The Digital Eye: Photographic Art in the Electronic Age

Paul Berger, Warp & Weft Ground

In the book, The Digital Eye, Sylvia Wolf describes technology as it progressed from analog to digital. After, the details the effects of digital photography on human perception, and in turn, culture, politics, and economics. Theory from Barthes to Benjamin emphasizes the relationship between photography and reality. Photography is a representation, but further, a cropping. When digital enhancing and composing occurs, the image less and less resembles "reality." Despite this, collage may better describe the world than a truncated image could. Our photomontage assignment allows us to use digital photography as a medium of reassessing what reality really is or is presented to be. Hank Willis Thomas's Unbranded series of works remove the words from advertisements to show the stereotyping of minorities, allowing viewers to unravel the world they perceive and consider how images are fabricated for consumption. In Wangetchu Muti's work, she combines images to represent black women in a culture of media that lacks the same representation. Our works, too, should act a a means to reconsider the roles images serve, to describe our "true" perceptions of reality, and to fill in what is lacking from the full picture.

Are any images inherently false?