When is a photograph no longer a photograph?

[samstevens]

On 11/18/2022 at 10:39 AM, Dustin McAmera said:

With a film photograph, you can develop the film in such a way as to increase the contrast, but you can't develop it so as to change who was in the bank vault, or the wrong bed. So as long as its not retouched, it's definitive.

Of course, you can say the same thing about a digital photograph. “So long as it’s not retouched, it’s definitive.” The key isn’t film or digital. It’s whether we can perceive or prove any retouching. Propaganda and alterations of photos for nefarious reasons were alive and well during the film only days.

https://www.history.com/news/josef-stalin-great-purge-photo-retouching

[vrankin]

We're all seeing digitized images here. It's not a problem for me. I worked strictly with film and wet processes from 1970 until 1999. However, I didn't feel as if I left the realm of photography, when recording images on digital sensors. Understandably, for reportage and forensic photography there are requirements that original images not be altered. But to impose those limits on my personal photography would seem artificial. When does an image morph from photography to graphic design? I can't define it objectively. But I know when it crosses the line for me. 

Edited November 22, 2022 by vrankin

[michael_frangos]

On 11/20/2022 at 3:18 PM, jnancz said:

as soon as someone makes a latent image it's been altered and manipulated

This doesn't make sense

[Allen Herbert]

A photo is always a photo.

However, when it has it has lost its character by being over cooked...well, for want of a better word it is a lost its soul.

It ceases to communicate other than being a pretty pretty banal thing at best.

[T. R. Tinker]

I don't view your image as a photograph.  I see it as digital art - and there's nothing wrong with that (plus there's a heck of a lucrative market for digital art).  Personally, I think when we stray too far from what might have been achieved in the darkroom, we leave photography behind and enter another area of artistry.

It's a darned nice image, 'though.

[glen_h]

On 11/19/2022 at 12:44 PM, Ricochetrider said:

A good friend of mine is a photographer for a former newspaper that’s now an online (local) news service. He’s not allowed to alter, edit, enhance or post process in any way. At least one photographer who worked with him has been fired over this hard, fast rule! 
 

@samstevens excellent point about labels. Thanks! 

Seems to me close to impossible in the analog days, and completely impossible for digital.

Printing on other than grade 2 paper, would be contrast enhancing?

Since I believe in Nyquist, sampling at greater than twice the highest spatial frequency, can exactly reproduce the original.

But then you have to convert that without, as above, any contrast change.

Maybe I just have a bad scanner, but I pretty much always have to do contrast adjustment on scans.

 

Most AgBr paper is now exposed by scanning lasers from a digital image. 

Can that be done with no contrast change?

[JDMvW]

On 11/18/2022 at 12:20 PM, Tony Parsons said:

“When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.’

FWIW, a similar comment is made by Parson Thwackum in Fielding.

"

In Henry Fielding’s 1749 novel The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling:

 

“When I mention religion,” declares Parson Thwackum, “I mean the Christian religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England"

Edited February 1, 2023 by JDMvW

[David_Cavan]

When I say it is. And when I say it is not. Nothing else really matters, other than angels dancing on pinheads.

[httpwww.photo.netbarry]

On 11/17/2022 at 6:32 AM, Sanford said:

Let's just say if you published it and made some money, you'd owe a part of that to the original creator

Not sure that's true.  Do collage makers who sell their pieces owe a royalty to every image maker whose image they appropriated? I don't think so. 

[Dustin McAmera]

If those original works are in copyright, then yes I think they do, unless the collage-maker can argue fair use. If he/she is selling his collage, that will weigh against such an argument.

 

 

[httpwww.photo.netbarry]

I'm thinking of one artist who is showing internationally that does intricate pieces using hundreds of pieces cut from cartoons for instance. See: http://www.richardkraft.net/flag-sail-wing/yp3gfyf2f12i7w0ktfneb60vt4imlv 

Go through these, they're really interesting, but I don't think he has paid royalties, but maybe I'm wrong.

[Dustin McAmera]

That it goes on doesn't make it right.

