Does photography need this?
Written by David WhiteI’ve been chatting to a some of the other photography course leaders down here at University College Falmouth, and there is something troubling me. To be honest, it’s been troubling me since I was a reviewer at the Rhubarb Rhubarb portfolio review earlier in the year. It’s this: often, I cannot tell if the images I am looking at have been manipulated or not.
No Fake stamp.
The other course leaders I have been speaking to agree…the Marine and Natural history photography degree (mmmmmmmmmm….wonderful) tutors feel the same, the leaders in the BA Photography do too (although maybe that’s not too surprising) and as for the fashion photography peeps…well, nothing ever gets manipulated in fashion photography, so we can stop worrying about them. (Note to those not able to discern the sarcasm in my voice…that was thick with it). Problem is, image manipulation is now so ubiquitous that we almost need to start from an assumption that the image -has- been altered. How has that happened? Therefore I suggest a code for the metadata, such as the word NARA, standing for Never Altered Raw Available. I’m knackered, and am just hammering this out, so please suggest better acronyms…or, even better, dafter ones:
LMAIHTI: Leave Me Alone I Haven’t Touched It?
AHAIG: As Honest As It Gets?
FOIG: Fuck Off It’s Genuine?
Discussion (16 Comments)
….oh alright then if no-one else wants to have a go…..
Digitally Untouched Completely Kosher
Really, All Bytes Basically Intact Thanks
Too clever by half John, but I like it 🙂
Nothing quite like whipping out some negatives to settle it!
I’m glad to learn someone is finally thinking about this. I wrote an article for LensWork magazine in 1995 (LensWork #10, Summer 1995, “Seeing is not Believing”) about this very thing. I also devoted a chapter of my 2009 book, Photographic Memories, to it. The question, at its most basic, remains:
How much digital manipulation can be done to a photograph before the result becomes something other than a “photograph?”
The answer to the question would also go a long way in defining the new medium of Digital Art.
It depends on what you mean by manipulated. All Raw files need some sort of processing (not being image files and all) so is it just a case of setting some sort of standard (open up raw file, save as jpeg, close) or do we give some sort of leeway to post processing? If so how much? There are guidelines but often it’s left to the photographer’s and editors best judgement. Of course, altering in the case of adding/removing elements, swapping out bodies, ‘tidying up’ ‘distracting’ elements (ahem fashion industry are you paying attention?) is a no no for documentary work, but I think at a certain point it’s always open to debate as to what is too much. When I’m teaching Lightroom and Photoshop, I tell people that basically, if someone looks at your picture and notices the processing work (Y’know, like wow cool colours man!) before they notice the content, you have gone too far. As documentarians and journalists, you want people to trust you, and if they think you’ve been manipulating your work in photoshop, you’re throwing that trust into doubt. It’s bad enough that commercial photography, advertising and the fashion industry does this on such a large scale that this is most people’s connection to photography, I’m always being asked by people if I’ll ‘make them look good in photoshop’ (which actually I love to hear as I can then reply ‘sorry, no, I’m not ethically allowed to do that..’)
Basically, aesthetics should lead you to the content, not obscure it. Which is about as vague and pathetic a guideline as I can come up with without throwing out half of all digital photographs ever produced and most of Eugene Smith and Sebastiao Salgado’s prints from the documentary genre..
Anyway, what about: Right Exposure And Light So Honest It’s True.
Everything needs that.
F.A.D (F**k All Done)
On the serious note Fred Ritchin spoke about this at ‘What’s Next?’ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKVjSwYsIak (skip to 6.37 if you are still shattered, this might just put you to sleep otherwise) in which he adds that the ‘photograph does not have credibility anymore’, a bit of a blanket statement in my opinion as there is still a lot of people that shape their view of the world through visuals, but it certainly raises the point that the public should know exactly how ‘real’ the photograph they are looking at it is.
Hi Vicoria … New Narrators looks terrific.
Thank you DR, it is still very much in progress.
V.
When has photography been “manipulation-free”? You choose a lens because it has certain characteristics. You choose a film because you like the speed/dynamic range (or lack of it)/grain/colors, etc. You modify the light (or wait for it to modify itself). You frame the image and select a point of focus/depth of field. You select a shutter speed to achieve an effect. You select push/pull/cross processing, selecting chemical formulae because of how they effect the image. You enlarge the negative (or not) cropping to emphasize your creative intent and remove distractions. You burn & dodge, maybe mask. Oil on glass blurs areas. You might stack negatives. When the print is dry, you can paint out the dust spots. You select a mat color & size, framing material, lighting (all of which alter perception of the image). Even the early tintype folks got varying results depending on technique and sometimes painted in a little blush in the cheeks.
