Our culture wants both to multiply its media and to erase all traces of mediation: ideally, it wants to erase its media in the very act of multiplying them.

Remediation (p.5)

According to Bolter and Grusin, immediacy is the desire for media without mediation. It demands that the method of mediation disappear and puts us in the presence of the original. This is nearly impossible, as the mediation is ever present. Yet, media strives to achieve this impossible goal of removing remediation in an attempt towards immediacy.

The analog photograph attempted to do this, but without color, it falls short of reaching any level of immediacy. The iconic black-and-white photograph above, originally taken in 1945, captured a moment of joy and relief as World War II ended. The attempt at immediacy made here is to put the viewer into this moment of celebration—the spontaneous kiss—and let the viewer live that moment by proxy.

The image received a digital face lift in 2013 by Swedish artist Sanna Dullaway, who colorized the photo, giving it new depth and meaning. This act, I believe, is an attempt to reach a level of immediacy that the original photograph does not reach. Adding of color gives the viewer a more “realistic” perspective, since most of the human population witness their own lives in color (albeit varying perspectives of those colors).

Notice how the veins on the arms of the sailor stand out more; observe the wrinkles of their clothing. Color in this photo does more than just add a layer of realism, but it does so by providing depth. This depth draws us further into the photo and closer to immediacy, but because the current viewer’s eyes are more accustomed to high quality digital photographs, the coloration looks dated, and the viewer is left with the realization that this is a relic, and the desire immediacy disappears.