[marceppy]

Quote

There IS a really important difference, however, between forensic/documentary/scientific photography and photographic art

JVMvW, I agree.   but they are not mutually exclusive

I recently saw a photomicrographic image of a cross section of a plant stem that was dyed to illustrate the tubular cell structure and probably color enhanced to augment the illustration - is still a photograph?  It sure was pretty to look at and it was scientifically correct.  It was manipulated and it would look great framed and on the wall.  It probably could have been used in court, in scientific presentation, and good enough to be in a gallery or a book.  I vote it  was a photograph because it was.  But some would disagree - it's ok. 

[Dustin McAmera]

The factors affecting whether a use is Fair Use include 'the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole'. In the case you cited, the guy is using such small pieces he can claim that his use of each original work is minimal; he uses the pieces as generic cartoon elements, not quotations from a particular work (though you could spend hours doing a Where's-Wally search of his collages for bits you knew). I'm sure he's safe. He might not be, if all his elements were from Disney.

But if the original image that started this thread were based not on a 19th century cameo, but a magazine photo of Madonna, then the photographer who took that picture would definitely have a claim. As I mentioned earlier, when someone worked out that the Obama 'Hope' poster was based on a particular photo, the Associate Press went after the artist on behalf of their photographer, and he had to settle.

[AlanKlein]

On 11/19/2022 at 3:44 PM, Ricochetrider said:

A good friend of mine is a photographer for a former newspaper that’s now an online (local) news service. He’s not allowed to alter, edit, enhance or post process in any way. At least one photographer who worked with him has been fired over this hard, fast rule! 
 

@samstevens excellent point about labels. Thanks! 

Some newspapers allow adjustments such as to correct lighting and contrast, but that's it.  Newspaper are dealing with trust, supposedly.  They often lie in their text but want honest photos.  Very strange.  

[AlanKlein]

On 11/20/2022 at 9:18 AM, jnancz said:

as soon as someone makes a latent image it's been altered and manipulated

Unless someone is God, there's not way to duplicate what happens in the real world.  So photography is limited.  It's why we say a portrait picture shows a "likeness" of the person photographed.  It can't actually be that person.  So manipulating to get an image is different than changing it so it is unrecognizable from the original scene and present a false duplicate to fool people.  

[AlanKlein]

On 11/20/2022 at 10:37 AM, samstevens said:

Of course, you can say the same thing about a digital photograph. “So long as it’s not retouched, it’s definitive.” The key isn’t film or digital. It’s whether we can perceive or prove any retouching. Propaganda and alterations of photos for nefarious reasons were alive and well during the film only days.

https://www.history.com/news/josef-stalin-great-purge-photo-retouching

As an old timer amateur, no one back then except experts and artists finagled their photos.  They sent them out to a 1 hour developer and got back 4x6" prints or slides of what they shot.  Digital and computers have made alterations easy to do.  So altered pictures today are at a different level in complexity and frequency.  

Edited February 14, 2023 by AlanKlein

[samstevens]

18 minutes ago, AlanKlein said:

As an old timer amateur, no one back then except experts and artists finagled their photos.  They sent them out to a 1 hour developer and got back 4x6" prints or slides of what they shot.  Digital and computers have made alterations easy to do.  So altered pictures today are at a different level in complexity and frequency.  

Yes, all true. But also a non sequitur. I wasn’t questioning the greater ease and greater mass access for digital photos to be manipulated. I was saying that an unretouched digital photo (for example providing the raw original) would be as reliable in court as an unretouched film photo.

[za33photo]

"Photographic Evidence" , Digital or Film , is absolutely not reliable in today's modern world.

 

[Dustin McAmera]

That's simply not true, or why would businesses and governments be spending so much gathering it?

It is important that the integrity of the evidence is protected and can be shown. In retail here, a lot of customer-facing staff are now required to wear small cameras that upload video or stills to a handling centre. So the shop staff never handle the evidence; there are few controls on the camera; just trigger buttons to start it; and the data can't be got out locally. The people at the handling centre know the thresholds for various offences having been committed, and they can send the police, sometimes before the incident is even over.

In other situations, the photographer's statement may be the guarantee that the evidence is straight, as I said in my earlier post. This is from the UK Health and Safety Executive:

1. A photograph or sketch may be admitted in evidence provided a witness (not necessarily, but preferably, the photographer/maker) gives evidence of its accuracy. Photographs should each be identified individually in a statement to which they are exhibited, unless an album is produced as one exhibit, when an index should describe them. The statement should say when and where the photographs were taken and that they show what the inspector saw.

