The Digital Age

Fred Ritchin is currently the director of pixelpress.org, he is the former editor for The New York Times, he has written multiple books, taught at Tisch and NYU, and he is overall known for his commentary on the "Digital Age".
I looked into Pixel Press a little and this is a direct quote from their "About Us" page on their site:

" At PixelPress our intent is to encourage documentary photographers, writers, filmmakers, artists, human rights workers and students to explore the world in ways that take advantage of the new possibilities provided by digital media. We seek a new paradigm of journalism, one that encourages an active dialogue between the author and reader and, also, the subject."

This quote shows what Ritchin likes about photography, we can conclude from this quote and the reading, After Photography, Into the Digital, that Ritchin is supportive of contemporary digital photography that can be used to show the 'real' in the world not a subjective manipulation of it.


 In After Photography, Into the Digital Ritchin opens the first chapter saying hat photography is ending and enlarging. He goes on to talk about how technology in general has changed the contemporary lifestyle. On page 16 he talks about how machines (Mac's in this example) have been made out to be seemingly more intelligent than their human owners.
On page 17 he says, "the digital inhabits the land of the in-between, and beyond". I believe that here he is talking about how digital photography is not real in a sense. While it is striving to capture things in the real would it is made up of data not light like film is. [Side Note: This makes me wonder if Ritchin is more supportive of photographers who shoot film but then scan it, rather than just shoot digital?] Because digital images are less tangible Ritchin also hints at the fact that this makes them loose their meaning after  they are used over and over. Digital also gives the photographer the room to shuffle information or to manipulate the image. Ritchin calls this photographer the, "postmodern visual disc jockey."
He see's digital as being too at hand or too quick, because of this the images loose an aura. This reminds me of Walter Benjamin's The Age of Mechanical Reproduction, and how a repeated image looses it's aura. On page 22 Ritchin talks about author Don DeLillo and the story of the aura of the most photographed barn. How no one even sees the barn because it has such an aura created by photography. It has become something more.
Photography has always been used in multiple ways but it has always been regarded as a medium that could be trusted. This believed fact has never really been true but according to this article we must now question photography more than ever because in the digital age, images have become very easy to manipulate. This effects how we perceive images seen all around us, in the media, advertising, and art.

To more blatantly answer the question, as to what Ritchin's position is about how and why digital changes photography; I would have to say that because digital photography is so immediate, all around us, and easily manipulated it affects how we see things and we must now more than ever question the truth and the realness of what we see in images.
So what about digital photography and the real?
The digital age already makes us experience moments in life through a screen instead of in actuality. This is one way that digital photography affects the real. On page 21 Ritchin says,
"It is not because it makes it more immediately "real" that we prefer the image, but because it makes it more unreal, and unreality in which we hope to find transcendent immortality, higher, less finite reality."
Does this mean that the age we live in now is more comfortable in finding something more perfect than the real?
Ritchin himself mentions how young people take many photos of themselves to achieve the perfect facebook or myspace image, this could be one example. Another could be the staged shots by celebrities managers or advertisements trying to sell us the perfect product. Are we so incised by perfection that we are allowing ourselves to be manipulated?
Ritchin mentions Sontag on page 23. They interestingly seem to share a like of photography that documents real life struggles. He quotes her saying, " A photograph is not only an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask." He then says, "the 'real' she was referring to was the scene itself."
We read previously Sontag's dislike of the mass bombardment of images in the media that has come from new technology and ways of sharing and taking pictures. At the end of the chapter Ritchin says, "In the globalized marketplace both image and sham are spreading, intertwined." "Once the world has been photographed to is never the same." To him, it seems that the digital's relationship to photography is that the viewer must now question what they see.
Many of the photographers and images that we discussed surrounding photographing the pain of others would be example of the kind of photography Ritchin likes and believes to be 'real'.
Paul D'Amato might be an over used example, but I think that he's a great photographer who is a good example of a documentary photographer of the 'real'. Paul documents chicago neighborhoods like Pilsen ad Cabrini Green.

