The Digital

This week's readings focused on the consequences of the digital revolution and within that sphere the creation and use of digital photography.  

The most negative viewpoint on digital photography was Fred Ritchin's writing titled After Photography:  Into the Digital.   He begins his discussion with the digital revolution and how it has created a space where "touch is reduced to clicking and sight to a rectangle."  This rectangle has become a world unto itself or an uberenvironment that has consumed the user in its menagerie of digital media.  

According to Ritchin, digital media is always malleable in that it can always be rethought and reconfigured, and is more pliant to human will than perhaps any other medium before it.  It is all at once nonlinear, made up of code or data, which is constantly being manipulated, has multiple authors, circumvents nature while redefining space and time,  allows the original and the copy to be the same thus draining the original of meaning and is interactive.  All of these items are in some form of opposition with what photography used to be.  For example, analog photography was understood as capturing a specific moment in time where whatever was photographed was understood to be real.  For Ritchin, this credibility of the realness of photography is what is in jeopardy with the development of digital media.   

What has taken the place of reality is virtual reality, a created reality.  This "reality" is based on the image rather than the actual experience. We desire the image more because it is unreal.  This unreality seems to us to go beyond our finite existence and so we want it more.  

The Most Photographed Barn in America

To explore this point further, Ritchin includes an excerpt from Don DeLillo's White Noise.  In it DeLillo and another man named Murray drive out to see "The Most Photographed Barn in America."  Once there Murray declares, "No one sees the barn." and "We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one."  In other words, society has decided what the barn looks like and so that is the way everyone sees it.   Everyone who goes and sees that barn is actively perpetuating the illusion or image of the barn, not the actual real barn.  They do not experience the bar, they capture it, flattening it out to be shared with others.

In the end Ritchin, almost desperately, asks "Where is the real now?"  He offers no answer here, but it almost seems hopeless that it will ever be found again.  We are looking at pictures of pictures, everything is manipulated and made into whatever whoever wants it to be.  In this time, the real seems to be only found in its always shifting form- the unreal.  

In opposition to Ritchin's writings is Corey Dzenko's Analog to Digital:  The Indexical Function of Photographic Images.  Basically Dzenko argues that the reliability of photography has not changed despite the digital revolution but rather it "enlarges" the traditional practice of it.  He cites the fact that digital photography has visually taken cues from its predecessor, analog photography, in order to maintain the belief that the photograph represents reality and because of these cues (characteristics and conventions of the real) the viewer sees the "real."  

Kerry Skarbakka, Stairs

For example, he uses the work of Kerry Skarbakka, specifically an image titled Stairs.  Here, the artist used digital technology to make it appear as though he is falling down the stairs.  He then posted this image on FailBlog.org and to not much surprise people commented on the image as though it had really happened.  This is because the photographic appearance of the image, created by Skarbakka through the study of analog photography, and the context surrounding the display of the image all led to its credibility as something that really existed.   

Dzenko also brings up the point that the believability of photography has always been something that has been in question, since its beginning.  This question of reality is not something new in photography and as such is no cause for alarm.  The question has remained and viewers have believed.  

The final point he makes is that the social uses of photography have generally been ignored as part of this discussion.  He sees the digital as just replacing the analog in social use.  For example, when looking at an image in the newspaper, he gets the same information from it as he would if he viewed it online.  Fundamentally he believes that there is no difference, socially, in viewing the image one way or another.  

The final article, Jorge Ribalta's The Meaning of Photography, rewinds the argument of digital photography's consequences to a recontextualizing of the understanding of photography in the post-modern age.  In order to get into the digital we first have to understand that photography died along with the modern utopia, during the modern age.  These deaths correspond with the shift from analog to digital and that it is precisely the digital that has allowed the reappearance, even if it is disembodied from its original form, and explosion of photography into our visual culture, or in Ribalta's words "photography dies but the photographic is born."  

