before the change, information existed in analogue formats, stored on various mediums such as vinyl records, film stock – used in motion pictures and chemical photography – magnetic tape – as in open-reel recorders, audio and video cassettes – and even paper. The transition to digital technology implied the virtualization of all analogue information, which through conversion became a mathematical code, operated by computers. Fast paced, digital technology comprised all major mediums, currently present in ‘almost

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every aspect of a developed nation’s technical infrastructure’ (Gere, 2008, pp.12).

From Gere’s statement, the digital technology can be regarded as a new phase of modernity, characterized by increased connectivity, interactivity and convergence – but most importantly, digital technology dematerializes information.

Photography made no exception from the digital movement, and soon the photographic film was replaced by digital sensors: not only a radical alteration, but a rupture with the physical existence of information, since old technology operated and stored the information in its natural state, which is analogue – for example, a vinyl record has the actual (physical) frequencies of the audio track printed at a microscopic scale, and the stylus only captures these frequencies in order to restore them to an audible level. Oppositely, the digital technology steps into the virtual, de-materializing the information and converting it to a code, interpreted by computers. In digital photography, an image is received analogue, converted to a code, processed by the computer and either converted back to analogue (as in print), or displayed on screens. In this respect, Sabine Kriebel maintains that 'in contrast to the film-based and chemically transformed analogue photograph, the digitally encoded, computer-processable image first exists as mathematical data' (2007, pp.38). In the same light, Martin Lister argues that digital photographs are processed and shaped by bodies of code in the form of algorithms (2013, pp.11). Digital technology offered several advantages through the conversion of photographs into mathematical data, facilitating photography's transition from analogue to digital: the digital images were conveniently stored, multiplied or transmitted via computers, but most importantly they were instantaneously 'developed', ready to view on the camera's display, and much easier to interact with. Regarding the instantaneity of the photograph, Roland Barthes wrote:

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'I am not a photographer, not even an amateur photographer: too impatient for that: I must see right away what I have produced.'

(1982, pp.9) This issue has been solved through the incorporation of LCDs on the back of digital cameras, where images can be reviewed, cropped, or deleted – while providing additional information such as camera settings, light readings or histograms. Philip Gefter writes how 'photography is vastly different in these early years of the 21st century, no longer the result of light exposed to film, nor necessarily lens based' (2014). Gefter stresses the impact of computers which are now able to fully replace cameras by generating virtual images – created entirely by computer software, thus turning the practice of 'taking photographs' into an optional one – a form of disembodiment of photography and shrinkage of its former practices. In the first edition of The photographic Image in Digital Culture, Martin Lister describes how the entire practice of photography has been gradually substituted by the personal computer: 'A set of new technological procedures are being anxiously seen to undermine a practical tradition of visual representation. One which has been central in the experience of modern cultures: photography.

The body of the photographer moving about the social and physical world, a trained and knowing 'eye', the camera fondly thought of as an extension to this seeing body, and then the darkroom in which another range of craft skills was practised, has imploded in the small grey, plastic box of the personal computer.'

(1995, pp.3) Primarily, the purpose of photography was to provide an independent and objective process of visual representation, achieved through the invention of photographic cameras: mechanical devices used for recording images, as

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described in the previous chapter. Through digital technology, the external intervention of human in recording and developing the image is further replaced by automated, computer-controlled processes. However, the virtualized image can be easily manipulated through computer software afterwards, allowing more space for interaction and alteration than the chemical, analogue photograph did.

Moreover, Lister identifies two ways of understanding photography since the medium divided between analogue and digital formats. The views correspond to each side of the medium: the realist view is linked to the analogue form of photography, making reference to its former, long-established quality of representing the real; the new digital format is assimilated with the constructivist ideology – that of constructing, both individually and socially, knowledge or meaning (1995, pp.9-10). One could consider that photography's ability to convey meaning is now enhanced by digital technology, allowing it to generate meaning and construct reality, based on photography's traditional perception. Kriebel reinforces the idea, maintaining that digital technology has the ability to 'produce imagery that has no immediate relation to the material world.' She adds: 'Until it is printed, made material, the image is immaterial and ephemeral. This means that the image matter itself is infinitely malleable, freed from the restrictions of the analogue world and inserted into the exploratory, experimental, and potentially infinite digital realm. The image becomes "information" in the computer.'

(2007, pp.39) From this angle, the digital format frees the image from the limiting analogue bounds imposed by nature, making it versatile and interactive while residing in the immaterial state of virtuality, in this state the possibilities being vast: the image can be multiplied, transmitted, distributed over various networks, resized or manipulated. Lev Manovich observed that 'image processing techniques make

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us realize that any photograph contains more information than can be seen with the human eye' (1995, pp.2). Accordingly, digital sensors record a wider portion of the electromagnetic spectrum compared to the limited range the human eye is able to detect: shown in Figures 10, the image is a digital photograph, exposed for two minutes during night time.

