Sunday Musings: the camera doesn't lie after all, because it cannot

<p>We are told as a platitude that the camera never lies. This is countered by the apparently intelligent argument that the camera lies all the time, because we often misunderstand the events in the scene, or that certain elements are not included (as if creating instant maps of every object in the entire universe were possible). But neither argument is true.</p>

<p>The camera cannot lie, and it cannot tell the truth. It only presents facts. The photographer goes out into the proverbial field, clicks the shutter (for 10 hours or for 1/10,000 of a second) and preserves a scene - IOW, facts. Facts can be misunderstood, hidden, misrepresented. Facts can cause emotional responses. But facts do not tell truth or lies.</p>

<p>So it is true that the camera never lies, after all.</p>

<p>Mine sometimes tells me it's in focus ("beep") and it isn't. If I argue with it by repeatedly asking it to try again, it eventually concedes that it was indeed not being entirely truthful with that first, lazy "beep."</p>

<p>Cameras are machines with no sense of consciousness, but photographers (and editors) can lie with cameras and their work product.</p>

<p>Given a choice, will a politician be portrayed with his eyes shot and mouth open (the normal state), or clear-eyed and resolute. Will a crowd be photographed and cropped to show a teeming mass, or a sparse group of stragglers. Does a landscape attempt to show the often hidden beauty in a scene, or litter and graffiti in the foreground.</p>

<p>I think the most memorable photographs convey a message that originates in the mind of the photographer. In a philosophical sense, all photographs are lies.</p>

<p>It is the fondest hope of forensic and scientific photographers that the camera "presents facts", but they are always doomed to disappointment.</p>

<p>As the <a href="http://www.archive.org/stream/ephemeragreekpr00buckgoog#page/n6/mode/2up">Greek Prose Poem</a> ("the Seeker", Mitchell S. Buck) says:</p>

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<p>Truth alone does not exist<br>

Seek beauty if thou desirest peace.</p>

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<p> Or, from an old Irish folk song, "Truth is a fix-ed star". Cameras don't lie because cameras don't have agendas. Photographers, on the other hand...</p>

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<p>So it is true that the camera never lies, after all.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes, because a lie is a false statement made with deliberate intent to deceive - how can an inanimate object like a camera have "intent"? </p>

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<p>It only presents facts</p>

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<p>Does it really? Like the fact that planes can fly with their propellers not turning (because a fast shutter speed was used to capture the image)? Or that the tires are oblong when photographed on moving vehicles with a camera having a focal plane shutter? The enormous nose and tiny ears of a person's image taken up close with a wide-angle lens isn't preserving the facts of the scene - or does it? A long exposure at night creates light-streaks of passing vehicles - something that never existed in reality. Also, a long exposure can eliminate anyone moving from a scene - surely not a representation of the facts of the real scene?<br /><br>

</p>

As Matt used to say, guns don't kill

people, people do. With regards to

truths and lies, it's both...like the grey

scale. One is more evil while the other

less evil...isn't it?

<p>EVIL? Wasn't that "Electronic Viewfinder, Interchangeable Lens"?</p>

 

So that really is a telephone pole growing out of my niece's head in the last photo I took of her?

<p>I had forensic photography in the back of my mind in my first response. It is very easy to bias forensic analysis based on your preconceived conclusions. We have seen hundreds (thousands) of cases called into question because of the investigators' bias regarding evidence, including photographs.</p>

<p>This bias extends so something so widely accepted as fingerprints. Per a recent National Geographic article, the FBI now requires technicians to classify the unknown print BEFORE comparing it with known prints. Similar cases involve matching bullet and shell markings, and the now completely debunked use of hair samples and bite marks. Even automated photographs such as dash cameras and body cameras are producing equivocal results.</p>

<p>The new age of DNA analysis is subject to question as well. The process is proprietary and has not been validated to the level of a simple aspirin tablet (and we're still learning things about aspirin). The astronomical odds cited by experts are based on all possible combinations and permutations, not real world measurements. For the uninitiated, there are more similarities between earthworms and humans than differences from one human to another. Most of the 'possible" combinations are simply not viable. The book is still being written on DNA uniqueness. </p>

<p>Body cameras probably won't help much. Video cameras are much more sensitive to light than the human eye, and aren't subject to fatigue. Furthermore a video can be examined at leisure, whereas a policeman has about one second to decide whether an offender is holding a gun or a cell phone. "Drop it!"means DROP IT! Unarmed means what? Five times as many murders are committed with hands, fists and feet as with all long guns combined.</p>

<p>I can honestly and TRUTHFULLY say that I have never killed anyone with a camera. Rather, there have been many instances in which I have sorely damaged their feelings and called into doubt their own self image... :-)</p>

<p>At the heart of it, a recording device operating without filters or other enhancements only can record the image falling on the sensor (silicon or silver). We can manipulate the image through the use of accessories. A brilliant scene can be made to look dark--water clearer through the use of polarizers--so on and so forth. So depending upon the device and configuration--that image might not be a true representation of ANY reality before it.</p>

<p>Then there is the photographer. Every photographer has an agenda--to take an image of something. I have never known anyone who just randomly fired off exposures without looking at what was being framed--as a matter of purpose. There is always some intent, and some underlying agenda in the mind of the photographic actor. This does not even touch on the possibly artificial and false presentation or agenda of another human that is being photographed.</p>