Ribalta also questions, but does not directly refute, the idea that the digital photograph, with its loss of the indexical value of the sign, means that it also looses its believability.  He does recognize that, yes the digital has relaxed the relationship of the photographer to the photograph by making it easy create and dispose of but like Dzenko, she also notices that the digital uses the "codification and simulation of original photographic procedures."  She goes beyond Dzenko though in that for him realism is now an effect, something to be created, a normalization of the digital image into the photographic sign.  

Since realism is the the power and status of photography, Ribalta then begs the question, "Can photography maintain social relevance in the era of crisis of photographic realism?"In response to this he outlines his idea of molecular realism, or a realism that combines documentary and fiction.  He argues that with micropolitical discussions between the author and the spectator and a radicalization of the institutional critique, this new hybrid realism is possible.  

In supporting these two branches of his plan, Ribalta discusses artist Jo Spence and the Barcelona Survey.  With Jo Spence he discusses her ideas of democratizing the meaning of imagery through the understanding that now anyone can access the same tools as professionals.  It is this democratizing that will show a resistance to the refined status of the art object.  As this refined status lies with institutions, Ribalta calls for such institutions to reconsider moving beyond cultural confinment and modernist notions.  He asks for a radicalization of the institutional critique so that we can begin to understand digital photography through the reinvention of documentary and photographed realsim, or his molecular  realism.  

In the future, Ribalata hopes that all of this is possible, so that we can move on into the new potentials that are arising out of these relationships between politics, social sciences and art.  

In synthesizing all of these readings I am more inclined to agree with Ribalta's ideas.  It seems to me that a rethinking of the way we describe and work with digital media would certainly be beneficial, specifically if we were able to move beyond the modern.
 I, along with Ribalata and Dzenko, do not really believe Ritchin's view that the credibility of the photograph is at greater risk now.  This has always been a question in photography and so now, even though digital photography is different, given all of Ritchin's reasons, people as a whole, through digital photography's appropriation of names and conventions of analog photography, still believe in the photograph as real despite numerous questionings throughout history.

Another thing is that photography has been able to be manipulated since its beginning.  I understand that now manipulation is now much easier and thus does not require a master, but manipulation such as what occurred in the Cottingley Fairy photographs.  In these photographs two young girls, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffths, convinced a good number of people that the images they had taken were of real fairies.  They later admitted that the fairies were card board cutouts, but because of the power of the photograph, people believed, even though it seemed quite impossible.  Despite this trick, and many more, people continued to believe in photographs.  This fakery in the image happened in 1917, long before the digital revolution, and would continue to occur throughout photographic history.

Perhaps the most widely known photographer who uses digital manipulation in order to normalize his digital images into appearing as analog photographs is Jeff Wall.  Everything Wall does is what he calls "near documentary" and what is meant by this is he constructs his digital images in such a way that they appear to be not constructed.
An example of how he makes it appear as though the digital is analog, and thus leads the viewer into believing the image, is in his image Morning Cleaning.  Here, if Wall had wanted to, he could have brought out detail in the dark carpet where the legs of the chairs are.  Instead, he let them drop off into it, as if he had just taken this one frame in one moment, instead of hundreds over several days.

Jeff Wall, Morning Cleaning

Overall, I do not believe there should not be such a great concern with how digital has affected belief in photography.  I believe that he digital revolution is still so very young that now is not the time to act but rather to observe.

Looking at Race in Art

In this weeks readings we were given extensive viewpoints on the role of art in understanding race and it's  subsequent meanings.  Before we could get into this though, we had to understand how race is functioning in today's society.