Figure 10 – Tiberiu Ciocirlie, 2013. Long Exposure.

As the manipulated copy reveals in Figure 11, through reversing the shadow tones one can notice much more details captured by the digital sensor, but not visible in the first instance.

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Figure 11 – Tiberiu Ciocirlie, 2013. Long Exposure, Reversed

In addition, the virtual environment provides an unparalleled level of connectivity via the Internet, allowing users not only to receive large amounts of information, but to interact with it, at a global scale. Once the image is uploaded online and becomes integrated in the massive flux of information, it can appear 'anywhere there is a networked device and it can do so simultaneously across the entire globe' (Rubinstein and Fisher, 2013, pp.10). Lister notes how the attention has recently shifted from the digital image to the 'dispersed life of images online and to what is increasingly referred to as 'the network'' (2013, pp.4). Accordingly, the network became a major platform for exchanging information, users being able to download content and upload their own, leading to an overflow of information, which also presented an issue for the practice and consumption of photography, due to high volumes of images in circulation over these networks:

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“The biggest problem facing curators and historians of photography,” Mr. Bajac said, “is the overflow of images” (Gefter, 2014). The over-abundance of photographs concerned professionals as well, since the affordability of digital cameras and their integration in other devices allowed amateur or untrained users to distribute their work over the Internet.

Media convergence represents a key point here, ‘a ubiquitous but loosely defined term commonly understood to denote the blurring of boundaries between the media, telecoms and information technology sectors’ (Kung, Kroll, Ripken and Walker, 1999, pp.1). The convergence of media channels can be described as juxtaposing, since the core source of all mediums became the binary code, while the channels through which the information is received have been reduced to audio or visual (or both): for example one can use the same screen for watching television, browsing photographs, or access the Internet – since SmartTVs have their own operating system, Internet connectivity (through WiFi or LAN), and some feature DVD or Blu-ray Disc players for playback. Another example is a hybrid communication device of mass availability and use (Lister, 2013), which established new values in the development and popularization of digital photography: the camera-phone. The hybrid was developed by equipping already-indispensable mobile phones with small digital cameras: the portability and combined-utility of the camera-phone (plus its wide availability), triggered a cultural movement of great proportions that led to a flood of JPEGs (the common digital format for highly-compressed images) of rather mediocre quality all over the Internet. The arrival of the camera-phone and its socio-cultural impact shares many similarities with the development of the 35mm film camera known as the Leica camera, several decades earlier. At that time, the compact camera developed by Oskar Barnack used standard cinema 35mm film, and although the image quality was inferior to medium or large formats due to a reduced exposable 36

surface (and the necessity of using enlargers to bring the negative back to a usable size), it allowed for a significantly smaller, hand-held camera. The wide availability of 35mm film and the accessibility of these cameras favoured a quick popularization of the format, becoming the most popular photographic film size.

While large and medium format cameras required tripods and cumbersome flash units most of the time, the compact 35mm camera encouraged photography enthusiasts and amateurs to experiment with the medium. The camera-phone gained popularity on the same grounds: it sacrificed image quality for portability and ease of use. Limited space required much smaller sensors compared to regular cameras and less-complex lenses, but the portability and availability of the integrated digital camera weighted more in the popularization of the device.

The camera-phone now evolved into the ubiquitous smartphone – although still remaining a valid example of media convergence which combines telephony, Internet connectivity, short-range wireless connectivity (WiFi, Bluetooth, NFC), interactive screens (touch-screen) and advanced digital cameras – all in a single, light and portable device. Furthermore, through software applications, users are able to perform a wide range of operations on their smartphone: for example to take a picture, edit and upload it on social networks or attach it to an e-mail and send it to someone from another country – previously, these operations would have taken considerably more time using analogue technology (not to mention the missing notions of “e-mail” and “social networks”). Lister presents an interesting point in regard to digital technology's ubiquity and quick spread: 'Rather than dramatic novelties, so called 'new' or 'digital' technologies are now the stuff of habit, routine, everyday life and work.’

(2013, pp.2) Undeniably, these technologies have integrated in people's everyday lives at

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such a fast rate, that the terms 'new' or 'digital' did not become associated with them, but rather taken for granted.

