In the beginning of this article, the author mentioned the concept of “fluidity of the digital”. According to Ritchin, “[w]e are also rediscovering the initial meaning of ‘photography,’ ‘writing with light,’ in which the writing could consciously embrace the widr discourse of opinion after it finished its transition period of simulating the earlier appearance of objectivity” (11). This refers to the fact that when people started to reconstruct photos using the computer to make them easier to manipulate and quickly transmit, photos became less and less reliable. Pixels can be changed and the final version of a photo that the public can view may be completely different from the original one, in terms of the meaning the photographer wanted to convey.
There’s an example in the article that helps us further understand the meaning of “fluidity of the digital”. Ritchin pointed out the manipulation of images could cause an influence on genetic modification by saying that “[i]f you like the way you look with blue eyes in a photographic-style image, then genetic modification may seem less frightening” (12). That is to say the growing trend of using computer softwares to operate photos and the increasing acceptance of manipulated photos by the public, is actually gradually reducing our rejection of false information. As the public receives more transformed photos, people will gradually lose the ability of dialectical cognition and begin to accept this one-sided or out of context information.
To reflect on the extent to which photography is capable of capturing reality, I think first of all we need to confess that the original picture, and the moment that the shutter was pressed, the picture itself is really close to reality. Then we have to pay attention to the computer softwares that enables people to operate on those photos. As Ritchin mentioned in the article, editors, publishers, and whoever can manipulate photos before they were published, can make some changes on the photo to convey things they want the public to see, instead of the original photo. What’s more, I think the fact that changing some features of a photo can change people’s understanding of that photo is related to the viewing habits of human beings. When seeing a picture, we always have a routine of placing our eyes. And the manipulators use this feature of the human eye to reconstruct pictures to lead people’s attention to particular things in the picture. Compared with other media and technology, I think photography is the most user-friendly one, since it presents the information intuitively. However, the easy-to-understand attribute of photography also made it the target tool of spreading fake or false information. As a result, people should think critically when they are trying to learn something new from a picture.
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