Systems of representation: Towards the integration of digital photography into the practice of creating visual images

Abstract

This paper aims to set the foundations for an integration of digital photography into the broader framework of visual representation. The current climate seems to be marked by a preoccupation with contrasting the digital with the analog image. An alternative cross‐cultural approach is proposed, employing “systems of representation” characterized by the wide range of strategies for communicating through the visual image that can be found in the anthropology of art. These take into account the optical principles of depiction and their cultural determinants. The paper aims to place the practice of the digital generation and manipulation of photographs at a point of convergence with a variety of other means of transcribing the three‐dimensional world onto a two‐dimensional flat surface.