photographies

ISSN: 1754-0763 (Print) 1754-0771 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpho20

PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE DIGITAL

Winfried Gerling

To cite this article: Winfried Gerling (2018) PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE DIGITAL, photographies,
11:2-3, 149-167, DOI: 10.1080/17540763.2018.1445013

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17540763.2018.1445013

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Winfried Gerling

PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE DIGITAL

Screenshot and in-game photography

Photography in the digitally created or digitized reality is an everyday activity that is

rarely discussed in the context of photographic debates. This refers to practices such as in-
game photography or, simpler yet, the screenshot. The paper focuses on their history, the
specific status and materiality of these images of screens. Their (hi)story begins with screen
image photography of measured data on cathode ray tubes and the photographic capture
of x-ray screens. Screenshots and in-game photography can be seen throughout this context
but they are cameraless and can therefore be understood and discussed within a long
history of experimental photographic practices. Should we speak here at all of photo-
graphy? If so, what is their photographic specificity? Which image of reality do they
provide us?

Photography using digital cameras is the dominant photographic practice in the

physical world. Photography in the digitally created or digitalized reality is an every-
day activity that, however, rarely receives attention in photographic debates. Included
here are practices such as in-game photography and photorealistic renderings of 3D
models, as in architecture or design, or, even more simply, a photograph of a screen
(screenshot). There are also mixed forms such as the photography in augmented
realities that has recently become especially popular with Pokemon Go, the capturing of
a monitor by a “real” camera in front of the monitor for scientific and artistic purposes,
or the creation of screenshots of displayed images on a computer.1 Finally, of course,
in the history of “real-world photography,” there are also a whole range of photo-
graphs which capture television or computer screens, show billboards as photography
of a screen in reality, or even display other photographs held in the hand.2
The screen has long been a theme and object of photography, despite not
necessarily being a site of the production of photographs. If taking a photograph of
or with a screen is actually photography, does it represent a meaningful expansion
of the photographic dispositif or is there simply a temporary similarity to the way
that the image appears? Does this photography present us with something pre-
viously unknown?
In his last book, Emanations: The Art of the Cameraless Photograph,3 Geoffrey Batchen
describes cameraless photography as a purely analog medium and, at the end of his
remarks, positions it in direct opposition to digital image production. However, I
contend that the screenshot and cameraless photograph are very similar, and my
argument to that affect actually accords quite closely to that of Batchen. The screen-
shot admittedly does not have the immediate tactile quality that Batchen correctly

photographies, 2018
Vol. 11, Nos. 2–3, 149–167, https://doi.org/10.1080/17540763.2018.1445013
© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
150 PHOTOGRAPHIES

describes as the other of the digital.4 Nonetheless, it otherwise accords well with how
Batchen describes cameraless photography:

throughout photography’s history the cameraless photograph has always been a

subversive element, an auto-critique of everything that photography is supposed
to represent. For, in rejecting the camera, such photographs also reject
humanist perspective, rationalised space, three-dimensional illusion, documen-
tary truth, temporal fixity. They bring the margin into the centre to confuse
precisely that familiar, comforting distinction, and with it a lot of other
distinctions, too.5

Elsewhere, he writes: “and its edge becomes an arbitrary cut within a field of
potentially infinite elements rather than a rational frame surrounding a discrete object.
It’s a picture, in other words, that breaks with all received conventions of picture
making.”6
A screenshot is precisely this: like the photogram, it is a reproduction on a 1:1
scale. It has no perspective, makes no use of any three-dimensional illusion. It follows
no human view even if it is made specifically for it. The framing is often “an arbitrary
cut within a field of potentially infinite elements.” The screenshot and the photogram,
different from the optical photograph, do not appear as selections of potentially infinite
elements. Instead, they show an image of elements oriented toward the cut in a
specific way, even if the selected cut may be arbitrary.

