Is it worth persuing truth via photography and how?

<p>i feel as though photography has gotten to be more akin to painting than documentation. </p>

<p>subjects readily strike celeb-stolen poses as soon as a camera is pointed at them. widespread use of editing has made it increasingly rare to see photos of people with blemishes, stretch marks or other cosmetic 'defects.' hdr and the hyper sharp clarity of digital photography seems to be giving life a hyper real sort of look. and yet with the advancement of digital photography film grain seems increasingly unpopular outside of the musings of photoshoppers out to mimic the look of film. more and more photography seems to have become about pure visual cosmetics and less and less about revealing the electronic/mechanical/optical bias of the perspective of documentation. </p>

<p>in some ways grainless photography is approaching human eyesight and may be a more accurate visual record in terms of the way people see. but cameras aren't people. maybe grain and other traits of film and 'less perfect' cameras, media and editing acted as affirmations that the image before us was indeed created mechanically and is only a representation. somehow being surrounded by airbrushed impossible faces and bodies, no matter how unreal in appearance, doesn't keep reminding me that these are just representations. they only remind me of the widening gap between the real and ideal worlds in human culture and the apathy towards the real. </p>

<p>how about you? do you think it's worth trying to document real unfiltered events with devices that, by their very nature, create bias and falsification? and if so, how should that be done, by keeping the audience always aware of the bias or by pushing technology further and further to eliminate the appearance of bias?</p>

<p>Photography is a form of communication. You can write a thousand words about the "truth" of what you personally see in a scene, and include how bad the air smells because of the pig farm next door. Or, you can write a three-line haiku, with only seventeen syllables, that cuts to the <em>meaningful</em> truth of what you're trying to communicate. Granularity of the communication doesn't guarantee or even steer towards truth.<br /><br />The presence or artful absence of a blemish on a young woman's skin doesn't have anything to say about the truth that she's being depicted holding hands with the man with whom she intendes to spend the rest of her life. What's the<em> truth</em> in that image - that her skin isn't perfect, or that she's in love?<br /><br />Photography has never been about truth, per se. Not in the sense that making it more technically accurate (as it relates to resolution, or color temp precision, etc) makes a photograph <em>more true</em>. In the same way that capitalizing the first letters in written sentences and using punctuation may increase the clarity and ease with which one reads <em>that</em> form of communication, but doesn't usually change the truth of what's being said.<br /><br />No change in technology will change the perception of bias in any form of recording or communication if the audience doesn't trust the person who's doing the communicating. The appearance of bias isn't impacted by the technology.</p>

<p>Truth isn't what your eye sees either...psychologists have repeatedly shown for years that your brain creates your personal version of reality, whether it reflects actual events or not. Trial lawyers are well aware of this phenomenon and actively use it in selecting potential juries. In light of "my reality" I fail to see the substance of your comments. Photography is what it is, and it captures an image in a slice of time...irrespective of whether that image is distorted, realistic from your point of observation, or manipulated (which would include utilizing the distortion characteristics of the lenses themselves (think fish eye), or the effects of tilt & swing bellows). Mano pano photographers create artificiality because of the time lapses between their shots in the panos. I don't know that it diminishes the validity of their images....after all it takes time for you to move your head from one direction to another. </p>

<p>Look at the attached photos. One is made with a selfbuilt pinhole camera on a 8x10 inch negative while the other comes from a 10MP sensor. You could argue that technically these are about twohundred years apart and yet they are not that different. My point is this. You focus on the technical side of things while you left out intent. And that's the real deciding factor in your premise I guess. A glossy magazine uses and treats photos very differently from a newspaper or a magazine like NG for instance. In other words, it's based on choice more than on technical aspects.</p>

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

<p>i agree with these points to a degree. i agree that the very action of taking a photograph requires a departure from truth when considering the compression of a chosen lens etc. but doesn't photography by nature, more faithfully represent reality than a painting? and i am asking if there is a way to commit to this impossible mission of faithfully representing reality through photography.</p>

<p>i am not trying to make the point that film is somehow more truthful than digital, simply that the nature of the medium and if the 'perspective of the medium' is understood in the photo that this might contribute to the source of the image. just like a book has an author's name on the cover and your knowledge of the author will bracket the believability of the book. of course film can also be altered but when photos such as those used for marketing purposes look sleek and glossy, i will tend to distrust them because of their doctored appearance. if a photo contains natural vignetting for example, i have an idea about the type of camera/perspective from which the image came. if a photo contains an edited vignette, is that not a deliberate forgery of the origin/perspective of the image?</p>

