The Digital Age and Photography

The three readings this week, Jason Evans's "Online Photographic Thinking", Susan Murray's "Journal of Visual Culture", and Lev Manovich's "Everyday Media Life", all posed different viewpoints on society's switch from the analog into the digital realm.

In his essay, Jason Evans did not take a side in the digital vs. analog "debate", but rather listed some pros and cons for each method of photography. Digital photography, he says, encourages the photographer "to deliberate less about whether or not to actually take a picture." It has a tendency toward flippancy, where the art of the photographic practice is lost in the quick shoot, review, delete, and reshoot, review, delete, etc. that is the norm in digital photography. There is no limited shots, no end to the roll of film, no monetary value associated with every shot as there is with analog. The delicate practice of photography has ended with digital. Evans makes an interesting comment on page 43, stating "We are not having our choices taken away from us by the usurping of analog by digital; we just have to expand what photography can be." To a point, I can see where he is going with this. That if the type of film you are using is discontinued, you need to overcome that obstacle and figure out a way to continue your photography; you need to broaden what your photographic practice may encompass. However, there is definitely a different look, or a different aesthetic, to each type of film. If Kodak discontinues their film, maybe Fuji does not hold up for the style of work that the Kodak user is creating. And Kodak more than likely would not have discontinued the film if digital had not been around to encourage people to stop using the film. So I would tend to disagree with Evans in his above statement. Yes, there will always be a way to get film and continue analog projects, but as time goes on and there digital advancements continue, choices will become more limited, scarce, and expensive. Digital is usurping analog.

As for the internet's "contribution" to this digital age, Evans compares its use to that of galleries and museums. He talks about how the internet can reach audiences to the extent that galleries and museums cannot, without a sacrifice of content or style. On the internet, it is free to post as many photos as you'd like, and it's a safe way in going about showing your work. In galleries, it's a little different. They don't get the range or size of audience that the internet gets. However, what they do get, is viewers who are genuinely interested in the artist and their work. These viewers went out of their way to physically get themselves into this gallery to view this specific work. For the internet, all you have to do is minimize the movie you're watching, click "stumbleupon", browse through the page a little without really taking in who the artist is (although maybe you thought that the work was alright), and clicking "Stumble!" again, and *poof*, now you're watching the world's funniest cat video. Not much of a gripping viewing experience in relation to photography. With galleries, there is also a certain standard that your work needs to have achieved before it can be shown. There are critics and curators that will analyze the work and break it down, maybe declining the artist 3 or 4 times before their work has reached the standard of that particular gallery. It's a risky way of trying to get your work out there, but it pays off. You become part of a community of curators and critics, of viewers and collectors. Your name is remembered and has weight. Your work has a backbone; other people like it too and wanted to show it publicly. It's not just the artist liking it and posting it to their website. Galleries give artists credibility where the internet, at this point, cannot.

I don't recall whether it was Evans or one of the response essays, but there was a question posed regarding the types of photos that are posted on the internet, and how internet photos are not serious, whereas gallery and museum photos still are. There is not space in the gallery world for snapshot photography, family portraits, wedding photography, and some of the new (godawful) aesthetics that the internet is glorious at holding onto and showing. The gallery-type photography is still that of a more straightforward, serious nature, connecting more directly to the roots of photography. I think the question posed was something along the lines of "Will there ever be a time where these serious photos make it to the internet?" and I believe that there definitely will be. Considering that the average museum and gallery audience is mainly senior citizens and some student artists, and that kids growing up currently have not experienced the analog age and have no real connection to the photographic print, that eventually the need for printing out a photograph and displaying it in a gallery or museum setting will phase out. I believe that there will be an equivalent of this gallery credibility online when this happens, but I do believe it will happen. As for now though, we are still in the middle ground, stuck between the internet and galleries.

Gallery type print: Julie Blackmon's Green Velvet

Blackmon, although works with digital processes to collage and manipulate scenes, does shoot in film (if I'm not mistaken) and creates work that would not be just fleetingly taken and posted to her website (though she does have a website). To me, her work seems more to fit the gallery scene/collector's world.

