#poorimage

In comparative media studies classes that I've taken in the past, we spent a lot of time discussing the phrase "the medium is the message" and what it means. In Defense of the Poor Image is the most similar reading I've done so far in this class, because it makes us focus on even the pieces of media that were not intended to be presented by the photographer, or the pieces of media that we forget about as our technology gets better and we relinquish our kilobytes of information for gigabytes and terabytes.

I also found the discussion and links between privatization and pirating of content with the poor image to be quite interesting. Of course there are very very few phenomenon you can consider in isolation, so it makes sense that the poor image must be considered along with the causes that may necessitate the poor image even when technology is improved and image quality and content is no longer bounded by technological constraints.

Hito Steyerl’s remarks on the “poor image” and how it transformed society bring up a new way of viewing an image. She brings up the point that the “poor” images are not always bad, and sometimes are done on purpose for artistic reasons. People are so quick to judge something that is not technically perfect, so much so that artists may be barred from producing future work. I believe this viewpoint is something used to be much more prevalent, but as there is less pressure to be perfect and more pressure to be unique, purposefully making an image stand-out, even if its considered “poor,” may get more noticed by the general public, even if it is frowned upon by the elite & professionals.

As the world is more open to sharing images, and more people are given access to editing software and cameras, the definition of poor image takes on a whole new meaning. We can see the perspectives of everyday people in their rawest form, which can lead to more poor images, but these imagers are rich in authentic and creative content. Because of this, I think in general, people around the world are becoming open to seeing poor images, and I think this transition is not a bad one, because it allows us to view powerful images we may have once neglected on first thought.

Discussion Questions:

The perspective taken on by Hito Steyerl in "In Defense of the Poor Image" explores the many facets that have impacted photography as a result of the modern age. She makes remarks about how true photography is vastly separated from the ‘poor image,’ and that the modern world has made true photographic works harder to come by.

This is an especially fun topic for me to talk about, as I’m someone who lived on online forms growing up. The environment of oversharing photos and watching them reduce in quality and cropping with every new distribution is one that I’m very familiar with, and I’ve certainly contributed to turning pure images into poor images throughout my lifetime. While it’s certainly a sad prospective to see a high quality, well-cared-for photo to be treated so poorly and irresponsibly, I feel that’s part of the charm of the media world. If it were a requirement for every individual to treat every photo with the utmost care to ensure it remains at the same standard of quality as when it started, why, we wouldn’t have nearly as fun a culture of sharing photos and stories. The fact that anyone, experienced or not, can hop on the internet and easily share a photo with others is invaluable; the typical qualities of the ‘poor image’ are just scars which show that even non-photographers find the photo interesting enough to pass it along. I always found it funny when I would see videos which had intentionally been reduced in quality and re-recorded hundreds of times to simulate the poorest image possible, it’s both humorous and a good reminder to at least take some care of a photo when you pass it along.

Questions:

1. Do you think the ‘poor image’ is damaging to the integrity that comes with photography? Or is it a positive result of the natural progression of the medium into the modern world?

Reading "In Defense of the Poor Image" made me think specifically of the proliferation of memes and I wondered whether Hito Steyerl knew of memes when she wrote this essay. I looked at the history of memes and realized that YouTube began in 2005, which is when video memes became popular, but truthfully, memes seem to have almost always existed as long as the written word has existed. In other words, the ideas of the "poor image" have been prolific, as Steyerl seems to imply in her work.

Another interesting point I noticed was that although the title of the piece seemed to imply that there would be a "defense of the poor image," Steyerl never seems to fully defend it. Her slightly disdainful diction throughout the essay, which derides the "poor image," instead argues that these beautiful, perfect, original images are not necessarily accessible to the general public and that the "poor image" creates an almost socialistic aspect to media, allowing more people to participate. This idea also draws parallels to both Sontag's and Flusser's writings on how photography "equalizes," but Steyerl takes it one step further with her discussion of how the reformatting of the image has become an equalizer. Thus, instead of fully defending the poor image, Steyerl argues that we should accept that it has some good qualities and is a part of the reality we (or photographic/media snobs) must face. Without it, there also would not be any rise of the independent movie makers or low-budget films.