Isn’t every step in the process is a manipulation?
I agree. I would argue that alot of people can do more with film/filters etc… than alot of people can do with photoshop, and lets be honest, some peoples photoshop skills are shockingly bad! Where would we place the boundaries on editing? its ok saying you can do the same to a digital file that you can in the darkroom, but people cut negs, dodge/burn, colour shift, cross process, vignette… the list is endless, sometimes i would spend a full day on one negative ensuring that the final print was as technically perfect as i could make it. The same with my digital files, but i don’t believe that i am an image manipulator or that i have changed the content or intent of the photograph from my post production. Surely its ok to post produce an image proving that the ‘content’ hasn’t changed? i thought what mattered was the final image?! A lecturer at UCF taught many students, ‘Content is king’ stating that you could shoot your images on a mobile phone, compact camera, film, digital, who cares, as long as the content is there! surely then, this applies to post production?! who cares as long as the content is there? why should photographers be labelled as cheaters or their images ‘fakes’ because they know how to use a piece of software? Surely then i could say that all magnum photographs are fake because they have been printed by someone who knows what they are doing?!!!
We should be looking at how the images depict the story? do they tell the truth? do the photographs work as a set? not, oh he/she has used photoshop, its a fake, look at the metadeta…
i do agree tho, that sometimes, people take the piss! I’ve seen on other blogs about how much editing people do to a photograph to win awards or enter competitions. It should be down to the judges to ask for a copy of the original file to see whether the manipulation level is out of order, and should openly discus the questionable image to see if the original integrity or ‘story’ has been altered as a result of the heavy manipulation. Putting an acronym into the metadeta is all well and good, but surely an answer to your argument would be to ask developers and programmers to look at changing the metadata capabilities to ensure that every step of the photograph is saved in a metadata history image log so that you can clearly see every-step the image has gone thru from pressing the shutter to seeing it in a competition… It would not take much to change the programming. Do you not agree? but then where do you draw the line? its ok to say its alright to dodge and burn a photograph, but if its done heavily it can change the integrity of the image. so where do you draw the line? i don’t think you can, it should be as it has always been, about the final image or set, and the content. If it is believed to be a fake, ask for the original file.
when we face the fact that there is no truth in photography and we stop treating photography like a religion with blind believes, the case is solved and the medium freed to be what ever it wants to be.
But I think we should be wary of photographers saying this, and then it leading them to (or justifying them in) create image that misrepresent their subjects. I’m not accusing you, because it is a philosophical/theoretical viewpoint I wholly agree with.
I just think that this standpoint is sometimes too casually taken up by some photographers who then think that their work is beyond reproach on terms of how accurately it represents those depicted. Too often, work that is ‘justified’ in these terms is really just pandering to stereotypes and using this supposed justification as an excuse or caveat. That is weak.
I don’t think the acknowledgement of photography’s inherent inability to be objective or fully realistic precludes the medium from making either objective or fully realistic points. I am inherently objective, yet I can still state that 2+2=4 and have that mean something.
The whole manipulation debate has two prongs – the purely journalistic ethic issue, and the more personal decision to tell some stories rather than others. In this latter respect, I think the debate about image manipulation is something of a straw man that distracts us from the more fundamental issue of “how is this person being portrayed? and why must they be portrayed in that way?”
Even Hollywood, that paradigm of falsity, is wholly capable of communicating salient points when it wishes. Photography, no matter how manipulated or not, is equally capable of cutting through to relevant meaning.
Good points Sara.
There is another danger arising from the attitude that promotes the belief that the medium should be “freed to be what ever it wants to be”, which is that such attitudes are contagious, and critical and objective consumption of the end results may also be ‘anaesthetized’as a consequence.
I think we need to continually remind ourselves that photography is, in a sense, a ‘contract’ between all parties – the subjects, the photographer and the viewer. The subjects know their ‘truth’ the reality of their situation, and must trust the photographer to portray that accurately.
But the consumer is arguably not some drone that must just swallow all of this, but should continually question the ‘presumptions’ presented to them, pick at the loose threads in the fabric of stories and see if it all unravels. Everyone has a ‘duty of care’ to the truth in my opinion.
As I was once wisely counselled by my dear old dad:
“….son, if what you tell people is the truth you can forget what you said, but if you lie you’ll need to remember it forever”.
It’s just the difference between a “photo illustration” and a photograph. Almost all ad photography today is photo illustration, but I’d argue that even those hipstimatic iphone photos that won awards from the middle east are photographs. I don’t care if somebody adds grain or desaturates the sky, just so long as the image doesn’t actively lie. (Calm down postmodernists I’ve heard it all before, I’m over it).