It should go without saying that the way we interact with photography has undergone a seismic shift since the days of the album or the shoebox full of snapshots. More and more of our photographs are never printed but stored on our computers and shared through social networking sites like Facebook. We also have far more photographs than ever before, so we need new ways to store and organise these images. Metadata – which the Oxford Dictionary defines as: “A set of data that gives information about other data” [1] – is a critical component of our new photographic ecology, as it exerts a huge influence on both the storage and the visibility of our photographs. Continue reading
William J. Mitchell
The Index in Digital Photography
In my last post, I identified the index as a sign with a physical connection to its referent; which in photography theory is generally thought to be the imprint of light left on light-sensitive material. I also noted that for many theorists – Roland Barthes chief amongst them – this physical connection to the referent is the defining, or essential, quality of photography. What then is to be made of the numerous claims that digital photography does not share this essential quality? Continue reading