I get it, I get it...

... photography lies. Images lie. Sturken and Cartwright are being a little redundant here, although it is interesting to think of Impressionism as a way to represent reality, since it always seemed pretty abstract to me. Still, I thought it was interesting that Sturken and Cartwright brought up the idea of "historical" images, since I blogged before about the images of the Indians that seemed historical but weren't. It is still true that an image like the one I mentioned before, or an image with the signs of age (blurred edges, sepia tone, etc.) like S&C describe, is still generally viewed as "historical" and "true" by the casual viewer.

Most people have probably seen this image before and know that it's not actually a historical image of a computer from the past, but it proves that image technologies today certainly can appear to be historical representations of the truth. The caption at the bottom, the grain in the image, and the fact that it's black and white all make the image seem older than it is and credible - the caption in particular makes the photo seem like it is telling the truth. I found it highly amusing that S&C, describing the change in imaging technology and reproduction of images, didn't seem to foresee exactly how fast some of this technology was going to develop. (I think I might permanently start italicizing Internet and world wide web now just for the fun of it. And this was published in 2001? Wow, time flies.)