"I'm so over digital"

[Jamie Roberts]

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btw, just an aside: Barthes was certainly notorious for his post structuralist attempts to deconstructed everything, even everyday objects (e.g., in his collections of essays, Mythologies.) He was quite lucid about the system of social values and their myth creation in society, and very adept at reading images in respect to their semiotic meaning.

 

But I found it interesting that he did somewhat of a reversal when he penned Camera Lucida. This time it wasn't a deconstruction of the image but an acknowledgement of those very mythic properties of nostalgia, authenticity, physicality, and desire. And how specific photographs can operate outside those social values and become very personal and within a context of nostalgia; i.e., a sentimental association with a specific past and/or a desire for something aside from the present.

 

Granted it was the content of a personal photograph of his mother that got him thinking that way, but he then went on to interpret other photographs in the same light. Nostalgia is an emotion and whether one has never participated in a particular place or time or even if it's a false history, it can still conjure up something personal that rings authentic to that individual. And if that particular kind of authenticity is no longer attainable, then those aren't about mythic losses, but genuine losses.

 

Very interesting stuff. I'm just recovering after a wedding, but I really appreciate your responses here... so more from me when I can think more clearly

 

But I did want to say that Barthes often reversed himself, or nearly so.

 

And he always had a fundamentally difficult relationship with photography and cinema--not liking "The Family of Man' for precisely its erasure of history yet being intrigued by "the third meaning" and his family photos, the image repertoire, and semiosis in general...Though of course the *other* thing Barthes had a fundamentally difficult relationship (or at least a fundamentally playful relationship) with was the whole notion of the self (as in Roland Barthes by Roland Barthes)...

 

Anyway, I totally agree with you on the loss of the physical nature of the print, or even the ability to see a great print in person: both of those experiences have been changed through electronic transmission (though I still think the whole question of "authenticity" is complex one).

 

But certainly for people over 30 or 35, there is a fundamental difference in the dissemination and viewing of images now than previously (and forgive the ramble, but I was reminded by someone that it's been nearly 2 decades since I had my first web connection at my home...and 17 years since early widespread Web use in North America! A whole generation of university-level kids has grown up and never known a pre-web world, and with that comes a level of pictorial ubiquity that's such a huge gulf from what came before, it's hard to explain to them...).

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[CalArts 99]

re: generation of university kids: Students today come into the beginning classes having never used film. The current curriculum includes introduction to film and darkroom processes (it's also a university wide requirement; multiple campuses in a state run university system.) They also come into those classes having already spent a few years photographing and posting on social media sites, etc.. For them, a photograph has always been something you look at on a device of some kind.

 

When they use film for the first time and make a print, they tend to be pretty excited. The reasons are varied and include things like: "it's something I made myself" and "it's so way different and cool." Some of them end up going to film as their primary medium after that experience, and I'm assuming some of that comes from the 'being cool' and 'being different' side of the equation. As much as they need to be current and up-to-date with everything, there is that pressure to be 'different' and 'unique.' It's sometimes very hard for a young person to feel like an individual these days (hence the retro clothes, etc., which we all realize is ironic as it becomes the commonplace 'hipster uniform.' But this has been going on since the dawn of time, and we all participated in various ways in our own youth.)

 

Some of them do complain about the amount of time and effort it takes to use film and make a print (understandable in their world of 'instantaneous everything.') But when we get to digital editing and printing, they realize the same amount of time and effort that takes, too. Yet despite their history of instantly posting images on the web, making a physical print becomes very meaningful to them. They will stay in the digital lab for hours outside of class time making prints of all sizes. And they like the challenges of making very large prints and will experiment with different papers, etc..

 

It's probably part of that sense of accomplishment and the feeling one gets from 'making' something themselves. And they also have a physical object that they show their friends and can take home to their parents, etc.. It's a physical object that represents all their effort from thinking about the subject matter and depressing the shutter button to editing and finally printing. In addition, that print they make becomes 'individually unique' to them and not something downloaded and instantly copied to a hard drive to be stored and forgotten in the darkness. Once they start making prints, they do become cognizant of all those questions about the ubiquity of images, and they talk about it, too.

 

btw, I've always been interested in nostalgia and the way a photograph can recall those sorts of emotions in the viewer. (e.g., Sally Mann's work of using materials that evoke a certain nostalgia despite the subject matter; although much of the subject matter is about a perceived nostalgia and sense of time.) As a wedding photographer, I assume that you have thought about it a lot, too. Wedding photography is invested in those emotions. Many wedding photographers use symbolic subject matter (old buildings, old cars, etc..) to evoke that feeling of longevity and stability. A kind of nostalgic view of the institution of marriage, etc.. I find it all very intriguing in a 'Barthesque' kind of way.

[KM-25]

The whole point of the thread was to instigate thinking about 'the loss of a physicality' and in the context of the photograph on a forum such as this one. And the photograph itself is simply an example of a much broader societal question.

 

I get a lot of exposure to White House level think tanks and also deal with a ton of people in my ad work who are mostly younger than 30, very tuned into current events and social trends.

 

Almost all of them say the same thing, they are over the hype of the digital age and very much over the distraction it causes and how that results in not smelling enough of the roses in the tactile world. Yep, even some teens are over it, not caving into being on Facebook, tired of riding around in their friend's cars while they are trying to text instead of drive, you name it, a lot of young people are SO over it.

 

But people who are older than say, 50, they are not over it, they are embracing it as one final cling to their long past youth, so they not only perpetuate the hype, they love it and even cash in on it. Young people can see right through that and rightfully turn their noses up at it.

 

This is a much bigger thing than digital versus film or even photography, it is a worrisome total disconnect from the real world. Thankfully our young people are questioning it right out of the gate....thank god!