Truth

[Allen Herbert]

<p>What is truth in photography?<br>

<br /> Truth gives power. It embodies trust, and integrity.<br>

<br /> Or, does it? what it is truth is there a deeper percetion of truth a more challenging honest truth?</p>

[Allen Herbert]

<p>Sontag argues that through repeatedly capturing and viewing reality through photographs, their subjects can become less real. She claims that “aesthetic distance seems built into the very experience of looking at photographs”, and also that the sheer volume of horrific images throughout the world has produced a “familiarity with atrocity, making the horrible seem more ordinary – making it appear familiar, remote … inevitable”.<sup id="cite_ref-18" ><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_claim_(photography)#cite_note-18">[</a></sup></p>

[BelaMolnar]

<p>Truth is relative. It's depend on, witch side of the fence you standing. Seeking the truth can be very dangerous too, as history show us all the time. Information over load, visual or other form, conditioning the mind to the point of insensibility. </p>

[michaellinder]

<p>The OP is an age-old philosophical issue, dressed in different clothing. When there is closure on that issue, we also may have an answer to the OP.</p>

<p>In the meantime, I'm not sure that photographs can be either true or false. They may be representational to a certain degree; or they may be authentic in the sense that they are faithful to the subject matter. But, truth or falsity are property of statements (or propositions, depending on one's philosophical bent).</p>

[Sanford]

<p>I have decided to accept whatever Wikipedia says is true as the absolute truth, in most cases. Whether something is "true" or not in the true sense of the truth is really immaterial as long as Wiki satisfies my search. Of course if I was deciding on a new camera or car I might have to do a little further research.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Maybe the broadest truth that a photograph can embody is an affirmation that humans have the ability to create.</p>

[Julie H]

<p>The claim, via title or context of presentation, about the truth that a photographer is showing, and my (as viewer's) belief or disbelief in, as well as pre-existing knowledge about, that claim are not "in" the photograph.</p>

<p>If you show me a picture of a ball and title it "Cube," I'm going to doubt its truthfulness. Or, if I don't know what a "cube" is, I won't (be able to) make any judgment of truth value. None of this has any effect on the picture; the picture simply is. Photographs are supporting evidence to claims made (or not made). They do not, in themselves, make any claims at all ...</p>

<p>... which, I admit, is a little like the claim that "guns don't kill people ... " The evidence that photos provide supports (confirms, disconfirms, strengthens or weakens) claims that matter a great deal. Given that no voluntary movement of any kind by any person happens absent true belief, evidence that may affect those actions becomes complicit.</p>

[AJHingel]

<p>Alan, good question.</p>

<p>I have got much inspiration from poetry and abstract painting which claim, that they are more true than the so-called reality we all see with our two eyes (read: straight photography). Absolute truth does not exist. Even bold lies are a sort of truth. </p>

<p>"My images are abstract and surrealistic, but they are true. Paraphrasing B. Cendrars.</p>

<p> </p>

[michaellinder]

<p>OK, Anders, I'll bite. If absolute truth does not exist, it must follow that truth is relative. Relative to whom? To what? And what criteria are used to decide?</p>

[Julie H]

<p>Michael asked: "Relative to whom? To what?"</p>

<p>As with movement, relative to one's chosen frame of reference. Are you moving? Relative to what? Relative to whom?</p>

<p>[<em>I neither agree nor disagree with Anders's post. I am only addressing the "relative to" question</em>.]</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>In photography, point of view may be truth.</p>

<p>_____________________________</p>

<p>Character, genuineness, openness, and willingness ring more true to me than accuracy.</p>

<p>_____________________________</p>

<p><em>Relative to whom? </em></p>

<p>Perhaps each of us as individuals and all of us as a collective.</p>

<p><em>To what?</em></p>

<p>Perhaps history, society, culture, and the times.</p>

<p>_____________________________</p>

<p>Erich Fromm:</p>

<p>There is no absolute truth but there are objectively valid laws and principles.</p>

