Digital history

[Roy]

Hmm yes, it's a difficult one this. It is worrying that we are more and more relying on the digital image as the primary reference resource in many archives.

The digital image does of course give us searchability via database applications, and ease of access via the internet allowing us to share images all over the World - revolutionising the way we think of visual imagery altogether.

The problem comes when the image in question becomes a digital image only - that is when the original image no longer exists. Then there is no reference to the original and it is open season for image editing, either innocent or otherwise - to make subtle changes to the original or indeed to create a completely different version, often with a completely different meaning to the original.

The aesthetic removal of scratches, marks or unwanted details like a lamp post in a scan of an archived photograph for example, may seem like a good thing to do - to 'clean up' the image but when someone accesses the same image in 50 years time researching the development of street lighting in that area - if the original photograph no longer existed the edited digital image would be a very convincingly innacurate record.

If you apply this principle to the maxim 'in a war, history is written by the victors' then we have a much more serious problem and once again Mr Orwell's ominous shadow looms over our future and the 'Ministry of Truth' seems disturbingly prescient.

Roy.



"History is written by the Victors"
Winston Churchill.

[the Seeing Small team]

The social argument is very compelling , especially since there is no way whatever of regulating the use of image manipulation . A voluntary code of practice would be inoperable because , quite rightly , people would claim that it limited their freedom of artistic expression .

The genie is out of the bottle and viewers must acquire a more sophisticated awareness of what makes a picture . After all , for centuries painting and drawing were the principal means of conveying imagery and on balance it seems to have worked . But even before the digital age the camera was lying because the human eye and the camera never have seen the same thing identically .

The mirror never lies , but the portraitists medium telephoto lens both flattens and flatters . No human eye ever saw a landscape as landscapists prefer to portray it : through a wide angle lens . The fact is , for some curious reason , we see a much more acceptable world - or at least one that is more aesthetically pleasing - when we distort reality through our lenses .

Maybe at every level - social , aesthetic - we like to play games with our eyes . Nobody can yet decide what the game is and until then we cannot decide on the rules .