What is a Fake Photograph?

[Bill Pierce]

With all the controversy about “faking” news photographs, one of the most intelligent articles comes not from someone involved in journalism, but in landscape and nature photography. You can quibble about this point or that. But, at last, someone points out the obvious. If you are looking for the “absolute, objective truth,” you probably don’t want to look at photographs. I always looked at it this way -

Words - 28 people were killed in today’s battle, 43 wounded.
Picture - Picture of carnage, visual equivalent of sound of someone vomiting, not too many “facts.”

What is a Fake Photograph?
By Charles S. Johnson, Jr.
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/ethics_fake.shtml

 

[Bike Tourist]

Yesterday, I cropped some of my photos of a bicyce race from 3:2 to 16:9 ratios before uploading to stock sites. Not only did the scene lend itself to that format, but I eliminated my unavoidable shadow at the base of the image. I would not consider that an alteration. I could have chosen that format in camera. But then, one could continue to rationalize other changes until the image was not a literal rendering of the existing scene. But was the "original"? Not really.

Digital photography just reiterates the same old questions, but with more intensity since so much more alteration is possible.

 

[_mark__]

Crop, dodge, burn. anything beyond that is to much imo.

 

[flip]

an oxymoron or a paradox

Who knows. As soon as someone takes finder to eye they crop the context. The term fake is arbitrary and ill defined. Rules, people, rules.

 

[Bike Tourist]

Crop, dodge, burn. anything beyond that is to much imo.

What about color/B+W, saturation, contrast, shadows, highlights, sharpness, all of which can be accomplished in-camera or in post processing, all of which don't alter the subject placements, but can radically alter the look of the image?

 

[zuiko85]

I would think it has more to do with the intent of the photographer than with the actual photograph.

Just a thought.

 

[Photo_Smith]

A fake image is creating something that never existed. Putting a tree in a landscape from another frame, cloning out rocks or adding a rainbow etc. just like 'cameraless' images created in 3D programs ca never be a photograph.
Cropping, B&W and film/settings selection are artistic filters to an already existing scene.

 

[tunalegs]

Technically a fake photograph would be an image which is not actually a photography. That is an image not made with light.

One could argue then that digital manipulations like copying and pasting things are not photographic. It becomes digital collage then. A collage can be made up of photographs, but it is obviously not a photograph.

 

[DNG]

Yesterday, I cropped some of my photos of a bicyce race from 3:2 to 16:9 ratios before uploading to stock sites. Not only did the scene lend itself to that format, but I eliminated my unavoidable shadow at the base of the image. I would not consider that an alteration. I could have chosen that format in camera. But then, one could continue to rationalize other changes until the image was not a literal rendering of the existing scene. But was the "original"? Not really.

Digital photography just reiterates the same old questions, but with more intensity since so much more alteration is possible.

Look at it this way, unless you take a 360* image in all directions, ALL lesser are fakes?? I think not...
YOU DO have to CROP the scene in front of you with ANY CAMERA.
You decide where to frame and what not to include in the frame, same applies with Post Cropping.

an oxymoron or a paradox

Who knows. As soon as someone takes finder to eye they crop the context. The term fake is arbitrary and ill defined. Rules, people, rules.

Agreed, fake MUST imply that you can't duplicate it w/o massive darkroom or computer manipulation. (I don't count cloning out a dust speck or hot pixel) [I do count cloning out a huge part of an image to change the direction of the intended image]

What about color/B+W, saturation, contrast, shadows, highlights, sharpness, all of which can be accomplished in-camera or in post processing, all of which don't alter the subject placements, but can radically alter the look of the image?

These are all legitimate adjustments in any process.
All of Ansel Adams work would be FAKE if the equivalent Wet-Darkroom adjustments where not allowed!!!
And he did heavy darkroom manipulation!!
BUT, I think, he used a lot of manipulation with Dodging and Burning-In...
Taking out unwanted parts of an image is near impossible with Wet-Printing.

A fake image is creating something that never existed. Putting a tree in a landscape from another frame, cloning out rocks or adding a rainbow etc. just like 'cameraless' images created in 3D programs ca never be a photograph.
Cropping, B&W and film/settings selection are artistic filters to an already existing scene.

Agree with Photo_Smith.....

 

[Monochrom]

Fake!

Fake!

Hi, i was thinking about the same a few days ago....

I was looking into two different magazines, different in the year of issue, different in content, different in every single way except from the media (magazine) and the fact both had fakes in it...done with almost 70 years of gap...

The first one an italian magazine from the mid 30´s in which a military was saluting a mob...the photograph depicted very well the man but his right hand was obviously faked twiked to make another salute...the aim of that was to make the personality more aligned with a political compromise.
The fake was evident for me, today, but 70 years ago i think many thought it was real.

The second one appeared on the french magazine PHOTO and was a reportage about markus + indrani, the picture that draw my attention was a shot of beyonce as i thought it was...but i was mistaken, the picture was of mariah carey...
...al her skin history was completely erased rubbed away and masked...then looking the other pop stars of the reportage all ware made the same...their jaws were faked, their eyes faked lips faked and every single detail was procesed to make them pass from real to myth.

Not to mention that well known episode where the star from titanic was issued a completelly new body leaving just her head from the original or those pictures of the soviet era where after the purges many personalities where erased from the frame in such a way nobody could ever imagine they were in the same place with Uncle Joe.

So, today fake is not only a matter of making people look more suitable for a given context like a fashion magazine, but fake is more aligned with eugenesia...
Also the real in which photography set it´s foundations is transformed into a sketch an outline in order to make an illustration an impostor.

So what can i do...don´t know...were breathing a new lie...and the great tool that was photography is no more...

Photography ist Kaputt!

 

[ampguy]

I agree with your original post Bill. No matter how unbiased or accurate a photographer's images are, they are from a limited context of where the photographer was and what he could see at that moment of the image.

Some images may have been taken accurately, but the environment staged or recreated (http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg-part-one/).

And sometimes the images may be accurate, and the subjects accurate, but the context altered, for example, the wildlife photographers who buy land near national parks and bait wildlife for photos.