Through The Theoretical Status of the Concept of Race by Howard Winant, the ways people have of discussing race were outlined and then debunked.  Firstly, Winant explored what he calls "Race as an Ideological Contruct" outlined by its supporter Barbara Fields.  In this view, the concept of race fulfilled a need in society-the need for an explanation for the distinct social inequity of slavery.  Fields believes that society continues to reinvent race in order to fit itself, or in other words, race exists because people continue to make it a priority.  Winant argues that this viewpoint has become common sense (a person is just a person) but that it does not allow for a response to the sociocultural differences that have developed overtime and that it really only explains the origins of thinking about race.  He also contests that it fails to recognize the "deeply embedded social construct" of race in a society that uses it as a major part of identity.
Next, Winant looks at "Race as an Objective Condition." Here, he states that the proponents of this are committed to looking at race socially, but that they also fall into a sort of objectivism when it comes to racial identity and meaning.  In this viewpoint, race is part of group statuses that are ascribed to society, wherein then roles are performed accordingly.  Here race is treated as an object fact, one that eventually configures into rules of racial classification.  Winant again finds fault in that this view ignores the development of racial identity, denies historical and social comprehension of race and does give explanation for how people manage to navigate conflicting meanings of racial identity (one acting a race).
Once Winant puts these viewpoints down, he begins to call for a  "Critical Theory on the Concept of Race," or as he would coin it "racial formation." He contends that this new racial formation must recognize the history of the social construction experiences of race and race categories, as well as three other main defining factors all dealing with race in a contemporary setting, such as in the globalization of race.  He concludes his writing with hope for moving beyond the idea of race as an illusion and towards it being just another "marker of the infinity of variations" in humanity.

Carrie Mae Weems, From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried

From there we moved onto a review and an essay from The New York Times writer Holland Cotter.  The review was about a show titled Only Skin Deep:  Changing Visions of the American Self.  This show addressed American identity which then encompasses ethnicity, sexuality and race.  Cotter focuses mainly on how race was portrayed as a social fact that is used by a group of people to control another group of people through both physical and mental force.  He writes that this show more specifically looked into how photography has been used to record, reference and enforce the hierarchal rankings in the history of race.  He goes onto explain about some of the singular works within the exhibit and how they function there, always coming back to the "problem of the color line" or rather how the show reasserts how much of an issue race still is.

In Cotter's second writing, we begin to get a better overview of his viewpoint on race and ethnicity in art.  He begins with how multiculturalism moved art visually and conceptually beyond the Western hemisphere and allowed the social and ethical construct of the art world to be seen.  In this way multiculturalism tried to be rid of the exclusion that was occurring, and in some ways it did.  For instance, minority artists began to be recognized, but with that more issues began to develop such as art careers based on ethno-racial identity.
At the end of this article, Cotter explains that he has seen a shift in how the world is dealing with ethnicity in art.  He claims that there is a developing movement called post-ethnicity and that it can give a path out of ethno-racial art being defined as a category while still keeping identity, as a whole, viable.  Ideally this would mean that minority artists are at the center of the art world, along with everyone else.
By far the most interesting article we read this week was The Sound of Light:  Reflctions on Art History in the Visual Culture of Hip-Hop by Krista Thompson.  This article deals mainly with two artists, Kehinde Wiley and Luis Gispert, and how they combine art history and hip hop to comment on contemporary culture.

First, Thompson takes us through the short history of hip hop and its culture.  She reflects on the main criteria of hip hop culture, which is "being seen being seen", and how some people within the culture go about this through there use of bling.  Bling takes on a whole new meaning in this article, with its definition varying from the "sound of light off of a diamond," to a "flashy accouterment that glorifies conspicuous consumption" and any commodity that can show its opulence in the visual field.  In other words, bling is usually shiny, allowing light to bounce off of it and literally, physically blind the viewer.

From here Thompson draws a connection from the shininess of bling to the surface treatment that developed out of 17th century Dutch oil paintings.  What the discovery of oil painting allowed artists to do was render objects with meticulous detail of the "tangibility, texture, luster and solidarity" of real life.  This led the artists to look solely at the surface of things, or rather, the canvas became a mirror instead of a window.  The use of shine on the objects within the canvas gave them a pictorial value to match their commercial value, thus shine become an intrinsic value of an object.  The only thing that was not rendered with shine in mind was the skin of the subject within the frame, because this would dictate them as an object.  Having said that, it was black skin that was depicted as a commodity through the use of surficism and shine.  Here is where Thompson states that perhaps bling, which is between hypervisibility and disappearance(so conspicuous the wearer is defiantly noticed, but not completely seen because of the blinding ability of bling), is what black subjects use to make their subjectivity real.

