On the "Quantum Leap"

“A quantum leap” asks us to look at photography in relation to theories of how we view and understand the world, particularly quantum physics. Ritchin asserts that the ways we view and react to analog and digital photography is analogous to the behavior of light. Light, in the famed double slit experiment , reacts in two ways when passing through slits: light particles can manifest as waves or just behave as though they are separate particles, depending on whether the experiment is being observed or not. Observation changes light particles! That’s totally trippy. Photography can also be seen to operate along the same analogous lines: waves and particles. Where analog photography can be viewed as a wavelike system, digital photography can be seen as something closer to a particle system. In other words, “photography, analog and digital, plays with light but depicts the universe with differing assumptions” (Ritchin 178). Ritchin’s comparison in this case seems quite intuitive. Analog would, of course, have wave like qualities (don’t we slosh our prints in the chemical darkroom, as if creating something out of miniature waves?) and the pixel dominated environment of the digital sensor is visually comparable to that of particles, but I have to ask, what if analog images (namely negatives) are translated into digital form, essentially turned into digital pixels—could we then say that analog photography has both the qualities of waves and particles. Perhaps this is a too literal reading of Ritchin’s comparison—and in the end, quantum physics seems to defy something like light from being either wave-like or particle-like and may contain possibilities of existence that are not predictable and change with context, particularly when the element of the “observer” is introduced. What is more valid to me is the idea that digital photography does have this quality of behaving like particles, in the sense that varied and multiple meaning can be extracted from the surface of the digital image. Not only is meaning variable in digital images (analog images have variable meaning as well), but the unpredictability of added and subtracted meaning is possible. In other words, it is hard to predict how particles of information will react when there is the direct intervention of the “observer” which is basically the reader/viewer. In the example of Proust’s grandmother, the analog photograph, with its aura of the static, seems to deplete Proust’s vision of his grandmother to a state that is less than ideal. Ritchin argues that the digital images ability to create “various superimpositions and links” and “a multiplicity of perspectives” would restore Proust’s grandmother to his original ideal, that of a being who is more complex and may retain the fragmentariness that is a quality of our memories which create and recreate our memories of people in a dynamic way. Are we in the era of the post human being? Would we rather be cyborgs than goddesses? Can we live our lives in a constant state of questioning, of probabilities? What happens to the apparent need for continuity in our lives? I am appreciative of the way Ritchin ends his discourse on photography—that both analog and digital are in a “spiral dance” and that both methods of photography should remain in some type of relationship. In the end though, I sense that he is aware of the inevitability of digital photography dominance in a world that is becoming more and more hyper-realistic.

"Toward a Hyperphotography"

What is this "hyperphotography" that Fred Ritchin speaks of? It is the new paradigm of photography, where the image is no longer a capture of a segmented view of time, but a conflation of time. This model of photographic imagining will also be interactive, acknowledging that the viewer is as much about the viewing experience as the person who took the photograph: "The photographer's frame, heretofore simply a container for the image, can now store a variety of hidden information that can help to contextualize and amplify the image's meaning, accessible to the interested reader. Ritchin calls for a more "cubistic" type of photography, where multiple vantage points (perspective) is revealed to the viewer. Initially we may see a photograph as being a portrait of the heroic (photo of American soldier's lying on tarmac in Haiti with helicopter), justifying our project of bringing freedom to the world, but upon further investigation with the help of contextualizing imagery we come to understand that our manifested ideals are merely constructions. What about this idea of a proactive photography, where we can bring our predictions of future events (of global climate change for instance) into the present to enact change? Considering the wholly artificial nature of such imagery, I wonder how effective that might in influencing a change in our over consumptive, self destructive behavior. Would the proactive image not be another spectacle on the level of a Hollywood disaster film? Perhaps the most interesting idea for me is the idea of a photographs serving as surrogate family albums. This idea is encapsulated in Brian Palmer's 2004 "Digitial Diary: Witnessing the War." These are everyday moments of our armed uniformed citizens in abnormal situations. The photographs serve as albums for family members back home, who are not able to physically participate in the lives of their loved ones "overseas." The family album has evolved where it is not only the members of your family that is being recorded but a community of families as well, brought together by this "abnormal" state of war. The photo diary becomes the shared communal album.

On "The Social Photograph."

