Truth, lies, and BS

[Julie H]

Ouroboros

 

 

Sandy, that reminds me of a story (OT) of an eskimo woman who, with her family was starving in a frozen wilderness. She cut a strip of flesh from her own leg, baited a hook with it, and caught a fish. The family lived on this procedure to the thaw. The story ends by the teller saying, "I know it's true. I saw the scars."

 

Luckily for you, I can't remember where I read it, so it's a paraphrase not a quote. I do wish I could give credit.

[DavidTriplett]

To the degree that photography is a representational form of communication, that which is represented is always open to interpretation. My previous statement about deceit is more about intent than anything else. Manipulation of the latent image to express a feeling or understanding, whether in the darkroom or Lightroom, is a well established artistic and editorial practice. How viewers might interpret or apply meaning to any given image will have as much, or more, to do with what they bring to the experience as does the content of the image.

 

I appreciate Fred's comments about the importance of context. Without the context of the "Standing Out" topic, my image of the valedictorian would be of little interest, and unremarkable, except perhaps to the girl and her family. The simple context of topic changes the equation. I wager we have all seen photos where the topic or title has influenced our interpretations far beyond any meaning we might have ascribed to the image alone. It is in this framing of context, and hence meaning, that exists the greatest risk of deceit. (Except in the case of gross manipulation to artficially synthesize a condition or event that never existed, with the intent to prove a lie.)

[PapaTango]

Julie, given the words of your last post--the real sui generis of the discussion is not 'truth,' but what comprises "knowledge." In a different way of saying what you said, connection exists that this debate traces back to Plato--as the rubric "justified true belief." This gained a lot of traction during the Enlightenment, and was gnarfled over by Kant and others to arrive eventually in the hands of Artie and others. Knowledge is not a collection of facts, truths, or even SKILLS--to reground the statement to this thread and its content. It is rather the total of those beliefs, prejudices, experiences, opinions, and yes, facts concerning a matter or subject. Some choose to term this collection of cognitive ephemera "common sense." As we well know, common sense can often be a collection of hard prejudice, ignorance, and rubbish...

 

The 'truth' will always be illusive. Water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit--but only at sea level. The 'point' is conditional based on altitude (aka pressure). The only immutable (or euphemistically, 'truth-fact) we can derive is that "water boils." It also freezes and vaporizes--so water presents as many states of a particular root. Things that present as 'art' are problematic. Here, like water, we come full-front to the infamous "thing in itself" and even water is not a 'thing in itself' but comprised of two main, and potentially hundreds of other elements.

 

We have not squatted long enough on 'intent.' Art in and of itself is intentional--and it is coupled with that nasty knowledge thingie. Kant (pun intended) we just accept that the author of such cannot detach from persona and slicing a three dimensional section of reality and condensing it to two dimensions as something that even with the best of intents cannot be 'truthful?' No one can ever survey or condense the gestalt of the physical world through a slice. What we want anyone to see in that slice will always be tainted. More over if the intent is disingenuous. We ran through falsely introducing a subject into an image. On the same side of the coin is Stalinizing an image. I think that such work as McCurry's is not disingenuous or terribly contrived--but perhaps the point of intersection between an artistic vision and the pragmatism of being paid as a photojournalist. There are discrete expectations for both.

 

I would write more on this, but the nurse says it is time for my meds, and then a therapeutic anger management session... o_O

[Norman 202]

My preference is for BS, because it seems like it sets my mind free, like recess from school, like I have room to breathe.

Mine too, although I wouldn't call it BS.

 

But what does that do to the "truth value" of the picture

Makes it (and the false value) largely irrelevant.

[Julie H]

PapaTango, I sense from your post that you know that describing your pictures as 'true' is a very, very dangerous thing to do. Doing so will probably cause you to explode and die immediately. But you can tell me. I won't tell anybody. (However, would you please back away from your screen when you do it? I just cleaned mine and I'd hate to get spots all over it. Thanks.)