The screen image

There is a German word that describes the topic most broadly and marks a techno-
logical and historical starting point for the question of screen-image photography (and
screenshots): the word is Schirmbild, which means “screen image.”
The term Schirmbildfotografie (screen-image photography) was first used for photo-
graphs of an illuminated screen — the capturing of a screen “externally” using a
camera and not “internally” (screenshot), which is identical with storing. This distinc-
tion gets right to the essence of the screen image’s complex history: the photographic
practice is a reflection, on the one hand, of the need to safeguard and reproduce what
is shown in a screen image or on a monitor and, on the other, of a longer tradition of
cameraless photography. Aside from its own complex photographic origins, the history
screen image also touches on the development of the computer’s representational
forms. These both relate to the logic of the digital as well as to the development of
computer interfaces and their manifestations (windows and tiles).
The need for screen (image) photography has existed since the beginning of
projection of illuminated images onto screens. In principle, it is the reason for the
invention of photography: the retention of the image on the matt screen of the
portable camera obscura was one of the more important drivers of its development.
Screen-image photography is the photo-technological capturing of illuminated screens
(screen images)7 using a photographic apparatus. It was first developed for mass
screenings of x-rays in the mid-1930s.
 PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE DIGITAL 151

A Brazilian doctor, Manuel de Abreu,8 used an x-ray machine with an illuminated

screen for his examinations. With equipment running, the moving image of the inner
workings of patients appeared on the screen. It was too expensive to capture the image
on an image-sized x-ray film for mass screenings of x-rays of thousands of patients.
Instead, he found a way to photograph the screen image with a small-format camera.9
Images captured in this way cost less than a hundredth of the screen-sized x-ray film;
this cost-saving innovation represented significant progress for the health system.
Siemens further developed the technique in Brazil, and by the end of 1936 Abreu
had established its use in a Rio de Janeiro public health department office, “Centro de
Saúde no. 3.”10 Soon, further cameras followed in other Brazilian cities. From this
point on, the process became known as Schirmbildfotografie (screen-image photogra-
phy); Siemens soon established its use in Germany under the National Socialists and
later around the world.11
Screen-image photography was further developed for various representational
processes in the sciences, such as for recording the images of the cathode ray tube
(CRT) of an oscilloscope12 or of principally corresponding functioning computer
monitors. At this point, some camera types and devices were (further) developed
(see Figure 1).
These representations and projections onto various screens are already images
before their capture: two-dimensional and limited by a frame. An important char-
acteristic of these screens is their translucent surfaces — they are neither completely
opaque nor transparent.13 The momentary status of a visual output should be recorded
as singular and spontaneous, and, as far as possible, should not be further processed. In
this way, the image of a temporary reality or an event can be permanently recorded
and preserved, in order to archive it and disseminate it.
To put it another way, the parameters of use are always the same: the
instantaneous and affordable recording of a fleeting image or representation of
data and measurements.14 It should be noted that these images are often recorded
on polaroid,15 surely because they are better understood as copies and not so much
as photographs. Making a (photo-)copy is an act more akin to backing up,
archiving or witnessing than a selection or composition. The image is determined
by what is currently displayed on the monitor, which is not an intentional selection
for the produced image. Also, the first attempts at producing photographs were
conceived as copies: Niepce’s first heliographs are direct contact copies of print
graphics and texts (see Figure 2).
As Seth Giddings stated: “There was no pinhole or lens in this precursor to the
photogram, subject and copy and sticky media pressed together and bathed in light.
This heliograph – sun drawing – to use Niépce’s own term – was always already a
copy of a copy, a replication of an earlier printed artefact. […] Friedrich Kittler notes
that these early developments of heliography by Niépce were driven by a desire to
innovate in lithographic printing, and to automate image-making rather than any
prefiguration of lens-based photography. […] This was not the distanced and painterly
technics and aesthetics of Daguerre and Talbot’s light-filled rooms, streets and land-
scapes, but image-making through contact and proximity.”16 Talbot continued this
experimentation with copies, as we can see for example in plate 09 of The Pencil of
Nature.17 Michel Frizot even puts the images of the Camera Obscura in the context of
152 PHOTOGRAPHIES

Fig. 1 Polaroid CU-5 advertisement, ca. 1970. http://www.laboiteverte.fr/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/vintage-

screenshot-capture-ecran-ancien-07.jpg

copies, he calls them: “Kopie von Ansichten in der Camera Obscura” (copy of views in
the Camera Obscura).18 Thus, the polaroid material assumes an extraordinary role in
the documentation of interfaces. The monitor image is just as fleeting as the image of
reality outside the computer.19 In contrast to the early photographic experiments of
Talbot and Niepce, the goal of screen photographs was not initially reproducibility, but
 PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE DIGITAL 153

Fig. 2 Le Cardinal d’Amboise, 1826, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce. http://en.museeniepce.com/var/ezflow_site/sto

rage/images/collections/enjeux-de-la-photographie/nicephore-niepce/nicephore-niepce-bloc-image-4/9752-1-fre-
FR/Nicephore-Niepce-bloc-image-4.jpg

rather preservation and archiving as a replacement for hard copies that could not exist
in many situations due to technical considerations.