<p>The history of science is a history of inadequate and incomplete statements, and every new insight makes possible the recognition of the inadequacies of previous propositions and offers a springboard for creating a more adequate formulation.</p>

<p>Knowledge is not absolute but optimal; it contains the optimum of truth attainable in a given historical period.</p>

<p>_____________________________</p>

<p>Picasso:</p>

<p>Art is a lie that tells the truth.</p>

<p> </p>

[Lou_Meluso]

<p>I agree with Anders here. Truthful photographic still representations of the world, no matter how seemingly accurate, are not reality, ipso facto cannot be <strong>TRUTH</strong>. Photography, by it's very nature, is only a subset of reality. Beyond the pedestrian difficulties of mapping a three dimensional space onto a two dimensional one, every choice a photographer makes, biases the truth just a bit more.</p>

<p>I'm reminded of the Belgian painter Rene Margritte's famous <a href="http://collections.lacma.org/node/239578">painting of a smoking pipe</a> titled, appropriately, "The Treachery of Images". Under the rendering of the pipe are the words (in French) "This is not a pipe". In other words, this is only a representation of truth, it, in itself, is not truth.</p>

<p>Abstract, surrealistic and other non-representational approaches don't have have this burden of showing reality so the "truthfulness" is based more on the artist's vision, intellect and emotions.</p>

<p>Keats, writes in his poem <a href="http://www.bartleby.com/101/625.html">"Ode on a Grecian Urn"</a> that "Beauty is truth, truth beauty". He may be right about that but I don't think he was talking about photographic representations.</p>

 

[sgust]

<p>What is a truth? I define it as a statement that is true, or put differently not false. To assign a truth assessment to an image is to evaluate it's statement. And therein lies the problem. Many, if not most, images don't have an explicitly stated purpose or statement to make, documentary imagery being a notable exception. If you can't define the statement that the image is making you can't evaluate it's truthfulness. And also, when getting into images that do have statement, the more ambiguous the statement the less you can say about it's truthfulness as well. I can see this being the case with may artistic works.<br>

OK, that's my off hand opinion for the day. Feel free to tear it apart.</p>

[AJHingel]

<p>Ill risk an eys and try to be more precise on how I would see the question on truth and photography, but first the question on truth in science.</p>

<p>Truth in science does not exist. Science produces knowledge, but knowledge that continuously questioned and subsequently revised, producing even better knowledge or whole new knowledge about natural or social phenomena. I think can only link the question about truth and science by saying that science stice towards true knowledge about the world by eliminating slowly over time false knowledge. </p>

<p>For me truth and photography is opening totally different questions than that of scientific inquiry. As I see it, photography, as "straight photography", can of course produce knowledge as documentary knowledge, but its main objective would be to reproduce an image of the world as we would see it with eyes, if we were there. But it is still a false or flawed reality due to the limits of the media: cutting out anything outside the frame, its double "flatness" (reproduction on paper and a two-dimensional image) and not least it is an image which cuts out the use of other human senses, than the view and our mind, which are all inherent parts of how we apprehend our reality around us. The more straight photography is "artistic" or "commercial", the more it becomes a lie. Eventually a beautiful or ugly lie, but still a lie. <br>

<br>

When it comes to any other type of photography or photographical work, approaching what could be abstraction or surrealism, I would believe, that what is at stake here is the search for what could be called an "inner truth" or the "brutal truth" about the surface-reality we can observe and mostly live in. Most of this would be a "subjective truth" of the photographer (artist) but in some cases it could reach a "liberating truth", which increases our understanding of ourselves and liberates us from a superficial view of reality we live in.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Siegfried, et al, I think truth can be, but doesn't have to be, stated. Truth can be expressed and it can be shown. Artists actually often create it.</p>

<p>A few of the multitude of pictures that have conveyed a truth (if not always a fact, which is something different):</p>