 

Some examples of true/lie/BS may help. Here are some lies sprinkled with lazy BS (the worst kind):

 

… I worked for newspapers at a time when I was not competent to do so. I reported inaccurately. I failed to get all the facts. I misspelled names. I garbled figures. I wasted copy paper. I pretended I knew things I did not know. I pretended to understand things beyond my understanding. I oversimplified. I was superior to things I was inferior to. I misinterpreted things that took place before me. I over- and underinterpreted what took place before me. I suppressed news the management wanted suppressed. I invented news the management wanted invented. I faked stories. I failed to discover the truth. I colored the truth with fancy. I had no respect for the truth. I failed to heed the adage, You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. I put lies in the paper. I put private jokes in the paper. I wrote headlines containing double entendres. I wrote stories while drunk. I abused copyboys. I curried favor with advertisers. I accepted gifts from interested parties. I was servile with superiors. I was harsh with people who called on the telephone seeking information. I gloated over police photographs of sex crimes. I touched type when the makeups weren’t looking. I took copy pencils home. I voted with management in Guild elections. —

Donald Barthelme

 

Not how you'd describe your work, I hope.

 

Now for the true that I think art can pursue:

 

"… “They’re millows,” he [

Wilbur’s

three-year-old son] told me. “Look at all the millows.” No hesitation; no bravado; with a serene Adamite confidence he had found a name for something nameless, and brought it under our verbal control. Millows they were.

 

"I, of course, was aware that there must be a

right

name for those plants, and was not wholly easy until I had got it from a Harvard botanist. The right generic name was

Lycopodium

(the vulgar term was club-moss).

 

"… I was left with two versions of one plant on my hands. On the one hand there was the millow, a plant named on a certain day in April in the Lincoln woods, and involved, for me with my feeling for my son, and with all the thoughts and sensations I was having on that day. On the other hand there was a plant of the genus

Lycopodium

, a pteridophyte distinguishable from the mosses through its possession of well-developed stems and leaves and true roots; a plant of a certain description and presumptive history, which bore no necessary relation to any place, day, person, thought, or feeling.

 

"It is the millow with which we are more familiar; it is the

Lycopodium

which we are more disposed to believe. So that however personally we may take the landscape, however much sympathy and meaning we may discover in it, there is always a suspicion that our words are not anchored in the objects at all — that the word

tree

does not harpoon and capture the tree, but merely flies feintingly towards it and, like a boomerang, returns to hand.

 

"… In various ways, all of the arts have now “received” the industrial revolution. It would now seem one important need of our culture to repair its relations with the natural world — to feel our surroundings as an ensemble and to take them personally. (I assume that any sensitive person feels this as a simple emotional hunger, and I don’t propose to argue with anyone who does not.)

 

"… If I write of the landscape as it ribbons past the train window, fusing it with my thoughts and feelings and interpreting it through my human senses, it does not trouble me that my words do not essentialize it. What I write, as my words energetically unravel and shape themselves, is a part of the truth of things, and a gesture toward the sources of form and energy." —

Richard Wilbur

 

But 'true' is hard work. It doesn't fall into your lap by accident. Here is John Szarkowski:

 

"... a photograph of two people in one bed is shocking because a photograph is private, whereas a movie showing two people in bed is not shocking because a movie is public.

 

"A photograph may also be private in the sense that there is no designated public access to its meaning, no catalog of its constituent parts, its iconographic and formal resources. Each viewer, including the photographer who made it, must devise for the new picture a personal and provisional place among the other pictures and facts that the viewer knows. It is of course true that all good pictures contain unfinished meanings; only perfect clichés are perfectly complete.

 

[

line break added

] Nevertheless, good photographs are often more richly unfinished than other pictures, are

wilder

, in the sense that they have in them more elements that are not fully understood and domesticated.

James Agee

, pretending that the photographer was a fisherman and that the truth was a trout, said it was the photographer’s task to bring the fish to the net without too much subduing it.

 

"We are free to believe that Carleton Watkins and Mathew Brady and Gustave Le Gray and Charles Marville and Timothy O’Sullivan and Eugène Atget and Edward Weston and all the others would not have exchanged the work they did for a softer bed; in any case it is now too late for them to change their minds, and we have the work.

