"What the modern means of reproduction have done is to destroy the authority of art and to remove it — or, rather, to remove its images which they reproduce — from any preserve. For the first time ever, images of art have become ephemeral, ubiquitous, insubstantial, available, valueless, free. They surround us in the same way as a language surrounds us. They have entered the mainstream of life over which they no longer, in themselves, have power. Yet very few people are aware of what has happened because the means of reproduction are used nearly all the time to promote the illusion that nothing has changed except that the masses, thanks to reproductions, can now begin to appreciate art as the cultured minority once did. Understandably, the masses remain uninterested and skeptical."
John Berger in Ways of Seeing, written in 1972
My goodness, what does Berger think now? Not only do we have more reproductions than ever — an abundance of reproductions, thanks to sites like FFFFOUND! — but the images themselves are more insubstantial than ever, since they no longer exist in any physical sense at all.
The ease of sharing digital camera images means that anyone’s life can now be broadcast to one’s closest friends via Facebook or Flickr. And anyone can create a MySpace account that can be customized to one’s heart’s desire, complete with glitter images and cute cat pictures. Berger’s postmodern language of images has arrived — and it’s called the Internet. People are skeptical no longer.