Photography as a documentary activity has transformed with new technological developments. Photographers must also take into account the consequences of photographing people whose publicized images might endanger then from oppressive governmental forces. All these developments in photography may require photographers to take into account the possibility that their subjects can also be collaborators. When marginalized people are given cameras they often do not take the usual pictures of destruction and despair that are the realm of the new photographer. Besides the bombings and killings and houses, amateurs often take photographs of daily life that can be ecstatic and optimistic in the face of looming tragedy. Ritchin makes the distinction between the amateur photographer and the professional, who he feels is too inclined to take a particular type of photograph, who already knows what the message of the photograph may be; the amateur, without being held back by technical or philosophical issues, may bring a sense of authenticity to their photograph that is lacking in many professional photographs. The subject matter of these marginalized people is as simple as taking pictures of daily life--this is what they see on a daily basis and why is it not more authentic then the photographs of daring rescues, or a landscapes torn by war. Sometimes the professional is caught up in getting a particular type of photo that often asks to shock the viewer into action. These photographs have become essentially stock images in the canon of new photography; their authenticity is questioned because we have become numbed to their message--what Ritchin mentions is called "compassion fatigue."
Ritchin then makes the case that technology can again provide us with a new viewing experience of images. The interactive photo essay by Robert Noth and Antoinette de Jong is one essay that attempts to bring a visual identification of the victims from nuclear radiation. One is able to look at the photograph and then scroll over the image to be provided with more information on the subjects. This online photoessay has brought greater interaction between readers and has even effected governmental change for these people suffering from the effects of man made disaster. It is Ritchin's view that it is not that people are completely numb to the plight of others. It is instead the large amounts of imagery that attempt to evoke in us a sense of empathy that we become used to those images, and their credibility to incite in us a sense of empathy has diminished. It is up to photographers and writers to create new vehicles for discussion that take into account the collaboration of the subjects, and also the input of views from readers.

Myth 1: Destruction of the World

Myth 1: Creation of the World

Fall Creek: Revised Fluid Scan

On "Beginning the Conversation"

Beginning the Conversation is Fred Ritchin's commentary on the possibilities of the creating conversations between disparate communities and individuals in the platform of the digital multi media experience. There is a certain democratic bent to Ritchin's desire to have multiple perspectives in viewing digital images in the future web 3.0. One of his initial concerns was the idea that the virtual interactive domain would somehow be informative in an organic way while also keeping the interest of the reader/participant. There is an interesting example of how one begins to have a conversation with essentially a computer program in his description of Luc Courchesne and Paule Ducharme's virtual project Portrait One. Here the participants in the conversation are a virtual representation of actress Paule Ducharme and the reader/viewer/participant who must keep up an "interesting" conversation for the exercise to continue; the human must engage in a decent conversation with an artificial intelligence. What an idea! I am intrigued by the concept of a computer program losing interest in a boring conversation with a human; it hearkens back to HAL in Stanley Kubrick's 2001, a precocious, sentient computer program that wreaks havoc on his human handlers. Ritchin goes on to a more in depth discussion of the possibilities of people having a conversation with virtual photo essays in the multimedia newspaper (Ritchin and photographer Gilles Peres' Bosnia: Uncertain Paths to Freedom). It certainly is an interesting idea with the multilayering of information that allows the user to determine the path of the narrative. The desire to include a forum for discussion in the end seems to be the major drawback to the project with sometimes racist vitriolic being posted instead of a measured discourse, an unintended effect of an all inclusive approach to virtual conversation. Ritchin is not unaware of the dangers posed by a world where we get our information from interactive multi media sites. Headlines that are missing from these virtual communication platforms are sometimes essential in creating a unified communal discourse needed for social movements. Also, the proliferation of "citizen journalists" may create a glut of information that is redundant or superficial. He suggests that there needs to be more filtering of content, but who would accomplish this filtering? Who would be up to the task of going through the vast amount of digitally rendered information to keep the conversation focused? It seems to me an impossible task, and one that only institutions could accomplish, which would have their own biases and agendas in the end. Perhaps we could develop an artificial intelligence network based on filtering programs that provides parameters that would narrow down the discourse; but then again that network would also carry the bias of its creator, and who knows, perhaps that network itself will, like the intrepid HAL in 2001, turn on its creators and develop their own responses to the affairs of humans. It's not out of the realm of possibility that reality meets science fiction.