<p>Weston's <em><a href="http://www.edward-weston.com/images/image_pepper_index.gif">Pepper</a></em>.</p>

<p>Duchamp's <em><a href="http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f6/Duchamp_Fountaine.jpg">Fountain</a></em>.</p>

<p>Van Gogh's <em><a href="http://www.writedesignonline.com/resources/design/rules/VG-StarryNight.jpg">A Starry Night</a></em>.</p>

<p>Dali's <em><a href="http://0.tqn.com/d/arthistory/1/0/l/i/dali_moma_0708_11.jpg">The Persistence of Memory</a></em>.</p>

<p>Milton Greene's <em><a href="http://31.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m08ezfAimy1qzfye6o1_1280.jpg">Marilyn Monroe, The Black Sitting</a></em>.</p>

<p>I also think there is truth to be found in ambiguity. Ambiguity just may make me have to look harder and wonder more to find it.</p>

[charleswood]

<p>Photographs have to represent the world because the photographer is in the world, as is the camera, and the display, and the viewer who is also in the world. It is in the world that we often see a cube labeled as a ball - a lie - except that any cube isn't a cube because 'cube' is just a word that we agree describes a like property to entirely unique things; things similar enough to appear to be similar. Add the passage of time, and a cube will become a ball, being a ball all along. Snowflake is a word for a category of objects where each snow flake is entirely dissimilar to other snowflakes. Our words -thoughts - are abstractions as are any other representations of the changing world that we might come up with. The big truths are biological: we must eat or we die an example. Another example of a biological truth is that we are all food for something else.</p>

<p>Here is my photographic <a href="/photo/17556823">example</a>. One of my pictures that doesn't tell a story. A Scrub-Jay comes to by back door daily. It perches on the screen door and softly calls to me. It calls to me because I'm inside with my back to it. Without it calling me, I wouldn't know it was there. But that isn't the story. The story is that I've trained the bird to do this by giving it peanuts. I wait to feed it, it comes to the door. My truth is that I've trained the jay to solicit me for my own enjoyment. The jay's truth is that the jay has trained me to feed it and it comes to the door with the impatient yet polite insistence that I continue be trained and feed it. Whose truth is the truth, mine or the scrub jay's? To me, I'm producing that pleasurable visit. To the jay, it is producing a repeatable behavior in the man, exploiting the man's soft spot for gain. Between the jay and me, truth is relative except that it is all about food. Or is it?</p>

<p>The scrub jay that perches on my screen door is an emissary for its family. The other two, mate and child, also wait for the result of the emissary's call. So the human/bird interaction is also about reproduction. Human's and birds reproduce themselves and their culture daily. Part of the bird's appeal to me is its adornments, its beauty, its reproduction.</p>

<p>For his kind and its culture the emissary is both supplicant and bold toward another species, that behavior toward humans passed on to their young through example, observation, and learning. Similarly, I'm not the first person to offer a scrub jay a peanut without trying to catch and eat them. Birds are food, but they are also beautiful. Am I beautiful to the bird, part of its motive in training me?</p>

<p> </p>

[sgust]

<p>Anders, I'll agree that science doesn't claim any absolute truths. But it does make claims that most scientists would call true, i.e. the earth orbits the sun. There are a great many such truths that are considered true till proven false.<br>

As far as "straight photography" intrinsically being a falsehood, I can't quite agree because we view photographs with a knowledge that its only a representation of reality. It still comes down to the statement the image makes. The statement is nearly always implied by the venue and context, but it's there none the less. I can't see how the image itself can carry any truth in and of itself, it's only after we've given the image meaning that we can say weather that meaning, or statement to put it differently, has any truth value to it.</p>

