1. What does Ritchin mean with the “fluidity of the digital”? Give an example of digital imaging/digital photography that exemplifies this.
In the book In Our Own Image written by Fred Ritchin, he points out that we are entering the “post-photographic age” in the sense that the fidelity of the mechanical age was being replaced by the fluidity of the digital. What Ritchin means by the “fluidity of the digital” here is that photography has become more flexible to manipulate with the advent of electronic technology. In contrast to the conventional ideas that photographs are quasi-objective and historically reliable, photography now becomes a subjective experience and communication of interpretation. For example, O.J. Simpson’s police mug shot taken by the Los Angeles Police Department was modified by the Times to appear darker and out of focus. In this case, the fluidity of the digital was shown as a way to lift photographs to the level of art with no sacrifice to truth, though it in fact embodied the stereotype of African-American criminals. As we can see, the fluidity of the digital provides new ways of expression and interpretation of the world, once it gets a balance between authenticity and aesthetics.
2. Reflect on the extent to which photography is capable of capturing reality; and compare it to other media (technology) (e.g. text, video, virtual reality, books).
Photography, if not heavily manipulated, is able to capture what happens at that moment. Though it is what happens from the perspective of the photographer, it still leaves most of the interpretation work to its audience, which means the photograph doesn’t intervene too much in the reality. Compared with photography, the text is more subjective, as the writer would complete most of the interpretation and leave limited space for the readers to imagine what happens behind and beyond the text. But the shortcoming of photography lies in its feature——it only captures a split moment, while text can be stretched to a much longer timeline and provide more detailed information about reality. Therefore, the reality shown by a photograph, though more real to some extent, is sometimes difficult to understand. That is probably why photographers like Mexico’s Pedro Meyer believe that documentary photography needs no longer be limited to a single image, according to Ritchin, and they ask for drawing information from a variety of sources and making relationships explicit just like writers do. In a sense, it allows photography to get one step closer to reality.