Truth in photographs

[.ken]

I was thinking about it this morning... about how when we look at a photograph either in magazines, books or even in the media, it is very rare that the subject of manipulation comes up unless it is very visually blatant. And maybe it's never an issue. We expect the photos to represent the truth... but these days it is rarely the case. For example, if you pickup a magazine and there's a photo of your favourite actor or actress, you know she had some work done or etc but he/she looks great in that photo... maybe its the light, the makeup...

it's when it looks too real that maybe we should wonder. It's when we present something as a false truth that things become quite interesting...

http://jezebel.com/gossip/photoshop...-well-not-publishing-but-maybe-god-278919.php

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/digitalcameras/multimedia/2007/03/wiredphotos54

Elliot Erwitt said "The basic essence of a photograph is that it should be believable"

It's gotten to the point where manipulation is not questioned... all this to sell a magazine and make us feel bad about how crappy we look and beautiful they are. What are your thoughts... are we all selling cornflakes these days?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh5p5Sx5qZg&feature=PlayList&p=E11941A0BC518ACC&playnext=1&index=3

ok back to work... :-D

 

[bmattock]

I was thinking about it this morning... about how when we look at a photograph either in magazines, books or even in the media, it is very rare that the subject of manipulation comes up unless it is very visually blatant. And maybe it's never an issue. We expect the photos to represent the truth... but these days it is rarely the case.

Actually, I would challenge that assumption. What makes you think that we 'expect the truth' from a photograph?

For example, if you pickup a magazine and there's a photo of your favourite actor or actress, you know she had some work done or etc but he/she looks great in that photo... maybe its the light, the makeup...

And it is probably some or all of the above.

it's when it looks too real that maybe we should wonder. It's when we present something as a false truth that things become quite interesting...

I don't know what you mean. How does one represent something as being false-but-true?

http://jezebel.com/gossip/photoshop...-well-not-publishing-but-maybe-god-278919.php

The photo above was never presented as being a truthful portrayal of the model, was it?

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/digitalcameras/multimedia/2007/03/wiredphotos54

This photo was presented as being true, but was not. It wasn't 'falsely true,' it was false.

Elliot Erwitt said "The basic essence of a photograph is that it should be believable"

Note that he did not say it should represent some objective reality or be 'true'. Both of the photographs above are 'believable' but they are not true.

It's gotten to the point where manipulation is not questioned... all this to sell a magazine and make us feel bad about how crappy we look and beautiful they are. What are your thoughts... are we all selling cornflakes these days?

Yes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh5p5Sx5qZg&feature=PlayList&p=E11941A0BC518ACC&playnext=1&index=3

ok back to work... :-D

Mr. Erwitt is presenting his opinions, some of which I agree with and others with which I do not.

Manipulation is not new in photography, despite the fact that people these days seem to think it is strictly an attribute of the digital age. We seem to conveniently forget darkroom wizards who dodged, burned, and sandwiched negatives and slides to create the photograph they wanted. Some of the very oldest photographs were photo-montages of cut-up and reassembled prints and negatives. Where is the outrage about them?

Right - there isn't any. Which makes me think this is just another anti-digital rant, though cloaked in the polite language of a gentle philosophical question.

Your question does not address the many different kinds of photography that exist. This is, I suspect, intentional on your part - because it allows the careless conflation of "all news photographs should be objectively true" to "all photographs should be objectively true."

In reality, there are many genres and types of photography, and the need for veracity ranges from 'non-existent' to 'of primary importance' depending upon what is wanted, needed, or desired.

Newspaper editors probably tend to want unmodified photographs, and indeed, there was a news photographer who was fired from his job for making a dramatic photograph of a firefighter on a ladder in the sunset 'redder' to increase the dramatic effect.

On the other hand, commercial advertisers want their product to look at appealing as possible, and if a photographer refuses to do that on the principle that it is 'not real', he's fired. One can be as 'honest' as one likes, but the sponsor has the final say - if one doesn't like it, one can find other work.

In between these extremes, we have photographers who simply want to make their photographs look good - for whatever reason. If photoshopping out crow's feet on a paying client's portrait, or removing a telephone pole from Uncle Joe's birthday photo make it a better looking photo, no harm is done to anyone if the photograph no longer attempts to represent an objective reality.

There are always those who object to photographic manipulation. That is up to each person to determine what they like and don't like about it. However, it has always been with us, and it isn't going away. I recommend getting over it.

 

[furcafe]

Manipulation is indeed as old as photography itself.

I suggest reading Errol Morris's excellent essay on these issues as relating to Roger Fenton's "The Valley of the Shadow of Death" photo from the Crimean war (1855):

http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg-part-one/

 

[.ken]

@bmattock : my intention was to hear ideas and comments/opinions on the subject. I don't intend to defend my open-ended statements I wrote maybe carelessly (that seems to have been taken a bit too seriously). I have no hidden agenda of converting people away from photoshop, just wanted to start a friendly discussion. I manipulate images on a daily basis working in the advertising industry, so it's not a personal issue either, just a thought floating around in my head one early morning.

