Abstract
Two exhibitions at the San Jose Museum of Modern Art, “Metamorphoses: Digital Photography in the Electronic Age” and “Pixel Perfect: Digital Photography in the Bay Area,” both debate whether digital photography is a kind of art based on how people interpret photography. With the advent of powerful computer software such as Adobe’s Photoshop, artists can easily manage their work regardless of whether they want to create collages, adjust the color, add additional layers of images or text, experiment with scale, or transform dreamlike ideas into surreal artworks for public display. The two shows challenge the principles of photography - to record what is seen and to remain truthful to what is shown - with the primary goal of changing the public’s perception of photography’s ‘digital’ aspect. Photo manipulation is regarded to be a revolutionary method of expressing emotion in all its sincerity. The emphasis is on the feeling that the digital image evokes, whether exhilarating, mesmerizing, touching, or overwhelming, eerie; not on the process by which they were created, in other words, the artist’s method. Finally, the border between genuine and fake, or factual and virtual, appears to be blurring with the advancement of technology, which is considered a matter of contemporary art.
Preservation Process
Archived from http://switch.sjsu.edu/archive/nextswitch/switch_engine/front/front.php%3Fartc=171.html. Documentation of the preservation processes used for this collection is available at https://github.com/NickSzydlowski/switch. Metadata for this item was created and augmented by Thong Huynh, Spring 2022, ART 104.
Recommended Citation
Ekenberg, Jan
(1998)
"Metamorphoses Digital Photography in the Electronic Age and Perfectm Digital Photography in the Bay Area,"
SWITCH: Vol. 5:
No.
1, Article 3.
Available at:
https://scholarworks.sjsu.edu/switch/vol5/iss1/3