Can there be a concept of 'An Honest Photograph'.

<p>Stephen,</p>

<p>it appears that you will only be happy when you can have a camera that has no input from the photographer, where it exists in some arbitrary space and direction and fires at some arbitrary time to capture what is before it, without any "dishonest" manipulation from the part of the photographer. That might be your "honest" image. Photography is not like that.</p>

<p>In other words, dishonesty is an irrelevant consideration in most photography by humans, especially in art photography, where the desire of the photographer is to create an image that will attempt to communicate something to the viewer (beauty, fantasy, emotion, something rarely seen or seen in an entirely new way, something that may move the viewer, and so on). In rare cases, photographs can be used to engender some dishonest communication, but that is not usually because what appears before the lens is being artistically perceived and recreated by the photographer and not merely recorded, it is rather because the photograph is the instrument of some intentionally dishonest communication to the viewer.</p>

<p>Making images that are not some attempt at a real depiction of what is before the lens is not being dishonest. I think that in many cases it is simply being creative.</p>

<p>I think a security camera would probably qualify as "honest."</p>

<p>The OP should have been: "Can there be a concept of 'A DIShonest Photograph.'" Can you make a dishonest photograph?-- because I'm here to tell you, the answer is NO. Trust me, I've tried. I've sliced, diced, colored, recolored, texturized, smoothed, spun and warped photographic "meat." I might as well have been shooting bee-bees at the Terminator. If your eye finds one fragment of "recognizable" stuff, watch that "stuff" thumb its nose at you and "own" its own its space all over again in your mind ...</p>

<p>- Julie [who is eating a banana, not because she's a dishonest monkey but because she LIKES BANANAS. The banana, on the other hand, is, she hopes, <em>very</em> dishonest, given the origins of bananas.]</p>

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<p>We can do our best to make them as realistic and non manipulated as possible but in the end they are just copies of the world. I could go on about if anything we perceive in anyway can be considered real, citing the allegory of the cave. </p>

 

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<p>Absolutely, in fact in Platonic terms photographs ( or any representations ) are 'copies of copies' and would belong to the order of simulacra, they are doubly misleading and 'false'.</p>

<p>Also I find the 'concept' part of the question confusing, wouldn't it be more direct to ask simply 'Can there be an honest photograph?'</p>

 

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<p>How many would consider their ID photos "honest"? I never look like I think I look. Last time I got a new digital driver's license they gave me a second take. I didn't like it either but didn't want to seem vain. An attractive young women at the next widow was encouraged by the woman clerk to try again to get the picture her boyfriend would like. After several more tries and the opinions of myself and another clerk we settled on her best portrait. <br /><br /></p>

<p>It all depends if your concept of <em>honest</em> is limited to "accurate." Mine is not. So, yes, a photo can be honest, even when it is wildly inaccurate. It can honestly show you what I want to show you photographically. That may not correspond to anything else. It may be a truth unto itself and unto me and unto you, without attempting to represent a fact.</p>

<p>In addendum to my previous comments, I would add that the "concept of an honest photograph" should instead be considerd as the "concept of an honest communication." In other words, it is important that the photographer create images in a manner consistent with his own values. An image made in that way can be considered as an honest photograph. </p>

<p>Matt and Jeff, I don't think that dismissing this sort of conversation is a good thing. I take the ethics of photography seriously. I know, from personal experience, that not all togs do. At least one of them served time for failing to pay heed to ethics/morality. Take the famously cropped image of the young, naked girl fleeing a burning Vietnamese village as an example. The uncropped version told a completely different story, showing the twin columns of indifferent US troops filing into the village they had just napalmed. For many it's the difference between Sally Mann's iconic images and exploitative imagery.<br>

For decades I have said that, while the camera itself may not lie, the same cannot be said of the photographer.</p>

<p>You already said that.</p>

<p>And...the topic wasn't the honesty of the photographer, it was "the honesty of the photograph." Those are completely different things. Photographs are always honest as two dimensional objects. Photographers may be dishonest about what it took to make that two dimensional object, but that's not what was asked about.</p>

<p>Disagree entirely, Jeff. The two are difficultly separable. A photograph isn't made by itself.</p>

<p>I think that Peter is close to the truth on this question in regard to the morality/ethics aspect, but honesty also covers many other issues/values, not the least of which concerns the photographer's intention in making an image. And I would be surprised if the author of the OP had a closed mind in regard to that consideration.</p>

<p>I approach photography as a expression of myself, my creativity. It is my art. Is art honest? Same question to me. I alter all of my photographs to express what I want. I crop, dodge, burn, soften, sharpen, take out unwanted elements, etc. I suppose you could have an "honest" photograph by taking the human factor out of it and have a machine randomly snapping photos. The question is, would we be interested in looking at them? </p>

<p>Arthur, are you claiming that the unmade photograph is honest/dishonest? I would suggest that this leads to numerous unsupportable conclusions -- about the nature of unmade things.</p>

<p>Returning to the honesty of existing photographs -- those in the here-and-now -- if I am looking at a picture, right-side-up and I then rotate it 180 degrees, its down is now my up. Which of us is dishonest? Further, if I rotate it 90 degrees, now the darn down is my right and its right is now my up (or is it down?) !!</p>

<p>Julie,<br>

Good point. I know otherwise traditional film photographers who flip and rotate their work or even print negative images. Often as not no one notices. <br>

<em>Unmade photographs</em> might be a good topic for here. I don't know how I would frame it though. The thought of latent images on unprocessed film always intrigues me. </p><div></div>

