Simon Morely - the writing on the wall

Have newer imaging tools like digital cameras, PDAs and computer technologies changed the way we experience the visual world? If so, how?


my mum and brother with digital cameras - taken on another digital camera.

Computer technologies have made digital image manipulation so much easier and made our experience of the authenticity of a photograph less. They have also enabled greater imagination of different images that would have been impossible in the past. Computer generated special effects, for example, change the way we experience special effects in movies, and make anything possible, even things that would be impossible to create in any other way. It tends to make people less impressed by image manipulation and creation, and special effects need to be constantly bigger and better. In some ways these technologies have paradoxically made us appreciate impressive special effects less.

Digital cameras and imaging devices mean that people have easy access to digital images quickly, and have changed the way people view the world and images. When a digital image doesn’t have costs like film photography, people take more images, often more indiscriminately. Although it seems like you are able to document your visual world, it often means that you create less actual memorable images. Another aspect is that sometimes it feels like people become obsessed with recording ‘memoires’ as photographs rather than actually experiencing the moment.