<p>i wonder if someone could comment further on the difference between painting and documenting/ making and taking a photo. photographs can be used as evidence to convict or free a person. surely the integrity of this kind of undeniable truth is threatened by manipulation out of context. when manipulated photos pose as faithful representations.</p>

<p>if a woman's blemish is removed from a photo but the love is still rendered and communicated, if one became aware of the editing the photo would take on a totally diferent meaning in my mind. it would suggest to me that the photo was designed to depict something fictitious and i would question if the love that i'm seeing weren't also a photographic trick or accident. when the blemish is left untouched, i see something 'ugly' and honest and i don't question the validity of the emotion. to me this expresses a real love rather than an idealised one. </p>

<p>does this make sense? </p>

<p><em>"if one became aware of the editing the photo would take on a totally diferent meaning in my mind. it would suggest to me that the photo was designed to depict something fictitious"</em> <br /> to me it would merely suggest it was a poorly done job.</p>

<p><em>"but doesn't photography by nature, more faithfully represent reality than a painting?"</em> <br /> in essence yes because you see a painting for what it is even in the case of the magic realist painters like <a href="http://vanoostzanen.com/image_rest/karel.jpg">Carel Willink</a> but once again it depends on intent. Truth in photography is a very fluid concept.</p>

<p><em>"and i am asking if there is a way to commit to this impossible mission of faithfully representing reality through photography"</em><br>

forensic photography</p>

<blockquote>

<p>forensic photography</p>

</blockquote>

<p><br /> Don't forget security cameras. There's "reality" for you. Anyone looking for "reality" should collect snaps from security cameras, there's no communication from a photographer involved.<br>

<br /> Video is a whole lot more about "reality" (because you can see context and change) than still photography. Video has freed up still photography to be even less connected to "reality" than it ever was.</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p><em>"but doesn't photography by nature, more faithfully represent reality than a painting?"</em></p>

</blockquote>

<p>Paintings can show things that photographs may not show, like a history of experience with the subject. Some of the less realist, magical or not, painters show their subjects in far more dimensions than most photographers.</p>

<p> First, welcome back, Johnny! Good to see you here.</p>

<p> Everyone brings some sort of bias into the situation, including, as you point out, the subjects who "vogue". Instead of telling you what the truth is, or photography's limits in telling it, in my book the important thing is <em>that you use it to convey _your_ truths, </em> the very things you are concerned about in your post.</p>

<p>Your intent is clear to me: You want to get away from <em>idealized </em> imagery. </p>

<p> There are many ways to approach this besides the technical. No matter what means you use to nab the photons, it will have its own optical signature. The most complex digital camera can do this job as well as a Leica M6 with a 50 -- or an 8x10. Don't get mired in the endless squabbles about which describes reality better. Each does so in its own way.</p>

<p>[JM] " doesn't photography by nature, more faithfully represent reality than a painting?"</p>

<p> Not necessarily. The mediation of the body can actually impart <em>more emotional </em> faithfulness than a camera. The eye is not a little freestanding camera. It's part of the body, its image recording capabilities mediated/processed/enhanced by the brain. For example, people that speak different languages fluently weigh colors differently while thinking in different languages. Which is more faithful?</p>

<p>[JM] "and i am asking if there is a way to commit to this impossible mission of faithfully representing reality through photography."</p>

<p> There are a multitude of ways to do this, but the key is for you to do it in your own way. It's much more of a conceptual than a technical issue. Leaving behind idealized imagery in favor of what is real sounds like an excellent quest, a personal exploration with potential for the production of good, interesting images. This is not so much a problem to be solved as it is one to be <em>stated and explored -- </em> by you.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Truth is a slippery concept particularly for people who have not made a formal study of philosophy. Even for professional philosophers truth is a subject of ongoing research in epistemology. Writing about truth tends to involve difficult to write, difficult to read verbage. This post is probably no exception.</p>

<p>In general terms truth refers to propositions of the form "if A then B". Should it be the case that A is necessarily and sufficiently causally linked to B then the identity "if A then B" is true. Some robustly convincing truths can be discovered by observation. These are usually called facts. Facts are pretty reliable but they fall short of absolute certainty. One can conceivably be mistaken.</p>

<p>Another kind of truth is an <em>a priori</em> truth. This is a proposition that is always the case whether one makes any observations or not. <em>A priori</em> "truths" are always true. For example, that a triangle has three sides is an <em>a priori</em> truth. It is a nice question if there are any <em>a priori</em> truths about pictures in general and of photographs in particular. The answer is a limited yes.</p>

