Photo or Shop ? Truth-claim in the Photoshop-age.

de Mul: “The Digital photo is – even if not afterwards manipulated at all – no longer an indexical print of the depicted, but an analog picture translated into a serie of ones and zeros.”

Manovich: “[…] in software culture, digital media is a particular subset of the larger category information. ” photography = infography “the idea of information—a disembodied, abstract and universal dimension of any message separate from its content.”

Helmond: “Gates updates Daston & Galison’s notion of ‘mechanic objectivity’, which was related to photographic and other visual forms of media, to ‘computational objectivity’”

Gunning: “The fact that rows of numbers do not resemble a photograph, or what the photograph is supposed to represent, does not undermine any indexical claim.’”

Research Questions / Hypotheses Why do we still have an urge for indexicality in the current age of photoshop? Why people want to believe what they see, knowing it might be falsified? How/Why digital image falsifaction is less accessible then digital image editing. A philosophy on truthfull digital imagery.

Outline Introduction Theory –Manovich view on software taking command: the tranforming of photography into information. –Short history of photography and indexicality. –Indexicality and digital photography. Analysis –Why people urge indexicality. –Why its harder to falsify then to manipulate. Conclusion

Methods Textual / philosophical analysis of theory on truth-claim considering an updated notion of nowadays available technical knowledge on both digital photography and falsification.

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