Bearing Witness

[gns]

Video of SFMOMA's all day symposium last Sunday is available on their website...

http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/multimedia/live_streaming

"Given the power and pervasiveness of photography in both art and everyday life, what is the significance of the rapid and fundamental changes that the field is undergoing? How have social media, digital cameras, and amateur photojournalism altered the way photographs capture the everyday, define current events, and steer social and political movements? How have photographers responded to these shifting conditions, as well as to the new ways in which images are understood, shared, and consumed? How have our expectations of photography changed? Bearing Witness, a one-day symposium hosted by SFMOMA, considers these questions and assesses the ways in which photography matters now more than ever.

Source: http://www.sfmoma.org/explore/multimedia/live_streaming#ixzz2woFK8DRG
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art"

 

[fotomeow]

Wow, those are loaded questions topics of graduate study thesis projects! I think one of the basic aspects is that our our assumptions about photos has changed. With the advent of digital photography, we now regularly question how "real" a photo is: not just b/c of manipulating optics, but manipulating the existence of the subject altogether. Yes, with film we could manipulate in the analog darkroom, but not to the technological extent of the digital darkroom. Is it live or is it Memorex? If its not live, then are we really bearing witness?

And b/c the manipulation is so clean and real-loping these days, we question the whole reality of it. This idea, mixed with the visual medium being so powerful, puts us in sort of a quandary. But most people, it seems, dont bother with thinking about this too much on a day-to-day basis, so at the same time, photos have lost some of their power, since we are inundated with images all day long.

I suppose one could argue, however, that even if its a manipulated photo with no reality-base, then they/we are still bearing witness in a non-reality world, such as parallel universes (this theory being that we also live in multiple parallel universes outside of our own, where just by imagining a possibility, it exists in another parallel universe).