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At every turn, analogue images present reminders that they are photographs. They primarily exist as physical objects, photos printed on glossy paper, that can be held in relation to us. Their physical forms fray and decay, reminding us that they are something other. Film was processed and analogue images needed time, abstraction, and distance to become an image. Analogue imagery presents multiple opportunities in its conception, capture, and existence for us to encounter it at a distance and as a photograph; as a specific formal object. The digital image, however, is unfixed and always trying to hide.

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It may seem illogical that the digital image, famed for both its multiplicity and potential for manipulation, presents itself closer to the ‘real’, but this seems to be the case. Digital images seek to present themselves not as photographs (as formal objects), but literally as a form of sight. 

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The digital image does not have an indexical relationship to the real as the analogue photograph may, but rather the digital image seeks to present as the real itself; operating as experience and sight. In its aesthetics, speed, and mass ubiquity, the digital image conceals that it is a photograph. This, coupled with the way our identity increasingly intwines with the digital image (as in self-constructed social media identities where an image identity can supplant a relational identity as seen in Instagram influences) makes it harder and harder to step back and consider the digital image as a photograph and not as something real, something we have seen. 

 

This text is an attempt to look directly at the digital image and reinstate it as a photograph. My approach, however, is not born from the logic of the analogue image. Rather, I attempt to encounter the digital image on its own terms. I believe that it is not the roll of the digital image to speak to the past and that there is a pressing necessity to begin to build structures of understanding unique to the digital photograph. Instead of approaching the digital image from a theoretical frame provided by photography criticism, I aim to look to the frames and instances of these images themselves for answers. In this approach I aim to build a language native to the digital image, to speak about it in a more natural way. In order to open up space for the digital image to occupy; a broader and more honest realm not beholden to the assumed logic and thought structure of the analogue photograph, whose lineage is acknowledged but not beholden to. In this text, the digital image can be what it needs to be, it can be what it is, and we will deal with that. 

 

This text has a repeating internal structure that invokes three instances of the digital image; Abu Ghraib, the networked image, and image generation (the GAN), which represent different points in the development of the digital image. These three recurring subjects are set in repose to three wider photographic themes that form the chapters ‘Cameras’, ‘Performance’, and ‘Photographs’. Throughout these chapters, the relationship between the sections Abu Ghraib, the networked image, and image generation (the GAN) remains consistent. Abu Ghraib serves as an early and heightened example of the digital image and our interaction with it, illustrating how digital images operate, and how we interact with them. In the ‘networked image’ sections, relationships we see in the digital image at Abu Ghraib become more layered, ingrained, and complex. In these sections, images exist as multiple, set alongside a mass of concurrent images in a network. Lastly, image generation (the GAN) is introduced. Here we see the logical end result of the complex relationships outlined in Abu Ghraib and the networked image. I use image generation algorithms  (the GAN) as models that visualise the digital image's core themes, not so much the next photography as the end photography. Image generation algorithms take all that is complex about the digital image, internalise it, and reperform it. I use chapters, ’Cameras’, ‘Performance’, and ‘Photographs’, in relation to these reoccurring subjects, to demonstrate the need for a new ontological relationship to the digital image.

 

Before I move on to these main chapters, it is important to find some clarity in my frame of reference. However, a definition of ‘camera’ or ‘photograph’ serves as antithetical to my aim. I want to avoid a definition of ‘camera’ or ‘photograph’ to allow these terms to remain transient and unstable, a reflection of their existing state in the digital image, which directly questions definitions of ‘camera’ and ‘photograph’ that would seem logical to the analogue. Nevertheless, I believe it is important to introduce and explain the fundamentals of my three key subject areas, Abu Ghraib, the networked image, and image generation (the GAN).