Obvious Photoshopping in Meyerowitz Tuscany book--thoughts?

See earlier thread from this forum on the book:

http://www.photo.net/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg?msg_id=006h92

 

Okay, first let me say this is not a morality post--I don't know if Joel Meyerowitz considers

his Tuscan portfolio to be straight documentary photography or what...

 

That said, I flipped through that book in the local Barnes and Noble, and I had mixed

feelings. Some lovely pictures, some did nothing for me. And then an image in the middle

jumped out at me.

 

It's a street scene, on a plaza with a bunch of people on bikes. Mostly kids, mostly looking

at the camea. If you've got the book, look for the picture. Or if you walk by it in a store,

look for it (you can hardly miss it, it's everywhere).

 

There are two boys pictured, toward the right, one standing on the other's bike, that are

obviously photoshopped in.

 

It's a big, fat composite. Not that there's anything wrong with that in theory. Except that

it's badly done. The spokes of the bike are too thick from being badly dropped out of the

original background and the light is off. The dropped shadow rings false. The boys are

also not quite the right size.

 

I got curious and did a bit of homework. On Meyerowitz's site, you can see the photo I'm

questioning (albeit in a small thumnail) right next to the one the two boys were stripped in

from. I'm guessing Meyerowitz isn't trying to hide it, or he wouldn't post the original right

next to the source material.

 

If you're curious, just go to joelmeyerowitz.com, click photo archives, search on "bicycle"

then go to the fourth page in the listings that come up. Even on the 200px thumbnails I

could see that

the two boys in both pictures were the same, and having seen it printed, the manipulation

even jumps off the thumbnail to me.

 

Again, not levelling moral judgement here, just aesthetic. If you've got the book, have a

look and say what you think. I'm curious about your thoughts, since I don't really know

what to make of it.

P.S. Yes, I know this smacks of those tiresome photo.net picture of the week discussions

in which somebody inevitably cries "Manipulation!"

 

I don't mean it in that spirit. For what that's worth.

presumably he's just guilty of bad photoshop technique...?

Tim,

Well, yes. But in my experience it's rare to find noticeably flawed photoshop technique in a

showpiece book by a photographer with as high a profile as Mr. Meyerowitz. It's not like

there's any scarcity of really excellent photo retouchers out there.

 

Again, I'm not claiming it's a moral issue. It is not my expectation that this will affect any

of us--or (gasp) capital-P Photography--on any existential level. Just a note of curiosity I

thought folks might like to discuss.

i look at it as giving a image which is lacking in the original shot, a little extra help, its similiar to "auto-tone" a high tech technique for

musicians that cant sing too well, it changes out of pitch vocals into perfect pitch, photoshop helps those who need it.

He's not the same guy that had the same sky on two different "unmanipulated" pictures here in photo.net, is he?

 

What to make of it is that the book isn't as good as it could have been, due to poor workmanship on someone's part. I've seen books beautifully printed full of photos I didn't care about, and books (and magazines) with poor printing of good photos. I can't see any reason to get all worked up about it, though.

"He's not the same guy that had the same sky on two different "unmanipulated" pictures here in photo.net, is he?"

 

err - I don't think he botheres to post to photo.net :-)

 

He's widely regarded as one of the top tier colour LF workers around today and a fairly infleential member of the group of "New Colour" photographers who came out of the 70's.

Hi, Scott,

 

Just a comment...but I am interested in the reaction of folks to your posting. I believe that, just a few years ago, more people would provide a more negative reaction to such a contrived image.

 

I guess folks are becoming more accepting of the digital ways. I am disturbed about JM's manipulation, but not all would agree. I fear that in ten years, people will be conditioned to being unable to distinguish fake from reality (e.g., every time we walk past the magazine display).

 

Robt.

Oh, even PhotoShop could not save all those dreary, washed out pictures! This is funny!

"I fear that in ten years,

people will be conditioned to being unable to distinguish fake from reality"

 

they've never really been able to do that. Photographs aren't the real thing. But there has long been a widely held (and more often than not conveniently unspoken) misapprehension that photographs are "real" or "tell the truth" or are "objective doucments" etc. While many photographs do have some relation to "reality" there is less of a direct correlation than many would like to believe and most photographs are acutally fictions. It's just becoming more obviously so.

While I do not think the work in this book is up to the standard of his earlier work, I'll take the dreary washed out pictures here over one more hyper-saturated picture from southern Utah.

 

As to the Photoshop technique, I wonder how much this differs, in this day and age from the distortions of reality that we readily accept in traditional photographs. The world is not really black and white. The skies aren't really that dark, etc. In a well-known "Cape Light" photograph of Meyerowitz's the pillar on the porch was probably not really that orange and the sky probably did not really look that precise color of deep blue. These are all effects of the photo process that photographers exploit to make images that are more interesting or convey a hightened sense of awareness. I do not think its a conspiracy.

 

The fact that the technique is sloppy is a bit surprising, but perhaps the point was not to "fake" the picture, but to create a more obvious montage?

 

This from a non-Photoshop user.

"Oh, even PhotoShop could not save all those dreary, washed out pictures! This is funny!"

 

Actually, having lived in the region for 5 or 6 years a few years back I think it's one of the better depictions of Tuscany.

 

It manages to avoid the B&W /Nostalgia/drone drone trap, as well as most of the super saturated romantic tourist Velveeta cliches (anyone else glad Fuji is finally going to dump Velvia 50? Maybe the days of hyper-saturated photographic unreality are finally over - if you can't make it good, at least make it bright and blow their eyeballs out with the color!)

