Assignment Three - Rework
Notes from the session with the Tutor
On July 28, 2021, I had the feedback session with my Tutor on Assignment Three. It was feedback on a critical review: for this reason, it was a different session from the others and we had the opportunity to exchange opinions on our personal interpretation of the role of digital photography and how we practice it.
Part of the session was more of an 'au pair' chat between photographers than tutor-to-student feedback. I thank my Tutor because during the session I received academic suggestions but also personal points of view.
For example, I feel that the function of immediate visualization of the result given by the digital medium is a potential obstacle (in fact I deactivated it) to the immediate sense of the photographer to the surrounding environment and the subject. My Tutor sees it instead as an opportunity to immediately share the work just created with the subject and thus reach a greater degree of confidence.
All this confirms that the debate around the role of digital photography is still open and includes different interpretations.
Rework
Assignment
Three
Critical Essay
“Has the ‘digital revolution’ created more
problems than
opportunities for today’s professional
photographers?”
Text: 2.495 words
Index of
images
Image
1 Emily Allchurch, Sic Transit Gloria Mundi (after Piranesi) 2016
https://www.emilyallchurch.com/
Image 2 Newsweek and Time covers, June 1994
Image 3 Siggi Eggertsson, The Unknown
Image 4
https://www.pinterest.ch/pin/566468459356810553/visual-search/?x=10&y=10&w=544&h=554&cropSource=6
Image 5
Image 6 Paul Hansen (photo credit: AP/Paul Hansen,
Dagens Nyheter) November 20, 2012, Gaza City, The 2013 World Press Photo of the year https://www.timesofisrael.com/prize-winning-gaza-image-manipulated-critics-charge/
Image 7 Here Is New York. A Democracy of
Photographs https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/11/arts/design/11muse.html
Introduction
“After photography comes photography, but it is altered by the after.”
Hubertus von Amelunxen
“… Postphotography stands as a new universal language.”
Joan Fontcuberta
I have chosen to write a critical essay on “Has
the ‘digital revolution’ created more problems than opportunities for today’s professional
photographers?”
It is a debated and controversial topic, on which, after about
four decades from the birth of digital photography, different currents of thought
are still confronted today, with clear and, sometimes, antithetical positions.
The context originates from the fact that technological evolution
induces such profound and extensive changes in various fields, including the professional
one, that those who are subject to it (in this case professional photographers)
are practically forced to change part of their working methods.
Or to face completely new ones.
The relationship between analog and digital photography, within a
wider scenario induced by the "digital revolution", is therefore
continually scrutinized and interpreted according to different currents of
thought.
Sometimes these currents originated totally new cultural and
professional movements.
In this critical essay, I will bounce from the digital revolution
in the artistic/abstract field in order to focus my analysis on digital photography
for professionals like photojournalists, fine-art photographers, freelancers.
I will then investigate on relationship between digital revolution
and the representation of reality, whether the latter is a point of arrival or
a starting point towards the creation of a result: representation,
documentation, visual narrative, and photojournalism.
I will deepen the themes that are linked to the main threats /
opportunities that have arisen against the profession of photographer: photo
editing, digital manipulation, User Generated Content, Content Dissemination.
These themes will allow me to deepen on the ethics of altering
photos, the appropriation process, the from-scratch digitally "constructed"
image, the professional evolution of the digital photographer, the birth of new
work processes and new paradigms, the contamination of the so-called connected
world.
New strategies, new photographers
If we compare the mindset and workflow of the born-digital and born-analog
photographer, we detect some substantial differences.
As Fred Ritchin (Ritchin, 2012) states, the born-digital
photographer applies an obsessively repetitive sequence of photographic
shooting - visualization of the resulting image. The photographer born-analog
and switched to digital or not, keeps (for how long?) an observation - planning
- shooting sequence: it essentially derives from the fact that, in the analog
world, the moments of shooting and viewing the result are separated by hours,
if not days.
“The
digital environment encourages new strategies and supports them with new
efficiencies. For the moment, however, an older, more intuitive way of working
yields to newer methods that are often still relatively simplistic. An analog
photographer in the field, unsure whether the pictures on the undeveloped film
are any good, who pushes herself to take more, possibly better photographs, is
working in a more instinctive, exploratory, and probably more "present''
way than the digital photographer who sees the results immediately and right
away decides whether to reshoot or not influenced by the initial results."