The screenshot

By the beginning of the 1960s, photographs of computer monitors were already being
produced in order to make the work on the first interactive CAD computers visible to
a larger audience than the scientists working directly with these computers. They were
primarily produced for other computer scientists and developers to show at confer-
ences. At that time, the very few computers in existence were large and expensive, so
a method had to be found to make this type of production visible and communicable.
In the time since then, the recording of these image types has become conventiona-
lized. The existence of screenshots is especially meaningful for the history of the
development of interfaces, as they often make up the sole evidence of these
154 PHOTOGRAPHIES

Fig. 3 Polaroids of the interface development of Lisa at Apple (ca. 1979), by Bill Atkinson. With permission of Bill
Atkinson.

developmental stages.20 Many early computer systems, such as the Xerox Star, are no
longer operable. The often very few screen images have to function as canonical
witnesses to the development of these computers and interfaces. For example, the
collection of polaroids Bill Atkinson took starting in 1979 of the development of the
GUI21 of Apple’s Lisa without any special photographic equipment constitute the only
opportunity today to approach this development historically.22 As there was no
screenshot function, these photographs are an analog archive of one of the most
influential digital developments of the twentieth century (see Figure 3).
Matthew Allen describes this conventionalized form of screen photography at the
beginning of the 1960s as the origin of the screenshot,23 even though it was still created
in analog, with a camera in front of the screen, and the name only came into use in 1983.
Because the first interactive CAD computers were only accessible for a small circle of
scientists, it was of great importance to know where each picture came from: “The sense
of it being ‘from the screen’ was the most important content of the image.”24
So the new technology, the interactive screen, was also communicated as a new
ideology.
The invention of the Graphical User Interface (GUI) at Xerox PARC (Palo Alto
Research Center) in 1984 in the Apple Macintosh and a year later in Microsoft
Windows established worldwide the idea of “overlapping windows.”25 As a result, it
became apparently necessary for users to record the constellations of what was on the
screen in a standardized manner as a screenshot — an image of the interface unable to
be optically differentiated from its appearance.
The digital screenshot function thus came into being through the development of
the personal computer in various operating systems in the mid-1980s. With Apple, for
example, the possibility of taking a screenshot coincided with the 1984 release of the
Macintosh; a specific key command (cmd, shift, 3) saved the image in MacPaint format
on an inserted disc. On IBM keyboards, print screen was introduced at the beginning
of the 1980s, allowing the printing of a direct, physical copy of the screen, indepen-
dent of the software running. On Windows and other operating systems, the function
of the keys has since been modified so that now an image is copied to the clipboard or
saved as a file on the hard disk.26 As the Oxford English Dictionary traces the first
 PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE DIGITAL 155

Fig. 4 Screenshot of the Apple Macintosh interface 1984. https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/50/Apple_

Macintosh_Desktop.png

mention of the word to 1983, it can be assumed that it appeared in conjunction with
the function’s development in the computer (see Figure 4).
What happens concretely on the computer varies widely depending on the plat-
form. In simplified and general terms, the digital screenshot is triggered by a command
from the operating system. Using the video RAM, the screenshot is written as a copy
in the main memory or immediately onto a data storage device as a file (format) with
corresponding metadata. Thus, importantly, the screenshot is not rendered on its own.
Instead, it is a copy of the image currently appearing on the computer; this fact also
produces a specific form of (sometimes even juridical) proof. In isolated cases,
screenshots have been accepted, like photographs, as evidence in legal proceedings.27
Digital screenshots are pixel-precise positive copies (raster graphics) of the con-
stellation of program windows located on a given screen at the moment of capture, or
an actively selected part of thereof.28 Their borders are determined intentionally, and
the cursor is usually omitted.29 As a rule, they are rectangular (orthogonal) and
contain no characteristics of a central perspective. They are images of stratifications
of windows (applications)30 — of the realities of the computer — but they also enable
insights into the intimate, private life of the users. They present an image of the
interface in use with informative content on the most distinct levels — “an image of a
great density of circumstantial detail.”31
During the 2016 election campaign, American congressional candidate Mike Webb
posted a screenshot of an open Yahoo webpage on his Facebook account. In the
screenshot, in other open tabs (registry cards), pornographic content was clearly
156 PHOTOGRAPHIES

visible, likely unknown to Webb.32 The “density of circumstantial detail” was clearly
too great and caused a small scandal. In this case, the screenshot was unintentional
evidence of the interpenetration of the private and professional spheres.
First and foremost, the screenshot is documentation and serves to communicate
and archive images of a computer’s use.

