Locating the gap Traditional and the digital divide

Lloyd Godman

Key note address: Alternative Photographica. At the theconference From NIEPCE to NOW.. a survey of Alternative processes.

RMIT University School of Creative Media, Australia 2003 The purpose of this paper is not was free use of the invention and immediate excite- the very first struggled to achieve realis- ment. tic representation and looked more like abstractions to offer a definitive answer that of the scene in front of the . However, within lays out a rigid new regime to Despite the charges of blasphemy, the world was a few years the process was quickly refined to the ready to embrace the notion of photography and the point where photographic images gave very accurate jack march the digital order into opportunities that it offered. Nowhere is this more detail of the scene in front of the camera in a way the 21st century crushing all in graphically illustrated than in America where it was that painting or drawing could not. embraced almost as though America was the only its wake, or reiterate a desperate nation that had sole rights to the medium. Late in The perception of truth in this era was securely root- defence for traditional photogra- 1838 the American inventor Samuel Morse, who ed in religious belief and the unquestionable word of had attempted to fix images from a god, but in this blasphemous medium, subject was phy as the territory of truth, (such himself, made a visit to Paris and eventually met no longer questioned, there was no potential for it folly would suggest there is actu- Daguerre in March 1839. to dwell in the realms of the artist’s imagination, no While the French rights for the were space for an artistic license, as was the case in media ally a truth out there) rather it is to bought by the French Government and made free like print making and painting where aspects of the create a context where questions to the public in 1839, patent restrictions in England subject could be moved at will to form a more pleas- added a cost that constrained its use. However in the ing or relevant composition. can be raised about an inclusive United States, where no patent had been issued there photography (image making with was free use of the invention and immediate excite- There was a visual accuracy that spelt truth to the ment. subject, a photographic truth. It was a crucial time lenses and light but not necessar- Despite the charges of blasphemy, the world was when the visual culture of the world changed in a ily both) and the digital domain, ready to embrace the notion of photography and the dramatic way. Unlike the painted portrait, which opportunities that it offered. Nowhere is this more carried an elitist weight not everyone could afford, questions that might offer an in- graphically illustrated than in America where it was the quickly became available to almost embraced almost as though America was the only everyone with modest means, rapidly undermined

Inceptions of Truth “From today painting is dead” Delacroix declared. Research reveals that the invention of photography nation that had sole rights to the medium. Late in the industry of miniature portrait painters, which “Such a wonderful invention”. Inspired, he made was not a single revelation, but a series of incremen- 1838 the American inventor Samuel Morse, who had proliferated in Europe up until this time. the comments that an artist might “raise himself to tal steps over a long period of time where discover- had attempted to fix images from a camera obscura heights that we do not yet know”. With the official ies were made about both photosensitive materials himself, made a visit to Paris and eventually met This association of subject / image and the real, announcement of the invention of photography in and optical principles, discoveries which grew to a Daguerre in March 1839. became particularly evident with photographs of the 1839 humanity was confronted with a revelation; crescendo as imminent success loomed, but in both nude, where the morals of a virtuous, early 19th cen- it delivered a fundamental philosophic change in areas (photosensitive materials and optical princi- Morse promptly sent a letter to his brother, and tury audience was easily challenged and affronted. the way people implicitly saw images, a change that ples) actually date right back to the Greeks Aristotle through publication in the New York Observer, Up until the photograph, paintings of nudes had could only ever be refined or redefined. That initial and Archimedes. describing the results, alerted the American public to always related to religious depictions, gods and god- excitement of disclosure to a disbelieving public the potential of the process. “In a view up the street, desses from Greek myths or great historical events: could never be replicated, an innocence of image And yes, there was a German involved in this blas- the distant sign would be perceived… By the assis- ‘Well that’s how the story goes’. There was unspoken culture was lost forever; while a new order, a different phemous activity . In 1725 Johann Schulze ¬¬pho- tance of a powerful lens… every letter was clearly conjecture that somehow these paintings never actu- understanding between image and subject emerged, tography, for in modern photography it is from and distinctly legible, and so also were the minutest ally involved real people. virginity intact. And over the next 120 years an ap- exposed silver salts that the photographic image we breaks and lines in the walls of the buildings; and the parently unseverable truth between the image and know is ultimately formed. pavements of the street”. However, with photography these nudes had nothing the subject developed. to do with religious depictions, Greek myths or great However, it was an age where realistic depiction in Although Morse had returned to the United States historical events other than in some cases to imitate before Daguerre had published his full instructions, them. In a photograph, they were real people and Such was the revelation at the announcement of this the was stimulated and assisted by the D. W. Seager, who was leaving England just as the the fact they were naked in front of the camera was a new invention, that the Leipzig City Advertiser news- climate of scientific inquiry, which had emerged first published copies arrived there, brought the for- visual truth which could not be denied. paper in Germany responded in disbelief: “The wish through the Renaissance; so in the scientific fraterni- mula with him and is credited as the first American to capture evanescent reflections is not only impos- ties there was little surprise and full acceptance at the photographer. Transfixed to this new nectar, Morse sible ... but the mere desire alone, the will to do so, is announcement of this new invention. made his first