Observations on how Digital Technology is Transforming the Aesthetics of Photography

Photography is a highly intuitive medium. No matter how one selects the segment of reality to portray, or how one constructs and photographically expresses it, it will instantaneously be engraved on the film and that piece of "reality" will be nothing more than a "laterna magica" (magic lantern) image.

In this dissertation, I wish to consider how the introduction of digital technology is transforming the aesthetics of photography with its unique characteristics. In fact, the issue of how photography can undergo a digital transformation without losing any of grandeur as a form of artistic expression is one that is highly consequential to my own mission as a photographer.

Today, it is no longer possible to speak about the future of photography without mentioning digital technology. Originally, photography involved light projecting an image into a "camera obscura"(literally: a dark chamber) ; the image later came to be fixed by chemical means (to stabilize it). Further advances in mechanical and optical technologies led to photography and its tools becoming more sophisticated, but, with little change in the fundamental concept. In recent years, the advances in electronics and the advent of digital technologies has brought with it digital images, or "digigraphs", composed of hundreds or thousands of pixels, that can easily be reproduced (as well as altered) in identical quality, whereby one of the fundamental tenets of photography: the distinction between "original"and "reproduction" is beginning to be shaken by its roots.
As most histories of photography tell it, it was William Henry Talbot's invention in 1840 of the calotype, the forerunner of modern photographic positive/negative process, that truly heralded the advent of a the photographic medium as we know it because it enabled multiple reproductions to be made from the single photographed image. Since then, milestone developments of new materials on film and photographic paper contributed to the demise of the "aura" surrounding the notion of onlo a single, unique original since now an accurate image of virtually any object or scene in the world could be created and reproduced ---if one so desired--- in unlimited quantities for boundless dissemination anywhere around the globe via various media. In a sense, our world has been reduced to an accumulation of photographic images.

Now, with the advent of the new phenomenon of digital photography ---which does not even require the medium of film and prints to capture and reproduce images--- the distinction between "original" and "reproduction" has become obscured to the point of irrelevance. Digitally captured images are already in the form of electronic data and can be directly uploaded to the Internet from where they are instantaneously and concurrently accessible, as well as viewable, from anywhere in the world in virtually real-time by anyone with an Internet terminal. The "one" image will simultaneously "exist" in pixel format on every one of the browsers accessing it and can be viewed and even concurrently processed on all the screens. Furthermore, this does not apply only to "still images" but to moving video images likewise. Hence, the only original that still warrants that term, by definition, is the image"single actual subject" as there no longer is such a thing as an "original image" in the "paperless", non-temporal digital world: revolution consumes itself.

In search of the lost aura...

Walter Benjamin, a renowned German theorist and critic, asserted in his "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction"(1936) that attitudes to art were changing as a result of the introduction of mechanical means of reproduction. Unique objects, located in a particular space, lost their singularity as they became accessible to many people in diverse places due to the process of reproduction. The almost divine "aura" that was attached to a work of art (such as the early and still unique or "original" plate-based photographic images) were being lost and in its place the value of presentation, of showing and disseminating an image ---albeit a reproduction of it--- was growing. Hitherto, this magical aura that was often admired or worshipped with near religious fervor was due to a great extent to the uniqueness or singularity of the individual work of art. On the other hand, art also lost a great deal of its "exclusive", "upper class" image as the wider accessability concurrently represented a "democratization" of art appreciation. Furthermore, photography with its possibilities of instantaneously documenting events, personages, scenes from daily life, etc. was particularly suited as a medium of political awareness building and became a catalyst for "politicalization". Benjamin foresaw that Photography also lent itself to.

Thus a new politicalized constructed way of presentation for photography came to be effectively utilized for disclosing and intentionally reconstructing reality. Photographic expression although on the verge of losing its original aura have started to shift its focal point to the presentation values, while photography has contributed its public receptants' change in perception into "llusion of homogenity" (according to Benjamin). Under this consensus of illusion, "reproduction art" (which was intended to be reproduced in quantity from the outset) have been so far reproduced and circulated, imitated and reproduced, experienced and consumed, and as its consequence, the concept of distinguishing an original as the "authentic" image and its reproduction as a "fake" has lost its meaning. This closely resembles what is happening in photography as digital technology makes inroads.

As soon as photogrphs made their evangelical acquaintance with "digital technologies", fiction (producing) playing overcame reality, taking place in daily exaggerations and excessiveness in a festive like richness. At various levels of individuals' illusion --- no matter how unordinary and weird they be --- photographic media's standpoint were transmitted easily with no sweat into mere method for replaying and copying. Photographs or digital-graphics are becoming mere instrument/means/material to personally disassimilate (make distinction clear) the relationship of ones inner and outer "real" world, where real life is fading away surrounded by new technologies of "Innfotainment", in daily life where in some sense reality is lost.

On the other hand like it has been in the past decade, the more reproduction of worldwide phenomenon and events via photographs on printed matters done daily, the more photographs are in their way becoming recognized only as limpid media like mere "windows" or "gates"; just letting real events and unprecedented images passing through them. This "transparency" is even becoming more prominent owing to the digital images that do not let films and printing paper interpose with them. In the near future, surrounded by virtual media that reproduces and consumes reality in three dimensions, photographs may totally lose its foothold as its point of origin.