Computer game photography

Recordings of computer game realities are another example of the use and expansion of
the screenshot function. The story of photographic recording of computer games
begins at the very least with the possibility of recording played games using a virtual
camera, so as to look at them again. These images were first developed by players as a
modification of the game Doom,33 in order to comprehend gameplay from a player’s
perspective and to be able to distribute the images for training purposes. From these
possibilities, the so-called machinima culture later developed, which records choreo-
graphed scenes as film-like projects using the game engine. Recordings from the game
are further processed and cut as game scenes or game films, then shared with others.34
The industry has accepted this functionality as an expansion of the game concept; as a
result, creators now provide a choice of camera positions and various optics for
recording the game. With a virtual camera, players can photograph or record film,
and they are not necessarily restricted to the reproduction of the gamer’s perspective.
The possibility of creating a screenshot of a specific state in the game has theoretically
existed since the introduction of this function in the operating system. And yet these
types of screenshots always contain the interface of the particular game and are thus
documents of a game culture and belong to a specific cultural scene. At least in its
common variety, computer game photography is marked by its manifestation of a
central perspective, the image of a virtual camera.
A different logic governs the capturing of images in a computer game than does
screenshots: the former is marked, in the broadest sense, by photorealism,35 the
declared goal of virtual realities as far back as the flight simulator.36 Even when the
rendering, character design, or set design are removed from the reality of an everyday
world, a central perspective paradigm governs the representations. In turn, a photo-
realism that aims to create images indistinguishable from photographs governs many
games, 3D simulations, and digital film. This realism even includes certain photo-
graphically simulated effects such as lens flares, distortions, and blurred movements,
among others.37 As Cindy Poremba said in one of the first pieces on in-game
photography from 2007: “When games integrate photographic ‘flaws,’ such as lens
flare and lens distortion, we have become so naturalized to viewing through the lens
that, rather than detracting from the experience, this enhances a sense of realism.”38 It
is noteworthy that photorealism is simulated as analog photorealism in games. Analog
“errors,” algorithmically removed as unwanted in digital “real-world photography,” are
intentionally generated here (see Figure 5). By now, analog photography has come to
be accepted in games as naturalized; it is intended to show photographic authenticity.
“Error-free” digital photography seems too artificial in this context.
 PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE DIGITAL 157

Fig. 5 In game photography from Mirrors Edge Catalyst, by Joshua Taylor. With permission of Joshua Taylor.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/joshtaylorcreative/37533799946/in/album-72157687088352840/

The generation of the game scene is subject to a photographic paradigm, because

many games are played from a first-person perspective and the image to be played
appears as the image of a virtual camera of this perspective. The wide-angle ego
shooter perspective is thus not unlike that of an action cam.39
The practices of the screenshot and photography in computer games must be
differentiated by use and function. If the screenshot is more the spontaneous capture
or documentation of a temporary status of the computer for various goals such as
retaining the settings in a program, a glitch (disturbance), or a constellation on a website,
then photography in the computer is more a photographic activity. Its goal is to retain a
specific theme: a situation or a scene.40 The screenshot of a moment in a video chat
seems best suited for a direct comparison with photography, because, in effect, real video
of a remote conversational partner appears on the computer, with the goal of recording a
physical reality and not a digital one. Screenshots and photography from computer games
retain a digitale Wirklichkeit (digital reality) not a virtuelle Realität (virtual reality), as
Markus Rautzenberg suggests.41 This distinction becomes especially clear when a
computer user tries to operate within the screenshot as if in an interface, because the
two are easily confused. If the screen is filled with the screenshot of the previous status of
the screen, the difference only becomes apparent when attempting to operate within the
screenshot. The screenshot is taken as reality — that has been — on the computer screen
(and pixel-precise). It is a strange confusion with reality that could never occur in
photographs. The latter were only confused with nature early on;42 otherwise the
photograph has always been understood as a representation.
Aside from a few games in which photography is part of the gameplay, in a
computer game, photography is “transformative playing”43 — i.e. an activity not
within the rules of the game. It is a creative and reflexive appropriation of the
game. Here, it seems important that photographic aesthetics are tested in the game.44
158 PHOTOGRAPHIES