successful only days blasphemy. God created man in His own image, and after this and the process spread through the land no man-made machine may fix the image of God. Is While the French rights for the Daguerreotype were like a ship load of colonists. it possible that God should have abandoned His eter- bought by the French Government and made free nal principles, and allowed a Frenchman ... to give to to the public in 1839, patent restrictions in England the world an invention of the Devil?” added a cost that constrained its use. However in the United States, where no patent had been issued there Due to the crudeness of the processes, in some cases Anonymous circa 1855 These people were unashamedly naked, photographi- stultifying influence of the pictoralists … The Photo As inventors of the medium Daguerre, Bayard and was not practical for wide scale applications since Establishing an Archive cally frozen as in a Barthesian death, caught out, and League’s task is to put the camera back in the hands Fox Talbot, etc are embedded into the history of the it took eight hours to expose, a view from Niepce’s on display in a cultural age where the of of honest photographers, who will use it to photo- medium as archetypal reference points. studio window taken in 1826 is considered the oldest flesh was shunned. Worse than that, in some cases graph America.” From the Photo League, and other existing photograph, Daguerre and Niepce worked they may actually be involved in disgusting acts of groups like Magnum, etc. generations of photogra- Reflecting as a frustrated artist using the Camera together from 1829 until Niepce’s death in 1833. fornication. phers in every country of the world followed a doc- obscura and the Camera Lucida as aids to drawing trine of imagined objective photographic truth. whilst on holiday at Lake Como in Italy, Fox Talbot Although, Daguerre was once again alone in his With this association to an assumed truth, photog- made the following comment: “on the immutable experiments, he had made excellent use of his time raphy quickly became recognised as evidential. A New Zealand has also had a strong and commit- beauty of the pictures of nature’s painting which the with Niepce and had learned enough to make impor- means of telling: telling that the subject had been ted group of like photographers. Stalwarts like Ans glass lens of the camera throws on the paper in its tant advances. Finding the proper developing agent in front of the camera at a certain place at a certain Westra who engaged in this genre during the 1960s, focus...fairy pictures, creations of a moment and was the key to Daguerre’s success, and occurred quite time, that specific objects had specific associations to inspired the next generation of photographers to destined as rapidly to fade away. - It was during by accident. Daguerre had placed one of his treated other objects in the image. utilize the documentary approach, which appeared these thoughts that the idea occurred to me - how copper plates in a cabinet that contained a variety of to reach a peak around the 1980s. There was wide charming it would be if it were possible to cause these chemicals and was surprised to later find a clear im- Such was the accuracy of recording visual informa- spread enthusiastic activity by a growing group of natural images to imprint themselves durably and age had developed on the plate. Through the process tion that some in the Royal Photographic Society photographers who had been influenced through remain fixed upon the paper”. of elimination, he found that the substance he was argued that its place was in science and not art, an exhibitions - Photoforum and the teachings of influ- seeking was mercury vapour that had leaked from argument in the minds of the public that dogged ential figures like John B Turner and the collecting of Talbot’s findings were read to a meeting of the Royal a broken thermometer. The discovery meant that photography for years. Perhaps because of the early Luit Bieringer and Eymard Bradley at the National Society on 31 January 1839 in his paper: “An Ac- images could be exposed in about twenty minutes, philosophical battles between photography and Art Gallery. count of the Art of Photogenic Drawing or the process rather than several hours. painting, photography developed this notion of truth by which natural objects may be made to delineate as a key characteristic of the medium. Combined with a world-wide enthusiasm generated themselves without the aid of the artist’s pencil”. Daguerre further improved the photographic pro- by legendary photographers from Magnum Photos, Talbot’s contribution is best summed up in his own cess that he and Niepce had developed by utilizing Long before Steiglitz, Strand and the Weston mob it promoted a climate which implied there was only modest statement: ‘“..I do not profess to have per- sodium chloride to permanently fix pictures and, proposed the notion of a modernist photographic one approach one should take to photography. fected an art but to have commenced one, the limits by 1839, was ready to release his knowledge to the truth as art, where they took control of the definition, But it is ironic that this feverish climax of activity of which it is not possible at present exactly to ascer- public. a control that permeated generations of photogra- reportage and social documentary slid into a decline tain. I only claim to have based this art on a secure phers, a different species of photographic evidence just before the most significant social renovations foundation”. Yet, the daguerreotype process had serious limita- existed. this country had known and some of these signifi- tions. The imprinted images that were obtained cant changes went quite undocumented while more Before he became famous as the inventor of the through Daguerre’s technique were clear, but fragile. In 1854 an English physician, Maddox, developed trivial events a mere 5 or 10 years earlier had been first successful form of photography, Daguerre, was Relatively heavy since they were produced on metal, dry plate photography, eclipsing Daguerre’s wet plate shot to death. an acknowledged painter. Originally trained as an the images were further weighed down by the need on tin method, which made photography a much architect, he later became a pupil of E. M. Degotti at for a cover plate or frame to protect their delicate more practical process. Among the new applications the Paris Opera and a thriving scene painter. Work- surface layers. Furthermore, each daguerreotype im- was the photographing of inmates for prison records, ing with Charles Boulton in 1822, Daguerre helped age was unique and could not be copied, a problem and so began the practice of utilizing photographic develop the Diorama, an illusionistic exhibition in that was avoided in the photographic process de- truth as