An important aspect of digital photography debated in this chapter is the generally accessible practice of manipulation and alteration of photographs, which becomes possible through widely-available computer software: the alteration of images has impacted on both the practice and perception of photography, since it questioned its former quality of representing the real, while revealing new possibilities. According to Kriebel, to alter a digital image 'is effortless and even integral to it. Mutability and manipulation are inherent to the digital medium' (2007, pp.40). The coded, virtual environment is therefore propitious for image manipulation – or other types of information, since the binary base is common to all digital mediums. As demonstrated in the previous chapter, manipulation was present in analogue photography as well, although not as accessible or common as in digital photography – the generalized practice raised questions regarding photography's former ability to represent the truth: 'the frequency of the occurrence and the fact that the image alterations can be accomplished by nearly anyone with basic computer skills has triggered mounting societal skepticism' (Ritchin, 2009, pp.31). In addition to the user-generated flow of manipulated images, the practice has been found in publications as well, which raised public awareness. Fred Ritchin relates an early case of electronicallyprocessed image from 1982, when National Geographic's staff modified a photograph of the pyramids of Giza in order to suit the magazine's February cover as shown in Figure 12: 'They electronically moved a section of the photograph depicting one of the pyramids to a position partially behind another pyramid, rather than next to it. It was a banal change – after all, the original photograph was an already romanticized version of the scene that 38

excluded the garbage, tourist buses, and souvenir hawkers – but it opened the digital door.'

(2009, pp.27)

Figure 12 – National Geographic, 1982. February cover

According to Ritchin, the image was already romanticized – or beautified in Sontag's terms – through the selection of desired elements within the frame, while excluding other details (garbage, buses etc.), resulting in a subjective image rather than a depiction of reality. By converting the image from landscape orientation to

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portrait, the staff at National Geographic carried forward the subjective purpose of the photograph at the (further) expense of realism.

Ritchin also recalls the rather controversial O. J. Simpson incident, which featured on the 1994 Time magazine cover as shown in Figure 13.

Figure 13 – Time magazine, 1994. O.J. Simpson

Ritchin notes how the mug shot of O. J. Simpson was significantly darkened in the context of his arrest (accused of double murder), while Time’s editor James Gaines explained that he intended to bring "a common police mug shot to the level of art, with no sacrifice to truth" (2009, pp.29). The 'artistic' interpretation of Simpson's mug shot was widely perceived as racist – given the circumstances, the editor deliberately darkened and blurred the image in order to suit the murder story. In this case the manipulation techniques (although deceiving and racist)

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have been used to emphasize a point, the editor relying on the stereotyped concept that associates dark with evil: he intended to match Simpson's appearance with the gravity of a double crime the latter was suspected of. In support of this idea, Mullen writes: 'Manipulation in photography may therefore be necessary in order to represent the scene or subject as accurately as possible. Events do not always seem clear and self-explanatory in photographs, and without captions some photographs become decidedly ambiguous.

Ironically, a photographer may be compelled to manipulate a photograph In order to represent the subject or scene as faithfully as possible.'

(1998, pp.9) From this point of view, digital images are altered in order to focus on the subject or isolate it from distracting or unnecessary elements which are also part of the setting. However, the photograph's indexical link to reality is broken as 'the image comes to be more the outcome of the invisible process of its own algorithmic and software production than any relationship it has (or had) to the world' (Lister, 2013, pp.16). Lister also identifies Adobe's Photoshop as the most popular software used in image manipulation and argues about public concerns regarding manipulated images: 'Photoshop was closely associated with the anxiety of the 1990s about the threat to photographic 'truth'. We still have the pejorative phrase 'it has been photo-shopped'.'

(2013, pp.13) As a result, audiences perceived these practices as threats, and responded with scepticism towards the digital image, which also reflected in a change in perception regarding photography's promise to represent the real. It is not only the perception of the medium that changed, but the perception of the self was affected as well, for digitally manipulated images allowed users to project a desired image 41

rather than the real image of themselves: as Ritchin points out, in the last two decades the most frequent alterations were 'brown eyes turning blue, lips and breasts enlarging, and any and all putative "flaws" disappearing' (2009, pp.25).

In this sense, it is equally accurate that the digital medium offers a way of expressing the self (or phantasising), although limited to the boundaries of the virtual space. The possibilities offered here encouraged the development of virtual realities, which are able to simulate the physical world – referred to only indexically, while the entire graphical channel is computer-generated, as for example in video games, which Lister observed to be '…aesthetically photographic themselves as they employ photography's reality effect (photo-realism) in the form of motion blur, lens flare and depth of field. The 'flaws' of the older technology guarantee the 'realism' of the new form. Beyond this, many games have built-in capacity to take photographs of the game world inhabited by the player' (2013, pp.16) In order to emulate a valid, convincing replica of the real world, the virtual environment is deliberately added 'imperfections' of analogue technologies, which have been associated with the previously authentic representations of reality.