 

"… To avoid unnecessary misunderstandings, especially their own, most photographers of ambition and high talent would prefer today to serve no instrumental functions — no “useful” goals. They wish simply to make pictures that will — if good enough — confirm their intuition of some part or aspect of quotidian life."

 

****************************************

 

The following is some red meat just for PapaTango:

 

"… Number is that to which, and through which, time moves, for time is nothing without, and so nothing but, the movement of nothing into number. Time is not only necessary for number to emerge, number is equally necessary for time itself to be able to pass, or to be the movement that it is. For time to pass, there must be entities by which one might tell the time, where telling means counting as well as recounting ...

 

"To say that we have become more quantitative than ever before is not to say that everything must be rendered up as number, without remainder, and then abandoned: it is to say that number is always in the middle of things." —

Steven Connor

[DavidTriplett]

I will always prefer the memory of chasing flutterbys through a field of flowers with my children, over a more technically accurate description.

[DavidTriplett]

An interesting current experience in the question of "truth" in art: As is my wont, I was reading a history of the great sailing ships of the late 19th and early 20th century. In the book was a facsimile of a painting by a renowned artist (the name escapes me at this moment) illustrating a noteworthy event: One of the last of the great windjammer cargo ships sailing past and away from the challenge of a race by a steamship. The actual event took place in the dark of night, making it a very poor subject for a painting. The artist rendered the event as having taken place in daylight. I would offer that this is not a lie or intended to deceive, but is artistic license appropriately applied.

[sjmurray]

To me, a photograph is a 1/100 of a second, give or take, frozen moment of something. That’s not much to go on. Truth or lie, its hard to know. I believe most people viewing the image will invent their version of what that slice of time is saying to them. Like all art, it could lead them to some inner truth, or just the opposite. An effective photograph stimulates emotions whether it represents truth or BS.

[Julie H]

David, your ships have got me into thinking about something that I want to post, but need more time to disentangle it. Stay tuned ... (and thanks!)

[Julie H]

The artist rendered the event as having taken place in daylight. I would offer that this is not a lie or intended to deceive, but is artistic license appropriately applied.

 

 

True for painting; not true for photography, IMO. Above, PapaTango wrote that "Water boils at 212 degrees Fahrenheit- — but only at sea level." That's not true for photography. In photography, ideal water never boils. This water in a pot in this time and in this place boils, or that water in a kettle in that time or place boils, or that water in a that pan at that time boils, but ideal water never boils in photography.

 

You (David) are an architect. You draw plans for buildings. But that ideal plan isn't the building. The 'true' building must submit to the conditions of its making: the materials, the site, the labor that performs its construction, the current and ongoing weather, the site, etc. Just so, a photograph that one has in mind must submit to the real. Yet both idea(l) and completed building or image are there in what is final, what is 'true.'

 

In Wilbur's story about his child's 'millow' versus the scientific club moss, both must exist, both continue to exist in what is 'true' out of that story. If Wilbur had no idea what the green thing that was being called 'millow' was, experience that came out of millow being added to club moss would not have meant what it did. The join, the union of idea and real is where 'true' happens, I think.

 

In your (David's) comment about a butterfly being called 'flutterby,' the one depends on the other for its truth. Both are enriched. Lest you think 'flutterby' could stand on its own, this story: my neighbor told me how, one day when gardening with her four-year-old daughter playing in the grass behind her, she heard "Look at the fat worm, Mommy! It's standing up!" As you may guess, it was a copperhead standing eye-to-eye with her daughter. The 'true' impact of that story depends on both 'fat worm' and 'copperhead.' [a poisonous snake]

 

In photography, I think 'true' happens in the join, in the union between idea(l) and real. Both are necessary; neither can stand alone as 'true.'

 

Here is an example of what happens if, in a photographic medium (composite), you refuse to submit to the real:

 

 

This is supposedly Euclid's Proposition 28, from Book 1. I'm spoofing the ideal being brought into the real while refusing to admit that my lines aren't straight, my curves aren't curves, and there's things like gravity that require stitching to make stuff stay in place ... and leaf rot ... etc.

 

A lie would be when, unlike the above, you conceal rather than admit that you're not submitting to the real. But I'm getting way to theoretical, so I'll stop.