evidence. In 1864 Odelbrecht first advo- Paris that contained paintings on large translucent veloped by William Fox Talbot at approximately the cated the use of photography for the identification screens, which appeared to come to life with skilful same time. of criminals and the documentation of evidence and light manipulation. crime scenes, and from here Also, the bulky equipment, bottles of concoctions was born. The photograph became a corner stone of Daguerre’s artistic pursuit was in creating realistic and the need for a new metal plate for each image, judicial truth, a powerful truth that could convict, or renderings and utilized a camera obscura to aid his made the process fairly costly and outdoor photog- release. efforts. Through this, he became intrigued with the raphy impractical. After several years of widespread idea of permanently fixing an image chemically, as popularity, use of the daguerreotype began to dis- Perhaps this idea of photographic truth is concisely were many others during the period. Daguerre began sipate in the face of further photographic advances, underlined by the credo of the Photo League, whose his initial experiments alone, but he was soon intro- most notably the development of the wet collodion documentary work is conceived in part on the fol- duced by his optician to Joseph-Nicephore Niepce, process. lowing: “Photography has a tremendous social value. who was working with similar ideas. Upon the photographer rests the responsibility and Perhaps more than any medium the association duty of recording a true image of the world as it is Hesitant at first, the pair decided to collaborate, between inventor and process became a key aspect today…. The Photo League (works) in keeping with Unknown Photographer Portrait of Samuel F. B Morse c 1845 primarily concentrating on silver-plated copper within the context of the photographic medium. In Daguerreotype the traditions set by Steiglitz, Strand, Abbott and sheets treated with iodine to make them sensitive mediums like painting, sculpture etc. the history is Weston. Photography has long suffered….. from the to light. While the process they used at that time ancient, the inventions and inventors lost in the mists of activity that followed. But like other media, the photograph still allows But at the beginning of the 20th century, the science inspired individual with an affiliation to the arts. Denying an Archive the practice of utilising existing historical images as behind the new discoveries and developments in Questions like who invented oil paint, who discov- reference points. Many of the daguerreotypes that re- photography had become much more complex than While the romance of the lone inventor pottering ered bronze casting may be traced back to civili- main are still noticeable for their exquisite detail, and a few simple chemicals and an alchemist’s aptitude. away in a alchemic laboratory endorsed by the Royal zations but certainly not to individuals. To some allow comparison of minute detail with these loca- Inspired and affluent as an individual might be, Society seemed irrelevant in the dawn of post-mod- degree, printmaking has retained a reference to tions today. In its own time this caused quite a sensa- the resources needed to achieve these new break- ernism, it had also become an impossible scenario. individual inventors like Guttenberg, but they are not tion. Indeed, the Spectator (2 February 1839) called throughs lay beyond the means of a single entity. The So there is little surprise, that when we look at the embedded in the history of the medium in quite the daguerreotypes the “self operating process of Fine environment shifted, the individual was no longer invention of digital visual media there is a different same way as the inventors of photography. Art”. The reaction in America was also one of amaze- empowered, only companies like Agfa, Kodak etc. unparalleled contextual wealth to draw from than ment. The Journal The Knickerbocker for December with wealth and authority could provided a situa- photography. The social context that existed when photogra- that year quoted: “We have seen the views taken in tion where discoveries like , Ansco print, phy was invented presented an environment where Paris by the ‘Daguerreotype,’ and have no hesitation Autochrome, etc were made. At the birth of the information age, subheaded, the importance was placed on recording and retaining in avowing, that they are the most remarkable objects post-photographic age, intellectual property was information. As routinely as we place information on of curiosity and admiration, in the arts, that we ever Because of the commercial implications, specific regarded as the most precious commodity. Unques- the web, it was considered standard practice that an beheld. Their exquisite perfection almost transcends information from the new technology became tionably not something to be gifted to the people of individual should document entries in their journal the bounds of sober belief”. The daguerreotype, be- something to safeguard, not only to hide from one’s the republic as the French Government had done about their experiments, their endless failures and came aptly called a “mirror with a memory”. competitor but also inadvertently to deny the public. with the Daguerreotype. But like photography the ultimately their discoveries and inventions. Often these new products required elaborate technol- precise point at which was For those who partake, there is an attraction akin to Daguerreotypist Carl Dauthendey, a photographer ogy, as a means of manufacture or processing, which invented is open to interpretation. Was it the drum an arcane ritual that is still potent today. who became the first professional daguerreotype has left them as vanished processes that may never scanner constructed by Russell A Kirsch and his photographer in St. Petersburg, makes an interesting be resurrected. In retrospect, the artists of the future colleagues at the National Bureau of standards in the We know a great deal about Fox Talbot, because he comment on the way Daguerreotypes were viewed: may never have the pleasure of exploring the special 1950s that recorded visual information on a raster wrote constantly about his work. In fact we know “People were afraid at first to look for any length of subtle colour of Dufaycolor, or the extenuations of grid? a great deal about many photographers and even a time at the pictures he produced. They were embar- red in Autochrome in the way earlier processes like hundred years later, the daybooks of Edward Weston rassed by the clarity of these figures and believed that the Daguerreotype, etc are explored in a Was it the techniques that NASA offers an revealing window into how he worked and the little, tiny faces of the people in the pictures could contemporary context today. used to correct