ed photo video: Photography in the age of the computer was held at The Photographers Gallery, London. In the exhibition and the book of the same title the authors sketched out the implications of encoding photographs as units of electronic information:1) A shift in the location of photographic production; from the chemical darkroom to the electronic darkroom of the computer2) The outputting of single photographic originals in an expanded range of ways, from hardcopy through transparencies and varying forms of print, to the TV screen.3) An unprecedented ease, sophistication and invisibility of enhancing and manipulating photographic images.4) The entry of photographic images into a global information and communications system as they become instantaneously transmissible in the form of electronic pulses passing along telephone lines and via satellite links.5) The high-speed transmission of news images which are no longer containable within territorial and political boundaries.6) The conversion of existing photographs and historical archives into digital storage banks, which can be accessed at the screens of remote computer terminals.7) The potential of the new information and image networks for greatly extending the practises of military and civil surveillance.8) The unprecedented convergence of the still photographic image with other, previously distinct, media: digital audio, video, graphics, animation and other kinds of data in new forms of interactive multi media.However as the authors stressed, probably more significant than the change in how images are produced, distributed and used, are the ideas to which the changes are giving rise and how digital imaging is challenging and changing traditional ways of seeing and thinking. It seems that our traditional belief that the camera never lies has been brought into question. It also appears important to consider who stands to lose when the truth of the photographic image stops being accep...
