ICA exhibit captures story behind digital photography

With the advent of today's technological era, photographers can manipulate photos to create images that never really existed. The techniques of digital photography are the subject of an exhibit entitled "Photography after Photography" at the Institute of Contemporary Art. In conjunction with the exhibit, which runs through October 26, experts gathered Saturday in the Institute of Contemporary Art's Tuttleman Auditorium for a symposium called, "Manipulated Realities: Imagery in the Digital Age." The building is located at 36th and Chestnut streets. More than 100 people attended the symposium, which featured eight speakers, including several University professors and professional photographers. They focused on a wide variety of topics, ranging from the development of digital photography to the relationships between digital photography, texts and captions. With digital photography, "the click of the mouse echoes the click of the camera," College senior Joshua Schuster said. English Professor Craig Saper added, "[Photography] is a window on the world." In one of the day's speeches, Nancy Shawcross compared digital photography to its predecessor, analog photography, in which the image is not enhanced or changed using computers. Analog photography is a "certificate of [a] past person, past time [and] past place," according to Shawcross, manuscripts curator at Van Pelt Library. Digital photography, on the other hand, allows the photographer to manipulate photographs, making them, "a certain art, but an uncertain witness," Shawcross said. Austrian photographer GYnther Selichar, meanwhile, noted that the use of photography as evidence of the past has been threatened during the digital age. Digital photographers "have the strange potential to switch seeing into believing," said Selichar, one of the photographers featured in the "Photography after Photography" exhibit. In addition to discussing the emergence of digital photography, several speakers addressed the acceptance of photography itself as an art form. Putting less emphasis on the subject of a photo and more on creating a snapshot of life, photographers can "erase identity and reveal pieces that make up the image," said Shawcross. This allows photographers to place the focus not only on the subject of their photographs, but also on the techniques used to portray the subject, she added.