(Ritchin, 2012)
The digital photographer's approach, by successive approximations,
is compulsively focused on the continuous display of the shots taken and pushed
to the repeated refinement of the technical parameters. The author of the shot,
who should be particularly sensitive to the surrounding environment, to light,
and that subset that will be part of the photographic composition, is led to
isolate himself, to the advantage of the so-called screen paradigm.
“Digital photographs,
frequently made while peering at the camera's back, concretize the central
paradigm of the screen. Veteran press photographers, for example, refer to
digital colleagues as "chimping" (said to be derived from the actions
of a chimpanzee), given that they can frequently be seen looking down at the
screen and pressing lots of buttons, even in the middle of an event- although
that may be preferable to what analog press photographers have long been
called: shooters.” (Ritchin, 2012)
If the shielding effect induced by the digital tool has
obvious consequences on photojournalists (possibly creating more advantages in
terms of efficiency and speed), I believe that the professional photographers
of the digital age risk a mediation by the tool, which interferes with
perception, the eye and the soul since the photographer defines the composition
through another possible mediator, the electronic viewfinder.
It is a substantial mediation and can penalize photographic design, that is the act of conceiving the image before taking the shot. Furthermore, the photographer, who, thanks to a condescending technology, can be exempted from technical/qualitative assessments such as, for example, the quality of light and tonal degrees could be induced to passivize and disengage from the content.
This theme is explored by Joan Fontcuberta, who states "The photos that crowd the social networks were taken by operators without any qualifications, who just point and shoot ..... Shooting without thinking: visual depredation prevails over the desire to experience, accumulation on quality ". (Fontcuberta, 2016)
In my personal experience, while I recognize what Fontcuberta states, I also note that, if we leave out the area of mobile photography and remain in the photography obtained with the most recent photographic tools, even non-professional ones, the average quality from a technical point of view is high, to the point of precluding what Fontcuberta defines as "... the flag of error, as a generator of creativity and aesthetic progress”. (Fontcuberta, 2016)
From another point of view, Fred Ritchin states:
“While digital media are considerably more efficient and cheaper, easier to master and to distribute, in their near omnipresence they may lack a sufficient singularity (what Walter Benjamin referred to as “aura”) as well as enough subtlety to engage viewers deeply, or even to provoke their sustained attention.” （Ritchin, 2013）
However, the intervention of technology to support the creation of
the photographic image can also prove to be an opportunity.
The advanced photographer, partially exempt from technical issues/constraints, can concentrate on the content and not worry about masterfully managing the tool. Furthermore, he/her has the possibility of influencing technique and content at a later time, to the point of no longer having to use the photographic medium to create an image.
The post-photographer can thus enter a world of pure perception and abstraction, where reality is no longer essential as an original "layer" on which to base the construction of the photographic work.
Reality is relegated to the potential role of a source of inspiration, on the way to the conception of visual artwork.
Image 1 Emily Allchurch, Sic Transit Gloria
Mundi (after Piranesi) 2016 https://www.emilyallchurch.com/
In the case of documentation and photojournalistic photography,
reality regains its central role. It is appropriate, then, an
ethical reflection on the life cycle and use of the photographic image.
“Despite being inevitably interpreted and framed according to the photographer’s own point of view, a photograph, no matter how unfamiliar or even grotesque its depiction, was considered difficult to refute given its status as a reliable trace of the visible and the “real.”” （Ritchin，2013）
“But photographs were also thought to contain useful information captured via the lens, including some that had escaped the photographer’s control—recalling Garry Winogrand’s famous phrase: “I photograph to see what things look like when they are photographed.” (Ritchin，2013）
In the digital world, where the photo editing process has taken over from work in the darkroom, the consistency of what Winongrand states is jeopardized by the possibility of graphic manipulation: the photographic shot loses part of the intrinsic value of truth and legitimacy that have been always recognized in analog work.
“The photograph’s documentary status has been altered, in part, by its transformation from a physical object derived from chemical processes to an expression of digital code. Rather than being viewed as the result of a recording process in which anyone present would have seen something similar, the ephemeral and easily malleable online photograph (digital-imaging software is pervasive and highly efficient) can be increasingly considered an expression of a particular point of view, a commentary on events that is more akin to writing than it is a definitive rendering.” （Ritchin，2013）
Thus a further paradox is born: the photojournalistic image, which is expected to have the function of certifying the truth and objectivity of the news, needs, in turn, to be ethically certified as the non-manipulation of reality.