Although highly accurate, both the manipulated images and the virtually simulated realities are nevertheless breaking the link with the real – photography's long-established association: 'because manipulation in the digital imagery is so easy, however, its evidentiary force – its truth value – as an authentic record is put into question' (Kriebel, 2007, pp.40). The issue determined changes in public's perception and a decline in photography's ability to tell the truth or, a transformation in how we seek the truth in the image. In this respect, both Batchen and Lister wrote about the rumoured 'death of photography', since the arrival of digital technology: 'everyone seems to be talking about the death of

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photography' (Batchen, 1994, pp.47). According to Batchen, the two reasons which are likely to have caused this concern are the effect of the image manipulation software that allows fabricated photographs to be passed off as real ones (photography being ‘robbed’ of its cultural identity as a distinctive medium) on one side, and secondly, the suspicion caused by the inability to distinguish reality from its simulations, the world becoming an 'undifferentiated "artificial nature"' (1994, pp.47). Both premises are related to the accuracy of digital images, which can easily pass as 'real' photographs: even in the case of a digital copy of a digital photograph, as Ritchin points out, the differences are indistinguishable so that “original” loses its meaning (2009, pp.17). In addition, the other source of concern is photography's objective ability to represent the real, whose decline has directly impacted people's perception. Similarly, Lister confirms the rumour: 'The press and popular journals have reported the 'death of photography' and issued warnings of the 'you can no longer trust your eyes' variety.'

(1995, pp.1) It is not solely the practice that distances photography from reality, since analogue format was also subjective in representation although presented in a more ethical manner: it is the general perception and the idea that through newlydeveloped technology, it is more accessible – and thus more likely for a photograph to be altered and misrepresent the truth. Rather than condemning the digital format (and practice) of photography, Mullen, Rubinstein and Fisher have formulated opinions from different angles, balancing the overall perception of the medium: 'In digital imaging, as in standard photography, writing, or conversation, we must depend on the integrity of the communicator

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while still maintaining a healthy dose of skepticism, so as not to be erroneously persuaded. Digital imaging is not “an evil,” as described by some in the industry, but merely another tool at the photographer’s disposal.' (Mullen, 1998, pp.14) In this respect, Mullen suggests that a general measure of scepticism should be applied in the interpretation of any kind of media texts, since they are subjects to personal interpretation or biased versions of reality. Rubinstein and Fisher propose their view regarding the network and user's virtual presence within the network: 'Far from being the untrustworthy vehicle of manipulation and untruth, the digital image is actually a very accurate image, not, in the first instance, of an external reality but of the ways in which we as humans embody the network and how the network is intertwined with our embodiment.'

(2013, pp.13) It is therefore a matter of perception regarding the newer, digital format to the same degree it concerned analogue photography. Each medium has its own advantages and disadvantages, and they are equally capable of representing the real, for 'real' is arguably an imprecise value: subjective, interpretable. It is the digital photograph that addresses our current needs most accurately, which makes it suitable for our times: it allows for mass multiplication and distribution, network integration, and interaction. In terms of representations, digital photography assists and records current values and socio-cultural tendencies, such as the sense of community and inclusion, presence on social networks, or various forms of entertainment or recreation – thus, offering limitless possibilities in the rapid developing virtual environment.

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Chapter 3 – Current Perception

In a recapitulation of the previous chapters, two different (if not antagonistic) notions of photography have been identified, each related to the technical nature of the medium – analogue or digital – and to the particularities implied by these technologies. During photography's prolonged state in analogue format, it established itself as an objective, independent form of visual representation, able to capture and re-present the real. After the medium's conversion to digital format, most of the existing values have been replaced by new, often contradictory ones, which impacted the entire practice of photography. In this stage however, the former notion of photography persisted in popular perception, giving credibility to subjectively altered images, created through digital technology and computer software. The advantages offered by digital technology – such as image quality, interactivity and availability – led to the quick popularization of digital photography, becoming the most used format, while 'the chemical photograph has become an historical artifact and its traditional means of production have become all but unavailable' (Lister, 2013, pp.1). The technological shift and the general perception have therefore generated a paradox, since digital photography allows users to manipulate, distribute and interact with images at an unparalleled level, while the perception is still dominated by photography's former belief of representing the irrefutable proof that a given thing happened. In this respect, Ritchin observed that 'photography has achieved the paradoxical credibility of a subjective, interpretive medium' (2009, pp.19). The paradox Ritchin proposed revolves around photography's generally attributed credibility, despite its contradictory qualities of being subjective and interpretive. Ritchin continues:

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'Its perceived credibility, to whatever extent it exists, has been a useful function, especially as evidence of one sort or another. But its perceived credibility has also been purposefully misused to manipulate the public since the medium's inception for political and commercial goals' (2009, pp.19)

The ability to offer evidence on the basis of resemblance or trace, along with instantaneous recording features have recommended photography in becoming the principal form of visual representation, finding immediate use in documenting reality and furnishing evidence, where painting proved to be a slow and cumbersome procedure (Sontag, 2005, pp.5). As shown in the first chapter, photography's association with reality resulted in a powerful political tool for manipulating the masses and as Ritchin suggested, commercial photography provided the public with idealized and frequently unrealistic versions of reality.

