Znalezisko

Warsaw, Łazienki palace park, author no., February / March 2018 ; Fujifilm instax instant photo, image area 6x4.5 cm,

In the digital age, when photos exist only as collections of zero-one information stored on memory cards in smartphones, tablets and hard drives in computers, and can be seen on liquid crystal screens, it is nice to find a photo on the street by accident in the form of a paper. You don't need electricity or batteries to see them, because a traditional photo is an image created by the world itself, through a negative or other photosensitive film, which becomes a kind of gap, creating a distance and delay between the object and the image. At this point, the intersection of two separate processes takes place, which are already happening spontaneously with the help of the incident light through the open shutter of the camera. The first belongs to the field of chemistry and it is the action of light on certain substances, while the second belongs to the field of physics and it is the formation of an image through an optical device on the negative plane. The image formed on the photosensitive membrane becomes a synthesis of these two processes. As Jean Baudrillard wrote in his last essay, the digital age destroyed the photographic image: "The end of the special presence of an object, because it can now be produced in a numerical mode. No more the unique moment of the photographic act, because the image can be immediately removed or transformed. ...) The photographic act was a moment of the simultaneous temporary disappearance of the subject and the object in an instant confrontation, because the shutter button lifted the world for a moment together with its gaze, its activation meant a syncopia, "little death", releasing the mechanical perfection and efficiency of the image - this moment, however, disappeared in process of digital and numerical processing ".

A numerical image - or perhaps calling it a synthetic image after Baudrillard - therefore it can no longer exist as a self-contained image, it needs hardware, software and electricity to exist. Its autonomy fades and it becomes a derivative of some kind of instruction, the effect of the aromatic operation of a computer program, which is responsible for the automatic process of image production itself, and then its storage on a digital medium. The problem often arises that due to a media or software error, the image becomes a useless file of digital information that means nothing. It only shows on the device screen as error. The situation is even worse in the case of the lack of electrical power in the device, because then - a bit contrary to the question contained in the title of the quoted essay - everything digital will disappear due to the lack of its availability.

A photo, a photographic image, is also simply an object in its material form and shape, with a specific texture and even a smell that can sometimes be accidentally found on the sidewalk during a winter walk.

quote from: Jean Baudrillard, Why hasn't everything gone away yet? The last essay, Warsaw 2009.

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