Illusion: a photographic answer to truth

<p>Who said illusions were simple? The idea that viewers under 30 today see the imaginary sacred, inviolable veracity of photography the same way that people did in the 1850's is absurd. They're on Flickr, own Photoshop, GIMP, Irfanview, etc and know how to use it and what it can do. They make composites themselves. Maybe it is different in Europe, but I seriously doubt it.</p>

<p>I was at an art opening in the Fall of last year, where a very well-known Brit was showing his eco-conscious nature pictures with scantily clad gorgeous, but not-so-natural looking women cavorting or languidly posing with wolves, bears, salmon, raccoons, pumas, apparently humping lucky trees, etc. and a lady viewer in her '70s, looking every bit the moneyed collector, came up and asked the guy "How much of that is Photoshopped and how much is real?" With a stone boyish face, he replied, "None of it is Photoshopped." The lady burst out laughing convulsively in his face. There was a 3/4 sec. of awkwardness where he remained silent while she cackled heartily, then finally, he bad-boy laughed in synchrony.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>"Who said illusions were simple?"</p>

<p>I think what Anders was actually saying that there is more in a photograh than just illusions. They can have a lot more information contained within them other than illusions. Take Documentry photography for example. It is telling a story.... and a photograph of someone being shot is a photograph of someone being shot. I think from the very early days most people understood that photographs can be manipulated to create illusions and there are many examples of that. But a mug shot is a mug shot and a photograph of fairies at the bottom of the garden is a simple illusion.</p>

<p>Yes, in one sense of a word a photograph is an illusion but it also can contain a lot of factual information.</p>

 

<p>Allen, I can't see here where anyone said that illusions were all there is. Obviously, a photograph has ties to its referent (which is why it can't lie well) and it is also far removed from the reality (and context) of that referent, which is why it also can't tell the truth. All of the photographer's choices also shift the look and meaning of the referent. What looks like a mug shot could be a deadpan, head-on portrait taken of an unshaven, sleepy man in the morning, and you would have no way of knowing.</p>

<p>Talk to a real forensic photographer some day and you will see that your easy factual information is more difficult than you think.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>"and it is also far removed from the reality (and context) of that referent, which is why it also can't tell the truth."<br /> <br /><br />Far removed from reality I think not. A photograph of your uncle Jasper after a night out with the lads is a photograph of your uncle Jasper after a night out with the lads. Yes, you can interprete with your own take....but still it will be a photograph of your uncle Jasper after a night out with the lads. Really that simple. Documentry prides itself on factual information not fairy tale illusions. I think we take the word illusion too far from its understanding and actual meaning. Indeed following the same path you can easily claim life is an illusion; before we were born we were not aware after we cease( unless you have a faith belief) we are not aware...is the inbetween just an illusion?</p>

<p>"One can, indeed, create emotions through illusion. That's, to me as a photographer, more important than so-called truth."</p>

<p>Hmm, politicians are big on playing with emotions the truth is often cast aside. Of course we can create emotions through illusions but they are emotional illusions. Perhaps we can call them emotional truths from our own personal illusionary fantasy thoughts.</p>

<p>Truth in anything is a refreshing experience and to be valued.</p>

<p>There are a lot of truths to be shared in photography.</p>

<p>I think it is deeming to cast Photography in the light of just merely illusions/delusions.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Who said illusions were simple?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I did, Luis, which does not imply that many does not put great efforts into it.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>The idea that viewers under 30 today see the imaginary sacred, inviolable veracity of photography the same way that people did in the 1850's is absurd.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Who formulated that absurdity? Luis did !</p>

<p>What I have been trying to communicate, but obviously, for some, in vain, is that the characteristic of photography, contrary to most others arts, is, that it has its roots in what Julie pinpoints as the "found", more than in the "made".<br /> At last I, find such a clarifications useful in a discussion on photography and "illusions" (and as mentioned earlier, on "lies") although, surely, contemporary viewers of photos are very aware of manipulations of reality in photos, as Luis highlights. Such awareness does however not eliminate this central tradition of photography, of showing something "found" in reality.<br /> In my eyes, the interest of discussing "illusions" and "truth" in photography, as Fred invited us to do, is that it underlines the swing in the minds of all viewers of photos between the "found" and the "made". Such swings of the mind are not, or at least less, in action in other arts.</p>

