The digital sandwich
Photography, it would seem, has, like so many other things, fallen victim to deconstruction. This was an inevitable development, preordained and, I must add, long-heralded. All the new techniques and approaches that are generally described as “digital” and break images down into various layers, points and work areas are a serious threat to those principles on which photography has built its reputation.
Or at least they might be a threat, because although the truthfulness of photography in all its weighty determinism always used to provide us with a sense of reassurance, at the same time we had started to be less convinced about it. What was always considered its main quality had stopped being valued as such. When it comes down to it, we really like photographs for the way they distort the reality they contain and not because they faithfully represent something, even if we hypocritically insist that the camera cannot lie.
Basically, what digital technology does, in its own very humble way, is to push back the boundaries of perception, opening up a whole new experimental dimension in which perceptions are reorganised, analysed and amplified by tinkering with the photographic image, that frozen contrivance which seemed totally tamper-proof. This is not about making a mockery of photographs through distortion; the aim here is not to bring about their suicide, but [...]
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