Ectoplasm: Photography in the Digital Age

I really enjoyed Geoffrey Batchens essay on the photography in the digital age. I found it remarkable to read that “in 1989 photography was dead,” which I find really hard to understand but if though about it makes complete sense. Individuals in the past relied on photography to display the truth and used to documents. And since the development of the computer, image processing has taken of the medium and people have lost faith in the truthfulness of photography. Another important concept that I found interesting and easier to understand was that it was “no longer possible to tell any original from its simulations.” Which goes back to the Benjamin’s constant argument of the loss of the aura in reproductions, there are so many multiples in the world that are so accessible it loses its value. One example was the “After Sherrie Levine” website that was discovered, the website was a reproduction of Levine’s reproduction of Evan’s work. At the website there could have been infinite amount of reproductions made with certificate of proof also.
As the essay continues I found the idea of photography being a vision of life and death very compelling. Initially, I though photography as to a medium to capture life but I was wrong, in the beginning with the start of daguerreotypes being associated with “black magic”. It continues with the explanation of the slowness of exposure times and the creation of corpse like images. However, to contradict with the idea of photography being related to the idea of death Benjamin again inputs the idea of the aura and its death that is often represented in photography is a result of “authentic social relations” that “could be brought back to life”. Because the sacrifice of the spiritual authenticity within a photography it allows relations to develop, and on a deeper level, the development of capitalism.