Response for In Our Own Image

By proposing the idea of the fluidity of the digital, Ritchin is trying to say that contemporary imaging is quite different from the past photography which only captures reality. He explained that the photography of the future will be able to show existence which is both solid and illusory. In my understanding, the fluidity of digital is based on reality but processes the reality to let the outcome images become more advanced. It starts with the fragmentation of things and synthesizing it in interesting and unusual ways. One example can be the hyper-photography, which combines pictures coming from reality with imagination and metaphoric pictures. And this dates back to the nineteenth century. In our modern world, contemporary photography has more creative tools and technologies, which adds convenience to create synergistic works with modern social media.

Photography can record reality very well, for example, shooting a portrait, getting an image of the war and so on. However, some pictures are designed to mislead people, which are based on reality but covered the truth by processing. Texts and books have even more flexibility on revising the truth. But for videos, they have certain limits, so most of them are reliable. Virtual reality is kind of similar to digital images. It originated from reality because it’s simulating the scenes in our real world. However, it builds some things that don’t exist in our real world according to people’s imagination and expectation. All the social media above are initially used to reflect on reality, and then with people’s imagination and the digital tools, they produce works synthesizing the truth and disclosing interesting metaphors. They aren’t only capturing the obvious facts, but they are trying to seek the deep theory in these facts and show it to people. Thus from my point of view, photography is a good way to express what you see and discover from reality. And it’s easier for people to understand compared to those written in texts.