Illusion: a photographic answer to truth

<p>We often discuss the accuracy or truth of a photo. What role does illusion play?</p>

<p>Illusion seems to be a significant photographic quality 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, playing with viewer expectations, playing with distortion and ambiguity. (Yes, of course, painters and other artists can do this as well.)</p>

<p><a href="http://www.google.com/images?client=safari&rls=en&q=james+cassebere&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&oi=image_result_group&sa=X">James Casebere</a> built miniature model structures and photographed them as if they were life-sized.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=Julian+Faulhaber&hl=en&safe=off&client=safari&rls=en&prmd=ivnso&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=uO-JTpqwGKKFsgKgkpVy&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&ved=0CAQQ_AUoAQ">Julian Faulhaber</a> photographed gas stations and landscapes with such cleanliness and concentrated saturation that he made the "real" seem "unreal."</p>

<p>The two examples above are chosen for their obviousness. There are much more subtle uses of illusion.</p>

<p>Often the illusion is not meant to be complete. Rather, the photographer can let the viewer in on the illusion, thereby layering the experience to attain both a connection to and disconnection from reality.</p>

<p>Illusions do not only take place through post-processing moves. Framing a scene can be illusory. By isolating something out of context, one can make something seem very different from how it looked at the time of capture. Perspective, lens distortion, motion and depth of focus blur, reflection, shadow, use of scale can all lead to photographic illusion as well.</p>

<p>The emotions we read into a photograph, especially if we project those emotions onto the photographer or subject, can also be an illusion. Photographs transform subjects, scenes, and photographers' feelings. They don't necessarily deliver them as they were. What a photo looks like can often travel a long distance from what emotions went into it. Photographs often elicit emotion without necessarily mirroring the emotions of the photographer or subject. Sometimes, on the other hand, we can read pretty accurately into the feelings of a photographer or subject by looking at a photo.</p>

<p>Some styles of photography are obviously made with illusion in mind. Illusion is at the forefront of their purpose. Post Modernists will often overtly play with this as did Surrealists in their day. But I think any kind of photograph can have illusory qualities, whether we intentionally put those illusions there or not.</p>

<p>Do your photographs suggest illusions? Do you think about this in your work? Are there photographers you're familiar with who particularly utilize the illusory aspects of photographs? Are there social, cultural, ethical ramifications to illusion in photographs? Can we relate to photos differently by understanding the role of illusion rather than seeing them as a search for truth, essence, or accuracy? And, most importantly to me, can the play and understanding of illusion actually help us achieve a truth more significant than accuracy of representation?</p>

<p> </p><div></div>

<p>I certainly will - deliberately, with malice aforethought - use a focal length and angle that contributes to the illusion that my subjects are out and about in glorious freedom from a scene bustling with people, vehicles, and other distractions. I'm referring to my hunting dog portraits, and the demonstrated preference (on the part of many of those dogs' owners) to see their animals portrayed in a highly romanticized, nearly theatrical (and almost ritualized) context.<br /><br />In reality, the photographs are often made in the middle of a certain amount of chaos or proximity to less-than-idyllic ... <em>stuff.</em> The most successful illusions don't involve cloning out power lines (though of course I'll stoop to that!), but in being aware as I walk along and shoot that there's about to be a magic opportunity to capture the subject against a moving sliver of background that, seen later, conveys a completely different atmosphere.<br /><br />The truth that is exposed through these shots isn't so much about the nature of the subject, but rather the aspirations - <em>longing</em>, really - of many the dogs' handlers/owners to be farther afield, and enjoying their dogs and their passion in a less suburban (and often more fantasy-like, really) setting. For that audience, the photographs are successful because they resonate with their deeply held wishes for a different or more frequently enjoyed lifestyle. They want the serenity that comes from one man, one dog out in the field - and they seem anxious to engage their willing suspension of disbelief (despite having <em>been there</em> when I made the photograph, so they <em>know</em> we had just walked past someone else's SUV, had just stepped around an outhouse, and that the foliage simply wasn't that ... <em>way,</em> exactly), when seeing the photographs. <br /><br />So, those photographs - for them, and for me - are often aspirational, or even works of fantasy, despite their very down to earth appearance as seen by the average viewer. The illusion of isolation, the sense of Noble Dog, Out On The Grounds With The Country Gentleman, is often my purpose with some subjects. And I've been learning how to craft that illusion, and how to give people permission to come out and say that's what they want.</p>

