analog-are
reflected in digital photography. I insist on this because of the
new condition of the image it entails and our relation to the
realm of the visual. Language found its medium in writing, and
printing made writing the object of literacy. Images could not be
used with the same ease as writing, and could not be transmitted
the way the voice is. When we found ways to have voice travel at
speeds faster than that of sound, by electromagnetic waves used
in telephone or radio transmission, we consolidated the function
of language, but at the same time freed language of some of the
limitations of literacy. Digital photography accomplishes the
same for images.
A written report from any place in the world might take longer
to produce, though not to transmit, than the image representing
the event reported. Connected to a network, an electronic camera
sends images from the event to the page prepared for printing.
The understanding of the image, whose printing involved a digital
component (the raster) long before the computer was invented,
requires a much lower social investment than literacy. The
complexity is transferred from capturing the image to
transmitting and viewing it. Films are used to generate an
electronic simile of our photographic shots. At the friendly
automated image shop, we get colorful prints and the shiny
CD-ROM from which each image can be recalled on a video screen or
further processed on our computers.
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