Photography in the Age of Falsification

Kenneth Brower has a thoughtful article in the May Atlantic Monthly called "Photography in the Age of Falsification". In it he addresses questions of digital flasification within current nature photography, while addressing the historical roots of falsification by classic photographers - Ansel Adams burning in the sky in "Moonrise" so some troublesome clouds disappear, and so forth. He ultimately calls for the creation of a new f64 group dedicated to purity in this age of manipulation.

 

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Worth reading and well balanced.

Kenneth Brower is only about 10 years too late. I and others like me have stipulated that photography should be about what is in front of the camera not so much as who is behind it.

 

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Frank

(Look for California license plate F64ART)

<P>Oh, no, Mr. Brower is many decades too late. View camera photographers have been using camera movements to displace mountains for far longer than digital imaging's existence. If tilting against windmills and pumping up magazine circulation are his motives, then this is a very good reason to read this article.

 

<P>No significant standards organization exists for painting, drawing, sculpture, dancing, music, and (most certainly not) writing. Why should photography be any different?

 

<P>This is a truly pathetic attempt of some weenie academician trying to assuage his/her confusion and/or guilt complex over technology. A hundred years ago, Brower would have been panicking over Audobon's drawings. If Brower wanted to be really meaningful, he would have had the article published in USA Today, not Atlantic Monthly.

<P>I retract my previous post.

 

<P>I wish Mr. Brower the best of luck in his nature photography standardization efforts.

 

<P>I hope to leverage off of (i.e., profit from) any success that he might have by selling images that do not conform with the f64 standards. Frank and I will be exhibiting at a group show at the MOMA; please do drop by. Thanks!

Photography is falsification and it is just that easy. AA and many others interpreted what they saw and did it(as many continue to do today very well) with style, technique and clarity. But no camera records what you see, as you see it. Perspective, depth of field, angle of view, choice of film, choice of display medium-all have a large effect and if you shoot exactly the same scene with every film and print on every paper combination you won't have any trouble picking out what is 'most accurate'. Almost anyone who looks at them will be able to tell you and most of the people won't be in agreement. The idea there is something wrong about burning in skies is pure bullshit. It is no more accurate or inaccurate than shooting the images with the old glass plates that gave nothing but white skies. Photography is an interpretation and that changes with the person doing the interpreting. But, go ahead and make it another foolish cause to straighten out the world. I will gladly help by selling you all the prints you want so you will have something to carp about.

I completely agree with Dan, every photo is a "falsification" in the sense that it compresses a 3 dimensional object onto a 2 dimensional image, interprets the perspective (near-far relationship) and tonal range. Black and White is another interesting abstraction that could be argued to be a falsification of the "natural". To me, all that counts is the final print. I don't care at all how it was obtained, and how well it corresponds to a "natural scene".

It's all very well, but where to draw the line? If I take a photograph, and then later on find out that my sky or something is not as saturated as I would like, is it fair to pump it up with some image software? Or use it to get rid of any distracting element that might detract my composition? Or should I get back there and try to do it better? The fundamentalist approach, either way, is not the answer. I prefer to go back, if I can, and try to do it better, this way I learn from my mistakes, instead of "erasing" them.

Some thoughts:

 

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Kenneth Brower is no weenie academician; he is the son of David Brower, of the Sierra Club and Friends of the Earth. David grew up in photographic circles. An interesting part of the article is a story of AA printing in the early 60s while a teen aged Brower watched. I noted the article was balanced. By that I meant he represented both extremes of view, understands both, and is not adverse to darkroom and digital manipulation. His call for a new f64 group I see as a call for a group which would represent the baseline of the photographic process, from which all digital experimentation springs.

 

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It's facile and ultimately unproductive to argue that because the photographic process is, at best, only an abstraction from 3 dimensional reality, somehow these questions are not worth adressing, especially as we are now in an age where an image can be processed far beyond the imagination of earlier photographers.

 

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I say it again: Brower's article is balanced and worth reading. He knows photography and he knows photographers. Flame it afterwards, not before.

If one thinks that photography is technological solution for the literal recording of a scene, then they probably never looked at a picture that they�ve taken ("This doesn�t look like what I saw!" "The sky is white, the faces blue, etc."). The art of photography, separate from the aesthetic artistry, is being able to use the technology to recreate the sensation of what it looked like. If you use a ND grad filter for the sky at the time the picture is taken, or dodge it the darkroom later demonstrates master of the medium.

Unless a photograph is being used to convey "factual information" such as: reportage, forensic evidence, wildlife shots, advertising, etc., I really don�t care how it was made. Doing things like substituting skies is as old as landscape photography (The sky would always be blown out with blue sensitive orthochromatic film in a typical exposure. So photographers would take shots of the sky with the exposure set to show clouds and do a montage to make the scene look right.)

So long as you�re not trying to prove who shot J.R. just make it look good.

An important distinction exists between deception and alteration. To deceive is "to cause to accept as true what is false." To alter is "to make different without changing into something else." As long as deception isn�t involved, alteration of an image is fine. Creative alteration of what the camera records and subsequent alteration of the recorded image can be used for a variety of worthy purposes. I believe Bruce captured it well when he stated "Unless a photograph is being used to convey "factual information" such as: reportage, forensic evidence, wildlife shots, advertising, etc., I really don�t care how it was made."