<p>After Matt's example, I cannot add that much really. Much of the illusion that I find in my own photos is there due to framing (mostly in what isn't there), perspective (mostly when I opt for wide angles) and to some extend the timing. <br>

I agree with the examples in the OP, but that leaves me another question: can you make a photo without illusions? Each step along the way contains choices that include and exclude; the 'tension' between what is there, visible in the photo, and what we feel is not there, triggers ideas/imagination about how things might have been outside the photo (be it the garbage you framed out carefully, or the moment just before or after you triggered the shutter). It's what creates the story, what implies the emotion or message. Doesn't every photographer to some extend play with these illusions by the mere fact (s)he makes a choice?<br>

Even when thinking about documentary works - it's the ability to embed a story that makes a photo really stand out. Those "just" recording a place and time are not the ones that impress us, it's those that convey an emotion, and/or manage to concentrate a whole story of many moments into one still frame - but the emotion, the lengthy story - aren't those illusions?<br>

Would a photo work without it?</p>

<p>I like photos that do it subtly, though. That leave me with an ambiguity, with a layered-ness or strightout a surprise. What triggers me to "look a second time" are these kind of illusions, these loose threads that are there for me to discover and play with in my mind. The things that make me recall I am not looking at a recording of reality, but a vision on it.</p>

 

<p>Fred, I am reminded of what I have heard writers of fiction ask: Can we use lies to tell the truth?</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>I'm not sure if this fits into the discussion or not. I did not see the illusion when I shot it. The old Olympus E-20 did not correct for photos that were shot in portrait mode. I don't remember the specifics now, but there was further cropping before I could get what I wanted from it, once I saw it.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p><div></div>

<p>Here is the story of how the one above likely came to be:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/6019849</p>

<p>As I said, I did not see the illusion when I shot it. It looks like two trees hugging each other, and thus the title from the lines from a song:</p>

<p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p>I see illusions all over the place, but where is "truth" - and truth for whom and on what ? If the "truth" in question is just reality as we would have seen it with our two eyes, had we been there, I find it less interesting, especially in a philosophy forum. Fred's text refers, as I read it, to the fundamentals of photographic reality as distinct and different from viewed reality.</p>

<p>Whether, the fact of constructing the viewed reality for the purpose of shooting it, changes something, I would have my doubts. It just adds a new layer of illusion (or why not call it bluntly multiple "lies", as I would prefer to call it) like in much fashion photography as here <a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/__kwF9vKRmNg/SwgTOxAuATI/AAAAAAAAVlo/Frnn9XcYaiY/s1600/expo6.jpg">Erwin Olaf</a>.</p>

<p>Illusionary or false realities are surely the mother-language of photography (like that of other visionary arts) and why many of us use the media for expressing ourselves. When it comes to "truth", it is nowhere to see, but an understanding of reality that can be approached by being confronted to multiple lies, as far as I see (sic!) it. . .</p>

<p>Anders, the "truth" is in the difference. In the reflexive exploration of what happened as compared to what was expected. Consider drugs; they present themselves as a chemical illusion to the body. They work *because* there are -- there must be in order for them to have their effects -- existing receptors already in place, already "expecting" what they resemble, imitate, illude to.</p>

<p>As a simple example, consider artificial sweeteners. They taste sweet because their chemistry works to our sweetness receptors just as real sugar does. But the "illusion" is only the means -- the way of "getting in." It's never the point (or the "truth"). The truth is in the difference; the artificial sweetener doesn't make us fat, but it also doesn't deliver any of the energy that our body's receptors were designed to eagerly anticipate. That's the difference; that's the truth. Notice that the illusion (the "sweetness") was not in that "truth." It's the carrier, not the package.</p>

<p>Carbon monoxide kills because the body thinks it's oxygen. Recreational (illegal) drugs have narcotic or stimulating effects because they chemically resemble something that is "expected" by existing receptors. Again, notice that it's the difference -- what was delivered vs what was expected -- that's the "truth" of the outcome of these illusions (which illusion is only the means, not the end).</p>

<p>Women don't wear eyeliner because they want you to see big eyeballs; they wear eyeliner because big eyes lead to ... other effects.</p>

