Photography in the Age of Digital Reproduction

I recently read Walter Benjamin’s well-known essay “Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” and, unsurprisingly got to thinking about a medium of “art” close to my heart – photography. Over the past few years I have seen my own interest in photography shift along with its technologies.

When digital photography first started to break into the mass market (in a major way) about five or so years ago, my thoughts were those of a Luddite – the technology would never be good enough, the images would always be inferior, film would stay prominent. I was mistaken. Surely, I had a lot invested in the success of film, I had an expensive film camera and, most of all, was very proud of the fact that I had learned to use a film SLR through trial and error. Digital brought the threat of watering down a whole art so that anyone could do it, it was the equivalent of revealing all of the great secrets of the Master’s – no, it was more like grafting a Master’s hand onto your arm.

With digital photography anyone can cheaply (well, relatively) learn how to capture great images through trial and error. Versatile and easily usable consumer SLRs and new generation point-and-shoot/professional control hybrid cameras combined with intelligent imaging software have made the ability to produce great images available to anyone with an interest. Some would argue that little skill is now necessary to produce a good image, yet these days, little equipment is actually needed to create a great image and to cultivate good picture taking skills.

So, what is the status of photographic art in the age of digital reproduction? How has the art shifted? Some thoughts:

(1) No copy necessary.
Reproduction of the image is now done on the computer screen. Not only no longer is there an original image with a mythical aura, there is neither an infinitely reproducible physical copy. There is only the visual trace of the image on the screen. The existence of the copy is reduced to the retransfigurable crystals of an LCD screen; it truly flits in and out of the present.

(2) Image sharing websites.
Sites such as Flickr, Picassa, Facebook, and the various crowd-source stock photo collections provide for hundreds of thousands or millions of images to be available for viewing at any given moment. Thousands of photos are uploaded every hour and devoured by people across the world in seconds. Spatial differentiation in artistic style is consequently reduced. As another photographer, my influences pour in from all over the world and I am unable to tell who or where these influences originate. Photographers hide behind monikers like “Moann” or “ind67,” names that say nothing of identity. Images can be flipped through as fast as they load. A favorite image could be purchased and printed, but the likelihood of this happening is slight, as the image could just as easily be bookmarked or set as computer wallpaper or shared with a friend through a link. Again, as Benjamin reflects on the removing of recorded choral work from the auditorium to the home for private listening, personalization of the consumption of the work has occurred. The photographic image no longer has an original context beyond the moment and place it was snapped. Its whole life has been embedded in digital code.

(3) Mass production/consumption and its influence on the aesthetic

The eye sees a scene, the lens captures the scene, the internet hosts the image for all to look at. Image sharing sites host comment and ratings sections to mediate the consumers’ roles as critics. Is the image original? Interesting? What does it say about skill or art form? The mass provides answers. As more and more similar images are uploaded onto the internet, and people are normalized into what is a “good” photo, new forms of photography also arise. The High Dynamic Range photo and the heavily manipulated surreal image which restradles the line between reality and painterly fantasy are examples of a new photography allowed for digital photo processing. As the software and hardware to produce these images becomes more and more common, they are no longer the works of exceptionally skilled professionals, but the works of especially advanced technology. Hence, the “skill,” the aura of the ability to transmit the secreted flits of reality, of the photographer is diminished.

Where does this leave the art of photography? Is it now dying as an art form, or simply mutating? As technologies have improved, the traditional photograph has, for the most part, become an antique that conveys an era and aesthetic of limited technology - imperfect in comparison to the infinite perfectibility of the digitally manageable image. So it would seem that the art of photography would be pushed to a new level by necessity of survival, a level that would blur the line between photography and something new. So if this is the case, then the traditional professional photographer, artist or commercial, and even the skilled amateur have lost ground and been diluted by the proliferation of cheap cameras, computer sharing, mass judgment, and the outsourcing of their skill by technology. A new type of photographer has also been bred, however, one that is less a photographer and more of a computer wizard with another sort of creative skill, dealing with a 2D digital canvas and a whole palette of digital tools.

I am still unsure how I will fit into the new photography. My current temptation is to go retrograde and abandon the demands of the digital photographer. Yet there is another factor I haven’t yet discussed, and won’t go to deep into - the dilution of the identity of the photographer, of both the knack and the eye. Whose eye is it that pinpoints the image to be snapped? My eye or the eye of the masses that deem the image worthwhile? An old wizened man in an exotic country will draw the snapshots of a dozen tourists in a few moments. A majestic mountain landscape or a beautifully eroding factory could similarly draw a large amount of camera interest. Perhaps this is nothing new, but as the means and discourse around the art form falls into the hands of the masses, then does it become subject to too much cultural refereeing? Losing its ability to affect?