#Blog 5: In Our Own Image Reading Response

According to Ritchin, “Fluidity of the digital” means that the considerable easiness of manipulation and quick in transmission of digital photographs due to its being restructured in the computer into discrete elepixels. The historically mythologized as quasi-objective and reliable media of photography now turns into an initial sketch that would be and often was redrawn. Digital photography could consciously embrace the wider discourse of opinion after it finished its transition period of simulating the earlier appearance of objectivity. For example, in the Time magazine’s case, it manipulated the Los Angeles Police Department photograph of O.J. Simpson upon his arrest. This digital photograph was made to appear darker and out of focus that makes it transit from a “common police mug shot” into something with indication and power to deepen the public’s stereotype of African-American as criminal.

In my point of view, the belief towards “traditional” photographs that they are able to capture the truth is wrong at first hand. As written in the book, photographs are “writing with light”. If we all agree that writing is subjective, then, photography should also be. At the exact moment the lenses capture the light, the truth has already been altered due to distortion, blurr and many other factors. There’s no way you can say that a photo has captured the exact truth. Even without digital technology, we still can create hallucinations and conduct deception. What digital photography does is just to make it more convenient. Its capability of capturing reality is, like any kinds of art forms, in the hands of the creators. The creator’s intention has the most power in determining whether or not he or she will reveal the truth, or the truth in his or her mind.