@furcafe: I'll check it out. I'm always up to learn new ideas and hear what others think of the subject.

 

[antiquark]

In general, for advertising or fashion photography, everyone accepts that the images are heavily altered.

For photojournalism, people expect the image in the newspaper to look basically the same as it did in the camera. Reporters have lost their jobs for going too far with the manipulation of their images. Editors have a list of acceptable manipulations, and that includes minor things like contrast adjustment.

Personally, I like non-edited photographs. But that's just me, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with manipulated images. I think there's sort of a continuum from painting to photography, and photoshopping is somewhere in the middle. To say that photojournalism is good, and painting is good, but photoshopping is bad, is somewhat inconsistent.

 

[Merkin]

I am of the opinion that all photographs are lies, it is just the degree of lying that varies.

 

[bmattock]

@bmattock : my intention was to hear ideas and comments/opinions on the subject. I don't intend to defend my open-ended statements I wrote maybe carelessly (that seems to have been taken a bit too seriously). I have no hidden agenda of converting people away from photoshop, just wanted to start a friendly discussion. I manipulate images on a daily basis working in the advertising industry, so it's not a personal issue either, just a thought floating around in my head one early morning.

Forgive me for responding as if to one who has an anti-digital agenda, but you must realize that of late, those who wish to vent their spleen regarding the issue have attempted every manner of doing so, including thinly-disguised 'philosophical' questions which are not very artfully designed and rather transparent.

Your initial assumption - that people 'expect' accuracy in their photos - put me in mind of someone attempting the usual anti-digital screed. I don't think most people expect anything of the kind, which sort of topples the entire argument over.

 

[squirrel$$$bandit]

Manipulation is indeed as old as photography itself.

I suggest reading Errol Morris's excellent essay on these issues as relating to Roger Fenton's "The Valley of the Shadow of Death" photo from the Crimean war (1855):

http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg-part-one/

SUPERB piece of writing. I highly recommend everyone sticking through and reading the whole thing!

I'm with Merkin, every photograph ever taken is a manipulation.

 

[Merkin]

SUPERB piece of writing. I highly recommend everyone sticking through and reading the whole thing!

I'm with Merkin, every photograph ever taken is a manipulation.

It isn't even necessarily a matter of manipulation, but a matter of perception. Photographs remove us from the environment beyond the edges of the picture plane. We are told what to see by the photographer. We cannot examine anything about the subject or the moment beyond that with which we are presented. At its most "truthful," a photograph is, if nothing else, a lie of omission.

 

[bmattock]

It isn't even necessarily a matter of manipulation, but a matter of perception. Photographs remove us from the environment beyond the edges of the picture plane. We are told what to see by the photographer. We cannot examine anything about the subject or the moment beyond that with which we are presented. At its most "truthful," a photograph is, if nothing else, a lie of omission.

Bravo, well said.

 

[antiquark]

I would argue that people expect accuracy in their photos, for three reasons:

- The vast majority of pictures are unedited. They are either snapshots in a photo album, or straight-from-the-camera snapshots on flickr.

- Photo retouching is a difficult skill that not everyone can do.

- If people expected manipulation, then they wouldn't express surprise whenever they're shown before and after versions of fashion shots. However, people are shocked and amazed whenever you show them the effects of photo retouching.

 

[Merkin]

I would argue that people expect accuracy in their photos, for three reasons:

- The vast majority of pictures are unedited. They are either snapshots in a photo album, or straight-from-the-camera snapshots on flickr.

- Photo retouching is a difficult skill that not everyone can do.

- If people expected manipulation, then they wouldn't express surprise whenever they're shown before and after versions of fashion shots. However, people are shocked and amazed whenever you show them the effects of photo retouching.

Ten years ago, I would have agreed with you. However, in the digital age, photo retouching is no longer a mystical skill, but a relatively easy set of techniques available to the masses. For instance, recall the couple of news cycles last year where there was a furore over Newsweek not photoshopping Sarah Palin's face ENOUGH...

 

[bmattock]

I would argue that people expect accuracy in their photos, for three reasons:

I will address each on its merits, therefore.

- The vast majority of pictures are unedited. They are either snapshots in a photo album, or straight-from-the-camera snapshots on flickr.

One could take the position that edited or not, photographs are by their nature inaccurate. Both by the nature of the act of photography stripping a two-dimensional likeness of a three-dimensional view, and minus all context, such as smell, sound, temperature, and motion, etc; and also by the fact that film does not reproduce exactly the color or the shades that were observed - neither does digital, with it's in-camera processing of every image.

One could also take the position that the examples used were that of a magazine cover shot and a propaganda photo; a reasonable person might well expect that such images are altered. Most of us are familiar with the 'zit-removing airbrush' effect of our halcyon days of high-school yearbookery - well before the age of digital trespasses upon the sanctity of pimples.

- Photo retouching is a difficult skill that not everyone can do.

Skillful manipulation, mayhap. In any case, I have no trouble believing people do it, just because I cannot.