The long-established notion of photography still predominating in public perception originates from the analogue, mechanical stage of photography as Lister maintains: 'Realist theories give priority to the mechanical origins of the photographic image. They argue that the mechanical arrangement of the photographic camera means that 'physical objects themselves print their image by means of the optical and chemical action of light' (Arnhem 1974). Photographs are spoken of as ' "cosubstantial with the object they represent", "perfect analogons", "stencils off the real", "traces", or as "records" of objects or of images of objects' (Snyder and Allen 1975). Hence, what is stressed is a guaranteed causal link with the physical world; photographic images are automatically produced and are passive in the face of reality' (1995, pp.10)

Lister quotes Arnheim's work in On the nature of photography and Snyder and Allen's from Photography, Vision and Representation, in order to emphasize

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the nature of the deeply-ingrained idea regarding analogue photography, which is perceived as maintaining a link with the physical world through its mechanical, chemical and optical nature – in a process where objects print their own image automatically, through the reflection of light: hence the notion of an independent practice that does not require human's intervention. Other factors that helped generalize photography's unconditionally-attributed credibility, according to Szarkowski, were the accessibility and ubiquity of the photographs: 'Photography was easy, cheap and ubiquitous, and it recorded anything: shop windows and sod houses and family pets and steam engines and unimportant people. And once made objective and permanent, immortalized in a picture, these trivial things took on importance. By the end of the century, for the first time in history, even the poor man knew what his ancestors had looked like.'

(2007, pp.2)

The ability to record 'anything' from meaningless objects to strangers on the street – at a negligible cost, resulted in a plethora of photographs of all sorts, while the medium's prestige guaranteed the authenticity of each depiction.

Szarkowski uses the term 'immortalized', which implies two meanings concerning photography: first, the image becomes timeless, reproducing to infinity what has occurred only once according to Barthes (1982, pp.4), or 'embalming time' as Bazin wrote (1960, pp.8). The second meaning suggests that once a photograph has been taken – immortalized, it can no longer be altered or transformed, remaining unchanged and re-presenting its subject indefinitely – a highly idealized assumption taking into account later developments. Therefore, one can assume that the accurate recording generates a presence, identical with its subject and unaffected by time or degradation, nor by external alterations: Victor Burgin makes a statement towards this thinking: 47

'So far as this content is concerned, to a very great extent our ways of conceiving of photography have not yet succeeded in breaking clear of the gravitational field of nineteenth-century thinking: thinking dominated by a metaphor of depth, in which the surface of the photograph is viewed as the projection of something which lies 'behind' or 'beyond' the surface; in which the frame of the photograph is seen as marking the place of entry to something more profound - 'reality' itself, the 'expression' of the artist, or both (a reality refracted through a sensibility). The surface of the photograph, however, conceals nothing but the fact of its own superficiality. ' (1982, pp.11)

According to Burgin, the credibility attributed to photographs, as a component of the most circulated notion of the medium, is locked in the nineteenth century thinking which perceives photography as a multi-dimensional representation, expected to project its depiction of reality through a presence – not as an impersonal recording, but as a meaningful re-presentation: 'a communication from a singular founding presence 'behind' the picture, either that of the author or that of the world. The image was thus held, paradoxically, to give presence to an absence' (Burgin, 1982, pp.10). As Burgin mentions, photographs are not so complicated – rather, they are superficial – for their link with reality lies only on their surface while the depth of representation is only an illusion, constructed with light and reinforced through the outdated thinking in discussion. Moreover, if analogue photography preserved its connection with reality through mechanical recordings and its physical existence, one could consider photography's conversion to digital a definitive rupture with reality, since the image becomes dematerialized and only exists mathematically, in the virtual space. According to Lister, the transfer to digital photography caused radical transformations in visual culture:

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'this transition from the photo-mechanical image, a material analogue with its compelling sense of a referent in a prior reality, to the immaterial digital constructions and hybrids whose sources may be mathematical and 'virtual' as much as empirical, is being seen as a key element in a radical transformation of visual culture.'

(1995, pp.4) Digital technology influenced the entire practice and perception of photography, radically changing the way photographs are taken, circulated and consumed – thus impacting on the visual culture as Lister mentioned. Digital photography evolved faster than its preceding analogue stage, relying heavily on computers and software operations, while opening new possibilities in visual representation. With cameras integrated everywhere and easy-to-use image manipulation software, the newer format permeated both the physical and virtual environment with high volumes of altered digital images, generating scepticism among the audiences. Paradoxically, the former notion of photography as a truthtelling medium continued to exist simultaneously with the newly-developed digital image – despite the latter's increased circulation over the Internet and social networks, or its wide use in conjunction with image manipulation software.