Digital Photography and Ethics of Photo Alteration
Even before the advent of digital photography, the availability of
very expensive flat and roller scanners (for example Crossfield and Hell) and
the practice of digitally scanning slides led to the birth and evolution of
para-digital platforms for post-editing of images.
They have replaced, or rather, they have entered as an intermediate step between the traditional darkroom development process and
printing.
With the advent of digital photography, the features of photo-editing
have reached the power of total image manipulation, and a new term was born:
photo-illustration.
Often the manipulation of an image is done by those who publish
and not by those who produce.
Stephen Mayes, Director of VII Photo Agency in 2012, in an interview with Wired Magazine addresses his criticism to an important magazine such as Time, which claims to have never manipulated the photographs published, but forgets to explicitly indicate that the cover photograph it is almost always manipulated.
The following image clearly shows how, in the intentions of the publisher, the different lighting of the face in the same mugshot creates an association of ideas dark = evil, probably in order to give greater emphasis to the violent content of the story and to strike the reader-consumer.
Image 2 Newsweek and Time covers, June 1994
“It is a convention that we’ve learned very quickly. It’s not so
many years since there were scandals about manipulated covers; now it is routine.
We’ve absorbed it.” (Mayes, 2012)
The profession of the photographer is flanked by other creative professions, based on new content and new needs.
The photo editor is a professional figure with his own dignity. In the artistic field, photo-editing, and the creative process without the aid of the photographic medium, or by appropriation, have given rise to real professional and artistic movements.
Image 3 Siggi Eggertsson, The
Unknown
From a certain point of view, the professional photographer could be depleted of those
characteristics that made him unique and original, such as the ability to
"see" with the lens and "paint" with light.
Image 4 https://www.pinterest.ch/pin/566468459356810553/visual-search/?x=10&y=10&w=544&h=554&cropSource=6
Is it crucial to save the nature of the photographer, so distant
from that of the photo-editor and graphic artist, sublimated in the ability to
return to observe reality and create professional and artistic content while
maintaining a bond irreplaceable with reality?
I could try to answer with another question.
Is Photography still the sign of the real?
In both the legal and journalistic fields, photography is the
protagonist of the ritual of telling a story and witnessing the truth.
“The historically established
belief in the authenticity of the photographic image has its roots in the
assumption that a physical-chemical apparatus can (re)produce the displaced
analogue image of an optically perceivable phenomenon. We believe in photography
just as we believe in our shadow.” (Amelunxen,
1996)
Whether it's late photography or photojournalism, photography is
used as a means to tell a story and inform about reality.
All this, despite having been amply demonstrated, observing the
work of Henry Peach Robinson as an example, that, since the nineteenth century,
even the analog image could be substantially manipulated.
Image 5
The following image has been the subject of an important
controversy. A forensic analysis showed that the image is a set of three photographs
and that it has been heavily post-edited.
Image 6 Paul Hansen (photo credit:
AP/Paul Hansen, Dagens Nyheter) November 20, 2012, Gaza City, The 2013
World Press Photo of the year https://www.timesofisrael.com/prize-winning-gaza-image-manipulated-critics-charge/
One of the great paradoxes of digital photography is defined in
all its concreteness: photography, which can be altered to the point of no longer
being considered photography, loses its atavistic cause-effect link with the
photographic medium, which expects to be the recorder of reality.
It is expected that the genuineness of the emotional impulse that
is created by the vision of the image is guaranteed by the "here and now" of the pure photographic shot.
The photographer is expected, through his work, to put us in
contact with reality and not with a manipulative substitute.
The photographer is expected to be, in symbiosis with the
photographic medium and as such, the recorder of reality.
In the digital age, the photographic image is no longer
intrinsically true. It must be accompanied by a formal declaration, in the case
of legal procedures, and reassured by the professional's need to protect his or
her reputation and responsibilities in the journalistic field.
What looks real, could be untrue, what is claimed to be real, is
true.
The issues of reputation, validation of sources, and, ultimately,
the credibility of the media, are central and directly linked to the whirlwind
growth of the use of User Generated Content and the capacity for digital
manipulation.