<p>Pictures consist of an arrangement of marks on a surface well ordered enough to represent something identifiable. Traditional arts, painting and drawing for example, require an artist to place marks on a surface according to a plan they have in their mind. The plan consists of description of the picture as well as a set of mental instructions needed to move the artists hand/ brush/ pencil. Using the IF/THEN form of proposition we can say with certainty that <strong>if</strong> we have a painting or drawing <strong>then</strong> there must have been an artist to produce it. And that artist must have had the picture plan in their mind. But we cannot go further back along the chain of fabrication and say the picture plan must correspond to something in the real world. Artists are fully capable of inventing picture-plans of entirely imaginary things.</p>

<p>Significantly, modern digital picture making is a straightforward mechanisation of what traditional artists have been doing for millenia. Again there is a picture plan. But this time it is in a electronic brain rather than an organic one. And again there must be a mark making device but instead of the artist's hand/brush/ pencil we might use an ink-jet printer. Either way marks get put on a surface and a picture results. The same constraint applies to picture plans in electronic brains and organic ones. Both are fully capable of holding images of entirely imaginary worlds. Just because there is a plan does not mean, <em>a priori,</em> that there is something in the real world to correspond to it.</p>

<p>Photography is dramatically different. A photograph is caused when a real optical image, consisting of a physical sample of subject matter, lodges in a sensitive surface and occasions marks. The surface and the array of marks it bears is the photograph. Photographs do not involve a picture plan, a brain, or a mark making device operating according to instructions. A photograph is a physical artifact as certain as a foot print in a beach. Using the IF/THEN form of proposition we can say with <em>a priori</em> certainty <strong>if</strong> we have a photograph <strong>then</strong> some real world subject matter must correspond to it. Unfortunately, just knowing that photographs can be made only of real things does not guarantee that we will correctly identify those real things. Consider all the Loch Ness photographs with distant floating logs that are supposed to prove the monster really is out there.</p>

<p>Truth values can be found in painting/drawing/digital pictures and also in photographs. The truth values involved in the two alternatives are different. They are not equivalent or interchangeable. And neither technology offers a haven against the general fallibility of casual observers.</p>

<p> </p>

<p>Ah, Maris thanks for reminding us that the dictionary we should be using was written in 1850.</p>

<p>Is truth all that important if the photo that is a lie looks better on the wall?</p>

<p>I think Johnny wants to trust that what he sees presented in a photograph is not something he would identify as "just another form of trickery." I think that too much emphasis on "real vs. fake" reveals a person's inner trust issues rather than his understanding of the application and meaning of the word truth. The issue isn't whether or not the picture has truth from the world in it, but whether one can safely believe it is not a someone's fictionalized (read manipulated) reinterpretation of the world. </p>

<p>I remember being young myself, and, at the time I felt that I had some sort of edge on the "reality dilemma." I thought I knew real from unreal very clearly. It would have shocked me to see just how naive I was! I probably would have been better off if my native self-aware sense of humor had been more awake, but then everyone has to grow up in his own way. I don't know Johnny, nor do I know anything about him, but as I read his concerns I feel an urge to tell him to relax and look for more ways to take pleasure in living. Let reality, especially with something like photography, take care of itself.</p>

<p>"Figuring out reality in a photograph is like nailing jelly to a tree!" - Albert</p>

<p> Johnny's concerns are perfectly legitimate, and in my opinion, reflect nothing regarding trust issues, growing up, or any other deficits. Many other Master photographers have addressed these concerns in different ways. It is not required for anyone to think the same way, nor to put down Johnny for exploring this.</p>

<p>[Disclaimer: I am in no way, stating, suggesting or implying that printing straight or manipulating imagery is superior to the other. They're just ways of working.]</p>

<p>Diane Arbus printed straight, no dodging, burning, anything. Rarely bothered to spot.</p>

<p>http://photobucket.com/images/diane%20arbus/</p>

<p>Max Yavno produced series done the same way:</p>

<p>http://www.agallery.com/Pages/photographers/yavno.html</p>

<p>Then there's Gene Smith, who did a lot of darkroom "trickery". He was an idealist in many ways, but integrated the iconic elements seamlessly into the story.</p>

<p>http://www.leegallery.com/smith.html</p>

<p> Or...how about no camera, and no images from life in any way? Robert Heinecken:</p>

<p>http://www.mocp.org/exhibitions/2007/01/robert_heinecke.php</p>

<p> Which is more real? True?</p>

<p> </p>

<p>I think Luis is onto something.</p>

<p>There's often a backlash when the subject of truth and/or accuracy comes up.</p>

<p>Yes, there is always perspective and often, if not always, a bias in any photograph taken. But there is also a matter of degree. Some photos are less biased than others, more accurate, more "truthful" (in one specific but very-often used and commonly-understood sense of "true").</p>