Photography as an activity is transferred into virtual worlds. Open-world games like

Grand Theft Auto as well as first- and third-person shooters seem especially suited to this
shift. In such games, shooting (the shoot) and photography share the same
perspective;45 the point of view is identical with the point of action.46 Among the
possible motivations for this similarity are the following: can images be made that are
confused with real-world images? Can ways of seeing be developed that are distinct
from the planned game image? Is there a special aesthetic arising from game photo-
graphy? Can photographic concepts be transferred from real-world photography into
the game, and which images result therefrom?
All types of conventionalized photographic genres are tried out: landscape,
portrait, architecture, erotic/pornographic, and documentary photography, among
others. Photographers always seek out remote, dilapidated, and destroyed places in
the game and the aesthetics of ruins.47 Furthermore, they select specific themes in a
way that may be called conceptual or documentary, for example in the photos of
“Native Gangs of Los Santos.”48
Under certain circumstances, players have to adapt to the life rhythms of the game’s
time. For example, when required to photograph sunrises in Grand Theft Auto, it is only
possible every 48 minutes. Unexpected effects, representational errors, and the borders
of the game are also recorded. The results are often unique genres that are more closely
oriented to the logic and economy of the digital game’s representation. It is worth
observing that the presentation of photographs, such as in albums on Instagram, Flickr,
and Tumblr blogs, is very much oriented toward the image. Unlike in other forms of
game adaptation by game-art artists49 — as so-called mods — this adaptation is not
reflexive, which changes the game in its regularity or representation.50 Players must
often intervene into the programming as well.51 To some degree, the activity of taking
photographs in a game is very similar to real-world photography, as Canadian photo-
grapher Benoit Paille suggests:

Using my DSLR, I take screenshots/photography of my wanderings in the game.

Places of interest are marked and located on the map using the game’s GPS
system. I would often return in a given virtual location, depending on the light or
time of the day, color, and weather.52

This photography is fully at the mercy of the game. The latter’s world is protected
by copyright, crafted by designers, and based on rules. The photographers move in a
world formed down to its last detail. Photographers can thus only record what others
have created. Sometimes, copyright disputes arise. The game industry, whose product
is the foundation of these practices, nonetheless seems in full agreement with the
processing of their products in this way. NVIDIA, the graphics card manufacturer,
recently developed the Ansel software53 that renders images with specific graphics
cards together with specific games. This process omits the interface of the game,
allows free movement through the game space while suspending the playing mode and
the temporal progression, and generates an image in considerably higher resolution
than the display (see Figure 6).54
Ansel is thus a special realization of the photo mode that various games (the first
was Gran Turismo 4, 2004) have introduced in the recent past. The generated images
 PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE DIGITAL 159

Fig. 6 High resolution screenshot with Ansel. https://images.nvidia.com/geforce-com/international/images/

050616-geforce-dot-com/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080/nvidia-geforce-gtx-1080-nvidia-ansel-super-resolution.png

https://www.flickr.com/photos/joshtaylorcreative/37533799946/in/album-72157687088352840/

show in an ideal manner what 360° spherical panoramas and plenoptic cameras are
only able to approximate.
This technology thus finally takes leave of the technique of the screenshot and
makes “professional” tools available for computer game photography. This technology
also addresses another problem of in-game photography — the escape from gameplay
mode. Whereas sometimes the production of a photo in a first-person shooter can cost
players their “life” for stepping out of gameplay to complete an unplanned action,
exiting gameplay becomes the rule with Ansel or similar photo modes. The game is
simply suspended for the duration of the recording. The shift that happens when a
game exchange occurs photographically is worth noting in general. Here, gameplay is
left behind in favor of the production and sharing of an image. Like in other forms of
social photography, the sharing of a moment — the sharing of an image — becomes
more important than the gameplay experience.55