Kehinde Wiley, Portrait of Andries Stile

With all of this background in mind, Thompson moves into Kehinde Wiley's paintings.  Here she claims that his paintings, particularly those of the black urban youth, show literally, through his process, how painters have used surfacism and light to construct opulence and power, not just on canvas, but also into real life.  For instance, Wiley uses a "super-rapturous light" to envelop his subjects, but he does so in such a way that the subject disappears through competition with that light.  This is because Wiley interprets that light into a super ornate surface decor, allowing it to out subject, as it were, the person that one would originally think is the subject.

Luis Gispert, Untitled from Cheerleader series

From Wiley, Thompson moves into Luis Gispert's Cheerleader series.  Again we first begin to see themes of hip hop through the lens of oil paintings, but in a much different way than Wiley.  Gispert is more interested in how the visual expressions of hip hop and bling are able to show a commodity's status as being a part of "blackness."  He does this through totally removing the illusion that surface aesthetics give to ground-figure relations.  For instance, in this series, he photographed girls of all different ethnicities in cheerleader outfits and the accoutrements of bling (grills, expensive, shiny jewelry, etc.), jumping into the air.  Behind them is nothing but a green screen, drawing attention to the fact that the illusion of gravity is created only by the use of perspective, scale and light.
Overall, all four of the articles were interesting and each gave me something else to think about.  There are so many issues facing minority artists and it seems as though things are only getting slightly better over time.  I do think it is frustrating that many artists who are actually able to support themselves as artists are white men, but I have also seen a lot of other types of people do great things, so that gives me hope.  As society is become more and more complex, so are peoples' identities, and hopefully in the future this will mean that there will be actual equality, and rightful subjectivity, between all people.

Photography and/as Ethics

While reading Regarding the Pain of Others by Susan Sontag, I cannot shake the feeling that although she contradicts her old writings' truthfulness, that it is done out of hope that the previous writings are not true rather than belief that they are not.  Rather, I think she makes a weak argument for her change of ideas and so I am not totally convinced.

Bearing in mind that I only received three chapters of the book (chapters seven, eight and nine) these chapters would appear to be the ones in which she address her old thoughts presented in On Photography.  It is in this previous book that the theme of "hyper-saturation," in regards to the massive amount of images seen on a day to day basis, is fleshed out through the understanding that the hyper-saturation is what, according to her, caused people not to care about images of horror.  In other words, we had seen so much horror, that we had become neutral to it.
It is in her rethinking of this idea that makes up what becomes the meat of Regarding the Pain of Others.  Sontag, rather than dismissing the gluttony of images, begins to think directly about how and when we see images of war and horror, specifically beginning with photographs that are presented to use through the television news.  Here, just looking at the function of television, Sontag draws out characteristics such as its instability of attention (channels can be turned) and its being made for entertainment.  This recognition of entertainment value makes her realize that the news must continually "stimulate" the viewer in such a way that things remain interesting.  In this way, according to others' views, not Sontag's, the news causes war to become a spectacle in which people can distance themselves so far from the reality that they believe that there is no real suffering in the world.  According to Sontag, this belief only covers a  "small, educated population living in the rich part of the world..."This is a vast generalization to her, because she understands, as many of us do, that there are millions of television viewers who do not have the "luxury" of forgoing reality.

In chapter eight, she goes on to discuss what she believes a photograph can and cannot do.  For Sontag, a photograph cannot give us the historical information on the suffering it ensnares, which is logical, for we cannot learn more than what is pictured in an image, it cannot "repair our ignorance."  What a photograph can do however is invite.  Invite us, the viewer, to pay attention, reflect and learn about what is happening in our world, and for me, it is this invitation that would possibly lead someone to doing something about the suffering.
With that being said though, Sontag continues with her belief that the viewer is frustrated about the inability to actively fix the problems represented in these images, and that is why there is a debate around the meaning of viewing such images.  She writes "If we could do something about what the images show, we might not care as much about these issues." Which to me means we should stop debating about photographs and start figuring out how to help people, but perhaps, as Sontag later suggests, once I am removed from these images I will forget my indignation.

