Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film

Over the last four decades, image-editing software has radically transformed our visual world. The ease with which images and text can be digitally generated and altered has enabled new forms of creative experimentation, while also sparking philosophical debates about the very nature of representation. Digital Witness: Revolutions in Design, Photography, and Film examines the impact of digital manipulation tools from the 1980s to the present, for the first time assessing simultaneous developments and debates in the fields of photography, graphic design, and visual effects. Featuring over 100 works, the exhibition traces the emergence of distinctive digital aesthetic strategies, relationships to realism, and storytelling modes. Whether using early paint programs, commercially packaged and open-source software, individually programmed tools, or AI image generators, the artists in Digital Witness illuminate the visual culture we now inhabit, in which “Photoshop” is not only a product but also a verb.