Iwona Irwin-Zarecka, associate professor of sociology and anthropology at Wilfred Laurier University in Ontario, zeroes in on the meaning of such a crossing in her reaction to the modern day digital recording and manipulation of photographs. As Professor Irwin-Zarecka warns, once the information about the basic parameters of each of these elements is digitally written in computer code, it can be rewritten at will. Whether the original consists of an actual photo, a computer-generated invention, or both, it becomes much like clay in the artist's hands. Thus the whole idea of a photograph's representing something real collapses. Must the marriage of technology and art require such a compromise with ideals of truth and beauty? Perhaps not, if we can learn to navigate and confront the tangled webs of truth and rhetoric. As the author muses, to reflect on how we experience photography is to think through familiar rituals and news events, voyages and voyeurism, art and commercials, the mundane and the sacred. Truly a lesson for survival in the digital age. (Introduction, p. 3-5)