imperfections, that ran as trace lines thought. From its invention photography has kept its see out at them, so amazing did the unaccustomed caused by transmission static, from images of the history intact, and quite often photography is taught detail and the unaccustomed truth to nature of the By the inception of the , these research Luna surface sent back by Ranger 7 in 1964? from this chronological perspective. Niépce, Da- first daguerreotypes appear to everyone”. environments had hardened much further; giant guerre, Talbot and Bayard were not only inventors; corporate conglomerates, or massive government Was it in the late 1980s when Canon, Nikon and they all produced compelling images themselves, funded institutions like NASA controlled extraordi- Sony introduced compact, high quality, still-video reference points to work from. nary well resourced environments of technological that recorded images directly on miniature discovery. The large financial resources that sup- floppy disk and provided an alternative to the silver Accessing Archive the Over the past 100 years many photographers used ported these new developments were well beyond an processes? the validity of this currency, as with the reference to the polished plate of the Daguerreotype in Joel Peter

Witkin’s images, they referenced the inventors and The diff rence Unlike Talbot, Daguerre etc, the inventors of digital the historic processes, in their work. media were not artists looking for new methods to create images, but scientists looking to solve prob- Or with the Atget Rephotographic Project, 1988 lems for large organizations. project by students in Paris where the photograph Today we might look at images, particularly pub- provided succinct reference point to look back at the lished images and feel there is little difference be- memory of place in a way that other media had never

tween digital and traditional photography. So what is e permitted. The Rephotographic Survey Project in the a this digital image hype all about? What is the differ- USA was broader and challenged a number of pho- ence between a traditional image and a digital image? tographers to relocate various places from historical Mitchell gives an excellent graphic description: “The photographs across different States in America that basic technical distinction between analogue (contin- had been previously documented in the mid 1800s uous and digital (discrete) representations is crucial for military and geologic surveys by photographer here. Rolling down a ramp is continuous motion, but like Timothy O’Sullivan and then photograph the walking down stairs is a sequence of discrete steps sites as they appear today. Ironically in an increas- - so you can count the number of steps, but not the ingly populated country the results were not always Daguerreotype Anon. Jabez Hogg making a portrait in Richard number of levels on the ramp”. urnabization. Beard’s Studio 1843 Zooming in, we see the photograph tered, and this factor it is crucial to the digital image. Surprisingly the inevitable took over 150 years. As the picture provoked considerable controversy. As Subversion is made up of tiny silver particles embedded in the an obvious response, eventually someone would turn mentioned earlier the Victorians had issue with surface of the paper. As these grains actually overlay This precise control relegated the traditional enlarge- Delacroix’s declaration back on photography. Like nudity in photography. and at one stage when this each other, the layer of particles has a thickness or ment technique of burning in and dodging, regard- a latent photographic image, the theatre of death photograph went to Scotland to be exhibited it was depth. The amount of light each particle receives de- less of how elaborate, as a blunt instrument, a stone was waiting to be scripted for photography, and the considered so controversial that the left hand side of termines how dark it will turn when fully developed tool, in an age of laser cutters and smart bombs. play-acted out. From the flap of William Mitchell’s the picture was concealed, only the right side being and the tone of an area is determined by the tone or In traditional photography, Ansel Adams drew an book, The Reconfigured Eye - Visual truth in the shown. However, there were others who saw in this density of all the over lapping silver grains. analogy from his musical training; he talked of the post-photographic era he states; “From this moment picture a valiant attempt to use photography in a do- as the score and through a range of intricate on, photography is dead - or more precisely, radi- main which up to that time painters had dominated, Arguably the most basic form of digitalization, the printing techniques the print as the performance, cally and permanently redefined as painting was one and when Queen Victoria purchased a copy for her use of a half tone screen for reproduction in maga- where the photographer placed emphasis on specific hundred and fifty years before. Enhanced? Or faked? husband (at ten guineas), this seemed to make his zines newspapers etc. through a printing press, was a areas in a similar fashion to an orchestral conductor. Today the very idea of photographic veracity is being photograph respectable! As if entrusted with the means of breaking photographs down into a series a He saw the photographer’s role not only as taking radically changed by the emerging technology of digi- power of God to spike photography for undermining dots that either printed a dot of ink or left a gap. The photographs with the camera but as the consummate tal image manipulation and synthesis: photography God’s truth, this righteous construction was the hilt closer the dots the darker the tone, the wider the gaps performer in the . can now be altered at will in ways that are virtually of a foil to undermine photography’s truth. the lighter. The smaller the dots the finer the repro- undetectable, and photorealistic synthesised images duction. However, close examination of the digital These tools of traditional photography were well suit- are becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish Henry Peach Robinson, also working during the 19th image reveals that smooth curves and continuous ed to Strand’s, Weston’s and Adam’s high-modernist from actual photographs”. Century in a similar manner, produced a work titled tonal gradients are approximated by discrete intentions - their life quest was for a kind of objective Fading Away referencing a young woman dying of (small squares of uniform colour or tone) and where truth that demanded a quasi-scientific procedure Photography was raped, its imagined virginity of sickness surrounded by a concerned family. Today each is of a different tone a gradation exists. leading to a closed, finished perfection. truth was ripped away, stolen without consent