<p>Julie, you do raise an interesting question. The OP asked "..as photographers do we naturally <strong>look</strong> for 'the best photograph' and in doing so skew/edit any truth to our individual agendas?" <em>(my bold characters for clarity)</em> That would support the contention that the photographer has some intention in regard to what he wants to create. And that would seem to include at least one consideration in your category of the unmade, or latent-still-to-be-achieved, photograph. The role of the photographer, be it honest or dishonest (and however you wish to define those terms), is thus a property of the unmade and imagined photograph, just as much as the photograph itself. Of course, a photograph that does not exist at all can have no such property. Or am I missing a nuance in what you are saying....?</p>

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<p>but honesty also covers many other issues/values, not the least of which concerns the photographer's intention in making an image</p>

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<p><br />Sorry, this doesn't play. The thing itself is different than its creation. And "honesty" on the part of the photographer can only be in the representation of it, not in the thing itself. Regardless of my intention, the photograph stands as an object.</p>

<p>The "thing itself" can be the "subject matter", whereas the photograph is a consequence of the photographer's perception of the subject matter and therefore for me it is his "subject", not something strangely remote from that.</p>

<p>How many photographs of the same subject matter by different photographers are absolutely identical. I would hazard a guess that there are none.</p>

<p>I guess we agree to disagree, but I appreciate your differing viewpoint, Jeff. </p>

<p>Arthur, you ask, "Or am I missing a nuance in what you are saying....?"</p>

<p>To whom is the unmade photograph capable of being either honest or dishonest?</p>

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<p>How many photographs of the same subject matter by different photographers are absolutely identical. </p>

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<p><br />That has nothing to do with "honesty." The photograph is a two dimensional object. It is always honest, or maybe it is neither honest nor dishonest. But it is simply a two dimensional object.</p>

<p>Julie, the answer for me is "nobody", if we exclude the mind of the photographer who might be contemplating an as-yet unmade photograph.</p>

<p>The net worth of Adobe - Microsoft in part - and the imaging software section of Apple - stock would amount to zero if your 'quest for the original image' concept were in place.</p>

<p>Plus it would be most difficult to 'enter a print' to the Internet, as one would have to do something to get the 'original image' on the Web.</p>

<p>Good luck...</p>

<p>There seems to be a really common (mis)conception of photographs as "envelopes" or as vehicles or deliverers. As if some pristine "other" that is not the photograph itself should be (able to be) conveyed by a good/successful photo. The photo itself is just something you use to "get" that other pre-expected "other" thing -- from the past, or maybe an abstract already-held-belief. The photograph is just something that, like an envelope, you mentally throw away after successful delivery of the desired/expected content.</p>

<p>This denies that a photograph is a whole, indivisible, embodied thing. It's no more an envelope, no more a delivery vehicle to the past than children are envelopes or delivery vehicles for their parents. The past, the parent participates in the whole/indivisible embodied thing, but it's not somehow "inside" it, delivered to the present and available for unwrapping. It's like but not the same; it's complete/whole; it's not a shell.</p>

<p>Photographs are MANY things. They are different things to different people at different times. Many folks forget that photos don't have to be envelopes, so in that sense, Julie is right to remind us that a photo is a thing in and of itself. It can very much be a creation. But a photo can certainly be a reminder of the past, a representation of something else, a container or shell. We photograph a house we're advertising in order to sell it. We photograph some men and woman models in order to make tee-shirts look sexy. Those kinds of photographs can be dishonest when they mislead, and many of them are meant to mislead. If we go to an Occupy Wall St. rally and only photograph the one or two instances of violence and no instances of peaceful protest, we have dishonest photographs. If we want to say, the photographer has been dishonest and not the photographs, we may. I can shorthand that, however, to say the photos are dishonest. We photograph our kids' birthday parties not because we want to have new 2-dimensional objects to look at in a scrapbook someday. We rightfully treat them as containers of memories.</p>

<p>The question was, "can a photograph be honest." Yes, it can. And honesty is something different from representational and something different from accuracy or adherence to fact. There is emotional honesty whereby a photographer may allow a kind of personal truth to be known, shown by a photograph. Photographs show not only what has happened, not only a "decisive moment" (unfortuantely a phrase which has warped many people's understanding of what a photo can accomplish because they LIMIT photographs to that rather than using it as one concept and catch phrase among many to describe what photos do). Photos can be about possibilities as well. In creating a vision, a photo can point elsewhere than to a singular moment. They can be a narrative that has the fullness of timelessness and, in that sense, transcend that moment even as it recognizes it.</p>

<p>You're describing your personal pre-existing beliefs and expectations; not what the/a photograph is.</p>

<p>The <em>waiting image</em> idea as set forth by Jean Baudrillard rings true for me. The image <em>waits</em> for me to show up and my mental template matches it. We are the subject of our photographs. He proposed attempting a <em>pure</em> photography free of the photographer, similar to the OP's <em>honest </em>question. I did a show and have a Blurb book "Waiting Images." where I considered the photographer and viewer as subjects of the pictures. <a href="http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/91606">http://www.blurb.com/bookstore/detail/91606</a></p><div></div>

One can argue the fact of the photograph-object, but the peculiarity of the photograph is that everyone responds to it in the mode of sympathetic magic -- the human subject, the viewer, and the photographer no matter their sentiments about it.

 

Alan, what I learned from Baudrillard is that the photographic image is of material light delineating material objects. His light is Hopperesque. At least, that's the word that comes to mind.