<p>Fred you had me here<br /> "We often discuss the accuracy or truth of a photo. What role does illusion play?<br /> Illusion seems to be a significant photographic <a id="itxthook0" rel="nofollow" href="#">quality</a> because photography is so tied to our "visible reality." Photographers can use the connection between a real-world occurrence and the resulting photograph to expressive advantage..."</p>

<p>I thought the op was an insightful exploration of the role and uses of illusion. From what I read it is not really a question of found vs made. straight vs created. I shoot straight work and I create/build photos. Most often the line is obscure and illusion is just part of the craft that gives work a voice.</p>

<p>"Truth in anything is a refreshing experience and to be valued." of course it is Allen even tho yours and mine will differ. If we declare the 'facts' we will also differ. In photography as with other expressive mediums it is a special opportunity to put an individual voice to 'truth'. For myself, a verbal klutz, photography allows me to uniquely express a resemblance of a valued perceived 'truth'. <em>Express</em>ive,... interesting word, loaded really.</p>

<p>I think Fred has opened a particularly interesting door in this context with the word, a word - illusion ...</p>

<p><br /> "awareness does however not eliminate this central tradition of photography, of showing something "found" in reality"<br /> <br /> Equally we should not judge every photograph as a mere illusionary lie.</p>

<p> "Truth in anything is a refreshing experience and to be valued."<br /> <br /> of course it is Allen even tho yours and mine will differ. If we declare the 'facts' we will also differ. In photography as with other expressive mediums it is a special opportunity to put an individual voice to 'truth'"<br /> <br /> We do not differ that much. I would not like to see a person suffering and I suspect neither would you. Of course we could claim all photographs are illusion and that a suffering person was just a photographers illusion and really they were tucking in to apple pie and cream. Of course the photograph was not depicting the suffering but it was all about the angle, light, and the photographers timing and take. Why not just take a photograph of a dead leaf and claim it is the the answer to the ultimate question... <br /><br /> Let us be honest if photography is just about creating illusions why should we bother. Perhaphs writing fairy tales would be more fun.</p>

<p>A man once wrote"that life is merely a stage which we all play our part"or words to that effect.</p>

<p>But I like to think that some of us go back stage and photograph the reality not the illusions.</p>

<p>Allen you said a mouthful. The angles are abundant. and an appropriate quote in the context of this thread imo.<br>

Yet I think our take on it differs significantly.</p>

<p>[<em>trying desperately to escape the "lie/truth," "found/made" conundrums ...]</em></p>

<p>However, or whatever you think illusion is, I would claim that it only happens when you're not in it. It's only an illusion afterwards; from the "outside." You can't live there; you can only pass through and look back.</p>

<p>I would also claim that what happens in that "looking back" is more than half (maybe even all of) the reward/attraction of illusions. More specifically, it's about looking back at your self, more than, or even to the exclusion of, what the illusion consisted of ("out there"). It's the sudden making-vivid-because-of-it (the "wobble") of the return to what (you perceive to be) non-illusion that makes the long post-illusion savoring of the experience be <em>most</em> of the experience of it.</p>

<p>Allen, you have interesting views. But why are you making stuff up and playing fast and loose with the truth of this thread? You have continually claimed some things that are simply not the case. Here are some examples, just from your last couple of posts, but your posts throughout the thread have been riddled with straw men (arguments you first make up and then argue against):</p>

<p><em>"we should not judge every photograph as a mere illusionary lie."</em></p>

<p>No one here suggested we should judge every photo as a mere illusionary lie. You are the one who continually formulates his ideas with SHOULD. </p>

<p><em>"we could claim all photographs are illusion"</em></p>

<p>You're the only one trying to claim this, merely so you can argue against it.</p>

