"Photography's Ghosts: The Image and Its Artifice"

Cafe,

I thought this book review by Frances Richard of Michael Fried's _Why
Photography Matters as Art as Never Before_ and Fred Ritchin's _After
Photography_ was really good.

It was published in the 16 March 2009 issue of _The Nation_ (vol. 288,
no. 10) and is available online at:

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20090316/richard

Among Ritchin's arguments about the new Photography 2.0 (aka
"hyperphotography"):

	"Documentarians in the digital dispensation have a duty, he
	believes, to invite commentary, modification and defiance.
	Viewers have a duty to respond. 'Information,' Ritchin argues
	astutely, 'is not a consumer right but to be earned through
	the manner in which one seeks it, even in the virtual world.'
	Accordingly, he advocates web-based work that 'confounds an
	otherwise simplistic sense of interactivity in which there is
	a menu of choices but no resistance, coming out of a
	singularly direct, consumerist American culture.' Online
	editors might facilitate active viewing by developing a tool
	kit for digital forensics:

	"'A new photographic template for the digital environment
	could be devised in which information is hidden in all the
	four corners of the image so that those interested could make
	it visible by placing the cursor over each corner to create a
	roll-over. The bottom right corner might contain issues of
	authorship and copyright; the bottom left could contain the
	caption and amplifying comments by the photographer; the upper
	left could contain responses to the image by its subjects; and
	the upper right could give information as to how the reader
	can become involved, help, learn more, by providing Web
	addresses and other guidance.'

	"These are interesting proposals, and a few key early adopters
	might make them de rigueur. But while Fried insists on a
	hermetic seal between reality and image, Ritchin downplays the
	objection that new conventions breed new chicanery. Once
	institutionalized, would amplifying rollovers not be
	bastardized like any other guideline promulgating transparency
	and justice? Photographers, designers and editors obviously
	ought to be conscious about pandering to click-addicted
	passivity. Fundamentally, however, the essence/appearance
	conundrum cannot be solved by more or better data and
	interfaces. Images promise, and never quite deliver, reliable
	witness--because they can't. Complete, unadulterated
	transcription of the world did not exist in technologies known
	to Plato or Daguerre, and it doesn't exist in any we invent
	now."

... Ritchin's take on an updated "techno-ethical visual criticism"
sounds interesting, although I, too, wonder about its effectiveness....

Deborah
_____

Deborah Taylor-Pearce
[email protected]



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