Digital Cocktails: Believable Imagery-(Dis)Believing Your Eyes

The pen is mightier than the sword but in our increasingly visual culture maybe the image has become the automatic weapon, with unprecedented power for communication and with very real consequences. We swim in a visual culture and yet like fish in water we hardly think about significance of the medium that envelops us: information, news, advertising, pop culture, celebrity portraits and not to overlook our family albums now online and public at Flickr, Facebook and elsewhere. The power of the photograph lies in its obvious immediacy and its assumed reality - but how much should we trust what we see in the digital age? As the 21st Century gets under way the power to make and distribute imagery has never been greater and we need to learn new skills to distinguish fact from metaphor, public from private, art from vernacular, truth from lies...

Panelists:
Stephen Mayes Director, VII Photo, representing thirty globally recognized photojournalists

Kira Pollack Director of Photography, Time Magazine; Fmr. Senior Photo Editor, NY Times Sunday Magazine

Theresa Raffetto Theresa Raffetto Photography, Commercial Photographer; President, Advertising Photographers of America

Fred Ritchin Professor of Photography and Imaging at NYU; Author of "After Photography" (2009) "A fascinating look at the perils and possibilities of photography in the digital age"