by this we might read the title as a comment on the dissolv- But the tools of digital imaging appear more adapted brash new high tech kid on the block. ing of photography’s imagined truth with a huddle of to the diverse projects of our modern era; a digi- But photography’s truth had always been a false per- traditionalists around an ailing medium. tal image is always open. Lyle Rexer Comments in ception; it had been anchored on a quivering lump of Photography’s Antiquerian Avant-garde: “The intel- clay rather than an immovable foundation of stone. Subversion of a different kind was also at hand when lectual residue of the poststructuralist wave arouses As photographic materials of the time were over sen- it came to photographic truth in the form of adjust- queasiness with Weston’s unabashedly totalising sitive to blue green, there was often a problem retain- ing the scene before the camera. There has always formulations and foments skittishness about hang- ing information in the sky of a landscape. To counter been a vague line between the subtle modification ing a logocentroid quite so closely; a medium that this, photographers like Gustave Le Gray, printed of the objective image where the odd thing was ar- privileges fragmentation, indeterminacy, and hetero- separate negatives of dramatic skies in to give a tonal ranged to create a stronger image and all-out direc- geneity and that emphasizes process or performance balance to the image. While this use of combination tion where the image was constructed from scratch. rather than the finished art object will be seen by printing was not criticized when he exhibited his 19th century studio portraiture in the new countries many as no bad thing”. seascapes, it is unlikely that he hung finished images like New Zealand which utilized a set of fairly stand- utilizing the same negative for the sky in each adja- ardized props to associate the subject with the illu- Yes a negative could be printed repetitively, but there cent to one other, so perhaps it went undetected. sion of a new found prosperity might have told small were always aberrations in the performance; materi- lies, and the tradition has continued in various forms Digital image Half tone screen image als changed, negatives could be damaged and that Artists like Osca Reijlander, and Henry Peach Robin- through to the present. The fact that the digital image is broken into steps dreaded enemy, dust turned up in different place son were involved in technically more complex sub- is significant. Initially the steps were few, producing with each printing. versions that combined parts of numerous negatives But the rhetorical re-enactment of significant news coarse images, broken into large squares of tone or In a digital form, an image could be altered, trans- to create combination images beyond the reality of events, as in Jole Rosenthal’s famous photograph of pixelated. Today, we recognize such images as low ferred as a series of binary codes. And as in Baudril- what was in front of a single . Reijlander marines hoisting the Stars and Stripes atop Suribachi resolution. As technological advancement refined lard’s concept of the simulacra; the copy without an produced a large composite allegorical work from Yama Iwo Jima Feb 23 1945, to obtain a more graphic this new image method into smaller and smaller original, precisely copied dissolving the distinction many negatives titled The Two Paths of Life, which press image drew a different line. Some considered it steps, eventually producing images indistinguishable of original and copy, reducing the image to raw data. depicts a sage guiding two young men towards man- a reckless use of the medium, a use that undermined by the naked eye from traditional photographs, the With Photoshop and the click of a mouse, Adams’s hood. One looks with some eagerness towards gam- the most publicly perceived photographic objectivity. distinction in the public’s mind between the means score could be played up like hell, or reduced to a bling, wine, prostitution and idling, whilst the other of making a photograph dissolved. A photograph is a vague melody interspersed with anything else at one’s looks (with somewhat less enthusiasm!) towards However, when it comes to more than a cool mil- photograph by whatever means. disposal. There is no doubt that any veracity photog- figures representing religion, industry, families and lion dollars, Cindy Sherman reigns supreme. In 1995 raphy had been severely undermined by digitisation. good works. In the centre appears the veiled, partly the Museum of Modern Art purchased the original The effect of this breaking down of the image into Although humanity had become conditioned to the clothed figure symbolising repentance and turning prints of the series Untitled Film Stills from the art- a defined grid allowed the information in each pixel photographic image, again it was a time when the towards the good. ist. With Sherman as the main character, these ficti- to be manipulated in a precise manner, in a way that image culture of the world changed in a crucial way, tious images of stereotypical Hollywood and tabloid traditional photographic truth had never been al- and new perceptions were desperately required. Shown in 1857 at an exhibition in Manchester, snapshots, signaled a turnabout for a museum that had championed the idea of photography as a dis- The words digital democracy has a nice ring, but But this tactility is not generic to all images stored tinctive art, based on modernist photographic truth. Lyle Rexer Comments: “The medium that had from photography has always been about democracy. In as digital files. Regarded as a design icon of the 20th Suddenly the Sherman acquisition enshrined a its inception played upon the ineffable effects of light the 19th century photography allowed images to be century, a CD has its own seductive urbane appeal species of antiphotography an art of cultural docu- was now bathed in a lurid glow. For although this obtained by everyone, in the 20th century it allowed and tactility, there is a sense of mystery of what im- mentation in which the fact of the picture-taking, antiphotography was corrosively self-aware and images to be produced by anyone and the 21st cen- ages it might contain, but then again, it might con- its accumulated social meanings (film stills) and the politically astute, it paid no attention to itself, that tury offers publication and subversion of images by tain absolutely nothing. position of the observer (photographer and viewer) is, to the mediating circumstances of paper, printing anyone. However with freedom comes problems of were far more important than the composition of the process, composition, texture tone and moment that discrimination. In the 20th Century many could not Others see the emergence of digital imaging as a images, the matrix of