Milk Jeff Wall
In Liquid Intelligence, Jeff Wall uses his photograph, Milk to describe his ideas on liquid intelligence. Photography has always been a mechanical process that has the ability to capture its opposite, natural form. While Wall controls many aspects of his photos and manipulates them in some cases, the splash of milk in Milk, is an organic or natural form that is created on its own. He is using photography's mechanical process here to capture a natural process.
In the past water played a huge role in photography. While the mechanical process is used to capture the image, water and chemicals are needed to produce an image on the film. Even then and now photography's relationship to water was a love hate one. You would never want your camera to be submerged in water, so the role of water in photography is very limited to creating the image on the film, it is controlled. The role of water in photography also connects to the past, water has always been used to create images. This liquid form embodies memories of the past according to Wall. Creating the image on film is the wet part of photography, the dry part is the technology itself or the equipment.
Of course digital is changing all of this. Wall doesn't see digitals over take as good or bad but as "a new displacement of water in photography." Of course digital really just takes water out, chemicals and water are no longer needed because there is no film, everything is dry now. This also changes the historical ties, digital is now much more different from any photographic process in the past. Digital is technologically smart as Wall says but it is also stereotypically colder now. This dryness and coldness makes the historical past different, digital becomes more self reflective of the time now more so than photographic process before. Everyone is using digital these days, it is all around us, people are constantly recording the contemporary in one way or another.
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