<p>Photographers can surely take more or less objective stances.</p>

<p>That doesn't change the fact that a picture is a picture and not the same reality of which it is a picture.</p>

<p>If these differences in objective stances didn't pertain, we wouldn't be able to recognize one particular significant difference between, say, Cartier-Bresson and ManRay.</p>

<p>The only thing that bothers me about Johnny's post is a certain tone of voice about photographing styles other than his own. So that language like "celeb-stolen poses" judges instead of describing. I use poses to explore truths. It's a different style of photographing but no better or worse than Johnny's and no more true to photography than Johnny's.</p>

<p>Additionally, I think it would be a mistake to conflate "candid" for "accurate" or "true." An "accurate" photo can demand a lot of intention and "candid" can thwart accuracy. I've seen many candid shots of people that are neither true nor accurate.</p>

I think the first concern of creative minds is cteating of what your call the truth on this page. The truth as abstract categoria being taken without context has no cognitive meaning or value to behold. It may also be helpful to see and talk about truths instead of [one] truth as it is basically confusing attempt to reduce the multiplicity of phenomena to a single one something and trying to determine it as truth or not truth.

<p>Yes, it is worth persuing truth with photography. But like Ilia said there are many truths to be found, outward truths and inward truths. There's the ( objective ) appearance of the tree and there's how you might feel about the appearance of the tree. Both are truths which are worth to be persuid photographically, the inward being as truthful as the outward.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.pdngallery.com/legends3/michals/">http://www.pdngallery.com/legends3/michals/</a></p>

<p>sorry, not to detract from the great conversation you guys have generated but how do i quote each of your statements in order to offer a response? i want to be detailed in my responses! and thanks soo much for taking my concerns seriously and offering comprehensive replies!</p>

<p>On the one hand you have in the OP's opening remarks a common complaint that photographers find it too easy and work too hard at obscuring the world as one would expect to see it for himself. On the other, you have the proposition that the mind as an instrument in its own right attributes 'reality' to whatever it is willing to accept and believe, whether there is any grounding in the external world for it or not. This imagination is the groundspring that produces invention and art for everyone. </p>

<p>There is no clear answer for issues like this. Shall we write yet another book on the subject? And why not, for the matter is never closed enough to allow a person to simply dismiss another perspective on it. If the mind is involved in appreciating photographic productivity, what guidelines exist for the OP to apply to figure out what picture is more real than another?</p>

<p>I leave it for Johnny to sort out: Is it hell in a handbasket, or are things simply so baffling and complicated one sometimes feels at a loss to know which end is which? </p>

<p>I hope you understand that I am a sympathetic correspondent, not just another person seeking an opportunity to throw (opinion) stones around. I would offer you the hope that things get clearer with time. They do not. Now I find myself sometimes offering the sage advice that if I'm not confused, then I know for sure that something is wrong! Of course I see comedy in myself when I make remarks like this.</p>

<p>There is something odd and funny in the 'human condition' that says that even if things never make sense we go ahead with them anyway. It isn't necessary to worry that being aware that the wart on Aunt Mary's nose is gone makes her any less precious. There's a lot more to life than what we can see. There are the mental and emotional parts we live with where there is no counterpart in the world the senses can detect at all. </p>

<p>Some questions are easy enough to ask, but in all your life, you will never find an answer that is certain and forever. (Not that one shouldn't look just the same.) Really!</p>

<p>thank you albert but can someone tell me how to quote previous posters so that i can respond in detail?</p>

<blockquote>

<p>thank you albert but can someone tell me how to quote previous posters so that i can respond in detail?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Cut and paste the quote into your response, highlight the text, then click the quotation mark icon above the text box.</p>

<p>this interface is really difficult compared to myspace quoting in forums. there, i can reply to all and have copies of everything that i can just delete from. here, i have to keep scrolling up and down to quote each item and it doesn't even label who said what. sorry to be a nusance but i've got to make a separate text document of this thread just to respond properly...</p>

<p>Matt--comparing photography to communication is flawed for your example. written and spoken languages do not sample a portion of the real world in their rendering of a thought. photography samples actual light reflected off of actual objects and we communicate with these renderings. to say that the method used for gathering this data that our expression takes form by does no affect the trueness of what is communicated seems impossible to me. there is a vast difference between partial images that a camera captures and images that editing technology creates. there is only abstract truth in editing out a blemish by replacing it with skin that did not exist in the form it appears in in an edited photo. just as there is only abstract truth in language. photography deals with the gatherinig of light that is, by all known accounts, "real" and allowing physics to sketch a representation of this "real" phonomenon. While there is human intervention/imagination/perception filtering how the photo is taken and what of, it is nothing more than nature and physics at the core of photography. there has to be more fact, truth, reality to photography than arts/communications consisting purely of man's self-created audial and visual symbols. we're talking the difference between concrete and abstract communications.<br>