their presentation or the visual had for almost a century signified a work of photo- distinguish between a photograph crafted at a high welcome opportunity to expose the aporias in pho- truth that lay before the camera. graphic art”. level a personal snapshot. tography’s construction of the visual world, to decon- struct the very ideas of photographic objectivity and While traditional Photography might not have closure, and to resist what has become an increas- expired just yet, it has certainly aged. Unlike the real ingly sclerotic pictorial tradition. shoe; discarded left to fray and disintegrate from the elements, Weston’s image of it remains frozen in Digitalization has made photography easier; easier black silver. As Van Gogh’s shoes allowed Fredrick for people to access, easier to subvert and virtually Jameson a new reading it has the potential to reflect a impossible to detect, and consequently easier to different light. Like wine, this ageing might be some- abuse a reader’s trust than ever before. what of a blessing that allows the medium to gain a new sole/ soul, gain a fresh mobility. But protago- Andy Grundberg, the photography critic of the new nists who need a foundational faith in the recording York Times, predicted “an eventual derealization of instrument, photojournalists, the legal system and the photographed world. In the future, readers of the

Death science, have fought hard to maintain the hegemony newspapers and magazines will probably view news Kevin Robins twisted the theatrical knife deeper ical and optical) have come to seem restrictive and of the standard photographic image. It is a practice pictures more as illustrations than reportage, since in his book Into the Image Culture and politics in impoverished, whilst the new technologies promise to hard to remove. they will be well aware that they can no longer dis- the field of Vision with the statement, “the death of inaugurate an era of almost unbound freedom and tinguish between a genuine image and one that has photography has been reported”. He mentions the flexibility in the creation of images. There is the sense Photography based on real events, people and places been manipulated. Even if news photographers and convergence of photographic technologies with video that photography was constrained by its inherent will always teach us something about the world that editors resist the temptations of the electronic manip- and computer technologies, and this convergence automatism and realism, that is to say, by its essen- once existed and the culture of the time we live in. ulation, as they are likely to do, the credibility of all seems set to bring about a new context in which still tially passive nature; that the imagination of photog- Snap frozen moments, Mirrors of Memory always reproduced images will be diminished by a climate of images will constitute just one small element in the raphers was restricted because they could aspire to be have some currency no matter how devalued that reduced expectations. In short photographs will not encompassing domain of what has been termed hy- no more than the mere recorders of reality”. currency might become in an age of hypermedia seem as real as they once did”. permedia. Robin continues, “Old technologies (chem- Often what gives these frozen packages a value added impact is associated inscriptions that locate people, For over a hundred years photojournalists have place, time. Where the photographer used insight subscribed to codes designed to protect the integrity

Resuscitation and method to record specific detail. of editorial content, such as the NPPA’s 1990 state- However, Delacroix’s declaration that painting was In the post-photographic age, is the digital assassina- ment of principle: “..it is wrong to alter the content of dead, never quite came about, in fact the invention tion a scripted theatre where a play is simply enacted Obvious manipulations, like the Untitled (Canoe a photograph in any way that deceives the public... of photography gave painting an impetus to move for the benefit of a few critics and commentators or a flying over Auckland) 1917 image by George Bourne, altering the editorial content of a photograph, in any on from the preoccupation with realist perspective real and final death? Photography has certainly taken might not offer the full open window vista of the degree, is a breach of the ethical standards recog- devised during the Renaissance through the popular- some body blows in the past decade or so from the straight documentary style, but there is more than nized by the NPPA”. ity of the camera obscura, to an exotic new jungle of digital revolution, but mortally wounding a media a useful keyhole to peer at how a city has changed, infinite potential. like photography is a hard call when photographers what people wore, and the humour of the day. Although this is unconfirmed, I believe in an attempt are still discovering new tricks with old toys. While it to retain integrity, photographers from the devout Rather than strangulation underwater, the supposed might not have expired yet, it has certainly aged, and All photographs have tangibility, an implicit tactility Magnum Photos Agency have vowed never to use killer, photography, actually dragged painting from like wine this might be somewhat of a blessing that where one can sense handling the image, where one digital means; yet photographs by the agency photog- a watery grave and gave it a breath of new life, not a gives it a new mobility. can stop to look again, where one can relate the detail raphers are available on the web. deathblow. It offered painting a fresh subset of visual differently with each telling. It is an essence that material to explore different directions, it catalysed Up until the invention of a workable photographic speaks through the materials and processes from the brush and pigment into arguably the richest exploita- process, images of any kind were relatively rare, but age the image was made in. A daguerreotype speaks tive period of the medium, while at the same time photography altered that and over the next 100 or so differently than an , which accents the inadvertently positioned itself in fine art as a poor years they became so prolific that attitudes towards language differently than a tintype or a silver gelatine cousin to the medium it was supposedly displacing. possessing images changed dramatically. print. From the Iraqi conflict in 2003, LA times photogra- But with both analogue and digital, the equipment One hot research focus: the integration of computers tographic truth in the postphotographic era, Norah Seduction pher Brian Walski was fired for braking the rules and can become a signifier of status within a consumer and electronics including cameras with textiles. It’s a Rudin of Forensic DNA in the USA offers the fol- combining