As the author notes, there is a certain following or hype around resolution and image quality that has been developed with the digital age. However, though the author doesn’t elaborate on larger trends which this pattern falls into, it is likely that the attractiveness of higher resolution cameras and technologies is part of the overall growth in consumerism from the casual photo taker on one’s phone to the professional with multiples cameras and lenses. Thus, though I agree with the author’s point about the growing wants of higher image resolution and quality, it is also important to note the larger pattern of consumerism, and that photography is not necessarily unique in this sense.

It is also interesting to learn about the author’s interpretation of the importance and many uses which “poor” images serves as a medium for. Because lower quality cameras are more available, especially to those in perhaps less privileged backgrounds, the medium of poor images thus serves as the common ground for such creators; yet, despite the lower quality in terms of pixels, these poor images created by a larger group of creators then possible has greater potential for ingenuity. Thus, as the author notes, the medium of “poor” images is often conflicted. One one hand, many would desire higher quality images and media while, on the other hand, a larger group of creators are able to innovate upon through the medium of “poor images.”

Finally, the author concludes with the idea that poor images represent reality, even more so than higher quality images which may capture details better. Intuitively, this statement may seem contradictory; yet, the example of taking photos for nonstalgic purposes also supports this conclusion. Namely, with people traveling and using photos as a means of communication, the photos are not necessarily of the highest quality nor is a tremendous amount of time and effort devoted to each image. In one sense, the majority of images on takes on a trip could be referred to as “poor” images. Yet, these images capture more than just the immediate scene; it includes the experiences one encountered. Thus, though in this example, these “poor” images may capture more detail explicitly, one can note that they can instead hold memories implicitly as well.

Discussion Questions:

In your opinion, does an increase in resolution or detail invoke greater recall of a scene or memory?

In her 2009 essay “In defence of the poor image”, Hito Steyerl introduces the term poor images and thinks about how they change arts and the way the world interacts with them.

One idea I found very interesting is how she compares different types of consuming media with a flagship store and different markets. There are different ways to consume for example a movie that come with different quality of the movie but also different prices. A cinema will have a better quality than a DVD, which back in the day was better than a stream online - but this will also be notable in the price.

Steyerl criticises issues that are today even more important than in 2009. The poor image, says Steyerl, is a way to escape the systems of national culture, capitalist studios, cults of male geniuses, ... . The poor image is a way to make sure less confirmative, less mainstream pieces are still available. Will back in the day this was through copies VHS cassettes, today the internet allows this distribution to happen a lot quicker and broader. Other than watching a Hollywood movie in 4K in the cinema, the poor image is not about the incredible resolution but about the bigger ideas behind it. This is why bad copies or pirated versions aren’t as bad, the idea stay conserved.

One thing that separates poor images from rich images is that they are not a part of the artistic discourse. They don’t hold any value in the world of fine arts because they are poor copies, but they also don’t try. Intellectual content is getting increasingly privatised, warranting the poor image as a mean to keeping content accessible at a reasonable price. This comes with another core quality of the poor picture: It blurs the lines between classes of society. And not only that. The artwork is influenced by the means of reproduction, so circumstances and science becomes a part of the art of poor images. Who is the consumer, who the producer? The lines are getting increasingly blurred.