Another example I found on the PixelPress website, one of their photographers, Joseph Rodriguez, documents many rough subjects in an array of locations but his project highlighted on the website was East Side Stories where he explores the lifestyle of L.A. gang members. 

Jorge Ribalta is a Spanish curator, critic, artist and author of Molecular Photography. In Molecular Photography Ribalta denounces Ritchins argument in After Photography. While it can be said that Ritchin is arguing that photography is dead, Rivalta argues that photography is not dead but simply modifying with time. In fact to me it seems that Ribalta and Ritchin share a common thought about the importance of contemporary documentary photography. 

On page 179 Ribalta talks about how photography comes from the industrial age already a time of great change in the world. Since photography's beginnings it has grown and changed through out time. He goes on to talk about anyone working the in field of photography in the 90's "experienced a sense of losing materials" and how digital has been replacing older processes. I can attest to this fact myself years later. From the time I have been at Columbia studying photography I have seen and hear a lot about the changes. In fact there is even talk about how the into color photography class is going to be changed in to a Lightroom class. Perhaps this change is so bothersome to me because I really loved my color photo class, it was something new and exciting that I got to learn but sadly color darkrooms are disappearing and being replaced with digital means of image making. 

On page 179 Ribalta continues to speak about digitals integration into photography. He talks about the sad but true fact that the digital world allows anyone to be a photographer. Point and shoot digital cameras replace disposable ones and give the user even more control, and with Photoshop anyone can be their own post-producer. As he says Photoshop "privatizes" photography. Because of this easy access to capturing and editing images a new sort of visual culture has been created. Thus in a way the ammeatur world of photography has forced the professional world to attempt to change in whatever ways necessary. 

Ribalta says that traditional photography has/is dying but digital technology is allowing something new to be created. He says on page 180, "Photography dies but the photographic is born." He then says, "photography becomes molecular" or in other words photography in a way has died but it has now shifted it's past energy into something new. He goes on to say how. "digital photography is an imitation of analogue" and that "photography's indexicality is eliminated by the artificial construction of digital photographs. After Photoshop realism is an effect." 

All of this leads us to the question he then proposes in the following paragraph, "Is photography without realism culturally possible and politically desirable?" 

Heres a mix of his ideas with mine:

1. He more or less says that loosing realism means that photo loses its historical importance as means to archive. I agree in a way but doesn't it mean that we just have a new way to archive and a new way to capture a world that is already radically different?

2. Ribalta thinks that photo without realism is not important because it holds no greater meaning, he says that it is "literally dead." I'm starting to think that he's as much of a downer as Ritchin. I get the point documentary photo intrinsically trys to show the truth in the world, but even then it doesn't always. A camera is made to record but it is always as subjective as the person who is behind it. Also isn't it a fact that even though work like Loretta Lux heavily manipulated image seen in Ritchin's article is still a representation of our time? Yes it might not be a depiction of life but it's a depiction of our means, it is a representation of a process that is new to our contemporary. Ribalta says that doc photography holds a 'power' I agree but these other processes can hold a different importance or power.

3. Ribalta says that we must now find how photography can still be socially relevant. Like I said above in 2 I believe that it is in a new way. He says that we need to find this in photo naturalism but I argue that   social relevance to our time can be found in many formats of photography. 

Ribalta quotes Martha Rosler on page181 saying how important documentary photo is and will always be. I found this ironic myself because Rosler's well known work is far from documentary. These images are from her newer take on "Bringing the War Home, done in 2004.

Ribalta calls for a turn away from photoshop and manipulation and says that what he calls molecular photography now needs to be a molecular revolution. Is he saying that he wants us to fight for which way photography shifts instead of allowing it to natural flow? He says that documentary methods need to be re thought, which I agree with. I think that documentary photos can still function when the artist adds a little more to them (in though when shooting, not post production.) He uses the work of Jo Spence, a british artist who works with self portraits that deal with image, world and health issues. While her work fits his arguments it is a but dated.