<p>@Edward. Tongue in cheek, I heartily disagree that the camera does not think for itself. My Nikon seems to be approaching that AI tipping point of 'technological singularity' in which it has become sentient and knows more than I do--wanting to make decisions for the wetware simpleton that is holding it. My 'smartphone' reached that point one Android OS update ago... :-(</p>

<p>This is a well-ploughed topic. John Berger addresses it in his book 'Ways of Seeing', and it was probably also discussed in his TV series of the same name. </p>

<p>He uses an effective trick to show how the observer's preconceptions color the interpretation of a photograph, or, in the example he used, a Van Gogh painting. (I won't give the details because that would be a spoiler. Take the book out of the library.)</p>

<p>Slightly tangential anecdote: I remember in the U.K. papers, in the 1980s, there was a photograph of a policeman's boot making contact with a protestor's chin, at a demonstration. It was around the time of the miners' strike. IIRC, an inquiry found the policeman had merely slipped and fallen backward, and it only <em>appeared</em> he was kicking this fellow in the head.</p>

<p>Dave, the field has been plowed and planted so many times it is in need of fertilizer. Hence, we throw a few buckets of that out every so often here... :-)</p>

<p>As to humans in pictures, this is a central thesis of John Pultz' "The Body and The Lens." We have considerations of whether the camera is recording a reality, or a staged presence that is "true" to the recording--but false to the narrative it intends to depict. Image and meaning are often two different things.</p>

<p>As a 'fer instance', I like to take small sections of a broader scenario--where they become out of immediate context to the whole they belong in. Sometimes as we know this wholly changes the impact and meaning of an image--outside of its reality. Take Sally Mann's "Sherry and Sherry's Grandmother, Both at Twelve Years Old." If framed in a larger image, we have little more than an adolescent girl standing next to a picture of her grandmother. Shot the way it was, we have a highly sexualized and charged image. Which is an accurate depiction of reality?</p>

<p>A bit ago, I read an article in Shutterbug about a study that was done using six different photographers--but only one subject. To each photographer, the subject was 'labeled' in some fashion--as a convict, a millionaire, a fisherman, hero, so on and so forth. Based upon the interpretive bias of the photographer--how the subject was interpreted differed. So the ultimate image appealed to the bias of the interpretation--and not any objective reality. Here is a nice little video detailing the thing:</p>

<p><a href="

<p>Or take my image here. This is raw--what the camera recorded. Is the boy jumping, magically flying with the bird, or is this simply a trick of light and shadow that makes it appear so? Only my hairdresser knows for sure...</p>

<p><a href="/photo/18143854">http://www.photo.net/photo/18143854</a></p>

<p>And where into this spectrum does the work of Arbus or Warhol fall? Is the lens accurately recording what is, or some ideological representation of the photographer's mind? With that, I have thrown my bucket of fertilizer into the field... :-)</p>

<p>And another idle thought:</p>

<p><a href="

<p>The camera cannot and does not lie about subject matter. But the real subject matter in camera-work is not the stuff in front of the lens. It is rather the real optical image floating in the darkness behind the lens. And the decisive occurence is when this real optical image strikes the film or sensor, how hard it strikes, how long it strikes.<br>

This is why photographs have qualities like focus, depth of field, exposure time, two dimensions instead of three, that don't exist in real-world objects in front of the camera. It is a mistake to declare photographs mis-represent things. Photographs aren't about things at all, just images.</p>

<p>"The camera ... cannot tell the truth ... So it is true that the camera ... lies, after all." - Karim Ghantous.</p>

<p>Well, you used all those words. I was just selective in the ones I copied, just as I might choose to take a photo of an attractive beach at sunset, carefully pointing the camera away from the sewage outlet and that pile of rusty tin cans someone dumped on the sand earlier.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Aren't photographs refused as evidence in U.S. courts unless the photographer or another authority testifies that the photos accurately represent the subject? This requirement wouldn't be necessary if photographs were never misleading, intentional or not. I think the testimony is waived sometimes if the other side stipulates that the photo is accurate (e.g., routine crime-scene photos).</p>

JDM, interchangeable lens and

electronic vf aren't evil. I was referring

to truths and lies, and with context.

Great art is but a lie telling a

truth...truth begins in lies. Evil, less or

more are the loudmouthed big ego

idiotic buffoon, and the slyly smiling

lying warhawk, for example. You know

Dick got impeached today 42 years

ago, and truth was told -it was by

photographs and recordings- and lead

to Dicks admission...

<p>>>>Based upon the interpretive bias of the photographer--how the subject was interpreted differed. </p>

<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rashomon_effect">*Click*</a></p>

<p>I never believe anything my camera tells me.</p>

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<p>You know Dick got impeached today 42 years ago, and truth was told -it was by photographs and recordings- and lead to Dicks admission...</p>

 

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<p>Tricky Dick resigned in order to avoid being impeached. He was never impeached.</p>

<p>As for other liars, cameras have lenses that lie, as shown in wide-angle and telephoto distortions of relative apparent distances of subjects from the lens.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>