<p>Afterthoughts: illusions are not vectors (think mosquitos or ticks as carriers of a disease for which they are the vector). A picture that delivers something nasty (or delightful) in excess of its intent is not an illusion; it seems to me that illusions are always going to be intentional [but I'm still thinking about this].</p>

<p>I also think that while illusions may often be signs (cosmetics, for example, are intended as signs of health), they are never symbols [but I'm also still thinking about this].</p>

<p>Anders, if one is the answer, the other must be the question.</p>

<p><strong>Lannie - "</strong>Can we use lies to tell the truth?"</p>

<p>Isn't that one of the things that mythology does?</p>

<p>I don't know why illusions can't be symbolic...and cosmetics at Halloween are hardly signs of health, and in tribes or subculture, identifiers. As usual, lots to inhale and hope for a ready neural receptor in my head after reading a Julie post.</p>

<p>Well, against the popular "truism" that "Photos do not lie" is the reality--photos ALWAYS lie.</p>

<p>Some just lie better than others. Sometimes I like the compressive effect of a telephoto lens that makes distant mountains look like they are on the other side of the street, and sometimes I hate it. Sometimes we want the illusion. Sometimes we want the exaggerated reality. Either way, where is truth?</p>

<p>Here are two I almost got arrested for:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photodb/folder?folder_id=1003686</p>

<p>Here is one that I shot in the afternoon, processed to make it look like night:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/6022249&size=md</p>

<p>Here is a "mountain" that never was:</p>

<p>http://www.photo.net/photo/5227239</p>

<p>I can conjure up mountains from nothing. With my camera I am a magician--and magicians lie. It's still magic all the same.</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<blockquote>

<p><strong>Lannie - "</strong>Can we use lies to tell the truth?"</p>

<p><strong>Luis</strong> - Isn't that one of the things that mythology does?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Yes, Luis, and mythology or not, the Bible is full of Great Lies--that sometimes yield profound truths or at least insights through parables, etc. Here is one of my favorites:</p>

<p>http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=ii%20samuel%2012:1-13&version=KJV</p>

<p>How does one "talk straight" to a king without losing one's head--one "talks straight" by lying. Through a fiction David finally saw the truth of the enormity of what he had done.</p>

<p>Did the conversation ever happen? Who cares?!</p>

<p>Writers of good fiction tell truth through lies all the time. Of course, sometimes a lie is just a lie, like Eve and the serpent. Great story, though!</p>

<p>--Lannie</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Matt, thanks. Very reasonable answer. I often forget about a very targeted audience like that, and doing work specifically for them. It's an important part of various types of photographing. I wonder just how much influence and effect our viewership (in terms of culture, community, milieu) has in many different types of photographic situations. </p>

<p>Wouter, you ask if we can make a photo without illusions. For me, it's a matter of degree. As you seem to suggest, it's good to remember that photos used in journalism can contain many illusions and, as viewers, we can be on our guard to understand the illusory aspects and take them into consideration. By way of answering Julie's question about intent, I'd say, no, illusions don't have to be intended. We can have cultural or personal biases that result in our taking a picture a certain way and we may not even recognize it about ourselves. Yet, because of that we can create a certain illusion in our presentation of something. Of course, as Anders suggests, we might then ask if it isn't ALL illusion (not just photographs) or just various levels of lies. Sometimes I think so. Sometimes I resist that notion. It's an interesting question to play with. I guess I generally tend to think we have a concept of illusion because we have a concept of non-illusion which seems a little more foundational. Non-illusion could just be a concept, like perfection, but not actually something that ever exists. The difference might simply be that I know what a guy sitting on a couch with his face reflecting in a glass table in front of him can look like when photographed through that glass table and I know what a guy sitting on a couch looks like when not photographed through a reflective substance. Both may be illusions of sorts (what is real?), but if they are illusions, they are of different orders. The former relates to the latter as a figure to a ground.</p>

<p>Anders, I understand what you're saying about the "truth" being nowhere to see, but rather an understanding of multiple and shifting realities, but as a photographer I feel compelled to resist that analysis. I don't think understanding accesses truth more than senses. As a matter of fact, I probably lean the other way. There is something very fundamentally real and true, something unfiltered and immediate, about what I see and what I can envision. It's often my own and others' understanding that mucks it up.</p>