<p><em>"if photography is just about creating illusions"</em></p>

<p>You seem confused. Please re-read the OP and all my posts and the posts of others. Then either tell us who specifically said photography is JUST about creating illusions and quote where they said. (If you find a quote make sure to include the CONTEXT of what they were saying to ensure that you haven't taken a quote out of context thereby misunderstanding it.) If you can't do that, perhaps you will re-think all your responses here. I used the word "argument" intentionally. What I had in mind was a discussion about our uses of illusion in making photographs and our experiences of viewing illusions in photographs. You, on the other hand, are simply creating an argument by putting words in our mouths from the very beginning. You saw this in all or nothing terms. You mistook an undertaking to go deep into the notion of photographic illusions for a very superficial ALL PHOTOS ARE JUST ABOUT ILLUSION OR NOT kind of argument.</p>

<p>_____________________________</p>

<p>As for photographing truth . . . I invite you to consider the difference between facts and truth. Facts are cold and in the world. Truth is warm and in our hearts and minds. Facts are often what I see when I see photos taken candidly. Truth is rarely present. Because the truth requires more than the facts. The truth requires a coherence of facts to each other in the mind of the understander of truth. Facts are out there. The truth is not. It requires something of us. It is a fact that that man is lying on the ground over there huddled under a sleeping bag, with a dirty face. That tells me nothing of the truth of who he is, or how he got there, or where he could end up. Truth often requires engagement. It is way more than cold, hard facts. Most photos rather than being illusions as you keep claiming I've claimed, I would say are facts. They capture persons, places, things, and scenes just like xerox machines, which also don't tell the truth, they supply copies of facts. Please stop denigrating truth. It's too important a concept to be so superficially bandied about.</p>

<p><em>[Addition]</em> Most good photographers I can think of use illusions to get to the truth, not to avoid it. For me, truth in photographs has little to do with accuracy of representation, though it can in some cases. Truth is usually bigger than that.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>photography allows me to uniquely express a resemblance of a valued perceived 'truth'.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Ecco. Just 'wow'- and I'm all serious. I think this manages to sum up really great deal, and just in 1 sentence. Clearly something a lot of us have difficulty with (me certainly included) ;-)<br>

OK, I had to read it twice but I attribute that to the density of information in 1 sentence, and my lazy state of mind today.</p>

<p>The key for me remains in 'uniquely', and 'value perceived'. The truth and what is illusion are (up to a level) personal. As already stated, our truths are not identical. So, what we consider illusions is also personal up to a level, as illusion and truth hinge together. Illusions somehow seem to oppose 'facts', as being non factual but equally pointing towards a truth.<br>

While I agree with Fred's last statement (how illusions do not avoid the truth), I think most good photographers also can do the exact reverse - use an illusion as 'smoke and mirrors', as irony, as tongue-in-cheek (OK, the effect would still point to a truth, but not at first face). <br />The more I think about it, the more I get this feel of a very multi-faceted tool one can employ in many ways. They're like the threads we see in between facts, the lines connecting the factual dots, the logic we see between events - which form our points of view.<br>

Multi-faceted also in the number of practical ways one brings illusions into a photo. The scope of it is really very wide, from deliberate framing to imply relationships between objects, to post-processing, effects of black and white, choice of focal length and some more. Also seems to range from the near-subconscious to the very conscious. As a result, I continue to have a bit a struggle making up my mind and/or coming to sensible coherent ideas, as some things fit in my photographic approach while others don't.<br>

___________<br>

As with all these discussions, it's about aspects of photography. Talking in absolutes "photography" and i.e. "illusions", "empathy" etc., one needs to keep an eye out that it is an aspect, not the whole and only story. Making statements in a thread like this absolutes, rather than contextual, would simplify opinions a bit too much.</p>

<p>Double post.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Truth often requires engagement. It is way more than cold, hard facts. Most photos rather than being illusions as you keep claiming I've claimed, I would say are facts. They capture persons, places, things, and scenes just like xerox machines, which also don't tell the truth, they supply copies of facts. </p>