Finally, the poor image is what lead to the rise of social media. It is no longer about stopping to appreciating the quality but about getting the idea and moving on. This, together with how easy it is to create and reproduce poor pictures nowadays, contributes to the always decreasing attention spans. As Steyerl puts it:

impression rather than immersion, intensity rather than contemplation previews rather than screenings

The often-cited aura is no longer based on the original but the transience of the copy, Steyerl says. These claims hold true today even more than ever. Apps like TikTok bring reproduction, altering and reworking to its limits; nearly every piece of information we consume is an endlessly recycled iteration of something we already know. Cooperations, nations, sexism, racism, and similar things remain great issues that are being mitigated by the poor picture and the disconnection of the poor image from the classic art sphere. At the end of the day, I think the poor pictures may or may not have a positive or negative impact on the art world, but it definitely influences the real world. As Steyerl ends her essay: the poor image is reality. Time will show if the poor image will be the soil for new forms of art or the beginning of the disappearance of art into meaninglessness and temporariness.

Questions for Discussion:

How will the poor image influence the art world, and how has it influenced the art world since the essay was written. Can a TikTok video be art?

Due to the sheer amount of photos I see online everyday, on social media or various websites, I think of those mostly as normal photos, with cinema or professional pictures as good ones. Yet, in this essay, Steyerl is saying that almost everything that is easily accessible is a "poor image." This seems to come from a mindset that prioritizes and reveres "true" art and photography, which means not heavily editing or formatting or compressing, because then it would lose its value. I was surprised at this at first because I never necessarily credited pictures with value, unless it was an extremely beautiful and well-shot picture by a pro. Yet when Steyerl began introducing the metaphors of photos and media too the economy, it started to make sense. Everything expensive and of value is limited, or else it doesn't mean much in this world of capitalism. It's just like NFT's (non-fungible tokens), where only the original holds value and only that one can be traded and sold.

I will say, however, that I do not fully agree with Steyerl on his stances. I believe that these images, although sometimes in worse quality than the original, have the potential to hold just as much, if not more, value in other ways. An edit or reformatting of a photo can enhance the pixel quality or resolution, but it can also add personal value. If someone were to sell a baseball fanatic a picture of Jackie Robinson and Babe Ruth that was edited from just a picture of the one of them, the new "poor image" would probably have more value to that specific person than the original. In this case, it is all about perspective.

Discussion Questions:

1. Does a "poor image," as defined by Steyerl to be something reformatted and changed, always have to lose value?

It is really interesting to see the digital copy of something positioned as such a negative product by Hito Setyerl: "Only digital technology could produce such a dilapidated image in the first place." These poor images were low in resolution and adapted in various ways as they populate the internet, burying the original. Even though these images were able to bring back a lot of the experimental work drowned out by time through the period when resolution was prioritized ("The insistence upon analog film as the sole medium of visual importance resounded throughout discourses on cinema, almost regardless of their ideological inflection."), they were not necessarily brought back in the shape that the author envisioned it to be presented. "With the possibility to stream video online, this condition started to dramatically change...Many works of avant-garde, essayistic, and non-commercial cinema have been resurrected as poor images. Whether they like it or not." Additionally, the "privatization of intellectual content" and reduction of state sponsored public media fed into the mass circulation of these poor images, where only through these, could they get materials free of the growing charges placed everywhere.

It seems that Setyerl did not look well upon these poor images because it "ends up being perfectly integrated into an information capitalism thriving on compressed attention spans, on impression rather than immersion, on intensity rather than contemplation, on previews rather than screenings." The authenticity of the production itself has been lost in its distribution journey and rather than spurring the thought and inspiration it was first created to do, it has been reduced to a mere click and move on. She believe that these images are "no longer about the real thing -- the originary original. Instead its about its own real conditions of existence: about swarm circulation, digital dispersion, fractured and flexible temporalities. It is about defiance and appropriation just as it is about conformism and exploitation. In short: it is about reality." These poor images spoke more about how they came to be in the possession of the public, through piracy and other means, rather than the subject of the images themselves. It tell more about our society and our history which materialized in this particular means of creating poor images and how these things has amassed to be such a big part of our media.

Discussion Questions:

On the matter of resolution, these days we are able to artificially make the resolution of an image better. Does this mean that our created copy becomes less of a poor image?