Weird, godawful, internet aesthetic of "vintage photography" (or so the blog is named). Unknown photographer.

This is what I picture when the words "aesthetic internet photography" are spoken. I cringe. They are horrible. I have come across photographer's websites that are full of photos like this. Straight on, point and shoot camera mounted flash of girls' legs with ripped stockings, usually outside or at a party. I get queasy just thinking about these photographs. Maybe it's because I've never been a Nan Goldin fan...? Anyway, I'd agree that right now, galleries give nice credibility to artists when their work is shown versus an artist's personal website with work that is cringeable.


Susan Murray approaches the analog vs. digital slightly differently. She talks mainly about how social photographic networking sites, mainly Flickr, create this digital "community" similar to the analog community. With digital photos, there is this development of a communal aesthetic, brought about by what Lev Manovich would call "tokens", which include comments, replies, tags, and messages all used to discuss individual photographs, groups/pools of photographs, etc. This digital community does not respect traditional amateur/professional hierarchies. On Flickr, there is no distinction between the amateur, the professional amateur, and the professional. You can make your best guess, but sometimes it is very difficult to distinguish between the three. All three types of photographers have their work in the same pools, with the same tags, gridded next to each other on the same page. Flickr is a celebration of photography, not a popularity contest, and not a place for ego. If the photographer likes the photoraph, maybe the comments will solidify this enjoyable aesthetic. Manovich points out that when we comment or reply to messages or other comments, we are creating discussions that are immediate. We are exchanging ideas that are constantly changing the art world and how we view it and how it develops. Time is not an obstacle anymore. It does not take weeks for one art critic to contact another art critic about a certain artist's work. It is happening now. All of these pieces work to create this communal aesthetic that Flickr has most definitely achieved.

Murray also mentions the more prominent differences between how digital and analog photography are viewed. Analog photography, or indexical and photography, was mainly used as means for more accurate documentation. Amateurs photographed their families, events, and used the medium to create memories. Professionals photographed in a way that was more artistic and reminiscent of painting. As Barthes said, photography is "a contract with death." Analog photographs were and are viewed as moments in the past, historical, and melancholy. This photography is emulsion on paper and silver on plastic. It is physical. Digital photography, or nonindexical and photographic, is mainly used as an a visual aesthetic, or content aesthetic. Of course it is still used to document families, children, holidays, events, weddings, etc., and photographers still use it as an art form in ways very similar to previous professionals of the analog age, it is not viewed as looking upon death. These new digital photographs are very transient, continual, and full of life. This photographic is what is mentioned above: content aesthetic. It is not so much about "This is the only documented photograph of William S. Johnson, lieutenant in the Civil War. He had 3 children and a wife and he never made it back home to them." Digital photography is about "Look how this light caught the pages of the book I was reading this morning, and how the wood grain is accentuated beneath the smooth texture of the book's edges." I'm not saying that analog photography cannot capture this exquisite light (it may even capture it better than digital can), but that traditionally, analog was not used for images such as these, whereas the digital bank of photography is overflowing with the small, beautiful things in everyday life. The same idea can be flipped, where digital photography can be used in the melancholy way that film was, although I have not yet seen something quite as successful at doing this as old tintypes or daguerreotypes.

Unknown photographer. Civil War Soldier. Daguerreotype.

This image screams melancholy.

This is one of my photographs that I would place neatly into the digital category.

I don't know if it is going too far to classify digital as "delicate" but I do get that feeling when looking at many digital photographs (Maybe I should be more specific here. The word that more properly fits that sentence would be digital images. As Evans stated, it sometimes does us good to not look at the analog physicality of photographs, but the digital image itself.) To me, there is something lighter about digital photographs in comparison to the heaviness of analog, and maybe this stems from digital's transience and movement. Analog is very solid, and digital feels a bit more pliable and flowing.