 

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For example, I believe using Velvia (aka Disneychrome) to record wildflowers and displaying these images in such a way as to make an audience believe this is what flower look like in the woods is wrong. However, I believe using shallow depth of field to isolate a flower is acceptable. Similar examples with human subjects also come to mind.

 

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In summary ... Alteration is fine, deception is not.

There is no clear line between alteration and deception. Our vision is strongly affected by our brains' subjective interpretation of what it sees. Chris's example of Velvia being "deception" is flawed at best -- certainly Velvia gives a more "accurate" picture of the flower than TMax 100. Yet I doubt anyone considers a black & white photo "deceptive" simply because it's black & white. Conversely, if I'm completely color blind, is it acceptable for me to shoot anything at all with color film?<p>

 

John, you are convinced Brower's article is well balanced simply because you agree with him. I say anyone that "calls for the creation of a new f64 group dedicated to purity in this age of manipulation" is fooling themselves, period. There is no photograph that ISN'T manipulation (or deception, for that matter). A picture shot on Vericolor film with a 35mm SLR and a 50mm prime lens mounted on a tripod has its place; but no one should mistake such a shot as being "pure."

"I say anyone that "calls for the creation of a new f64 group dedicated to purity in this age of manipulation" is fooling themselves, period. There is no photograph that ISN'T manipulation (or deception, for that matter)."

 

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No one is saying photography is not in some way a manipulation. How can it be anything else? But it is possible to define a baseline in the photographic process. That baseline is where a new f64 group would work. For others that baseline would be a starting point, raw material for further manipulation in the darkroom or through digital processes, or both. Where any one person works on this continuum is a matter of one's photographic taste and aesthetic assumptions. It's all valid, and it's all potentially art.

Haven't we hashed this over before?

 

 

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Here's my take on the matter for all it is worth (my take and $1.25 will get you a cup of coffee at Dennys). There are several well known photographers who have used various means to "falsify" images. Now when I look at a peice of their work that I admire I wonder if I should praise them for being great photographers or praise them for being great image manipulators.

I agree that some alterations are OK but deception isn't.

 

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Put it this way---was the image shot as PHOTOJOURNALISM (historical recording of an event) or ART?

There are some entertainers that lipsync during concerts and there are others that have the tallent to actually sing on stage , there are some sculptors that do not use bronze but rather some form of cheap putty that looks like bronze, there are some painters that simply copy others ideas and then there are those who truly create, there are those photographers that go the extra distance to be at the right place at the right time to get great images on film and there are others who don't and who have to put things there while sitting in there family rooms via a computer. All of these so called "art forms" need to be valued for what they really are. I don't think we need a standard to keep cheap imitations under control. An educated public will know the difference and do it for us. True artistic quality is something to be held special, and most people recognize it when they see it. Like the old clich'e goes, "You can fool some of the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all of the time".

I think this will remain a hotly debated topic for some time. Yet it is important to keep in mind the context in which a photo appears and the photographer's original intent.

As for journalistic photography, my opinion is that if an image was digitally manipulated, it should be discounted because it does not accurately represent true events or settings. This can be dangerously misleading to an uneducated public (limitless possibilities here). In a journalistic venue, the accurate recording is lost and may actually misinform.

However, the use of such tools to produce an artistic image for sharing with others should be made acceptable, so long as it is also documented. Artistically an image is the creation of the photographers emotions, desires, and skills. If other means than stardard photography are utilized to bring his/her vision to life more successfully, than so be it.

Also, if the intent of the photograph is solely for the benefit of the photographer or for personal appreciation, then I believe that digital augmentation is not a sin. If a person takes a photograph of a sunset for personal enjoyment, who is to say it is wrong to add some color to make up for a lack of timing or remove an unwanted silouette to better balance the composition?

Just as long as the goals are kept within sight and no one is mislead, I think technological manipulation is a useful tool. The important fact to consider is that it does not become the end instead of the means.

E-Mail me an application for the new F64 Group. Better yet send it by snail mail.

To summarize the opinion of a number of posters, �all photography is falsification, all photography is deception�. So I guess how an image is created does not matter. Whether or not it is essentially an image of a �real� event is unimportant.

 

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Some make the distinction regarding whether the image will be used for photojournalism or art. I think a better distinction is whether some images should still be considered photography at all. I think digital manipulation can now be performed to the extent that some �creations� should no longer be considered photography. I don�t understand why some people cannot see a difference between �burning in skies� or a particular film�s color rendition and computer alteration to the extent that the result has little or no relationship to a real event that occurred naturally.

 

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Bruce Rubenstein even states, �Unless a photograph is being used to convey �factual information� such as: reportage, forensic evidence, wildlife shots, advertising, etc., I really don�t care how it was made.�

 

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Thankfully, some photographers feel differently. Galen Rowell, when he made his well-known photograph, �Rainbow over Potala Palace�, hopped a fence and started hiking parallel to the palace in an attempt to align a rainbow with it. As the rainbow intensified, he began to run, even ditching his camera bag into a bush to speed up his efforts. He states that he ran nearly a mile at an altitude of 12000 feet to get this image. His image was used both for photojournalism and as a fine art poster. It is a unique image of a real event where subject matter and lighting combined in a remarkable way. . I�m sorry, but using a rainbow filter or digitally adding a rainbow is not and never will be the same thing.