The introduction of the computer and the digital camera into the household has changed how images are valued and perceived. Although the process of material desensitization began with the television marketed as an item of furniture, the endless and ever growing streams of photographs are always being updated and taken, saved to someone’s desktop and buried somewhere far into a hard to locate folder called “Untitled Folder”.

History is now perceived from only images that naturally fail in documenting the times. An individual imposes the conventions of his own day on to the image of the past, like a work of art and therefore misunderstands the work of art. The photograph as a tool for artist documentation will never have the same impact as the original work of art or may elevate the original work. Masterpieces such as the Mona Lisa are widely seen through their photographed copies, and less seen in person. Today’s generation has a different relationship to image information.
Growing up with Google image search and spending hours of childhood scrolling and absorbing as much information from images and text at a rapid speed, has to have some material desensitization. The unlimited amount of virtual “space” the Internet provides a never-ending chance of discovering and being discovered.

When the affordable digital camera was introduced into the home everyone became a photographer. The surplus of never ending images decreases photographs informational value. In the endless photographs of girls in front of their bathroom mirror and mothers photographing their newborn baby’s some value in image creation is lost or maybe gained. The act of uploading your photographs online is all in the hopes to be seen or to be remembered. The functions of a photograph are to document, to represent or to remember, a time in the past. They can serve many purposes such as decoration in a home or in a collection like a family album or the most relevant in today’s society, a self curated webpage on the Internet (Facebook) to describe your ideal