</blockquote>

<p>Fred, I have no intention of repeating myself, but you are going too far in your totalitarian way of seeing the world and monopolize "engagement". Why do you want to impose on us your way of seeing the world. In my eyes, what you call "cold hard facts" can in some cases, when you are engaged and careful find your shots in the seen "real" world, better represent the illusions we live in, than any made representation of what you call "truth". Maybe, if I may, your problem with cold hard facts is that you live in the illusion that what you call truth can only be found elsewhere. This problem, that you share with many, I'm sure, is in line with what Julie rightly explains:</p>

<blockquote>

<p>However, or whatever you think illusion is, I would claim that it only happens when you're not in it. It's only an illusion afterwards; from the "outside." You can't live there; you can only pass through and look back.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Well, we all live in the cold-hard-facts-world whether we lock our doors and draw the curtains and we mostly would not see the illusions while being there. For some, it's called alienation. Also for some, or at least for me photography is one among other visual means for "looking back" and getting nearer a truth ("a truth" and not "the truth" and always "towards a truth" which is never an absolute state of understanding apart from in totalitarian ideologies).</p>

<p>I disagree, and believe most of us (myself included) live in a benignly delusional world, for which there is plenty of scientific evidence for, partially because of the dynamics and biological limits of the senses, overcompensating for fear, and the usual brilliant idiot's sense of righteousness. Facts are meaningless, boring, vapid things until we take their human measure (who said that?). I think this, in part, is what Fred means by engagement.</p>

<p>When illusions are conceived, and still in our heads, not the image/print, maybe we can't live there, but they sure seem to live inside us. If not, where? So, for a golden few moments we at least cohabitate, no? When something is inside you, which way do you have to look to see it? Forward, back, sideways?</p>

<p>P.S. And while I'm at it, irony's been beaten to death, buried, resurrected, and had several stakes driven through its little knotty heart.</p>

<p> </p>

<blockquote>

<p>Why do you want to impose on us your way of seeing</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Anders, I don't. It's why I stayed out of the discussion for days, making a post only this morning after almost a week of silence on my part. Perhaps you're having a language difficulty and somewhere in my recent post mistook my own view on photography for some sort of imposition on you. If I could impose my views on you, that would make you rather weak, and I think of you as anything but weak. I doubt you could be so imposed upon. I doubt that Wouter, or Julie, or Josh, or Luis, or Allen is that weak that they would be imposed upon by my personal thoughts on photography. Any such interpretation on your part is completely of your own prejudice and fabrication. Perhaps you should go back to talking about "lying," speaking of monopolization.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>Facts are meaningless, boring, vapid things until we take their human measure (who said that?).</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Luis, as far as I know, the first to formulate the idea was Protagoras, somewhere around 440 B.C., when he said, loosely translated, <em>"Man is the measure of all things."</em> And, yes, you got the gist of what I was saying. I appreciate your comprehension.</p>

<p>[<em>Warning! You probably don't want to read the following before having at least two cups of coffee</em>.]</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>"The autonomy of man is linked to the <em>interrogation</em> of nature, to the interrogation, and not to the responses that are made."</p>

<p>"If human existence responds to the question "what is there?" with anything other than: "myself and the night, which is to say infinite interrogation," it subordinates itself to the response, which is to say to nature. In other words, humanity explains itself from nature and thereby renounces autonomy. The explanation of human life from a given (from any throw of the dice substituted for any other) is inevitable but empty to the extent that it <em>responds</em> to the infinite interrogation: to formulate this void is at the same time to <em>realize</em> the autonomous power of infinite interrogation." -- <em>Georges Bataille</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Are not photographers "infinite interrogators" <em>par excellance</em>? Hmmm ... but am I agreeing or disagreeing with Luis? Who and what is subordinate, and who and what is autonomous in the perception of illusions?</p>