<p>Julie, I like the idea that "truth" is found in a differentiation. It brings up, for me, the significance of relationships, which I think is often what photographic illusions rely upon. When I was working on the OP, I was thinking of your own photos in terms of constructed illusions. I'd say yours is a case where you often let your audience in on the illusion and so you play with both our connection to and our disconnection from reality.</p>

<p>Luis, thanks for the reference to Halloween.</p>

<p>Makes me wonder if many who put on makeup at Halloween or other times (I'm thinking of the drag queens I know but also many others) are painting on their truth (or at least A truth), in a sense. We often tend to think of having to strip away stuff to get at the truth, the proverbial peeling of the onion. I wonder if we can't build up truths, like layers of paint on a canvas. Is the makeup the illusion or is the illusion the scrubbed face . . . the so-called "natural" face?</p>

<p>Does a persona, a pose, makeup, have to create an illusion? Can candidness be the real faker, fooling us into thinking we've peeled the onion?</p>

<blockquote>

<p>the "truth" is in the difference</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Somehow, yes, Julie, but not quite. Truth is maybe, when we succeed, in the reaction to the "lie", and the reflection it provokes. Mostly what photographers are able to do is to function as catalyzer of such reactions, not least because most photographers would not know the "truth" either. </p>

<blockquote>

<p>I also think that while illusions may often be signs (cosmetics, for example, are intended as signs of health), they are never symbols.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Sometimes they are symbols. Cosmetics, at least what I see around, are mostly illusions (lies) of beauty and attractiveness more than health. In fact anyone noticing cosmetics would know why it has been used. It's use has become a <strong>symbol </strong>of caring about how you look and making the intentional effort of appearing attractive to others.</p>

<p>I agree with Lannie that "photos ALWAYS lie" - even when they are straight, with or without the intentions of the photographer.</p>

<p>Lannie, I do not see illusions as lies per se, but they're also not entirely true, either. They work well, because as Julie pointed out, there are receptors for it. Those receptors are primarily those of perception, how our mental states shape and filter the world into a personal illusion. Illusion works because it's a native, autonomous, partially learned form of differential modeling, thus a reliable channel of communication with others. An intimately familiar process. We also speak to each others' delusions in a similar way, though that's best left for another thread.</p>

<p>Last weekend I was at a gallery opening of large format photography. I spoke with all the photographers, and the curator about LF, and with two notable exceptions, everyone else mentioned the potential for realism with large prints "you can walk into". What an illusion that is, and frankly, a vapid one without other things going on. Personally, I like prints I can't walk away from (even if I feel terrified/repulsed and like running away), but these guys place great value on the "window" illusion.</p>

<p>To me, photographs can neither lie nor tell the truth. They transform.</p>

<blockquote>

<p>photos ALWAYS lie</p>

</blockquote>

<p>This may be true on an abstract theoretical/philosophical level (and I understand it on that abstract level), but I don't find it terribly useful either practically or photographically. Sure, I suppose every photo is a lie. But we can utilize lies, fakery, and illusions in photos, recognize them as such, and talk about them as such without neutering the idea by claiming everything about a photo is a lie. If everything in a photo is a lie, it is not to the same degree and of the same order. So we can still tell the difference relatively speaking between what's more illusory in a photo and what's less so.</p>

<p>Different degrees and types of illusion and accuracy are used effectively by many photographers. They probably think in nuances and degrees to get the job done, not all or nothing as a means to get lost in thought.</p>

<blockquote>

<p> ... it's the ability to embed a story that makes a photo really stand out. Those "just" recording a place and time are not the ones that impress us, it's those that convey an emotion, and/or manage to concentrate a whole story of many moments into one still frame - but the emotion, the lengthy story - aren't those illusions? Would a photo work without it?</p>

</blockquote>

<p><br /> Very much my thoughts too. Illusion/Allusion, that's what its all about. I was out with photo friends yesterday in Rockport, MA environs. The famous red, "Motif No. 1" lobster shack <em>eluded </em>us. I don't think anyone could do an interesting picture of it. Same with the waves breaking on rocks. We were flummoxed. </p><div></div>

