The Aesthetics of Digital Photography in the Era of Meta-Data

Abstract

With meta-data, the collection of information is automatic. A tension if not a contradiction then appears between the action of the photographer and the collection of data related to the production of images. Of course he has an increased access to data on a larger scope of issues, but before all, he steps into a new system: this is where the disruption, the tensions and contradictions are at their peak. Whether for the without-art photographer or the one who is aiming for art to the extent that the whole field of art is changed: the technological disruption brings about an artistic disruption, and therefore an esthetical one. In the era of meta-data, an esthetics of a digital connected photography emerges though the theoretical matrix of the esthetics of photography remains the founding principles but this esthetics considerably widens its scope, dealing with new problems―related to contemporary art, technology, connectivity, the body and to the sociopolitical: crucial issues are at stake! It is a new theory both for a new screen and for a new world because a systemic revolution is underway leading to what Foucault labelled half a century ago as a new epistémé. The same goes from our being to the world and to transition from our being-here in its daily and ordinary commonplace to a being-into-the-world, to a being-nearby-the-world and therefore, to a temporal being from which the native temporality temporalize itself according to three directions or three ecstasies: native present, native past and native future. Then, a game of art and of man is possible where photography and meta-data play a crucial role, such as with Adrian Flury.