Distinctions between screenshot, in-game photography, and screen

image photography

Just as there are unmistakable similarities and common prehistories of all these
practices, there are also fundamental differences in their principles. In the screenshot,
the status of a clearly two-dimensional screen graphic forms the basis of what is
recorded, identical to the representation on the screen at the moment of capture.56
Usually, what is recorded is the graphic interface’s status, including the appearance of
simultaneously varied concepts and visualities in screenshots: texts, images, software
160 PHOTOGRAPHIES

interfaces, and 3D simulations, to name just a few. With its clear two-dimensionality,
the screenshot is closer to the photogram — the cameraless photograph — than to
photography itself.57 Accordingly, these images are not created by a “virtual camera”
and thus are not produced by the optics of a lens. They are pictures of a surface and
not of an operative image, as is an interface.58 They correspond to what was “located”
on the screen, similar to what is located on paper in a photogram — shadows of a
functional context that is erased at the moment of capture. The index of the operative
image references something other than the screenshot of the same screen-image
constellation. While the symbols, icons, menus, etc. of the interface always refer to
operations available on the computer, the index of the screenshot references the use of
the computer, its culture, intimate things, etc.
The distinction between these images that look so interchangeably similar is found
in the decision to take a screenshot. The act of the screenshot is of paramount
importance: the image is removed from its procedural context. As an act, it corre-
sponds to the photographic gesture, but as an image, it is a reproduction, the backup
copy of an irretrievably lost constellation or situation on the screen. The screenshot is
possibly the only image of a thing that could be confused with it, at least for a short
time. Robbed of the operativity of the interface image, the screenshot, like a photo-
gram, is only a shadow of what it portrays.
In-game photography creates an image organized according to perspective from a
game’s spaces, and it resembles photography from the physical world with which it can
be confused under certain circumstances. The confusion here lies at the level of
simulation. It is a double simulation: if photography simulates a view of the world,59
then in-game photography is simulating a simulation. As further evidence, a large

Fig. 7 Landscape in-game photography from Battlefield 3, by Joshua Taylor. With permission of Joshua Taylor.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/joshtaylorcreative/30787827074/in/album-72157673857672824/
 PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE DIGITAL 161

number of games are now oriented toward a photographic aesthetic and they contain,
as in the “real world,” places that can be called vista points (See Figure 7).60
Other games show a clear connection to photographic models. One example is
Day of Defeat: Source (Valve Corporation 2005), a game that is clearly oriented toward
photographic models from the Second World War.61
Moreover, elements of computer games’ renderings, such as backgrounds and clouds,
are generated from “real-world photographs.” If we observe the screenshot of a computer
game, it is starkly distinct from an in-game photograph: the game interface that is always
captured remains a witness to the game’s character. In contrast, in-game photography is
usually connected to the fascination with a photographic aesthetic of the beautiful and the
spectacular that has been transferred from the physical into the digitally created world.

Fig. 8 Spectacular in-game landscape photography in the computer game Rage by Iain Andrews and Joshua Taylor
from the same game. With permission of Joshua Taylor. https://www.flickr.com/photos/joshtaylorcreative/31647866334/
in/album-72157675895013083/; https://www.flickr.com/photos/63974083@N06/6232867909/
162 PHOTOGRAPHIES

One result is that different players will produce similar images; commonalities include
lighting, clouds, and even the simulation of seemingly identical mistakes (see Figure 8).
Screen-image photography is a strange hybrid. It creates a clearly two-dimensional
image using an optical lens. Its grasp is materially restricted to the surface of the
screen. In this way, it makes the composition or materiality of the display visible,
including curvatures, dimming, scratches, finger prints, etc. Parts of the presented
image and information about it are lost and other unforeseen things may occur — e.g.
the coloration may be changed.

Screenshot, photogram, and materiality

Screenshots, as shown, can possess documentary value, and the moment of their
creation can also carry special meaning. Like a photograph they can produce a
surplus of information that was not intended by the creator. The screenshot is an
image of a digital reality, as though the photograph is a reality: an image of what
has been in front of the lens. The screenshot, however, is a 1:1 reproduction of
the image that has been on the monitor, a representation of the status of the
computer. In that relationship, the screenshot is quite close to the photogram. It
does not follow any human view.
The screenshot is an image of an image which is very closely connected to the
reality of its creator. Kevin B. Lee has described this in the context of desktop film-
documentaries as follows:

If the documentary genre is meant to capture life’s reality, then desktop recording
acknowledges that computer screens and the internet are now a primary experi-
ence of our daily lives, as well as a primary repository of information.62

The image of the screen image is a result of actions and manipulations that are different to
those of a photographer, because the actions and manipulations are determined by the
computer: the cooperation or interaction between software, hardware, and the user.
In use, as I have shown, the screenshot is very close to the use of photo-
graphy. First and foremost, it is document and evidence, which can also be said
for our scientific work: many images in media studies publications are screen-
shots. Academics regularly employ this function or use found screenshots without
reflecting the status of these images. And yet where, when, and in what
circumstances were they created? The genesis of a screenshot is rarely documen-
ted. Only in the metadata — often no longer retained — is the moment of its
creation recorded. They are anonymous images, often aesthetically “poor,”63 and
created for no other purpose than to create proof quickly, to document some-
thing. They are images that offer unexpected access to practices that expand the
photographic field and shed light on an unanticipated connection between game
studies and photographic research.
 PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE DIGITAL 163

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes
1 See e.g. Doug Rickard’s “A New American Picture” (2011) and Viktoria
Binschtok’s “World of Pairs” (2012). Both projects work with images from
Google Street View.
2 See e.g. the work of Stephen Shore, Lars Tunbjörk, William Eggleston, Timm
Rautert, and, recently, Wolfgang Tillmans. These images bring up yet another
theme, the picture in picture or Mise en Abyme, which cannot be discussed further
here.
3 See Batchen, Emanations.
4 Ibid., 47.
5 Ibid., 47.
6 Ibid., 9.
7 According to this definition, screen image also refers to the projections on the
screen of a large-format camera, background projections, etc.
8 Manuel Dias de Abreu (January 4, 1894–January 30, 1962). At that time, the
technique was called Abreugraphie. See “Chest photofluorography.” Wikipedia,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chest_photofluorography
9 Results were examined with a magnifying glass.
10 In the middle of the 1930s, Robert Janker also worked on the development of
screen image photography in Bonn. He started using the process in the mid-1920s,
at first for the production of educational films on x-ray, that showed the sequence
of movements in the body. See Braun and Michels, “Die Tuberkulose auf dem
Schirm.”
11 It would be instructive to consider the dispositif of x-ray photography as a necessary
transparent representation. The medium’s transparency plays a decisive role.
12 See Schwab, Hochspannungsmesstechnik, 8.
13 The transparency of a monitor is a curious thing, because it is actually opaque. The
alleged inspection of the data — the representations of the interface — cannot be
compared with the transparency of the matt screen of a camera or of an x-ray
screen. Here, nothing is seen through; there is only representation.
14 Other systems of recording should be mentioned here — especially those devel-
oped by Fairchild, Steinheil, Kodak, Tektronix, and Polaroid — for creating instant
images, slides, videos, and prints from illuminated screens in analog processes.
15 For this use, polaroid even developed a film, spectra, whose image size of 9.2×7.3
better corresponds to the 4×3 aspect ratio of CRT screens.
16 Giddings, “Drawing without Light,” 50–51.
17 See Talbot, The Pencil of Nature.
18 Frizot, Neue Geschichte der Fotografie, 21.
19 Depending on the technology, the refresh rate is somewhere between 50 and 1000
hz.
20 Consider the relevant works of Margarete Pratschke, especially Windows als Tableau.
164 PHOTOGRAPHIES