<p>Alan, please tell those guys I said hello and that I miss seeing them.<br>

When I'm doing portraits, the range of illusions comes to the fore mentally, because people change expressions so quickly, and to a degree a portraitist can shift that state and affect what the subject does, or is likely to do. It is the same person, but the illusion lies in which expression you elicit/prompt/manipulate, choose, and how far it departs from the person's state. OK, state at the outset, since states are volatile and changing, sometimes quickly.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Luis, good points. It's one of the reasons I'm so reticent to accept that a photographer can capture someone's essence. There are too many conflicting and ever-changing sides to people to pin them down to a particular photograph or expression. A series may go a bit deeper toward discovering who someone is but many portraits are more about the discovery and exploration of expressions and moments than they are about the complexity of individuals. I think we capture significant moments and expressions in varying significant ways and that strikes a chord in us. Sometimes they do really seem to capture something unique and individual about the person, something deep. Sometimes they simply capture something that resonates with us as photographer or viewer, but is not necessarily like holding up a mirror to the inner workings of the subject. There's often a combination of particular traits (visual and emotional) from the individual being photographed and universal traits (visual and emotional) that go beyond that individual.</p>

<p>The act of freezing something can create an illusion of magnitude. A run in a stocking or some sloppily-applied lipstick may just be a passing glance in the moment, hardly worth mentioning. But in the right lighting, and preserved for eternity in a photograph, with a little help from context and focus, they can take on very moving and symbolic meanings. I think photographers can be in touch with these kinds of things (and being in touch doesn't have to mean spending a whole lot of time thinking about what they mean as much as noticing and observing them . . . and photographing them). It's the world and it's the photograph and it's an understanding and visceral reaction to their dependencies and differences. </p>

<blockquote>

<p>we can utilize lies, fakery, and illusions in photos, recognize them as such</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Obviously so, Fred. Seems to me to be self-evident. Shooting photos just to lie, is pathological.</p>

<p>Anders, it may be obvious. But it's worth talking about the HOW, not just the THAT. At least to me it is. So, I'd love to hear some ways you've used fakery, different kinds of illusion, and lies in your photos to express something important to you or about the scene or to show something a certain way. And/or some ways that a favorite photographer of yours has done so.</p>

<p>Somehow, I can't seem to agree to the word 'lie'. To me, it's not a lie - in the sense of telling an un-truth (and I would not know what else it could mean). I think most are <em>trying</em> to tell a truth, and show a reality - even when using obvious illusions.<br>

As I am very hesitant to accept a singular reality or truth (if there is one, would we be capable of making a photo of it?), the existence of an essence of a person or event. So I agree with Anders in that. My point against the word lie, fake is more a matter of intent. Those words seem to show an intent to show something unreal and untrue, and I just don't think that's the case. We're working from a vision, from a personal idea on what reality is, what truth is, the world and how we see it. We may manipulate what we see to emphasise something according to our vision. And I still would not call that a lie, actually. I would call that an attempt to communicate your vision.</p>

<p>Even when we create the illusions deliberately or accidentally, I do not believe we do so to tell a lie - instead we share a viewpoint. We communicate what we saw, how we experienced something, the impression it left on us. So, wordy as I get: photos do not lie. Photos do show you there is more than one way to see things.</p>

<p>The more deliberate illusions (and with that the more noticeable and visible ones) are more a matter of putting a lot of emphasis. It's when we want to make very sure our viewpoint is understood as a different viewpoint. A tool in the communication toolbox.</p>

<p>As a disclaimer to the above ;-)</p>

<blockquote>

<p>...we have a concept of illusion because we have a concept of non-illusion which seems a little more foundational. Non-illusion could just be a concept, like perfection, but not actually something that ever exists.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I generally think just exactly this; and increasingly become more disinterested whether there is an actual truth or reality. If there is, it's out of reach. And I find I learn more and gain more by understanding the other illusional, non perfect points of view than I do by chasing this perfect illusion.</p>

<p>Would art (and photography) be very interesting if we would have this unified truth and reality? Or do we need these illusions to reach a personal expression?</p>

<p>Wouter, I understand your hesitation, though I actually like the <em>subversive</em> aspect of using the word "lie" with respect to some photographs and some art.</p>

<p>As to your final question, I don't think either art or life would be as interesting from the standpoint of unified truths. It's one of the reasons I reject much religious thinking. I prefer to be on less solid ground. Foundational truths tend to collapse under their own weight.</p>