Vision – Alienation – Fabrication
Photography determines our perception to a great degree. It is often maintained that photography claims to be an authentic depiction of what is happening. At the same time the possibilities open to digital manipulation make us aware that photographs are often retouched, worked over or entirely generated in the computer.
Pictures with artificially altered motifs have been submitted to the German Youth Photo Prize from the beginning. Computer-processed photographs are first found in the 1990s. Digital (post-)processing and analogue alienation of the pictures offer young people the opportunity to experiment.
The use of computer-aided image-processing programmes as well as digital cameras allows the photographer to make new statements that go beyond the familiar. By taking and then processing the photograph, photographers can come closer to the original idea they had in mind when they first thought of the motif. Imaginary images materialize on the computer monitor that let the young photographer act as a media designer.
The digital worlds thus generated play in particular with the perception of the medium of photography. While the photo is often seen as a reproduction of reality, these pictures caricature the claim of photography to a realistic depiction of the motif. At the same time, by merging real and fictional worlds they create a new reality that only on second (or third) look reveals itself as constructed.