- If people expected manipulation, then they wouldn't express surprise whenever they're shown before and after versions of fashion shots. However, people are shocked and amazed whenever you show them the effects of photo retouching.

I would argue that they are not shocked because they expected that the photographs they had seen before were accurate, but because they did not know, having not given the matter any thought prior to seeing the before and after images.

There is a distinct difference between not knowing that an image was altered and believing that it was not, but the shock would be the same in either case.

 

[Merkin]

- If people expected manipulation, then they wouldn't express surprise whenever they're shown before and after versions of fashion shots. However, people are shocked and amazed whenever you show them the effects of photo retouching.

Also, the shock and amazement may be not from the fact that the photos are retouched at all, but from the amount of retouching. If one small blemish were removed, the average person's reaction would probably be "Oh. Big deal." On the other hand, if the photo has more airbrushing than a flea market t-shirt, the person might be surprised at how ugly a supposedly "beautiful person" can be.

 

[antiquark]

Ten years ago, I would have agreed with you. However, in the digital age, photo retouching is no longer a mystical skill, but a relatively easy set of techniques available to the masses. For instance, recall the couple of news cycles last year where there was a furore over Newsweek not photoshopping Sarah Palin's face ENOUGH...

You have a point there, maybe old people (30 and up?) think pictures are accurate, but young people don't?

Your Palin comment reminded me of her infamous bikini pic:
http://urbanlegends.about.com/library/bl_sarah_palin_bikini_pic.htm

 

[furcafe]

An excellent article on master retoucher Pascal Dangin:

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/12/080512fa_fact_collins

My favorite quote:

“Photography as we knew it, meaning film and Kodak and all that, was a very subjective process. With film images you had emotions. You used to go out and buy film like Fuji, because it was more saturated, or you liked Agfa because it gave you a rounded color palette.” With a ten-dollar roll of film, he explained, you were essentially buying ten dollars’ worth of someone’s ideas. “Software, right now, is objective. ‘Let the user create whatever he wants.’ Which is great, but it doesn’t really produce good photography.”​

 

[dmr]

If you want a chuckle, look here ...

http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.com/

The quality varies from lame to amusing, but it's worth looking at every so often since they point out some very blatant and careless photoshopping.

It still kind of annoys me when the Great Unwashed Masses will ooohh and aaahhh at heavily-photoshopped images, either prints or on the web! 🙁

 

[bmattock]

It still kind of annoys me when the Great Unwashed Masses will ooohh and aaahhh at heavily-photoshopped images, either prints or on the web! 🙁

There are a number of photographers on Flickr whose photos often receive scores of gushing comments - so heavily photoshopped that it takes me time to realize that if you were to return the photo to its original condition, it would be a boring, mundane, and absolutely uninteresting photo.

Some object to that - and I understand that point of view. But then I realize that people are reacting to the final result, not how it got that way. So whatever it is - photography or 'something else', people seem to like it.

In the end, that may be all that matters.

 

[russianRF]

This thread has been mostly about photomanipulation, yet the title is "Truth in photographs" -- I had other things spring to mind when I first saw this thread's title.

Mostly I was thinking about some of the images I've shot in the past couple of months, and how they've re-contextualized themselves since time has passed and I'm no longer physically present in the scene.

Or, to be more accurate, how the photos have become UN-contextualized: I had opinions, snap judgements, and prejudices when I took the pictures; I felt somehow justified in making these quick judgements on the people and scenes I was myself in BECAUSE I was physically present. We all do it -- oh that person must be a certain way because they're doing a certain thing, oh look at those two people over there talking.

When I look at the pictures removed from the physicality of the scene, I realize that in many ways photography is a mirror -- we see in the photos what we want to see, what we already bring to the artist's canvas in our heads, what we pre-judge people and objects to be.

Back to photomanipulation -- in many ways we (as BMattock pointed out) EXPECT to see certain things; a blemished fashion model just doesn't seem right. I frankly don't understand the distinction between a post-processing manipulation, an in-camera manipulation, and a non-photographic manipulation; photomanipulation is an extention of make up, of clothing, of facial expressions (feigned or otherwise). Like any medium of expression, the degree to which a photograph is reliable is up to the viewer/reader.

Let's take something an extreme opposite to fashion photography -- one of my favorite photgraphers Joel Peter Witkin. Would anyone argue that most of his work isn't heavily staged and manipulated? Yet he's popular, I would argue, because his fans believe he uncovers some underlying truths about life THROUGH or BECAUSE OF the photographic fictions he presents to us. Indeed, without the artifice, his work would be less remarkable.

Finally, I think that, if anything, the digital age has LESSENED the impact of photographic manipulation; a five year old can work a computer, and a precocious teenager can produce convincing photomanipulations. Everyone knows that; the ubiquity of digital photography has introduced the lay-person to what was once a "dark art," once a mysterious and unrealized process. Even my luddite parents have the sophistication to understand that photos are easily manipulated; I'd wager that my grandparents believed a lot more in photographs as unmutable representations of reality than any generation touched by the digital age.

 

[xayraa33]

yes, photos never lie, not even in the early 1870s