All this has changed the rules of the game: the map of
responsibilities has been modified. A new player, the ordinary citizen, into
the context, demanding the professional to have an even more formally supported
role than that of reality recorder.
Democracy and images inflation
The digital revolution has
resulted in the inclusion of amateurs among professionals and has dramatically
expanded the population of photographic content producers.
"For
the first time we are producers and consumers of images, and the simultaneous
accumulation of these factors has caused an almost infinite iconic avalanche." (Fontcuberta, 2016)
We, therefore, face inflation
of images: they are not previously selected, therefore not certified, then published
and disseminated immediately after their production. This action is within
everyone's reach, both from a technical point of view (smartphone) and from an
economic point of view (internet).
As stated in Fortune Magazine
(Fortune, 2012) ten percent of all photos ever taken were shot in 2011.
It is a fact that in this context there are job losses in professional photojournalism, and it is also the objective that this inflation of images, the production of which is within the
reach of anyone, is producing addiction and difficulty in selecting a quality
level.
“Adjusting to the digital
environment has been challenging for all those professionally involved in the
journalistic enterprise. A 2009 survey, “Photojournalists: An Endangered
Species in Europe?,” found that the three major crises for photojournalists
were low pay scale, competition from nonprofessionals, and the protection of
authors’ rights…..”. （Ritchin，2013）
The addiction generated by the
sight of images scattered without selection is of the same nature. They arrive
directly to the user as they were created.
"The image is no longer a
mediation with the world, but an amalgam of it, if not its raw material." (Fontcuberta, 2016)
"Anyone who places himself in
front of these images must therefore engage in a different way to avoid that
the excessive charge of pathos that passes through them makes them devoid of
testimony value; if we usually recognize the undisputed testimonial value of
photographs, the reaction they arouse implies something absolutely unprecedented…
.. "(Crescimanno, April 2013)
New forms of evaluation and
judgment arise, which are conveyed through “likes” and comments. Today anyone can
create a blog in which to publish their photos and expose themselves directly
to the evaluation of followers.
The work is evaluated and
becomes eventually “viral” on the basis of quantity of "likes"
The figure and work of the
professional photographers risk being "flattened" and devalued, as in
all contexts where the selection is bypassed and where the producer of the
content is both judge and user,
"The idea of the excess of
images ....... deserves a more in-depth and critical treatment that not only
implies the specific conditions of the image, but also the logic of its
management, dissemination and control ..." (Fontcuberta, 2016)
However, in today's world, anyone
has the opportunity or feel the need to take a photograph of an event they
witness: is it correct that professionals judge negatively this amateur practice
and come to ostracize a content, even when it keeps its promise of testimonial
commitment?
“The
transition from analog to digital photography was a pivot point, but it is a
pivot that wasn’t fully recognized in that working with these large DSLR
cameras we’ve been able to mimic [analog] photography as we know it. The
cellphone is a pretty pure implementation of the digital phenomenon.” (Mayes, 2012)
Is it correct that the professionals, in an attempt to differentiate themselves, protect their existence by retreating into inaccessible and snobbish niches, almost ignoring the "digital revolution"?
"On the other hand, the advantage of this excess is the consequent exhaustive and immediate access to the images, which thus lose the condition of luxury items enjoyed in the past." (Fontcuberta, 2016)
I believe that today's professional photographers should fully accept change (many already do) and recognize the opportunities to enter, with the decisive support of their professionalism, in these new currents of dialectic and visual narrative.
Clement Cheroux, photography historian and curator of the photographic fund of the Center Pompidou in Paris, regarding the photographic coverage of the events of September 11 (Cheroux, 2010), has verified that most of the newspapers published after the event always selected the same reduced set of six photographs, as if to standardize photographic information in order to maintain exclusive control over information.
This alleged strategy was offset by the "Here is New York. A
Democracy of Photographs ”(Peres + Others, 2002), where space was given, both in
an exhibition of five thousand photographs and in a photographic edition, to
what the citizens of New York experienced and wanted to testify.
Image 7 Here Is New York. A Democracy of Photographs https://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/11/arts/design/11muse.html
Which is the best sign of the real,
between professional and citizen initiatives,?
The social role of the professional
photographer in the digital age
As I wrote previously, the advent of the digital age has allowed the birth of the citizen-photographer and the proliferation of User Generated Content.