Deigned by Oliveiero Toscani 

Moving onto chapter nine, Sontag begins to question the reader about where images in need of a serious space of contemplation should be presented and wether or not it even exists.  There are so many places we see photographs these days:  art galleries, books, newspapers, the internet, television, ads, etc., and to make it more complicated, most photographs intermingle and avoid the categories we once gave them (art, journalism, advertising).  For instance, Sontag cites the use of a dead Croatian soldier's clothes as an ad for the Benetton clothing company.  Here, an image that could have only ever been photojournalism previously has become advertising, which once again raises issues of viewing images of horror, or post-horror for its' shock and entertainment value.
In the end, Sontag does not give us an answer as far as what a contemplative space might be in our contemporary society.  She does however say that art might have the best attempt thus far in invoking thoughtful discussion on photographs that include the pain of others.  Her example of this is Jeff Wall's Dead Troops Talk.

Once I moved through Sontag's work, I was able to dive into Arielle Azoulay's introduction to The Civil Contract of Photography.  In this, Azoulay outlines what she calls the "civic political space" that occurs in photography through the assumptions and actions of the photographer, the photographed subject and the spectator.  It is Azoulay's belief that through this civic space, citizenship is both returned (in a sense through the contract of photography) and demanded by those with a non or impaired civic status, which in her writings here is the Palestinians and women respectively.
It is interesting to note that photography does cross many boundaries such as class, nationality, etc. or rather, a photograph can be understood by almost any person regardless of background.  It is this idea for Azoulay that begins to allow photographs to move beyond the influence of the ruling power, or a political power that denies citizenship of some peoples.   This idea and the fact that for Azoulay, an image never belongs to one person because it's meaning can always be negotiated and renegotiated, means that no one entity can have power over, even the ruling power.
Azoulay and Sontag have very different ideas about what photography is capable of, specifically photography surrounding the horror and pain of others and the duty(Azoulay) or ability(Sontag) of the viewers' response.  As I wrote earlier, Sontag does not believe that a photograph has the ability to do anything more than "invite" a viewer into thinking about why and how this happened (that is, whatever is pictured in the photograph) and perhaps incite someone to learn more.  In the end, for Sontag, we are just frustrated viewers.  Azoulay takes a different stance.  She sees viewing images of pain and violence as part of our civic duty necessary for citizenship.  People that do have citizenship should then be using it as a tool for gaining citizenship for those without.  She asks that we take action and stand up for those who do not have the ability because they are not recognized by ruling powers.  It is, for her, our duty.

Gillian Laub, from Tesitmony

To bring some of Azoulay's ideas into context, the article on Gillian Laub's photographic series titled Testimony includes images of survivors on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is what Azoulay's entire book focuses on.  In these portraits, Azoulay places importance on their identity, which she claims is given to us through their accessories and objects, how the theme of the "two sides" is developed, and how Laub photographs the people in such a way as to allow the viewer to first be lulled by the normalcy of the image and then struck by the distinction of it.  For example, Azoulay examines an image where a young man sits on some rocks with his girlfriend.  She claims that it is not until a moment later that you realize that the man is missing both of his legs from the knee down.   This delay in reaction is one element that makes Laub's photographs interesting.
For Azoulay though, what makes these photographs most interesting is that Laub asked each person to write down how the place in which they live is perceived, which for Azoulay negates the political context within which these images exist because they are presented to the viewer in a "nonmilitant civil language."
Although in the introduction Azoulay never makes claims about whether or not these her ideas could be applied to other photographs, I think the ideas would function really well for any other images of suffering.   When it comes to anything not dealing with pain and suffering the civil contract could still apply, just in a more generalized sense.  More than anything, at the basis of her argument she has outlined the three players in photography and how each functions, each assuming the others' existence and each one quite aware of its' role within the paradigm.


More photographs for musing upon as we ponder these ideas-War Photographers in Afghanistan