“Le reel refers only to that which has neither a figure, like the imaginary, nor a syntax, like the symbolic. In other words, combinational systems and processes of visual perception cannot access the real, but this is precisely why it can only be stored and processed by technical media. The present can be distinguished from every earlier period by the fact that we live at a time when, with the help of Mandelbrot’s fractals, clouds can be calculated in their full randomness and then be made to appear on computer screens as calculated, unfilmed images. Practically speaking, however, this means that we must employ a considerable amount of film theory- which usually goes by the name of film semiotics- in order to clarify the radical new ways in which optical media handles the symbolic. This concerns, more concretely, techniques of montage and editing, and thus everything that has been regarded as specific media aesthetics since the time of Walter Benjamin.”
So, essentially, photography’s unique ability to represent the “real” was overtaken as soon as images could be worked out mathematically and reproduced digitally. Photography was put on the digital bandwagon but lost it’s technological uniqueness after Mandelbrot’s mathematics was realized. And while photography is still the most accessible way to create an image of something out in the world, it’s not unique in this pursuit.