Joan Fontcuberta states (Fontcuberta, 2016) that technology has sped up the production and dissemination of images that were previously subject to a professional, certified, but exclusive and slower workflow.
".... a change of canon in photojournalism is assumed: speed prevails over the decisive moment, speed over refinement." (Fontcuberta, 2016)
Given that the role of the citizen-photographer is clear, unequivocal and intrinsically social, as an insider by definition in a community and in the events that run through it, I therefore ask myself how the professional photographer should be placed towards contexts in which he is an outsider and whether this position has changed in the digital age.
I think nothing has changed in this sense.
In 1985, the American photographer James Nachtwey, aged 36 and shortly before being associated with the Magnum agency, wrote his "Credo".
“For me, the strength of photography lies in its ability to evoke a sense of humanity. If war is an attempt to negate humanity, then photography can be perceived as the opposite of war and if it is used well it can be a powerful ingredient in the antidote to war….. The worst thing is to feel that as a photographer I am benefiting from someone else’s tragedy. This idea haunts me. It is something I have to reckon with every day because I know that if I ever allow genuine compassion to be overtaken by personal ambition I will have sold my soul. The stakes are simply too high for me to believe otherwise.” (Nachtwey, 1985)
As in the analog age, in the digital age
the photographer has the duty to combine his social function with his legitimate
personal and professional aspirations.
According to Benjamin, photography has the
ability to support the senses in the mutation of their relationship with reality
(Benjamin, 2012). If this is true, the photographer has the ability to convey
knowledge in a different and more performative way, with the support, not the
interference, of the technical medium.
If technology and its progression are
conveyed by human needs, it is essential to prevent it from dominating and
contributing to the reduction of human sensitivity in the relationship between
reality and the creation of content. I agree with my Tutor, when he states that
“…we ‘know’ it’s a photograph (or film, or play or book
etc.) but we want to believe that it is the thing it represents. We suspend
this disbelief all the time”.
The transition from analog to digital
created the conditions for a different relationship with reality, which it was
thought might fail, compared to tradition.
"The
history of photography from analogue to digital could consequently be summed up
with the transition from a medium for the exploration of reality, for the
documentation and representation of the technological changes of the twentieth
century to an instrument that increasingly emphasizes the aspects spectacular
and playful, it detaches itself from reality, however, at the same time risking
losing value and capacity for signification; against this drift and in
opposition to any reductionism that cuts off any connection between image and
reality, it is necessary to insist on the possible virtuous uses of the new
medium. " (Crescimanno,
2013)
It was necessary to conceive new paradigms
and new ways of proposing content.
For this reason, initiatives such as Pixel
Press, which exploit the ability of the network to dynamically integrate the
information contained in the single image (the hyperphotography paradigm) are
essential in redefining the identity of the professional photographer, the
nature of digital photography, the strengthening of its social value.
".... why not also give voice to the subject of the
photograph?" (Ritchin,
2012)
Conclusion
Bibliography
AmelunxenHubertusVon The terror
of the body in digital space．Variousaut. libro．Photography After Photography．Amsterdam，G+B Arts，1996．
BenjaminWalter Experience and
poverty．Italiantrad.．Aura and Choc. Essays on media
theory.Torino，Giulio Einaudi Editore spa，1933．
CherouxClement Diplopia. The
photographic image in the age of globalized media: an essay on 11 September
2001．Italian
Translation．Torino，Gulio Einaudi Editore spa，2010．
CrescimannoEmanuele From
analog to digital. Photography, experience and technological progress.Italiantrad.．Palermo，Centro Internazionale Studi di
Estetica，April 2013．
FontcubertaJoan The fury of
the images．Italiantrad.．Torino，Giulio Eunaudi Editore，2016．
Fortune September 2012，Fortune Magazine．
MayesStephen PHOTOGRAPHS ARE
NO LONGER THINGS, THEY’RE EXPERIENCES．WiredMagazine, Interview．2012．
NachtweyJames Credo．1985．
Peres+Others Here is New
York. A Democracy of Photographs．Berlin, New York, Zurich，Scalo，2002．
RitchinFred After photography．Italian Translation．Torino，Giulio Einaudi Editore spa，2012 Bending the Frame．Aperture, Kindle Edition，2013．