None the less, the perception towards medium's credibility declined since the arrival of virtual imaging, although the tendency to interpret the photograph as an unquestioning depiction of reality remains dominant, before questioning its authenticity. Manovich writes about the technological difference between the chemical photograph and the digital image and how the two are culturally perceived. Accordingly, due to the complex process involved in manipulating analogue photographs, they were ‘comfortably regarded as causally generated truthful reports about things in the real world’ (1995, pp.9). On the other hand, digital images are inherently, and easily mutable, calling into question ‘our ontological distinctions between the imaginary and the real’ (Manovich, 1995, 49

pp.9). Reading a digital image, like any other media text, is subject to individual interpretation, based on one's socio-cultural background, beliefs and perception of reality. According to Mullen, this notion of reality is constructed through our measurements, culture and history, linked to the world we inhabit – thus, our notion of truth is also a product of these factors. Truth is therefore just another contextual measurement by which we judge reality – the “true” or “false” values being dependent on our perception (Mullen, 1998, pp.23).

Different perceptions of reality have generated subjective interpretations through photographs of both analogue and digital types, distorting our vision of the world: according to Lister, changes in the nature of how the world is imagined are taken to be changes in how the world is seen (1995, pp.4). In digital photography, the connection with reality is further narrowed through the dematerialization of the medium, causing not only an ideological loss of real, but the 'real in the most material and physical sense' to be lost (Lister 2013, pp.2). As Sontag concludes, '…the photographic image, even to the extent that it is a trace (not a construction made out of disparate photographic traces), cannot be simply a transparency of something that happened. It is always the image that someone chose; to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude. Moreover, fiddling with pictures long antedates the era of digital photography and Photoshop manipulations: it has always been possible for a photograph to misrepresent. A painting or drawing is judged a fake when it turns out not to be by the artist to whom it had been attributed. A photograph—or a filmed document available on television or the internet—is judged a fake when it turns out to be deceiving the viewer about the scene it purports to depict' (2003, pp.37-38) Sontag unmasks photography's subjective character, manifested throughout medium's existence and influenced by the selectivity of the frame – a core

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element of photography. Through framing, only certain portions of the scene are recorded, while significant amounts of information are omitted or intentionally excluded. In this sense, photographs magnify the world – but in a limiting sense, enlarging the subjects while excluding the surroundings – thus, providing truncated evidences of reality. As mentioned above, the authenticity of a photograph depends on the truth-value of its depiction, while a painting's authenticity is given by the artist, since paintings cannot be regarded as truthtelling, nor instantaneous representations. Taking Sontag's point further, the photographer should be equally taken into account for his or hers photographs as the artist is: if the audience cannot trust the medium, they need to trust the photographer, or whoever else is involved in the production and distribution of the images. In this respect, professional photographers are governed by precise ethical and professional codes that ensure the validity of the recorder material: for example scientific, documentary and forensic photography are generally trusted forms of photography, reliant on strict guidelines, and practiced by qualified photographers who provide photographic evidences free of concealments or alterations. In the case of digital photography, where images can be easily manipulated, the lack of credibility is compensated through the professional, regulated practice of photographers who reassure the veracity of the representations among the audiences.

Another aspect discussed in this chapter is photography's evolution in relation to painting, ultimately resulting in a new paradox, emerged after the digital conversion. In this respect, photography initially developed as a radical picturemaking process (Szarkowski, 2007, pp.1), perceived as an accurate, objective, instantaneous and independent medium – a powerful set of features to rival those of painting, which offered the exact opposite of these characteristics.

Photography's automated process limited subsequent alterations, thus able to 51

render a 'nearly divine representation of "absolute truth," which is "infinitely more accurate than any painting by human hands"' (Kriebel, 2007, pp.7).

Through this set of qualities, photography was not only opposing painting, but it was considered superior as well, its unprecedented capacity for resemblance 'seemed most appropriately to determine its specific work and to distinguish it from painting' (Burgin, 1982, pp.11). The paradox here arose with the shift in the practice and perception of digital photography, changing its status from opposing painting, to becoming similar to it. According to Mullen, the advent of digital images caused us to question and redefine the nature of the photographic medium in the same way the invention of photography prompted artists to re-evaluate the nature of painting (1998, pp.10). The most significant change brought by the digital technology is the unmatched level of interaction with the image as a 'code', in its virtual state: the mutability of these images resides at the core of the digital concept, allowing users to alter virtually every aspect of an image, add or remove details, shadows, textures, colourize or convert to monochrome etc. In this respect, the digital technology allows users to rework every element of the digital image as a way of self-expression, the same way painting allows artists to express themselves: this time however, the canvas has been replaced by the electronic display. In the same light, Ritchin writes about the nineteenth century thinking, which regarded painting and analogue photography as 'the handmade versus the mechanical', where painting preceded, inspired and ultimately became threatened by photography. The digital image of the twenty-first century became malleable and part of a larger multimedia, which Ritchin maintains to have a more distant relationship with its previous, analogue form than it has with painting (2009, pp.19). Therefore, the evolution of photography was inconsistent when related to painting, being marked by a sudden turn which resulted from the 'over-celebrated' conversion to digital. Arguably, the transition to digital occurred so quickly 52