<p>Fred, I think for something to be true, a truth if you will, it does need to express an idea. Now that can be written, spoken, or expressed in any of a myriad of different ways that we communicate. I don't think a truth can be created, only discovered. If something is true, it is so whether we recognize it or not. As far as a truth and a fact being different, I'm not sure. Part of me agrees with you but I can't figure out what the difference is other than we give the word truth more profundity. And as far as those images conveying a truth, what would those truths be? I find the images beautiful, thought inspiring even. And those thoughts may lead me to discover a truth. But that truth wasn't in the image. If so, different people would all find the same truth in them. But my guess is that 100 people to whom the same image "speaks" will find 100 different truths.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p><em>"And as far as those images conveying a truth, what would those truths be? I find the images beautiful, thought inspiring even. And those thoughts may lead me to discover a truth. But that truth wasn't in the image. If so, different people would all find the same truth in them. But my guess is that 100 people to whom the same image "speaks" will find 100 different truths."</em></p>

<p>That's why I could never answer your question which asks <em>"what would those truths be?"</em> But I think your ideas get us closer to the difference between fact and truth.<strong>*</strong> IMO, a fact is a state of being. Truth involves relationship and is less objective and static.</p>

<p><em>"Facts are notes and lyrics on a piece of paper. Truth is what a singer gives to a listener."</em> Sorry, I have no attribution for this. I read it a long time ago.</p>

<p>You emphasize that truth isn't <em>in</em> the image. I agree. And I think truth isn't <em>in</em> a statement either. Truth is expressed, shown, or conveyed (i.e., relationship).</p>

<p><strong>_______________________________________</strong></p>

<p>The metaphorical operation of a photo is why it can sometimes be so much better at expressing truths than it is at showing facts. Accuracy is about facts. Truth is more.</p>

<p><em>"There's a world of difference between facts and truth. Facts can obscure the truth."</em> --Maya Angelou</p>

<p>_______________________________________</p>

<p>I take another look at Van Gogh's painting. I see his truth and it becomes, in some small part, mine. It's not <em>in</em> the painting. It's <em>in</em> the vision (which is shared).</p>

[User_6502147]

<p>There is no such thing as "truth in photography". Usually, what you find is a subjective truth.</p>

<p>Les</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>Angelou, facts, truth, and Picasso . . .</p>

<p>Picasso's <em><a href="http://0.tqn.com/d/arthistory/1/0/O/0/1/picasso-met-2010-31.jpg">Head of a Woman, 1960</a></em></p>

<p>What I take from Angelou's idea and the difference suggested between facts and truth is that we could, by getting hung up on the facts we have come to know about faces, obscure the truth of what Picasso is instead showing us. </p>

[charleswood]

<p><em>Head of a Woman</em> expresses a fact to me. The difference between a fact and a truth is that (Siegfried) "...we give the word truth more profundity." For me, facts are relationships between one thing and another. One thing in that relationship may be less known than another: art can explore the boundaries where one thing meets another, revealing more facts that make our prior perception of facts seem less optimal than it had been a moment before, so we change a little.</p>

<p>Leszek - "There is no such thing as "truth in photography". Usually, what you find is a subjective truth."</p>

<p>To me that depends on how the word truth is parsed. If facts are truth, true facts can be photographed. "A picture doesn't lie" is sometimes true, we all know it from the photograph and accept a fact as a fact. A subjective truth: "we give the word more profundity" per Siegfried about truth v. facts. A subjective truth is a fact, subjective truths exist, marked by our having attached to them more value, profundity; elevated to a cherished belief, for lack of a better term, or a treasured belief. If you know in advance what people's cherished beliefs are you can endorse them or confront them in photography, art.</p>

<p>Green's <em>Marilyn Monroe - The Black Sitting</em> endorses a belief, Picasso's <em>Head of a Woman</em> confronts that belief. What is a fact is that we carry many subjective images of woman. Marilyn the icon was a real woman and she personally suffered for carrying on her shoulders our cherished images. Inside she looked more like Picasso's <em>Head of a Woman</em>. That she suffered is a fact, her suffering caused by the public confusing a cherished image with a real woman. So much for the harmlessness of cherished beliefs.</p>

