Digital photography is not something I have ever really thought about properly until this lecture. Even while I take photographs on my digital camera and the camera integrated into my mobile phone, I beleive I am taking photos of a moment in time, but then when I really think about it, it wasn't that at all. What I am actually doing most of the time is setting up a false moment in time, rather than just spontaneously recording one. Looking through the photo albums on my laptop and my mobile, there are very few pictures of real moments - there a few of me being pushed off my inflatable crocodile into a river, i.e. the before, during and after moments; that was a real moment in time and not one that I would like to remember, but it is in my album, mostly for the amusement of other people. There are a few very blurry pictures of my boyfriend in goal, as the ISO on the camera does not go high enough to compensate for the movement. It is quite hard to look at those moments and think about what he was actually doing, as most of the pictures are just blurs of black and yellow across the screen. I have pictures of my friends' wedding, but there is not one picture which is of a real moment in time. The actual ceremony was not photographed, nor the signing of the register or the cutting of the cake, but I have numerous pictures of them posing signing the register and posing cutting the cake. This lecture has made me wish I'd took more pictures of the actual moment in time, rather than the simulated one.
Digital photography has made me much more vain, because I know I have the power to retake or amend my photos if i'm not happy with them. Sometimes I wonder what I would do if I had to go back to an old 35mm camera and actually wait for my pictures to be developed and then scan them and start editing. And what would I do with the actual real object? Obviously I would probably bin it, as I wasn't happy with it in the firt place and had turned it into a digital image anyway...
The debate around the validity of photography is very real in my opinion. The onset of digital photography, or even photography in general (with the aid of computer editing technology) means that there is a huge abundance of anonymous images which can be passed of as either being photographed by yourself, or which you can pass off as yourself. Through the internet, people can invalidate photography by using photographs which do not represent themselves in any way shape or form. I could take any of the pictures from my mobile, transfer them to my laptop and then edit them so I could become a (seemingly) 6' brunette with brown eyes living in New York. Those of you who have actually seen me know that reality is closer to 5' blonde, blue eyes and living closer to New York in North Tyneside than NYC. This would be comparable to the works of Pedro Meyer, where he creates images of miraculous things in everyday life.
Patricia Picinini's 'The Young Family' presents a disturbing image to the viewer. Because of the completely realistic look of the animals(?) in the picture, we are forced to consider whether it could be an actual reality or not. When we look at the image we think about the advancements in technology which have enabled the use of pig's organs for human transplant and this forces us to wonder whether this has gone further than just body organs into a complete pig/human hybrid. New Media Cultures like the internet, multi-media messaging enabled mobile phones and other mediums mean that this fake image could be cirulated as reality within a matter of hours, if not minutes. The relief we feel when we find out that the animals (in the broadest sense of the word) in the image are imaginary is immense. Digital photography has the means to indoctrinate people in ways not unlike the one's in Orwell's 1984 - truth could be rewritten in minutes if the need arose using only a computer and basic photo editing software.... 88|