because new technological features were increasingly demanded: the public required an interactive, digital 'canvas' that allows for self-expression, while closely resembling the real by 'borrowing' the credibility and realism of the previous, analogue format. Since photography led to certain paradoxes after its transfer to digital, Manovich treats the digital image as generally paradoxical: 'I will refrain from taking an extreme position of either fully accepting or fully denying the idea of a digital imaging revolution.

Rather, I will present the logic of the digital image as paradoxical; radically breaking with older modes of visual representation while at the same time reinforcing these modes.'

(1995, pp.2) Manovich's statement successfully encompasses the current condition of the digital image, which is not fully accepted, nor fully rejected as photographical practice – rather, it lies somewhere in-between, half in the physical world, half in the virtual space. Digital photography, although widely used for its advantages, is perceived with less credibility and scepticism compared to its previous stage. The paradoxes generated by the digital technology, as Manovich stressed, are characterized by a dual impact on the existing notions of visual representation: on one side, the former values are opposed by new, radical ones – as in the case of computer generated images, software manipulation, network distribution of photographs, presented in the second chapter; on the other hand, the notions corresponding the outdated values are attributed to the new (often contradictory) ones – for example the former notion of photography as a truth-telling medium, which persisted in the popular perception although the arrival of the digital revolutionized the entire concept and practice of photography.

In summary, photography is currently perceived as a combination of old and new values, fused in a practice that employs significant amounts of computer processing, while benefitting from public's credibility. The mixture of contrasting

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values generated paradoxes in the practice and perception of the photographic medium, resulting in a certain degree of scepticism among the audiences. Since photography encompassed distinctive stages in its development, not necessarily related one to another, Lister suggests that 'it is more helpful to think of 'photographies' which have different 'histories' than it is to think of a singular medium with a singular, grand and sweeping history' (1995, pp.11). Therefore, 'disassembling' photography's history and treating each stage independently, one may have a better overview of the medium's contrasting forms, thus leading to a better, accurate interpretation. In this respect, professional photography can be regarded as the particular form of photography that regardless of the technology it uses – analogue or digital – can be generally trusted by the audiences, for the representation of reality is ensured through strict guidelines. Oppositely, amateur photography that circulates on various networks and most of the time originates from unknown sources, should not be automatically passed off as authentic depictions of reality – rather, a healthy dose of scepticism should be maintained, as Mullen suggested (1998, pp.14). In the same light, Manovich argues that unaltered, 'straight' photography represented one particular tradition of photography that always coexisted with other 'equally popular traditions where a photographic image was openly manipulated and was read as such' (1995, pp.11). Furthermore, Manovich stresses that a photograph can be read in different ways, depending on the context: the viewer could read photographs as representations of concrete events, or as depictions which do not claim to correspond to real events (1995, pp.11). Therefore, as with most media texts, the interpretation of a digital photograph is reliant on the context in which the image is presented, its source, but also on reader's socio-cultural background – the overall perception of the medium becoming the result of these variables.

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Conclusion

The dissertation provided both technical and cultural accounts, analysing the practice of photography from its artistic, historic, cultural, and technological perspective, concluding that the photographic medium witnessed a complex development since its invention, each stage bearing an effect on the practice and perception of photography. As research demonstrated, the medium emerged from the necessity to record reality objectively and accurately – features that painting was unable to provide. Through its automated, instantaneous recording process, photography found its use in scientific and documentary applications as a means for furnishing evidence. The medium's ascension was followed by a rapid popularization and wide spread, while photography's dominant notion – that of an unquestioning proof of the real – began to settle in popular perception. Sontag summarizes the history of photography as the struggle between beautification and truth-telling (2005, pp.5). The beautifying character of photographs is derived from fine-arts, and concerns the aesthetics of the image, transforming it into a visually pleasing representation. This aspect became prominent in the nature of representation, leading photography to establish norms of beauty, and thus becoming an authority in the production and consumption of visual material (Sontag, 2005). According to Sontag, the camera's role in beautifying the world was so successful that photographs, rather that the world, have become the standard of the beautiful (2005, pp.65). Photography's ability to tell the truth on the other hand, has mechanical, automated roots and facilitated the institutional and scientific use of recordings. Camera's accurate re-presentation of the scene produced through an automated process, was the most radical feature provided, functioning as a guarantee for the truth depicted. The paradox that will gain