 

Funny thing is, like most places, the light in Tuscany actually is often somewhat harsh and "washed out" but many photographers don't seem able to cope with that and instead let the "pretty" do their work for them

<<The fact that the technique is sloppy is a bit surprising, but perhaps the point was not

to "fake" the picture, but to create a more obvious montage?>>

 

Hmm, that makes me think I ought to look a bit closer, perhaps there's some explanatory

caption somewhere. It's a fine, subjective line, obviously, but it didn't look to me like it

was meant to be clearly a montage.

 

And honestly, I don't think anyone here's getting 'all worked up about" the matter--as I

stated a few times in my original post, I'm presenting it as a point of curiosity. A 'talking

point,' as folks've been saying lately. Hardly an earthshaking matter.

Go to http://www.michaelandpaula.com and take a look at some of the work of Michael A. Smith & Paula Chamlee in their books on Tuscany. You will see original images contact printed from 8x10 & 8x20 inch negatives & then printed with the finest quality available. NO screwing around & lying with pixelography in these images.

 

Why put out images that supposedly record an area or subject just to lie about them with manipulation?

Sometimes people with incredible skills in one area grossly overestimate their skills in a

related area. Kinda like Keith Richards' singing when he had the Expensive Winos

(shudder).

<<Why put out images that supposedly record an area or subject just to lie about them

with manipulation?>>

 

Well, just to play devil's advocate... ever hear of impressionism? "Lie" is a pretty

judgmental word. I'm _guessing_ he did it in the computer because he felt it better

conveyed the impression he had than the image he actually laid down on film. Not that I

can say for sure.

 

Pop psychiatry would say a lie badly told is a cry for help. Would the good doctor be

prescribing to Mr. Meyerowitz, 'take two Chamlees can call me in the morning"?

 

By the way, the Chamlee stuff really is lovely, to be sure.

The only thing that surpises me is the fact that it was done badly. Otherwise it's just a continuation of the kind of thing has been going on since photography was invented. Timothy O'Sullivan et al moved cloud filled skies from one photograph into the bald skies of another photograph. Eugene Smith changed the direction of people's eyes so they'd be looking where he wanted them to look. The examples of using the darkroom to change "reality" could go on and on. So Meyerowitz and others who do the same thing aren't doing anything that is different in principle from that which has always been done.

 

However, I think the easy access to Photoshop and every photograph imaginable on the web has altered how we look at photographs. The really extensive alterations used to require two or more enlargers and a great deal of skill. Most people had neither. So we didn't look at unusual photographs and wonder if they were created in the darkroom, we figured the photographer just made a great photograph. But Photoshop has changed that. Now, when we look at a photograph that seems like it would have been difficult to get in the camera (e.g. the advertising photograph that shows a whale leaping out of water with a gorgeous sunset in the background) we figure that the photographer didn't make that photograph in camera, somebody just used Photoshop to move a whale and a sunset into an ocean photograph.

 

So while photography has never been about "reality," I think Photoshop and the ease with which it can be used to do what Meyerowitz has done here has made us much more skeptical of photography than we used to be.

"You will see original images contact printed from 8x10 & 8x20 inch negatives & then printed with the finest quality available."

 

It's of no concern how they were made? The only question is "do they work?"

 

Meyerowitz's images are also "original" images

 

"NO screwing around & lying with pixelography in these images."

 

But they are awfully - well dull and grey? what happened to the colour. And they are so flat. And why do they insist on producing nothing but miniatures? Not a terribly accurate record of "reality ; is it

 

"Why put out images that supposedly record an area or subject just to lie about them with manipulation?"

 

supposedly record? That's a nice value laden term. Lie? Possibly. But then photographs can almost never tell the truth either. Photographs don't really record - they are more of a personal account, a gesture at most.

 

Smith & Chamlees photographs are really just a personal account of what they photographed in Tuscany. They fall very short of being a "record" of Tuscany. They are a creation of the photographer - rather like Bruce Chatwins travel writings or all those "my year in Tuscany" books. Not really a lie, but not really accurate either. In addition, the photograph and the thing or place photographed are two entirely different things. So many people still seem to confuse the two. A photograph of a tree isn't the same as a tree - something even my three year old is able to grasp - and yet that assumption so often seems to be made. And all photographs of this sort are always open to poetic license.

 

Strand, Gene Smith, Kertesz, Winogrand, Lange, Evans, whoever, - pick your favourite photographer, they all seem to have retouched, cut and pasted, directed and more.

 

In a way digital is helping people see how much artifice there is in most photography and the mistaken assumptions about its truthfulness, objectivity, accuracy are rapidly being stripped away - which probably isn't a bad thing.

An additional thought came to mind last night. I think it's interesting that Meyerowitz began as a "street" photographer a la Winogrand, etc. That movement was all about a sort of verite approach. This particular image fits into that tradition more so than the more straightforward landscape images elsewhere in to book.

 

So, the maipulation comes in a "decisive moment"-type image - it appears to indicate a shift in Meyerowitz's thinking about the unposed street image. Maybe that's why it seems sort of not right to some people. (It also fills in a gap in the composition.)

Meyerowitz also helped write the book on street photogorpahy - literally, whith "Bystander"

 

As such he would be well aware that photogorpahers such as Winogrand or Kertesz among others, for example, sometimes directed/posed people in their "street" photographs. As well as the very broad range of "traditions" and practices to be found under that umbrella, from Atget to Di Corcia