1. What does Ritchin mean with the “fluidity of the digital”? Give an example of digital imaging/digital photography that exemplifies this.
According to Richin, In Our Own Image, “… ‘digital photography’ obscures is that by changing the architecture of the image – moving from chemically processed grain to discrete electronic pixels – we are not creating another photography genre, but another medium…”(Ritchin xii) I agree with this statement that digital photography has actually become a new kind of medium rather than a type of photography. With the development of technology, digital photography can be edited, manipulated, and transmitted easily via the Internet that even though the photo is normal and being taken arbitrarily, it can still change its meaning by some approaches. For example, Stalin liked to subtract people who no longer supported them.
Without photoshop, Stalin can not remove people disliked him, which may seem awkward and weird. I think this is an example of fluidity of the digital that Stalin could make use of this characteristic to manipulate photos.
2. Reflect on the extent to which photography is capable of capturing sreality; and compare it to other media (technology) (e.g. text, video, virtual reality, books).
I used to think photography is a nice channel to capture reality that it provides an opportunity for other people to know things far from them. I liked to save photos which are taken in tourist attractions and hoped one day I can also go to these beautiful and marvelous places. For example, traveling in Italy was on my bucket list since I was a child. I was looking forward to visiting Rome for the famous historical sites, Venice for its unique scenery and so on. However, when I really went to these places, I found out that they are not as stunning as I expected. Afterwards, I started to think whether editing photos is necessary. Even though the photography may look better than the original one, it has already lost its significance: capturing reality. Videos are also an approach to record reality. However, people may also subtract parts of the video or change the order to manipulate facts. Therefore, from my perspective, because of the improvement of technology, we can not always believe photos or videos even though they look very real.
Source: Fred Ritchin, In Our Own Image, 1999
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