Abstract
For almost two centuries chemical and mechanical analogue photography followed by its electronic palingenisis, digital-photography, maintained a massive modernizing and industrial presence as well as global creative influence on depiction, communication, language, and thinking. Reformations of photography from monochromatic to chromatic, glass screen to paper document, still to motion film took decades to develop compared with the accelerated shift from analogue to digital screen formats. This paper references and expands upon a recent term ‘meta-photography’ as propounded in a recent dissertation “Introduction to Meta-Photography: A Self Reflexive and Self-Critical Mirror for Photography in Digital Culture” by Denis Guzel premised upon “digitized, networked and manipulated photography” regarding “different propositions of the ‘next-photography’” or “new-photographies” operating on “two meta-levels, both as an act of self-criticism” and “new…ontological difference.” My own (re)search into the ontology of photography also questions: “Do we still need still photography?” On the menu bar at the foot of the camera screen of my already outdated iPhone, I can select between “Time Lapse – Slow-Mo – Video – Photo – Portrait - Pano”. There appear to be greater, immediately accessible options innate to the digital platform, and it is that menu-bar with some of the options that pop-up that I find to be indicative of a redefinition of stillness. I am not concerned with second-guessing technological ‘advances’, but I am questioning emotional and intellectual affects of past, present, and future technologies transitioning meta-formats intimating new sensations of stillness, slowness, contemplation, movement, and dimensionality of extensive thought, communication, and language.
Presenters
David Julian CubbyAdjunct Fellow, School of Humanities and Communication Arts, Western Sydney University, New South Wales, Australia
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Still, Analogue, Digital, Meta, New, Next, Photography, Ontological, Redefinition, Emotional