<p>Josh/Wouter, to me, the key to what Josh is saying and that Wouter picked up on is the word "resemblance." This is a visual term that shouldn't go unnoticed, especially in a discussion of photographic illusion. Because photographs resemble, there is a place for illusion which is well worth considering. Resemblance, likeness, seeming. All significant photographic concepts worth exploring. Philosophers, for a very long time, pitted the way things "seem" against the way things "are." They often tended to put more stock in the "is" over the "seems." Appearances (for Plato, Descartes, and many others) were much lower down the ladder than "realities." I find photography a nice blurring of that line between reality and appearance, between the resemblance and the thing resembled. And, as Josh points out, photos can do the trick in this regard nicely. It's why I often look at photos as having at least two subjects, the one that's "in" the photo and the one that <em>is</em> the photo.</p>

<p>Julie,<br>

At the risk of just 1 cup of coffee (but strong coffee).... yes there is a lot of good food in that quote.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>to formulate this void is at the same time to <em>realize</em> the autonomous power of infinite interrogation</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Live is defined by death, sadness by laughter, darkness by light and the Catholics gently swerved around the issue by defining the bad as the lack of God's presence (thank you, Augustinus) (*). I had to think of this earlier when discussing the illusion one can create by explicitely not including thing(s) in a frame, creating an obvious absence, which communicates maybe even stronger what ought to be there. By lack of a photographic example coming to mind (I need the 2nd coffee after all): factually, we do not know what Vermeer's <a href="http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/vermeer/i/geographer.jpg">Geographer </a>is looking at, but somehow to me it always seems he's looking at (what was perceived as) the brave new world of scientific discoveries. Which elevates the whole painting to a statement of a new age, rather than just somebody looking out of the window.<br>

Or, somewhat more light-hearted, John Cleese: "<a href="

mention the war</a>".</p>

<p>_______<br>

(*) Apart from liking Augustinus, I include the example because it does raise a nice question which is just very slightly related to the thread at hand: those of order. In Julie's quote, nature reigns surpreme, and all other elements are subject to that. The void is wholly defined by what isn't there, and not by itself. Is darkness a type of light? Well, just some loose thoughts to start the week.</p>

<p>Wouter, I'm not sure coffee helps, but it makes the quote less painful ... In any event, I'm enjoying seeing Cleese and Bataille in the same room, chatting ...</p>

<p>To Fred's post about resemblance and blurring, it is my opinion that both those terms, <em>resemblance</em> and <em>blurring</em>, have nothing to do with the particular phenomenon of illusion (what makes and illusion an illusion). In fact, both terms are exactly what illusion is not. Illusion is about an <em>excess of certainty</em>, a certainty that, from another viewpoint or orientation proves unwarranted. Think of the duck/rabbit illusion. It's EITHER a duck or a rabbit. It's not a blurry duck/rabbit; it doesn't resemble a duck/rabbit, it resembles both a DUCK and a RABBIT -- which (duck and rabbit) need have no resemblance to each other. The whole frisson of illusion is that disagreement in certainty; one feels certain of BOTH duck and rabbit.</p>

<p>Blurring ("wobbling" in my comments) is the mental flutter that this dual certainty provokes, it's not the illusion, it's what can happen ONLY from afterward/outside. </p>

<p>I just saw Fred's post now as we posted at the same time. It touches upon what I left as unrelated monday morning thought: the order of things (to quote Fred: <em>Appearances (for Plato, Descartes, and many others) were much lower down the ladder than "realities."</em>). Indeed often the question seems to be about what things are, while what we're dealing with more often is what they seem to be. Agreed that photography is nicely in the grey area between the two.<br>

Julie, "<em>Illusion is about an </em>excess of certainty<em>, a certainty that, from another viewpoint or orientation proves unwarranted"</em>. I'm not immediately sold on it, to be honest. With regards to the viewpoints proving it unwarranted, yes. But whether all illusions come from certainty, no. To me, many illusions are there to show the other viewpoint or orientation. As such, they rather prove the excess of certainty of somebody else or another work, rather than their own. They change perspective to raise a question, not to answer it.</p>