A common interpretation of both contemporary photography is that photography is in a transition period (eg.,drones, smartphones, webcam, Google Street View) and the significance of the emergence of digital technology in photography in the early 21st century is that it is best characterised as the post-photographic . The term post-photographic is too limited to make sense of 'photography in transition' as its central concern of the post photographic is primarily about the peril of manipulated appearances, even though manipulation has always been a common practice of the modern uses of photography.
The post-photographic interpretation holds that the analogue photographic image offered the promise of objective representation. It is then argued that this is the main reason why, for the better part of the last two centuries, analogue photography has been our most adequate instrument for documenting the world, its objects and ourselves. Photography's authority lay in its matter-of-factness; i.e., in the apparently privileged relationship between analogue photographs and the world.: ie., a photograph is the causal product of a
mechanical photo-chemical process, Photographic theory found in the notion of indexicality a way to preserve and defend the documental value of photographs.
However, the technological developments of the last two decades made possible the transformation of analogue photography into digital information whose images are not bound by physical constraints other than the capacity of a hard drive. Digital photographic images cannot be described as indexical sign, and given that the plausibility of photography as a document has always rested on its unique indexical relation to the world, its supplantation by images lacking this characteristic hinders photography's traditional authority.
Digital images lack physical embodiment, for they are numerical abstractions whose relation to the world can always be contested. Unlike their analogue counterparts, digital photographs are not seen as signs of reality, but as signs of signs.Thus digital images in general to have no origin in concrete reality. Because they can be summoned out of data and algorithms would allow fake digital images to be presented as real photographs. Being incapable of distinguishing real from fake photographs leads to being incapable of separating truth from false-hood. Therefore documentary photography is thrown into darkness.
That is the post-photographic interpretation of the technological transformation of photography. It has a lot going for it: the ontology of photography has changed with the algorithms of digital technology; digital images are not signs of reality; it is also difficult to distinguish real from the deep fake images with the AI image generators that can spread false information easily.
But why reduce photography to analogue photography, rather than say photography has been different throughout its history? The different technologies have meant that photography has transformed itself since it emerged in the 19th century. The problem with the post photographic is that it fails to account for the significance of the ontology of digital photography.
Digital photographs are digital objects whose data structure is shaped by software to visualize information as network images. Digital imaging are social constructs that imitate the cultural codes and conventions of film and photography. Digital imaging represents a postmodern nostalgia for the representation of the referent of the analogue photographic mode.