PHOTOGRAPHIC MATERIALITY IN THE AGE OF DIGITAL REPRODUCTION]

Digital images are produced without the intermediaries of film, paper or chemicals and as such ‘never acquire the burden of being originals because they do not pass through a material phase’ (Bruce 1994:17). The invention of digital technology represents the first revolutionary change for photographic methods since Talbot’s invention of the calotype, which introduced the negative/positive process and transformed the photograph from being a unique item to one that was reproducible. By the direct conversion of light into a digital format to create a stable image, ‘photographs’ that only exist in the digital form can be seen in one context as a truer version of photography (writing with light) than those that require the creation of a physical intermediary to view the image in a material form. While the notion that an original photograph has a unique value precisely ‘because of its status as a physical object’ needs re-evaluation in the digital context (Bruce 1994:17), this chapter looks at the effects of digitising on photographs which, in their original form, are material.