I was considering the article "A Life More Photographic" (Rubenstein and Sluis) and I wish we had more time to discuss this one. I really enjoyed Lavie Raven's presentation and could have spent hours on this article and its implications. One point the article makes is that the emergence of digital photography "shattered the status of the photograph as objective truth". I don't ever think the photograph has been "objective truth". In compiling my images for my collection I was reminded of this. A photo of my family comes to mind- (the one above) we are around a birthday cake- This would appear to be a snapshot of a moment in time- a moment in which a group of people smiles around the birthday cake, but it's deeper than that- we aren't this cohesive unit in the least bit. We like each other, sure, but it's pretty complicated. I know I'm not objective in analyzing the photo but there is no way this is an objective truth of a moment in time.
So then I took a moment to really consider what the article meant by objective truth. I think it's that the one photo is itself- it brings me back to the issues of reproduction that we discussed and read about. Before digital, you could copy photos but never exactly- so the photo was the objective representation of whatever image it captured. In this context it makes more sense to me- the argument that objective truth is "shattered". When a photo is digitally messed with, so to speak, then the objective truth is no longer- there is a new truth requiring a new language to deal with said truth.
great shot and good topic. you're right to raise questions about the objective quality. where the debate comes from is a historical discussion about indexicality of a photophraph, i.e. the photograph shows what the light imprinted on a paper; hence objective truth refers to the physical relation between the object that's been photographed and the image.
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