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greater attention within the digital context, originates from the very first stage of photography. As shown in the first chapter, photography has been proven subjective despite its widely attributed credibility. Analogue photography is subjective in representing the truth, for the photographer composes the image within the frame, selecting the elements to be included or excluded from the recording. Furthermore, image manipulation was practiced as well, although with great limitations because of the complex process involved. Long before the advent of the digital image, Andre Bazin wrote about a separate, idealized world generated through photographs – as if he would have predicted the later development of the virtual image: 'No one believes any longer in the ontological identity of model and image, but all are agreed that the image helps us to remember the subject and to preserve him from a second spiritual death. Today the making of images no longer shares an anthropocentric, utilitarian purpose. It is no longer a question of survival after death, but of a larger concept, the creation of an ideal world in the likeness of the real, with its own temporal destiny.' (1960, pp.6) It can be argued that Bazin's concept describes digital technology, where the actual reality is simulated in a virtual, interconnected world. Here, the visual representation relies on the digital image and more precisely on its inherited capacity to represent the real, now transposed into complex algorithms, operated by computers. The practice of digital photography alone is disembedded and paradoxical, being attributed values from the old technology while developing new, radical (and often contradictory) ones. In the context of the image as part of the network, Rubinstein and Fisher define the ‘networked image’ as endlessly triggering its own reflection instead of mirroring the world – the logic of representation being replaced by the logic of self-duplication and mutation (2013, pp.10). The endless circulation of digital images over the Internet, together with 56

the known and accessible process of manipulation, contributed to photography's rupture with reality. As the second chapter described, the arrival of the digital was often referred to as the ‘death of photography’, since interventions in postprocessing were imperceptible and the public became sceptical of any representation. With the current paradox, research concluded that the former notion of photography as an irrefutable proof of the real remained predominant in popular perception, despite the dematerialization of images and their fragile link to reality. As suggested in the last chapter, the practice of digital photography currently shares many similarities with painting, and through manipulation the digital canvas becomes a way of expressing the self or phantasising with one’s image. It was therefore concluded that digital photography enhances medium’s existing features, offering new possibilities in accordance to actual public demands. The digital image should not be considered untruthful because it was not conceived to show the truth, but to facilitate transmission, circulation, and interaction within the new virtual environment. It is the former notion that blames the new technology for misrepresenting or altering the truth, when in fact the digital image borrows analogue photography’s ability to re-present on the basis of resemblance, not necessarily depicting reality. As concluded in chapters two and three, truth and reality are imprecisely defined terms, subject to personal interpretation: each individual interprets ‘reality’ in his or hers own way, depending on the context, knowledge, and socio-cultural background. Thus, the digital image may be read just like any other media texts, with a certain dose of scepticism and, in addition to the preceding stage, the photographer and the codes of regulation involved in the production and distribution of the image should be taken into consideration.

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Illustrations

Title Page – Tiberiu Ciocirlie, 2013. Long Exposure, Reversed.

Figure 1 – Media Manipulation [image online] Available at: http://imgur.com/gallery/gxJTfdX [Accessed 18 Jan 2014].

Figure 2 – Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1975. ROMANIA. In a Train.

Source: Magnum Photos.

Figure 3 – Fox Talbot, 1841-1842. ‘trees in a pond’.

Source: Bajac, 2002, pp.39.

Figure 4 – Police Archive, 1864. Judicial identification.

Source: Bajac, Q., 2002, pp.74.

Figure 5 – Kodak Automatic 35 Camera Brochure. [image online] Available at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kodakcollector/8111270033/ [Accessed January 2014].

Figure 6 – Alfred Stieglitz, 1893. Fifth Avenue, Winter.

Source: Encyclopædia Britannica.

Figure 7 – 1920. Lenin in Sverdlov Square, Moscow. [image online] Available at: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~hick0088/classes/csci_2101/false.html [Accessed January 2014].

Figure 8 – Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov. [image online] Available at: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~hick0088/classes/csci_2101/false.html [Accessed January 2014].

Figure 9 – Tiberiu Ciocirlie, 2012. CPU - Negative.

Figure 10 – Tiberiu Ciocirlie, 2013. Long Exposure.

Figure 11 – Tiberiu Ciocirlie, 2013. Long Exposure, Reversed.

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Figure 12 – National Geographic, 1982. February cover.

Source: Ritchin, 2009, pp.26.

Figure 13 – Time magazine, 1994. O.J. Simpson.

Source: Ritchin, 2009, pp.29.

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