Reality, Mediated...

James and Leo came over for a visit this afternoon after a protracted bout of chest infections [theirs] that have separated us all since New Year. As I've been doing some family tree work over the last week or two, the dining table is somewhat festooned with photocopies of old census documents and family photographs. James pointed out something particularly salient about one of those photographs: my mother and father's wedding day, nearly seventy-two years ago, pictured above. His observation was that the level of detail was almost hyper-real: digital, even. That digital technology - certainly imaging technology - did not exist at that time and for many decades hence, and I am old enough to remember when the only photographic images were chemically based, says a great deal about our relationship with the images produced by our cameras, of whatever form.

Nowadays, the taking of a photograph is entirely trivial - there is no skill in the mechanics of producing an image, only in its framing and composition [and even that can be digitally altered in real time]. The rest is wonderfully, almost miraculously, taken care of by some of the most powerful data-processing hardware and software technology we've ever had access to: our phones. That we have had this capability for such a short time in human history makes it all the more remarkable that we now take the whole thing completely for granted and accept unquestioningly that the reality that our reproductions of the real world offer is the result of algorithmic intervention, without questioning that intermediation: reality is whatever Instagram filter we want to make it. Cut back to my mom & dad's wedding photo: this artefact is the direct optical and chemically-produced analogue of the event itself. A slice of time. 100th of a second of my family's reality. Un-enhanced and as detailed as the event itself. That it seems to be hyper-real I find somewhat sur-real...