THE ONTOLOGY OF DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHS AND IMAGES

Abstract

This article attempts to understand the fate of conventional notions of photographic indexicality and referentiality in the digital era where digital images have replaced analog images almost completely. Following a critical overview of relevant literature on digital photography, the author makes a conceptual distinction between referentiality and indexicality with respect to their implications for the notion of photographic realism. With a particular focus on the concept of indexicality, defined herein as an element that radically determines the definition of photography, the author argues that the image becomes a “thing” in digital images in the absence of indexicality by using Jean-Paul Sartre’s notion of “illusion of immanence”, a claim that would strongly challenge the view that digital images can still be regarded as photographs that themselves presuppose a particular relationship between an image and its object