Ectoplasm

So this essay was really interesting to me because it followed my train of thought of how to approach photography. Relating photography to death, space and time is somewhat natural when thinking about photographs of past relatives or historical figures. "In stopping or turning back time, photography appeared to be once again playing with life and death." It plays with life and death because it shows you something that is gone, and can never be captured in the same way again. "photography has already enabled us to hand down to future ages a picture of the sunshine of yesterday." Batchen talks about two ways that photography will no longer portray objective truth: the first is through computers digitizing images so that they no longer can be trusted to portray reality, and the second is that the viewer cannot differentiate the original from copies or simulations. Benjamin brought up this topic of mechanical reproduction and how the aura will be lost due to photography, however, now not only is the aura lost, but so is the foundation on which photography was based: the portrayal of reality and truth of the surroundings.

Batchen mentions how portraits were reversed in concept because in order for the subject to be able to look alive, they would first have to constrain themselves like they were dead. Without this temporary embalming to take the photograph, the subjects actually appeared dead, like corpses. "Every photograph is therefore a chilling reminder of human mortality." Every photography reminds us that those in it will die or already have, which leads the viewer to ponder their own end.

"computer visualization, on the other hand, allows photographic-style images to be made in which there is potentially no direct referent to an outside world." At first, this makes you think that the entire basis of photography is shattered, but this is just another way to show the evolution of photography and how the artworld is currently being shaped. Soon there will be a new diagram to draw that has "not digital and not photography" written on one of the sides of the diamond.