Ton--how can you dismiss all photoshopping and editing as being 'a poorly done job?!' some types of photography are all about the editing. what i am trying to convey is that editing a photograph is a form of lying. perhaps cropping, lessoning dof and the very act of just using a camera are all forms of lying as well but i would like to think that by using cameras in certain ways we can arrive more closely to the truth even though we could never do so perfectly. </p>

<p>forensic photography is a very interesting pivot in this conversation. forensic photography is about pure documentation without emotional sway and art. is it completely ridiculous of me to try for emotional sway and art while still being otherwise very faithful to my perceived truth? i believe that the act of being faithful itself can be artistic and emotionally moving. that is what i hope anyway.</p>

<p>jeff, you make a good point that video or motion pictures have a stronger bearing on reality than still pictures. being trained in motion pictures before photography i still think in terms of seeking truth the way a documentary filimmaker would. but i think these concepts are valid in still photography as well it's just that tyme is being dealt with in a different way. i am not aiming for a complete and total reproduction of reality. that would require 3d copies of the entire universe to be made. which is a scientific theory all it's own! but for the purposes of rapid concise comments on real situations, i think photography is a strong medium.</p>

<p>michael--"Is truth all that important if the photo that is a lie looks better on the wall?" if you kowtow cosmetics over meaning, then yes. but i think that the popularity of escapism as oppose to appreciating reality, truth and fact is part of the problem i'm addressing. people say lying is a bad thing but yet we lie in our art constantly. seems like a double standard that i'd like to remove myself from. of course this is not to say that i think escapist art is bad or useless. i'm just saying that i don't think there's enough 'realist art' to strike a healthy balance.</p>

 

<p>albert, i don't doubt you for a minute that i have trust issues. </p>

<p>when i am raised in a culture that emphasizes independence and true human connection as values but has surrounded me with manipulative images of actors and models pretending to be happy with buying quick technological fixes and depend on emotionless corporations instead of being taught how to live without needless excessive commodities, be patient with those with whom i have conflict, and other concepts that would more effectively create an ethical, peaceful, balanced, skilled and happy society, yeah, i think it's appropriate that i have trust issues. </p>

<p>when i go to a one hour photo store and ask for a certain type of film and am told by the brainwashed clerk that kodak doesn't make color film anymore when the've just released a great new film this year, yeah i think trust issues are valid. don't you? </p>

<p>a sister of a friend of mine died today after getting liposuction because she wanted to be thin. she wasn't particularly unhealthy besides the weight. she mostly just didn't want to look fat any more. so you've got a two fold problem here. you've got a body image issue induced by advertising (photography) and you've got a quick technological fix instead. my photography is a descent from this sort of thought and behavior. </p>

<p>what does this have to do with truth? because we are literally being drowned to death by all the untrue images designed to manipulate rather than express life the way people really believe that it is. </p>

<p>everyone's got a different idea of what truth is but very few people are even bothering to commit themselves to conveying these truths. they using photography purely for manipulative communication and shallow cosmetics.</p>

<p>luis, thanks for the warm welcome back! there's soo much to respond to here and discuss i've got to pace myself...</p>

<p><em>"Ton--how can you dismiss all photoshopping and editing as being 'a poorly done job?!'</em></p>

<p>it's not exactly what I said Johnny all the more so since I do it myself. I merely implied that if it's that noticable as you seemed to suggest that it's more often than not a poor job. Altering by way of postprocessing, if done right is, or rather can be, a great creative tool.</p>

<p>I must say I have a hard time wrapping my head around your use of the word truth because you seem to use it in such a absolute way. Given the few exceptions that were already mentioned for me there is no real truth in photography because we create our own truth.</p>

<p><em>"everyone's got a different idea of what truth is but very few people are even bothering to commit themselves to conveying these truths. they using photography purely for manipulative communication and shallow cosmetics"</em> <br /> such a statement would almost suggest malignent intent on behalf of the photographer and I wonder how you come to that conclusion. It's a frightfull generalisation at best. I'm involved in streetphotography and as such you get to see what I have seen but even then, what amount of truth is there to be seen? Taking a twodimensional extract from a real life scene and with the proper context unknown to the viewer can only convey so much.<br>

I see that not so much as a limitation but rather as something I need to be aware of and can work with.</p>