Ninth International Conference on The Image

Abstract

This paper does not deal with a subjective valorization of what is generally understood as the still photographic image, there is no intention to “save” or “obstruct” the still image in the face of new electro-digital paraphernalia and paradigms. What is questioned existentially “for better or worse” is the usefulness of still photography and its objective viability as a discrete class of imaging, that has proven so useful within analog material and processes - a massive industrial, commercial presence and vital creative influence throughout two centuries. Now, within a couple of decades more or less, analog still and moving technology appear subjugated by new media that initially constructed rapidly improved electro-digital parodies of analog antecedents that inevitably extend into new, innately digital formations, blending boundaries between still imaging and animation. On the menu bar at the foot of the camera screen of my already outdated iPhone, I can select between “Time Lapse – Slow-Mo – Video – Photo – Portrait,” there continue to be more and greater options. I shall redefine for myself, at least, other forms of stillness and contemplation across ranges of choice and more. Because this paper is in effect a phenomenological observation - as has been the default methodology behind western contemporary art since Duchamp - it has no concern with ‘second-guessing’ futuristic technological development, but concentrates on emotional and intellectual affects of past technologies transitioning new definitions of stillness, movement and dimensionality reforming human thinking and creativity.