Research no.1: Geoffry Batchen

I read Geoffrey Batchen's Ectoplasm: Photography in the Digital Age, and found his stance on digital photography very interesting. Within the first page he makes a statement I perceived as both beautiful and thought provoking, "

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I have recently found myself very interested in the "truthful" nature of photographs, how can any representation of anything at a given 1/60 of a second become symbol to something in our world, real and fluid with movement? This reading seems to side with only digital imaging being unreal, and fabricated, but from the beginning we know photographic images are not truth, can not be said to represent the objects imitated.

He then begins to break down the actual etymology of Digital Photography, saying that unlike film, it never tries to argue that it is actually representative of that which it captures, that it actually represents more of a painterly approach to art, "

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So why is it such a big deal that we fabricate images? Why is it an outrage that news outlets portray "manipulated imagery," is it not all manipulated, light, shadow, focus, etc.? Should every photograph be titled as a "photo illustration," or should it not be already assumed, in the very word of photograph that whatever seen is not the truth, that there is no way that it could be in the first place? I love how Susan Sontag puts it, that a photograph is proof only that something once existed, that a photograph is, "something directly stenciled off the real," and nothing more.

I found it comforting when Batchen addresses the notion that digital photography will result in the death of photography. He asserts that the history of the science is one of transition. That photography is merely 200 years of evolution, from daguerrotypes, to the brownie, to 4 x 5's to those cameras from the 90's that printed out 35mm negative sized stickers, none of which threaten to dissolve the medium in itself.

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But how long will "human" survive....?