The weather forecast that helped me determine how I'd dress today was created by meteorologists examining sequences of still photographs. The security cameras in my office, my bank, and various public buildings around me, are snapping my picture in a stream of still frames. My wallet contains pictures of my kids, and a photo I.D. that allows the state and national governments to keep tabs on me. My computer screen-saver consists of a virtual slide show of pictures of my family. The bottom line is, that our culture's addicted to pictures.
Pictures are direct, visceral, sensory, and immediate.
They just get people's juices going. They're visual Viagra. Cab drivers, and receptionists, and commentators were yapping about the digital manipulation of photographs. It's a topic you'd think would be suitable for J-school classes, not the masses. But photographic subjects seem to strike a nerve now.