21 Graphical User Interface.

22 Hertzfeld, Revolution in the Valley, 89–97.
23 Allen, “Representing Computer-Aided Design.”
24 Ibid., 656. Steve Shapin describes the involvement of third-parties as “technology of
virtual witnessing” (Shapin, “Pump and Circumstance”).
25 See Pratschke, “Die Architektur digitaler Bildlichkeit.”
26 For a considerable time, it has also been possible to save actively selected areas of a
screen’s status.
27 See Krunoslav S. Kopp, “Bundeskanzlerin tritt zurück: Beweiswert von
Screenshots” (2011). https://digitalrecht.net/2011/06/bundeskanzlerin-tritt-zur
uck-beweiswert-von-screenshots/
28 Again and again, Margarete Pratschke has referred to the connection of this type of
imagery with an image production from (early) modernity (see Pratschke,
“Interaktion,” 78 ff.).
29 Though this was not always the case, the settings of today’s operating systems can
be adjusted to determine whether the cursor is present in the screenshot or not.
30 One exception is the smartphone, whose interface only ever makes one window
(one application) visible.
31 Shapin, “Pump and Circumstances,” 481.
32 See Moyer, “Politicians, Take Note.”
33 See Lowood, “High-performance Play.”
34 See Wehn, “Machinima.”
35 See Manovich, “Die Paradoxien der digitalen Fotografie,” 64.
36 Schröter, “Virtuelle Kamera.”
37 See Flückiger, “Zur Konjunktur der analogen Störung”; Karner, Assessing the
Realism; and Rautzenberg, “Exzessive Bildlichkeit.”
38 Poremba, “Point and Shoot,” 49.
39 Gerling, “Be a Hero.”
40 An incomplete list of the categories of screenshot could look like the following:
recipes, instructions/tutorials, topographical notes, quick exports from applications
(towards understanding/agreement), agreements, screenshot as input, error mes-
sages/debugging, settings in the reservation system, (saving settings), signatures/
references/library, visual citation/scientific documentation, image excerpts, film
clips/YouTube/vimeo, mistakes, videochat/documentation of long-distance rela-
tionships, visual gag, confirmation/legal protection, wish list, scoreline, success,
glitch, orchestration, curation.
The functions are: visual note, help with memory or communication, archiving,
separation of private/professional, collecting ideas, inspirations, dealing with access
privileges.
41 Rautzenberg, “Wirklichkeit,” 121.
42 Siegel, “Fotografische Detailbetrachtung.”
43 Salen and Zimmerman, Rules of Play, 305.
44 Möring and de Mutiis (“Photography in Computer Games”) describe the various
categories of photography in computer games as follows: “(a) Simulated photo-
graphy as central to the gameplay condition, (b) additional photo-mode–suspended
gameplay condition, (c) artistic screenshot-ing, (d) narrated photography.”
45 Photo-modes, in which the perspectives can be freely chosen, are exceptions.
46 See Neitzel, “Point of View und Point of Action.”
 PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE DIGITAL 165

47 See Fuchs, “Ruinensehnsucht.”

48 Xynthantion, “Native Gangs of Los Santos.”
49 See Bittanti, “Game Art.”
50 See e.g. Cory Arcangel, Super Mario Clouds, 2002. Description of the work on Cory
Arcangel’s Official Portfolio Website and Portal, accessed November 1, 2017,
http://www.coryarcangel.com/things-i-made/2002-001-super-mario-clouds
51 In any case, there are borderline cases like a modification (MOD) of the game
Grand Theft Auto 4, to allow for taking selfies in the game. The game’s creators later
implemented this function into the game.
52 Paillé, “CROSSROAD OF REALITIES.”
53 The name is a reference to American landscape photographer Ansel Adams.
54 Burnes, “NVIDIA Ansel Available Now.”
55 This becomes clear when you look at the advertising video of Share Factory on
Playstation 4, which is set up for processing game photography and video. Its motto:
“Share your greatest moments, your way.” “SHAREfactory™ on PS4 |
#4ThePlayers.”
56 This is already predictable in some of the manufacturer’s restrictions. For example,
it is impossible, for licensing reasons, to take screenshots from an Apple DVD
player with the Apple operating system.
57 See Batchen, Emanations.
58 For the difference between surface und interface, see Hookway, Interface, 4.
59 See Meier, “Die Simulation von Fotografie.”
60 For example, in Grand Theft Auto V (Rockstar Games 2013), The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim
(Bethesda Game Studios 2011), and Red Dead Redemption (Rockstar Games 2010)
61 The artist Kent Sheely shows this very clearly by reenacting an image by Robert
Capa (D-Day, 1944) of the landing of Allied troops in Normandy in the game World
War II redux (2009). See Möring and de Mutiis, “Photography in Computer
Games.”. The image can be seen on: http://www.kentsheely.com/world-war-ii-
redux
62 See Lee, “Tr@n$form3r$: The Premake.”
63 See Steyerl, “In Defense of the Poor Image.”

ORCID
Winfried Gerling http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8866-8723

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9HWJI

Winfried Gerling is Professor for Concepts and Aesthetics of New Media in European Media
Studies, at the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam. His research focuses on the theory
and practice of photography, digital aesthetics and media environments.