[Julie H]

has to deal with two questions of truth

 

 

... which brings me to a fourth category, in addition to truth, lie or BS, and that is ... I don't know what to call it. It ignores idea, it has no idea, and it ignores submission to or response to the particular material in front of the lens. Pure imitation, and/or pure craft is the nicest way I can think of to describe it. Many people seem to enjoy making photographs of this kind and many people seem to enjoy looking at photographs of this kind. Is it simply pleasure in copying what is admired or is it pleasure in the craft of photography for its own sake? If you enjoy such, I would love to hear why. Maybe these are IMAGEs?

 

What am I talking about? First, look at something that is NOT what I'm talking about. Consider the work of Charles Dodgson aka Lewis Carroll. He DID have ideas (to do with the mind-world of children) and he DID submit those ideas to the actuality of what was before his lens. For example, look at this marvelous picture of Xia Kitchen.

 

Now, here are Google search results for more pictures of the growing-up Xia. (Please ignore the non-Dodgson pictures mixed in the search results.)

 

With those in mind (finally!), look at this portfolio of imitation Xia pictures. They are beautifully crafted, and yet, to me seem to be entirely clueless as to any idea beyond imitation. They completely miss everything that Dodgson's pictures are about. Do you like them anyway? Why? What is the satisfaction in making such pictures and/or looking at them?

 

That was an especially obvious example. I see this kind of think in every genre of photography, landscape, street, you name it, and I see it all the time. What's it about?

[PapaTango]

Sorry to have taken so long to get back to this discussion. One of the nurses caught me eating that raw, red meat--and the doctor had me placed in a little room by myself. I still don't know the purpose of that action--but I think that it is BS... o_O

 

David will well recognize another dimension that you left out, Julie. It is how the individual or a group interacts with the created space--and the meanings and sometimes unintended purposes they will put it to as they experience it. I am reminded of a semi-intoxicated discussion I had once with a group of arch students (late at night and in a venue that encouraged such condition). A particularly gifted, but inherently angry young man from Cuba had designed a 'shelter' of sorts--the sort that only architectural students can conjure up--and proposed to place it in isolation into the deepest depths of Red River Gorge Park in Kentucky. We all were having a spirited discussion about how people redefine the use of commonality--and it was pointed out that I was sitting on a trash can (with lid) and had now re-purposed that 'thing' as a seat.

 

His point with his sketches was that the small, tall, 'creation' with one open side could be perceived as an art installation, a shelter, or a cultural artifact. I noted that it bore a strong resemblance to an outhouse that was missing its door--and how would he feel about the matter if most of those interacting with it chose to step inside and have a big, healthy bowel movement. This almost resulted in a physical altercation that both of us had to be restrained by the others--and I was forced by the university Provost to apologize... :eek:

 

In a long-winded way, I am coming about to the role of signifiers and semaphores. Roland Barthes wrote in "The Photographic Message" (click here to read) that a photograph was a 'message without a code' and without accompanying textual information thus becomes a "photographic paradox." Allan Sekula takes this outside of Barthes (and its ghastly collision between Habermas & Parsons)--opening the lines of his 1975 monograph "On the Invention of Photographic Meaning" (click here to read) state:

 

"

The meaning of a photograph, like that of any other entity, is inevitably subject to cultural definition. The task here is to define and engage critically something we might call the "photographic discourse....That is, the overall discourse relation could be regarded as a limiting function, one that establishes a bounded arena of shared expectations as to meaning

."

 

The unfortunate reality is that the vast majority of humanity either lacks, or has a seriously underdeveloped sense of applying anything resembling 'critical' to thinking or perceptions. A basic review of what passes for news reporting in our new age of leadership demonstrates that by and large--we seem to lack the ability to discern what is truth, fact, or complete BS. One of my favorite examples of this from the history of the Arts is the social art joke Salvador Dali played on the populace by designing horrid green linoleum for Sears... ;)

 

I am going to stop with this line of reasoning now, for fear that I will soon start quoting Susan Sontag and Derrida. So, lets move on to this roadside attraction.

 

Ala Rod Serling, "I will submit for your consideration...." the following photograph, which I have titled "Don't DO Acid."