These images are in a sense documentary but they have been made purposely by the artist. The writing on herself is a direct to-be-seeness. This work also has a amateur-ish quality to it (in a good way) as well as a therapeutic quality. This work makes me think of Gillian Wearing and her project where she approaches people on the street and has the write on signs. Would Ribalta be a fan of hers? She is documenting people but she is also initialing or has a hand in creating the moment. 

He begins to describe molecular documentary as a collaboration between multiple artist or even historians. He talks about Patrick Faigenbaum's project that documented the outskirts of Barcelona with the help of historian Joan Roca that was displayed at the Museu d'Art Contemorani de Barcelona. I found an interesting review of the work is anyone is interested in reading further. Ribalta talks about an exhibit at the museum that is a survey of Barcelona much like the FSA project of the 30's in the U.S. Museum spaces are important to him to keep archives and to share knowledge. He talks about how great of a communicating tool it is but to me it seems like photography's very basic starting point. It can do so much more. 

Ribalta stresses that we must find the real in photography and maintain it as a way to archive. 

Corey Dezenko is a PhD student in the Art History department at the University of New Mexico. She is also the only one that this point who I agree with and didn't seem to contradict themselves at some point in her article, Analog to Digital.                                                    She begins by stating the same fact as the others that digital has accelerated and enlarged the scale of traditional photography. Where Dezenko differs is that she notices that the fact that digital changes the indexical connection between image and reality is a theory and that the two previous theories I have blogged about overlook the fact that people still read digital images as being revealing. In other words people still read digital photos the same way they would analog ones.

Dezenko say's, "Photographs are perceived to represent reality in their reference to a subject in time."Here she is stating that yes photography by nature records things but she also acknowledges that it has other abilities. She also states that yes digital images are now made with data instead of light but again this doesn't affect how most people would view the image. 

Damian Sutton an Irish professor of film say's in his essay Real Photography, that "photography has always been "dubitative"... and this characteristic is not the province of the digital image alone."I brought up this point earlier that photography in the ages before digital could also be un-true, staged or manipulated. 

The example Dezenko uses of the real life garden that online viewer took care of was very interesting for the argument that digital can be real. (Ken Goldberg's Telegarden). Even more interesting was that over 10,000 people participated in the online project. This shows that it is not just a select few people who are not turned off by the integration of the real and the digital. She goes on to list other digital formats that are still widely accepted as real. For example, online newspapers or magazines and digitally captured images that are put in newspapers. 

So what about heavily manipulated images that can still be believable? She uses Kerry Skarbakka as an example. 

This image (Stairs, 2002) is a slef portrait made by Skarbakka by using climbing gear to simulate falling, he then photoshops out the gear. To those more familiar with photography we might be able to realize that this image is not believable but to others it could be. Dzenko ads in that this image was featured on the website, faliblog.org where online users commented on the photo believing that it was real. While the fall is simulated there are parts of the image that are indeed "real". The camera captured him and these stairs at this time. 

This work makes me think of other photographers like, Ben Gest, Kelli Connell, and Nathan Baker who all digital manipulate their work.

Ben Gest

Kelli Connell

Nathan Baker

Dzenko ends the article with saying that no matter what changes continue to happen in the switch from analog to digital that they will not change the viewing process of images. 

I agree with Dzenko on that topic that digital or analog, images are read in a way that does not matter. I disagree with photography being dead, the world is changing in every aspect so of course photography is as well. I think that we should learn to embrace these digital methods and make them work for ourselves in the realm of professional photography. I think it is important that pros find a way to keep their world separate from amateurs now that everyone owns a digital camera of some sort and has access to Photoshop. As far as documentary photography is concerned, I don't that it is the only form of photography that matters but I do think that it plays a special role in capturing the world at a certain time.