At the beginning of the chapter Ritchen talks about John Szarkowski and his views on photographers. I found it interesting how he categorized them with the “window” photographer and the “mirror” photographer. The window photographer viewed photography as a means of expression whereas the mirror photographer viewed photography as a means of exploration.
Then when digital photography came around those categories no longer applied and in replacement came a completely new category called mosaic, which I found quite interesting but complicated at the same time. There are so many more components to digital photography now that it’s hard to categorize it. Ritchen goes on in the chapter to mainly talks about photography now being linked to other media, such as other images, text and even sounds or video clips! It’s truly crazy the stuff we can get out of a one photograph these days. They call this new view “hyperphotography”, where an image can be hyper linked to other media. Ritchen talked a bit about the shift of this once delicate image you protected by holding only the edges in fear of smudges to now the digital era of actually being able to view the interior of the image. This is quite fascinating to me! The viewer has the option to view an artist’s work however they want. As well as each viewer is going to view and interact with it differently, getting different interpretations out of the image. He compared these photographers to filmmakers, poets and novelists. It’s quite interesting to think about actually. These photographers have the ability to tell a story to the viewer through a single photograph by interweaving other media into it.
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