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September 7, 2012
Bernd Stigler in Practice post on FotoMuseum's Still Searching blog says that in talking about photographic realism, one should not talk about the images but about photographic practices. Ultimately, he adds, it is the way that photography is used that affirms or negates its realism.
Gary Sauer-Thompson, Gibson St, Bowden, Adelaide
Stigler says:
Practical application decides the function of photography and defines its epistemic fields of reference. It decides about good and evil, conviction and rejection, images and their meaning.To name just one example of many: when with the emergence of digitalization the ontological status of photography became more fragile and often claims were made concerning and epistemic break in the history of the medium or even the end of the photographic age, shifts in practice began to take place that initially seemed inconsequential but then perhaps become much more important and sustained.p until now photography has perhaps been conceived too much in terms of images, and its social function has been neglected. But ultimately it is the way photography is used that affirms or negates its realism.
He adds that the fact that images are now much more readily available and circulate unimpeded, without regard for their source of origin—this is the real revolution that has led to the mass production and use of photographic images that one readily perceives as “fiction” and not as the “pencil of nature”.
The indexical nature of photography plays as little a role here as its relationship to reality via a logic of representation.
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