"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.