A few more decades after Benjamin(s observations, photography was to revive the "aura". as Susan Sontag once pointed out in her essay, "On Photography" (1977), the "original prints", which were being made by hand by the artists themselves (or by craftsman-like printers) and reproduction in printed form was distinct and separate.  Ironically enough, once photography proceeded to revive the aura of the medium ---as fine art---, however, the fundamental concept for this originality drastically began to fade in the new millennium; Nevertheless, photography in the future will be extended to include "digital art" and photographic artists will find their missions in searching for the disappearing aura.  In this day and age, especially while the mass-media increasingly dilute our sense of reality, the worshipful orientation towards magical or festive values as an art form will hopefully be regained.

Transition from "straightforward magic" to a cosmos of the subconscious

My first direct contact with the digital imaging world occurred in 1994 when I was invited to participate in a CD-ROM project entitled "Encyclopedia of Photography Vol. 1 (by Mizuki, Japan)". At once, I realized that the digital images reproduced on the monitor screen as an aggregate of pixels was far removed from photography as I had known it. Strangely enough, what next came to mind , was the historical controversy over whether photography could be considered a fine art because of "the absence of matter". Perhaps photography should more aptly be referred to as a "transmutation of reality".

Until now, the existing real photographic subject was captured on the photographic medium (i.e. film) by a delicate veil of light, that revealed the artistic richness of the subtle tones and shadows of time passages. But, the digitalization process removes all of these rich and deep nuances of reality. It can be likened to the qualitative difference between cinema films and home videos. Furthermore, conventional photography also has a unique capability of drawing out and conveying the inherent aesthetic qualities of its subject. In the initial phase of shooting, it frames a certain portion of reality --- its subject, then via the secondary developing and processing onto printing paper, moments in time are "frozen" onto its surface releasing a veil of "death" in rapture. It is there that a "sixth" or "mystic" dimension that transcends physical reality becomes perceptible, revealing an esoteric or ethereal world shimmering through the reality--- When all is said and done, photography is after all a unique type of "sorcery" in which reality and illusion, moment and eternity, what is visible and what is invisible, are all blended and melded into one; yet --- it is an honest sorcery. Subsequently, I believe that the only way that the grandeur of photography will endure in the digital age is for photograph and image based digital arts in the 21st century to fully realize and tap the potential of digital technologies for enhancing these creative aspects of imaging work.

The inspiration I gain from the subjects of this "honest sorcery" through my photography is quintessentially an extremely intuitive process. I let my imagination roam free through a vast subconscious domain and as a premise, await that flash of aesthetic inspiration or insight that comes like a shot in the dark. Although I may not be the great surrealist painter Joan Miro, who transformed "cosmic signals" into art, I realize that the key to tapping and releasing the artistic energy to create any form of art ---regardless of the method used in executing the works--- be it painting, music, poetry or the like, is the act of exposing the source of all life and power: spiritual energy.

Conclusion

The digital image processing involves a process that can of itself ---be more.or less--- creative whereby various images existing only in cyberspace are manipulated via the computer screen and keyboard to imitate ("reproduce") or resemble ("replay") as the manipulator is moved by their recollections of various images or sensations, perhaps so intense, vivid, or personal that one's heartstrings seem to be virtually pulled. In other words, it is like being a virtual astronaut venturing forth into a cosmos consisting of digital data, in a spacecraft of so-called "analogrecollections". What I want to emphasize is that "digital" images are mere cyberspace establishments of accumulated precise and homogeneous mathematical definitions of space and time known as "pixels". Only the "analogue recollections" of the Homo sapiens can imbue these images with "life".

What I have been attempting to achieve since the 1990s is how to give our "analog ue recollections" full unflod as "life" factors for digital expression. "Digital" forms of expression themselves will only stand up as bona fide if they revive impressions or recollections derived from real experiences or sensations; when the recollections of images of persons are reproduced or recreated using new methods, not unlike the time Karl Gustav Jung came across the discovery of the "Mandala" as as a symbol of the universalism in the subconscious cosmos. Hence, similar to meditating, digital designs and arts are also "intuitive" and "spiritual" acts.

Even when I am in the process of digital image manipulation, I aim to produce images of dancing forms and colors: similar to the fine arts by Joan Miro, focusing on the beauty of the living body in the center, and blending the finite with the infinite, that which actually exists with that which is recollection, the inorganic with theorganic, illusion with reality, the coincidental with the intentional... And that is what I believe to be the new form of aesthetic beauty, which I always long for: "The gracefulencounter of digital and analog". (END)

Original theses written by Miro Ito in Japanese, partially consisting of manuscripts which have been published in diverse p publications such as Computer & Design (Text book for design-related students edited by Japanese Graphic Designers Associatiation [JAGDA]; published by Rikuyosha, Tokyo), The Art of Photography in the Digital Eura: Views on Photography in the furture (her authoring book with two contributing authors, published by Ohmusha, Tokyo). English Translation: A. P. Boettcher, Tokyo/Toronto.