Analog to Digital: The Indexical Function of Photographic Images

In Analog to Digital, Dzenko explores the connection between traditional forms of photography or 'analog' and contemporary modern technological photography, meaning the 'digital'. 
First of all, he tries to define digital photography by using McLuhan's famous quote 'The medium is the message.' So the 'message' shows the way a new medium affects, culture, history and society. And thus, in relation to McLuhan's theory, digital photography is a medium which strongly affects the way we see and use photography. 
Furthermore, what Dzenko tries to make clear in his text is, that transforming analog into digital photography generally means transforming photography from objects into intangible data, because digital images are translated into codes. 
Although the author argues that in digital photography there is a lack of physical connection relating to ideas of indexicality and demateralisation,  he also acknowledges that this 'new' form of photography enables an easier editing process than analog photography. 
And thus, he also mentions that 'Digital photography challenges the historical belief that photography is representative of reality.', particularly because it enables us to change things around in an image or just include stuff that would normally not fit in. 

And I think that this is an interesting thought, regarding the fact that I also want to edit my project pictures on Photoshop. The fact that the project that inspired me, by Antoine Geiger, shows people whose faces are sucked up by their phones, kind of reflects Dzenko's quote, because phones sucking up people's faces is not reality, but at the same time, by choosing this extreme way of representing our excessive phone use, Geiger kind of shows a reality, of course an exaggerated one, but still.. 

However, the author also notices, that both forms of photography do have certain things in common and he critiques the way that digital photography is often reduced to its lack of indexical function. Thus he argues that 'Focusing only on the theoretical lack of indexicality in digital images ignores the social uses of analog photography that are now performed by digital images' suggesting that both forms of photography perform a social or political duty, because in fact,  the digitally coded photograph now performs the very same social function that was once only performed by analog or physical prints.