Reading a photograph.

This blog entry is supposed to be about 

Geoffrey Batchen's statement “photographs are pictorial transformations of a three-dimensional world, pictures that depend for their legibility on a historically specific set of visual conventions” (2009: 210). Reading that, I mostly just get confused. To tell the truth, my brain stops paying attention by the time I reach "pictorial transformations."

The best I can determine what Batchen is getting at, especially in context of viewing a photograph versus viewing digital imagery, is that photographs bring with them the illusion of truth and fact. When you see a photo, you assume that what it shows is real; an honest capturing of the "three-dimensional world." On the other hand, digital imagery is much easier to be skeptical about. Surrealist art is the perfect example. Although we can (usually) comprehend the world and subject matter of the image, our minds automatically tell us that it has been fabricated. With photographs, we have to tell our minds when something is fabricated, such as fashion photos. 

As with anything, there is a grey area. Hoaxes, for example, as is demonstrated by the debates and controversies over such photos as the Sasquatch or Loch Ness Monster. Things like these are the reason that photographs can't always be trusted to depict reality. At the same time, it's possible that they do, and the only people who will really know the truth are the ones who took or made the picture.