Just Looking ...

I read an article discussing how photography experts are developing new detection technology to determine whether a picture (say, on the internet) is truly authentic or just a fake. I’m sure that many of you have altered a digital photograph before (i.e. red eye reduction). However, this article talks about augmenting and “creating” pictures to the point where even photography experts cannot tell the difference between a real or fake picture. As Lance Corporal Ted Boudreaux (a U.S.A. Marine) found out during the summer of 2003 in Iraq, being able to make this distinction is important. Boudreaux wrote “Welcome Marines” on a sign, and took a digital picture with a boy holding that sign (both were smiling). Somehow, bloggers (the irony!) got a hold of this digital photograph, and skilfully changed the writing on the sign to say “Lcpl Boudreaux saved my dad and he rescued my sister!” and even “Lcpl Boudreaux killed my dad and he knocked up my sister!” Companies are now working on technology (i.e. digital watermarks) to prevent the creation of other phoney pictures (which consequently can cause major lawsuits).

We have already touched upon technology and its importance in class (McLuhan: “by continuously embracing technologies, we related ourselves to them as servomechanisms. That is why we must, to use them at all, serve these objects, these extensions of ourselves, as gods or minor religions”). In this scenario, there is a strong interplay between technology and image: the picture of a soldier with a boy is very powerful and influential; however, technology has enabled one to change the text on the picture, which also changed the meaning of it. So what happened to the meaning and desire of the picture when the text was changed??? What is the new desire of the picture? Initially, the picture may have possibly communicated a sense of peace or harmony between the two countries and/or between the Marine and the boy. The picture may have “wanted” or “desired” the viewer to feel this emotion. Changing the text (to the more negative comment above) probably made the picture want the viewer to feel as sense of hostility and disgust towards the Marine presence in Iraq. So we know the desire of the picture must have changed… how do YOU think it changed?