<p>A cherished belief has its own properties, as independent of individual will as my scrub jay is independent of me. Did I train the bird or did the bird train me?</p>

<p> </p>

[maris_rusis]

<p><br>

</p>

<p >Discussions about the "truth" of photography tend to go nowhere unless they embrace a sensibly formal concept of truth itself; the sort of discipline required of beginning students in philosophy classes. <br /></p>

<p >Going back to philosophy 101 the concept of truth applies only to <em>propositions</em>. Propositions are formal statements about the nature of things. A proposition that on investigation turns out to be the case is true or not the case then untrue, a lie in other words. So the question necessarily devolves into: What formal statements does photography offer about its relationship to subject matter, to the photograph maker, and to the photograph viewer? Interestingly, those who offer the most trenchant and long winded opinions tend not to organise their thoughts in the form of propositions to state and then to test; just wooly opinion mongering in effect.<br /></p>

<p > Here are a some of examples of common but silly propositions:</p>

<p >"A photograph of a tree is not a tree therefore photography lies". I can't remember a case of anyone credibly insisting the photograph should be physically congruent with its subject.</p>

<p >"A photograph is cropped from reality, it is not the "whole" truth, therefore photography lies". Does anyone reasonablyrequire the photograph to be as big and inclusive as the universe in order to be true?</p>

<p >"Reality is three dimensional but photographs are two dimensional therefore photography lies." Of course photographs are two dimensional but that is an inherent quality rather than a defect.<br /></p>

<p >On the other hand: "All points in a photograph bear a one to one relationship to points in the subject matter". This is necessarily true of photography because of the direct physical causality of the process. Significantly this is not <em>necessarily</em> true of paintings, drawings, and digital pictures.</p>

<p >There are several other propositions that are also true of photography and it is a pleasant diversion to think of them. Examples include:<br /></p>

<p >A photograph and its subject matter have to exist, however momentarily, at the same time.<br /></p>

<p >A photograph begins its existence when it absorbs a sample of something that was part of the subject matter.<br /></p>

<p >A photograph and its subject matter must share, however momentarily, a common line of sight.<br /></p>

<p >Imaginary things cannot be depicted in a photograph.<br /></p>

<p >The authority of a photograph to describe subject matter comes not from resemblance but from direct physical causation. <br /></p>

<p >Photographs like life-casts, death-masks, wax impressions, graphite rubbings, and footprints are images that do not invoke the use of use of data, memories, information processors, output devices, or display devices.<br /></p>

<p >There are indeed more propositions that are true of photography and it will be interesting to see how many turn up in this thread.<br /></p>

[charleswood]

<p>Imaginary things are at times pictured in a photograph because the images from our imagination are real as images although they don't depict real things. Even your sentence "Imaginary things cannot be depicted" calls an imaginary a 'thing'. If something is imaginary, it still has power to cause behaviors, is still something. Our imaginations can't conceive of a thing that doesn't look at least a little like something that does exist: ghosts wear clothing typically, as an example. The idea 'ghost' is a thing and even in photography there are daily references to 'ghosting in images', where something imaginary allows us to describe something that does exists. In photography you could construct a dream scape that never existed and it would be of something real: the fact of a dream represented with images.</p>

<p> </p>

[charleswood]

<p>- A photograph begins its existence when it absorbs a sample of something that was part of the subject matter.</p>

<p>Reflected light was not absorbed by the subject, never part of the subject, and instead become a mark of the subject on the instrument.</p>

[Norma Desmond]

<p>For me to go back to Philosophy 101 and academicize about Truth and propositions would be a big mistake. I took up Photography in order not to make that mistake (for myself).</p>

<p>______________________________________</p>

<p>Does the Greene photo exist in some sort of factual vacuum without the benefit of biographies about Marilyn and without the benefit of Picasso and others who have shown us more and given us more to think about?</p>

<p>Truth requires context and history gives facts context, as do other facts.</p>