The two trends that develop in response to anything new are, on one side, demonization and, on the other, deification. Naturally, both are incorrect.
Digital technology, with its truly rapid spread and its application in the field of art, should not be treated either as the messiah that has come to steer art in the right direction, nor as the barbaric conqueror intent on overturning or demolishing thousands of years of art history, including one hundred and sixty years of photography. It is merely another tool, but like any tool, it harbors both charms and traps and should be approached as such.
The digital revolution is the result of a path of geometric acceleration towards mastering technical mysteries, but simultaneously, it is the natural product of a society that thrives on consumption, convenience, and excess. People living in this society, bombarded with information and offers, are constantly forced to choose between better and worse, necessary and superfluous, what concerns themselves and what concerns others.
From the dawn of time to the threshold of the electronic and digital era, the creative life of an artist was a challenging journey among a series of choices. However, these choices were more about the essence and direction of their creation than the means and technical capabilities at their disposal, which were usually given and unchanged for many years. The certainty of established technology had many beneficial effects on artistic work because it reassured the artist and directed them towards more expressive contemplations. Secondly, because the creator mastered the technical means, which they had learned and applied over years, they were neither preoccupied nor hindered by them as obstacles. Thirdly, when they decided to bypass or enrich the established technology, it was a significant event that almost constituted a new content of their art. Today, both the artist and every user of digital technology face not difficulties but countless conveniences. Digital technology not only comes to solve problems that the artist has posed but also offers solutions to nonexistent problems or problems that had not preoccupied the artist. Thus, the temptation is great to start from the technical possibilities offered and try to lead through them to artistic choices. And this is a major mistake, because then the tree of technology hides the forest of creation.
Photography has another "entanglement" with technology and technique. Although it is a product of technology, its application uses easy and limited technique. This fact has given us photographers who tried to enlarge the technical needs and dimensions of photography because they naively thought it would also enlarge its significance. But today, it also gives us the exact opposite, namely photographers who, with the superficial ease of conceptual postmodernism, embrace automation and the randomness of digital ease to grant anti-technical merits to photography.
The absence of difficult technique in photography, that is, a technique that requires continuous practice, is on the one hand its weapon because it makes it accessible to a wider audience and applicable under simple conditions. On the other hand, it does not encourage the artist to a more demanding and continuous application. This realization should not lead the photographer to attempt to deny the realization itself, but should guide them towards its peculiarity, namely the exercise required by the eye and the mind, which are the preeminent technical tools of photography. If digital technology offers more than we need, that is one more reason for the photographer to be more selective. And to use this oversupply as a tool for thought. Thus, ease becomes difficulty. And it is well known that the more difficult the problem, the more appealing its solution. For example, if one is thrilled by the idea that in digital technology, the color image is the mandatory starting point, and that the photographer can at any moment convert color to black and white and vice versa, then they have taken a step in the wrong direction. Conversely, if this ease leads to even more thought, contemplation, and choice about when and why to choose color or black and white, then the ease from a passive (and negative) oversimplification becomes the starting point for fruitful (and positive) thought.
However, digital technology also has another benefit for artistic photography, at least from the perspective of some observers. It acts as a brake or a challenge to the generalized tendency to consider the photographic image primarily as an object, and often unique, which ensures affinity with painting and high values. Now, the image can be stored on a disk, displayed on a screen, floating on the internet, or reproduced with absolute similarity in countless copies. And fortunately, this fact creates additional opportunities for thoughts concerning the medium's identity and the artist's choices.
Plato Rivellis