This one might seem obvious, the tedious juxtaposition between analog and digital. What better way to demonstrate it than with books. Each have their pros and cons.
Old school ink on paper is tactile, tangible, and over time can take on a unique personality complete with brown faded pages, smells, dog ears, and, if your lucky, the occasional author’s autograph. It doesn’t need batteries. You can pick up a paper book and open it to any random page and start reading for the hell of it. On the other hand, paper and ink doesn’t provide its own source of light and if you like reading lots of them, their physical size can make storage of large quantities a pain.
Storage isn’t a problem for e-books. You can practically store thousands in one device that’ll fit in your pocket. You don’t necessarily need a reading light. Not only can you bookmark pages and highlight phrases, but if you’ve gotten yourself into a vocab-heavy tome there’s even a function that’ll allow you look up word definitions. Still, there’s that ever annoying stress that comes when your deep into a story and the “Low Battery” warning cuts your concentration. And, don’t get me started on the scrolling, beeping interruptions from other nosey app notifications.
Like I said though, what you see here is the obvious juxtaposition that we tend to notice pretty quickly. There’s another example that might not seem so obvious.
You might notice the warm tone and slight vignette darkening the edges of the image. What would be considered flaws of the limitations of film and print processing from a bygone era are no longer considered defects, but an effort of salt and pepper seasoning with nostalgia to make the image “more realistic.” Forget the fact that the image was shot with a digital camera incorporated with technology that has all but done away with these “problems” of long ago. Still, digital photography offers endless reminiscent possibilities without all the analog mess. Does that kill the motivation for ever wanting to use film again? Granted there are loads of advantages to using digital over film, but as film’s relevancy has been laid to waste by digital in terms of convenience, film more than makes up for in terms of the effect the physical process has on the creative one if you’re willing to take on the challenge.
There’s still one more example of juxtaposition here. It’s hard to tell just by looking (unless you’re an avid encyclopedic reader with the memory of an elephant), but there’s more here than just smart phone vs paper or silver halide vs binary code. The paper book is a copy of George Orwell’s “Animal Farm,” and the e-book is opened to “Material Proof of the Failure of Everything,” a short story by Heidi Julavits published in McSweeny’s Issue 32. Orwell’s piece was scrawled on paper and hammered out on a typewriter almost seventy years ago, and while I can’t say for certain, I’m willing to wager that some form of digital medium was used by Heidi Julavits to put together her piece within the last several years. Which one is better? Orwell’s is a classic. Julavits’s isn’t yet, but it might be.
Comparing these things might seem logical at first and ludicrous over time and with plenty of thought. Juxtaposition can be troublesome, divisive, and confusing depending on how deep you want to go or how shallow-minded an individual’s judgment can be, but it also can serve as a prompting to keep one’s mind open to as many possibilities as one can imagine.
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Other notable takes on the theme
Filed under: Photo Challenges Tagged: 2812 photography, color, Digital vs Analog, George Orwell, Heidi Julavits, Juxtaposition, Nikon D800, Pete Rosos, photography, postaday, The Daily Post, Weekly Photo Challenge, Wordpress