two images, (even though they were taken society, or represent the ideals a would be photogra- logical extension of true wearable mobility: By weav- lowing: “The issues surrounding digital photography moments apart) one of a soldier and the other of a pher who dreams of what it might be used for rather ing networking capabilities, including antennas, into for use in pretty much parallel those crowd to produce a more dramatic image. The Times than a means to an end. From the 1960s through clothing, military personnel is freed from the “weight in editorial photography, or any other use where the policy forbids altering a news photograph. to 1990s there was a fetish among the toys for the and bulk” of currently used communication devices. “consumer” expects that the image documents what Like a drug cheat, this action has also brought into boys mob to purchase Nikon or Leica cameras, they the photographer saw. Everyone panicked at first question some of his earlier award winning work. became the most popular piece of male jewellery for We are being watched, our mundane activities are and assumed that every digital photo was “manipu- While today photographic truth is linked to the in- people wanting to make a statement. fixed in an undetectable memory at the supermar- lated”. Now, slowly, as with editorial photography, tegrity of the photographer, it raises interesting issues ket, service station, bank, car-park, mall, swimming guidelines are being established as to what kind of about a press photograph that has been subverted These cameras were never likely to have the paint pool, airport, roadways, intersection. Cameras are enhancement is permissible and which changes need and published undiscovered, but is then taken and worn down to the brass with use. Or in the case of, mounted everywhere, on race cars, America’s Cup to be documented. The problem, of course, is that subverted by another artist, believing it to be real. Luis Dilia of Delahye - News Week - and Luc Dela- yachts, cricket wickets, tanks going into battle. There the people who are the most concerned understand haye, a freelance photographer with the Magnum are even dummy cameras that record nothing. even less about digital photography than they did photo agency, used as a shield where both photog- As a reaction, groups like Surveillance Camera Play- about chemical photography. Remember also that raphers had lucky escapes when a bullet hit their ers have evolved that use this medium as a means documentation of evidence in a lab, for instance, for Proliferation & Surveillance While it took photography 140 years to become fully cameras rather than them. to perform and protest. 15 mins of fame in front of the simple purpose of identifying it is probably less of established in our high school and tertiary curricular, Likewise in the digital domain, rather than its appli- which camera and what audience? an issue than, for instance, photography, it has taken little more than a tenth of this time for cation, obtaining the latest , hard ware where the photo IS the evidence. That is the short digital technology to permeate the image culture of and software can become an obsession that becomes But when we look to the most serious species of pho- soapbox”. our current generation. Digital cameras proliferate; the occupation and over rides the purpose. they attach like clingons to any convenient vehicle and have even found a way into the bastion of tra- Again, in both analogue and digital, it is easy to ditional photography. The cost of the digital item become seduced by the technicalities of the medium. is tumbling downwards at an extraordinary rate. Through the teaching of Ansel Adams and the Zone Regarded as a professional camera, a Nikon E3 was a System, a method of relating subject, negative and large and heavy beast, in 1998 it cost around $35,000 print tones, obsessional dependence on the right and at its highest image quality produced a 2.45 Mb technique often divorced ideas and content. file, today you might be lucky to off load a second Approaches to working in the digital domain can hand one for a few thousand. A camera of similar ca- snare an artist in the same way. Energy can be over pability today might cost $4-5000 and offer an image directed to ever refining the image on a technical size of 10Mb. Amateur cameras that a year ago cost level at the expense of content. $1200 now cost $700 and do twice as much. Security – A half-dozen years ago, wearable comput- This accessibility of means to make images and sub- ing was the stuff of super-geek dreams. Today, the sequence abundance has cultured a different attitude ultimate mobile computing system is the stuff of the in those who take photographs. Question: What’s battlefield, and the groundwork for outfitting these an editor’s nightmare? Answer: A kid with a Digital 21st century combatants is being laid at the U.S. . Army Soldier Systems Center’s Natick Labs in Natick, Veteran cinema photographer Bob Brown from the Mass. Fox Natural History Unit based in Dunedin, makes a distinction between digital and film. “When I began with film in the 1970s it was expensive and more bulky to carry, you shot in a way that mattered, you had to understand what a good shot looked like and make it count, film was precious stuff. This style, etched in my brain, carried over when I used digi- tal; my cut rate even with digital is still 10 to 1. New people in the Unit that have only ever known digital approach it with gay abandon, they shoot everything James McArdle - image from a 4” x 5” camera with multiple points of that moves scatter gun; its cheap and there is plenty of it. Their cut rates run as high as 70 to 1, it makes editing a much greater task than it needs to be”. The virtual - the - Thevirtual real Strange also, that the most photographed and per- An implosion, dust storms and a rain of A4 sheets haps believed event in history, September 11 2001 of paper exemplified how the visuality of the event occurred in the postphotographic era when photog- exceeded the most imaginative movie illusions of the raphy had lost its reliability. It was an event bom- period. barded by every type of camera, and recording me- dium available, from film, video to digital; everyone As an integral part of the digital hypermedia, the who had the means and vantage point made images current trend to present major news items, like the that day. From the plethora of images what did be- Gulf War, Sept 11, Invasion of Iraq, with extended come clear was that this was not a cinematic illusion, live coverage, accompanying graphics and theme it was a photographic truth which was a multifac- music that switches seamlessly at the click of a button eted beast and lay more in the hands of editors than to Sky movies or a simulated Playstation or Xbox photographers. Also, the most fundamental elements