Photography After Photography.
Photography After Photography.Exhibition catalog.
Germany, 1995.
Topics covered By Lev Manovich in the document:
1. Digital Revolution?
2. Digital Photography Does Not Exist
3. Real, All Too Real: Socialist Realism of "Jurassic Park"
read more...
I enjoyed reading this document, certain questions posed and theories presented by Manovich are just as relevant today as they were in 94'.
In fact, swapping movie titles and substituting references would easily transfer the date of publication to 2011.
At the same time he seems to chase his tale. The paper as presented by Manovich employs various efforts to be mildly oppositional generating the required discourse to flesh out a range of theories and opinions.
In this essay I will refrain from taking an extreme
position of either fully accepting or fully denying the idea
of a digital imaging revolution. Rather, I will present the
logic of the digital image as paradoxical; radically
breaking with older modes of visual representation while at
the same time reinforcing these modes. I will demonstrate
this paradoxical logic by examining two questions: alleged
physical differences between digital and film-based
representation of photographs and the notion of realism in
computer generated synthetic photography.
Manovich discusses modes of visual representation, historical continuity and discontinuity, semiotic codes, modes of display, existence of digital photography, realism of digital imaging and patterns of spectatorship in modern visual culture. Manovich has presented these cases as paradoxical logic and also logical paradoxes. I'm curious to know if the phraseology of this in any way pertains to separate definitions...
At the best of times the point is blatantly obvious and elsewhere more of a facetious rant.
Ultimately I found a number of points to be well illustrated if not exactly revolutionary, a fifteen year interval will surely account for this.
I agree with Manovich about the fetishized "film look",
fetishized "film look"
itself -- the soft, grainy, and somewhat blurry appearance of
a photographic image which is so different from the harsh and
flat image of a video camera or the too clean, too perfect
image of computer graphics.
The role of a nostalgic look and feel to film and video is more widespread today than ever. It has seen development in the form of Instagram a free photo sharing application that allows users to take photos, apply a filter, and share it on the service or a variety of other social networks.
Does this application of technology feed into Manovichs idea of a paradoxical logic? In a History of Western Philosophy, Bertrand Russell points out that people often find a way to retain characteristics of past civilization in an atavistic response to advances in cultural, religious, political and technological advances, refusing to conform to the more controlled, policed future of civilisation, looking backwards with rose tinted glasses instead of toward the future. McLuhan also points out that despair at segregation of society caused by the rate of change of technology indicates reasoning for this.
In contrast Hyper real, synthetic computer graphics, Manovich points out:
Whose vision is it? It is the vision of a cyborg or a
computer; a vision of Robocop and of an automatic missile. It
is a realistic representation of human vision in the future
when it will be augmented by computer graphics and cleansed
from noise. It is the vision of a digital grid. Synthetic
computer-generated image is not an inferior representation of
our reality, but a realistic representation of a different reality.
In other words, if a traditional photograph always points to the
past event, a synthetic photograph points to the future event.
Manovich is keen to point out the intentional degradation of “too real” digital imaging to fit seamlessly into a comfortably assimilated state for the audience,
At this point it would appear that the race is on to take the comfort zone a further step backwards, to a future-retro image. This is at a point where the obvious state is not the “too real” state but the ‘too aged’.
This is then, the final paradox of digital photography.
Its images are not inferior to the visual realism of
traditional photography. They are perfectly real -- all too
real.
And now, all too vintage. I’m sure Manovich would enjoy this further logical paradox.