 

 

Everywhere one looks--something is 'wrong' with these people. I still don't know where they buy their shoes--and pay no heed to that child with three arms. When this was executed some years back--I was mucking about with the concept of 'surreal.' Prints of this have made the rounds with my old "literati" academic friends--and was once entered into a showing. Oh yes, it was drooled--this and that, surreal, an insight and/or window into alternate realities, altered states of mental health (think schizophrenics), a parody of being, and lofty quotes from bearded scholars whose publications establish them as educated beyond their native intelligence were given. There is no truth here except that the 'artist' was experimenting with Photoshop and heavily influenced by the 420 factor. There is no fact here except I took a photo and manipulated it. Or perhaps I did not (manipulate it, that is), and there are some damned scary things going on out in the world--especially if you are messing around with fire after dark. :confused:

 

But here and now years later, on a bright clear afternoon--of sound mind and spirit--I wish to believe the following. It is sheer, unmitigated nonsense--and in my reckoning qualifies as entertaining BS. There is no underlying textual narrative, no submerged metaphors, signifiers, or hidden road maps to the Twilight Zone. Pack a lunch and your own cognition. I may be wrong, and YMMV if you are a trendy intellectual... :cool:

Edited April 20, 2017 by PapaTango

[Julie H]

There is no underlying textual narrative, no submerged metaphors, signifiers, or hidden road map

 

 

Something like this?

 

"… Objects have no meaning in themselves, rather they are prompts for a field of possible meanings that are dependent on context. Meaning often implies something fixed, but in this instance, let’s understand meaning as that which arises as the result of an object’s exposure to a specific circumstance.

 

[

line break added]

That is, objects facilitate certain outcomes rather than contain certain meanings, and each interaction presents the possibility for a range of outcomes to arise that are not wholly predictable. These interactions accumulate over time, thus the meaning of an object is ever evolving. When we assume that objects simply contain meaning, this complex dynamic is obscured.

 

"… Like philosophy, which seeks to know knowing, art seeks to perceive perceiving in its broadest sense. Thus, art must keep this process of perceiving open; it must endlessly defer an arrival at conclusive meaning to maintain its focus on how meaning is established.

 

"One way that art holds aesthetic meaning at arm’s length is by making the familiar strange, placing meaning at the horizon, out of reach but still in sight. In so doing, art reflects what it means to be in a world of aesthetics. It affirms that to be human is to be

within

aesthetics, not simply a consumer of aesthetic messages, but within a dynamic system of aesthetic producers. Art requires circulation to keep its object of inquiry present; stasis is its enemy, for its meaning is established through its exposure to a range of circumstances.

 

"… No one managed to use the transformation that discourse can effect on aesthetic objects more dramatically than

Marcel Duchamp

. As Thierry de Duve observed, the

ready-made

put on display the ‘pact that would unite the spectators of the future around some object, an object … bearing no other function than that of a pure signifier of

the pact itself

.’ De Duve is describing the social contract of art, the agreement we tacitly make to contextualize something in a certain way.

 

[

line break added

] The

ready-made

displays the pact that initiates the social relations around an object and the behaviors that ensue.

Duchamp

showed that this agreement did not require a specific object (which is not to say that his objects were not specific); the object simply acts as a marker of an agreement, a fulcrum around which a particular social organization forms, and meaning arises from how this group makes use of that agreement. All aesthetics are the result of a similar sort of pact, and art is where it is possible to lay that agreement bare." —

Walead Beshty

 

... or not?

[PapaTango]

Watch out, or you will have David Sylvester sleeping on your back porch. Picasso, Picasa--art or ghosts in the machine? Only your Mum(ford) knows for sure... :cool:

[Julie H]

What if its not all flutterbys and millows (and it never is).

 

Brown Circle

by

Louise Glück

 

[ … ]

 

I don’t love my son

the way I meant to love him.

I thought I’d be

the lover of orchids who finds

red trillium growing

in the pine shade, and doesn’t

touch it, doesn’t need

to possess it. What I am

is the scientist,

who comes to that flower

with a magnifying glass

and doesn’t leave, though

the sun burns a brown

circle of grass around

the flower. Which is

more or less the way

my mother loved me.

