Analogue v Digital
From this week's practical, I gained a better understanding of analog methods of photography when using roll film and medium format cameras and it made me think about the pros and cons of the functionality of using digital cameras . Therefore, I took upon myself to do some reading about the subject online. Here are some of the notes I made from the readings I did.
Dzenko, C. (2010) ‘Analog to Digital: The Indexical Function of Photographic Images’ Afterimage Vol.37 No.3 [Accessed on: 30th September 2016]
- Digital technology allows for greater ease in editing than analog photography, because it transforms photographs from objects into data. Thus, digital imaging technology theoretically disrupts previous notions of the indexical connection between photographic images and 'reality'.
- Digital photography challenges the historical belief that photography is a representative of reality in comparison to analog.
- With digital technology, it is arguably easier to edit and create images of objects that never existed in reality, thus casting doubt on the reliability of photography's connection to the real. In her article '"The Shadow of the Object': Photography and Realism," Sarah Kember quotes Fred Ritchin's reactions to digital image making in the early 1990s. Ritchin called computerimaging practices "the end of photography as we have known it" and lamented, "Certainly subjects have been told to smile, photographs have been staged, and other such manipulations have occurred, but now the viewer must question the photograph at the basic physical level of fact."
- On a theoretical level, digital photographs present a challenge to the indexicality of photographic media. No longer does light bounce from an object and cause a physical and chemical reaction of the silver on the photographic emulsion; instead, the image is converted into data, which is seemingly not physical.
- While the process of reading photographs is influenced by the context of the image, just because a photograph is created or distributed with digital technology does not negate its indexical function as many theorists have suggested. Focusing only on the theoretical lack of indexicality in digital images ignores the social uses of analog photography that are now performed by digital images. Because photography functions in multiple areas of society, it is helpful to explore a vernacular example apart from an art context.
- Social applications of digital photography still rely on the assumptions about the functions of analog photographs. The benefits of the new technology, such as the ease of editing and transmission, have resulted in the adoption of digital photography in practices previously completed with analog photographs such as in photojournalism, snapshot photography, and scientific imaging.
- In using digital images, conventions of earlier formats are maintained in order to create a transition between analog and digital, instead of a distinct switch. For example, online newspapers, which involve digital technology in both the capturing and distribution of images through the internet, use conventions of printed newspapers.
- Social applications of digital photography still rely on the assumptions about the functions of analog photographs. The benefits of the new technology, such as the ease of editing and transmission, have resulted in the adoption of digital photography in practices previously completed with analog photographs such as in photojournalism, snapshot photography, and scientific imaging.
- In using digital images, conventions of earlier formats are maintained in order to create a transition between analog and digital, instead of a distinct switch. For example, online newspapers, which involve digital technology in both the capturing and distribution of images through the internet, use conventions of printed newspapers.
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