The Uncertainty of the Mass Image: Logistics and Behaviours

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Cubitt, Sean. 2017. The Uncertainty of the Mass Image: Logistics and Behaviours. Digital Creativity, 28(4), pp. 265-278. ISSN 1462-6268 [Article]

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Official URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/146262...

Abstract or Description

The question of uncertainty raised in this special issue raises issues for the image as truthful, the truth that viewers can claim to find in images, and the ethical dimensions of truth. By tracing some key changes in the history of photography, this paper demonstrates that the mass production and especially mass storage and distribution of images creates a new condition for the image. This condition asserts that the purpose of the totality of the mass image as it now exists in databases is a mode of truth which alters earlier ontological, epistemological and ethical claims for certainty. Rather than propose a return to the humanistic privilege of the individual image, the paper suggests that a new politics of truth is demanded by the new condition of the mass image.

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Article

Identification Number (DOI):

https://doi.org/10.1080/14626268.2017.1378687