game , asks question of how future generations, of the photographic, time and place, emerged as the today’s under 10 year olds, interpret the images they most powerful tool at the disposal of those creating are confronted with. The presumed assimilation into the hypermedia environment pushed her towards an act of resurrec- these images. has allowed photography to look back in much the tion. She began to make tintypes of her specimen, Recently to identify with a younger audience, the same way Picasso was influenced by African art. For positive images on iron or aluminium plates discov- Regardless of the equipment, analogue, digital, still, New Zealand Army has resorted to using a graphi- Picasso, it was a creative revelation and liberating ered in 1853 and defunct in the USA for decades. animated, high or low quality, camera view point, cally simulated advertisement that models the play force, which can be seen in the painting Demoiselles and specific time related directly to the success of the station games as a means to enlist new to recruits. d’Avignon 1907. Where the two right hand figures Commercial chemical-based photography is becom- images being created. were painted after he had seen African art, the others ing relegated to a restricted craft becoming relegated before. to a restricted craft. In the reductive environment of globalization, manufacturers are cutting back, But from the distance of the impending rubble of materials are becoming more limited, harder to ac- photographic evidence from the Twin Towers disas- cess. But for many contemporary photographers, the ter emerged what was for me one of the subtlest yet random chemical marks of antiquarian processes powerful images of the event that spoke in a curious that were glossed over in search of an ever urbane language. On a roof top several miles away New York method, now offer a set of peculiarities and vagaries photographer, Jerry Spagnoli, having overcome his as a reaction to the proliferation of digital photogra- initial hesitations of the safety of the process years phy in the past few years. before, was creating daguerreotype photographs a method of making photos on copper plated with And while digital is acquiring the commercial en- silver. deavour that traditional photography once had, it opens a new passage for artistic pursuit through the Obsolete since the 1860s, it transformed his ap- forests of earlier photographic processes that were proach to , giving him a once cut down and discarded but have since regener- means to explore in a single image the collision of ated, and also offered some new avenues never before lived time and historical time. His series the Last explored. Current presentation confuses simulation with the But this strategy raises questions, as with these great Daguerrean Survey of the 20th Century is an real and even prompts the media to comment on images of a so called friendly fire incident in Iraq, archive of contemporary events and places that delib- We can never go back to the golden glory era of itself. The visual image is such a powerful propa- about what are the consequences when the mission is erately plays on the expectations. Jerry was not alone; traditional photography, but for many, chemical- ganda tool that it forms the basis of many campaigns. botched and there is a dramatic unplanned deviation a growing number of artists working with photog- optical processes, in whatever form, offer a sanity In Iraq, the USA encouraged embedded reporters in the choreography that supersedes the intended raphy were turning their attention to antiquarian that opposes the digital divide, there is a relevance and camera operators to become part of an attacking production. A change so dramatic the camera opera- processes. It offered a collision of opportunity, the that supersedes the pixel in the same way the surfing/ army unit and present a predetermined picture that tor wipes the blood off the lens and continues film- fading rhetoric of the photograph with the vagaries snowboarding experience surpasses exercising in a mirrored the video game in which the player, (the ing. And among this horrific sequence of images, of historical processes. gym. audience) observes, acts and ultimately wins. isolated frames of subliminal beauty, as gold fish swim in the green waters of a pond. The rescue of Jessica Lynch by US Marines was de- Around the time MoMA announced the Sherman scribed by a commentator a precision military opera- With satellite cell phone connections, small handy Untitled Stills purchase Jayne Hinds Bidaut, had been tion perfectly choreographed. Questions could also cams etc., the electronic hypermedia allows uninter- searching for a way to photograph her beetle, moth be asked about why the rescue of a young woman rupted coverage in a way that traditional photogra- and butterfly collection when she discovered she was filmed rather than a man and also how the tim- phy could never approach during past conflicts. could no longer obtain many of the darkroom sup- ing coincided with prime USA TV viewing. plies she needed. She was advised to go digital. This prospect of photography going the way of the natural As a maker, engaging in photography for the explora- hybridation of the hypermedia into a beast foreign to tion of a personal project opens up a line of dialogue our era. ichael Serres talks of the Parasite or static in References. with one’s self that can generates an extended percep- communication; -static being caused by some form tion and understanding of their relationship with the of electrical spike. Unfortunately, the original text with references for this paper has been lost? world. Rather than influencing generations of pho- tographers the way Steglitz, Weston or Sherman did, Despite the static, photography in all its manifesta- The text has come from a fully illustrated digital slide show that was presented at the conference. Due to the work might offer little but entertainment value tions still offers a special electrical pulse. In all its copyright a limited number of images have been embedded in the document. for the contemporary audience, but in reference to forms and those yet to come photography offers a the quote “Change the world, make a difference, rich vocabulary of visual means for artists. However think global act local”, changing an individual is an what appears at issues is the context and approach is ever so slight change to the culture of the world. placed in. -The gentle or violent interplay between processes, genres and context. In a world of genetic engineering it would be naive to think photography won’t mutate in a way we can’t Photography in whatever form it manifests, will yet conceive, evolve past this initial phase of digital always remain as Fox Talbot put it,,...... “A little bit of magic realized”.

Francis Baker - Van Dyle Brown Prints