 

[ … ]

[Sandy Vongries]

Julie -- in re: truth. After the first fish, a modest amount retained for bait (numerous WW II survival documents) would not impact survival -- self cutting would. Not smart. Second, you might want to look up the striking position of Copperheads -- they ain't Cobras, and their bites are rarely fatal.

 

As regards the poem, observation (+advice) and sunshine never harmed my children.

[Julie H]

Me on the couch with a small copperhead:

 

 

Same snake saying "stop tickling me!" (imagine child lying in grass facing it):

 

 

Cookie after meeting a snake:

 

 

Snake after meeting Cookie:

 

 

Cookie was bitten probably more than a dozen times in her younger days. This did not mean "leave the snakes alone." This meant WAR.

[PapaTango]

Some truth--I hate those snakes. They were everywhere when I lived in Western Virginia for a time as a child. There were large nests of them to be found, and lots of them would come out onto large, flat outcroppings of rock to sun themselves. Sometimes, an errant one--or a timber rattler would fall into the hole under the outhouse. It was wise to look down there before sitting down... :eek:

[Sandy Vongries]

We have Rattlers here -- referred to locally as "Buzz Worms". Two of my dogs were bitten and survived -- so far, the Rhodesian has been either smart or fortunate. The snakes are not too prevalent, I shoot one a year on average. Nello after a nose bite.

[Julie H]

Passing a Truck Full of Chickens at Night on Highway Eighty

by

Jane Mead

 

What struck me first was their panic.

 

Some were pulled by the wind from moving

to the ends of the stacked cages,

some had their heads blown through the bars —

 

and could not get them in again.

Some hung there like that — dead —

their own feathers blowing, clotting

 

in their faces. Then

I saw the one that made me slow some —

I lingered there beside her for five miles.

 

She had pushed her head through the space

between bars — to get a better view.

She had the look of a dog in the back

 

of a pickup, that eager look of a dog

who knows she’s being taken along.

She craned her neck.

 

She looked around, watched me, then

strained to see over the car — strained

to see what happened beyond.

 

That

is the chicken I want to be.

[Sandy Vongries]

Go for it! Even at my age, gotta admit, my goals are a skosh higher than that. Cluck, cluck!

[Julie H]

Empathy

by

Stephen Dunn

 

[ … ]

 

I was in D.C., on leave from the army.

It was a woman, of course, who didn’t call.

Or, as we said back then, a girl.

It’s anybody’s story.

 

But I think for me it was the beginning

of empathy, not a large empathy

like the deeply selfless might have,

more like a leaning, like being able

 

to imagine a life for a spider, a maker’s

life, or just some aliveness

in its wide abdomen and delicate spinnerets

so you take it outside in two paper cups

 

instead of stepping on it.

 

*********************************************

 

Small Frogs Killed on the Highway

by

James Wright

 

Still,

I would leap too

Into the light,

If I had the chance.

It is everything, the wet green stalk of the field

On the other side of the road.

They crouch there, too, faltering in terror

And take strange wing. Many

Of the dead never moved, but many

Of the dead are alive forever in the split second

Auto headlights more sudden

Than their drivers know.

The drivers burrow backward into dank pools

Where nothing begets

Nothing.

 

Across the road, tadpoles are dancing

On the quarter thumbnail

Of the moon. They can’t see,

Not yet.

 

*********************************************

 

For a Coming Extinction

by

W.S. Merwin

 

Gray whale

Now that we are sending you to The End

That great god

Tell him

That we who follow you invented forgiveness

And forgive nothing

 

[ … ]

[Allen Herbert]

"Your picture that I am looking at would be described as:

 

1. true
   
2. a lie
   
3. BS [aka bullshi*]
   

 

If your picture is none of the above, how would you describe its truth value? What am I getting from it?"

[Allen Herbert]

Your picture that I am looking at would be described as:

 

1. true
   
2. a lie
   
3. BS [aka bullshi*]
   

 

If your picture is none of the above, how would you describe its truth value? What am I getting from it?

[Allen Herbert]

All depends on you Julie.

 

Your ability or lack of ability to read the language of photography.