2. Both film and digital images may be used as evidence. For guidance on ensuring the evidential integrity of digital images, see Evidence that may assist your investigation in the Investigation section and Evidential use of photographs on the intranet.

 

https://www.hse.gov.uk/enforce/enforcementguide/court/physical-photos.htm

 

That link 'Evidence that may assist your investigation' goes to another numbered list including this:

21. Where it is intended to use digital imagery as evidence, staff should follow the guidance on the HSE kit pages of the intranet. This will ensure that the evidential integrity of the images is maintained and can be demonstrated to the court.

[samstevens]

And thank goodness for police wearing body cams which have certainly helped clarify situations that could otherwise easily be lied about.

[httpwww.photo.netbarry]

21 hours ago, Dustin McAmera said:

That it goes on doesn't make it right.

Not sure it's wrong. This guy teaches photography at a public college, the departments well aware of his projects. I think he has a better understanding than most of us on p.net.  

Did Warhol pay royalties to Campbell's soups or to Marilyn Monroe or any of the other celebrity silk screens he made? Well the answer is, the photographer who took the photo of Prince did sue and the case is at the Supreme Court.  Warhol's estate attorneys argue that the images were altered sufficiently by cropping changing angles adding colors and other additions to make it something new such as collage makers do and therefore to be a fair use. The photographer's attorneys argued they weren't sufficiently altered. The lower courts split on the issue.  

The example I showed you is hundreds of fragments totally used beyond a representational depiction and the use is so altered to me would definitely be a fair use. Pop Art and Post modern conceptual art often use appropriated material in different ways that create something new; in legal terms transformative.  I don't see wrongness in that process, but there'[s no like bright line between violating someones copyright or creating something new.  Do we have to acknowledge the individual sea animals  and ingredients used to make bouillabaisse or is it, as Anthony Bourdain said in "The Big Short" "a whole new thing"?

[Dustin McAmera]

Did you read my second post? I said

The factors affecting whether a use is Fair Use include 'the amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole'. In the case you cited, the guy is using such small pieces he can claim that his use of each original work is minimal; he uses the pieces as generic cartoon elements, not quotations from a particular work (though you could spend hours doing a Where's-Wally search of his collages for bits you knew). I'm sure he's safe. He might not be, if all his elements were from Disney.

But if the original image that started this thread were based not on a 19th century cameo, but a magazine photo of Madonna, then the photographer who took that picture would definitely have a claim. As I mentioned earlier, when someone worked out that the Obama 'Hope' poster was based on a particular photo, the Associate Press went after the artist on behalf of their photographer, and he had to settle

 

Edited February 15, 2023 by Dustin McAmera

[httpwww.photo.netbarry]

Sorry Dustin didn't see that post. I was thinking it was" find the pope in the pizza" from SNL. same difference.  I wonder when the Warhol case will be decided. Just to carry on with Warhol, people have said in today's environment whomever owns Campbells would have sued Wharf; for trademark infringement, but at the time, the head of the company wrote Warhol a letter saying he was an admirer of his art and wished he could afford to buy one of the soup can works but since Warhol apparently had expressed a liking of Campbell's Tomato soup, he sent him 2 cases. 

As far as the discussion about using photos in court I actually do have some experience. as a litigation paralegal.  I can't recall ever having a photo challenged in court as to its accuracy as long as the proper witness is used to introduce the evidence.  For instance accident scene photos taken by a police officer are generally admitted if the officer that was at the scene can testify that is how they recall it, especially if they took the photo whether film or digital, though the pictures are often challenged on other grounds such as relevancy..  I always thought digital photographs could be tricky because parties don't produce raw files and often don't know what they are.  Also with any photograph the focal length of the lens can affect the appearance of objects, giving different impressions of distance etc. When ever I went out with an expert and they were taking photos if size and distance were important I would ask them use a "normal" lens

 

[mikemorrellNL]

FWIW, I've just finished reading the novel Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell. One of the themes of this novel is IMHO relevant to this thread:

- we tend to want to stick 'labels' on everything and to put things into 'categories'

- reality is much more fluid, diverse and complicated

The question 'at what point does a photo become an illustration' implies that there are two distinct' categories' (photos, illustrations). And some kind of variable 'boundary' where one category merges with (or crosses over into) a different 'category'. TBH there are currently many more genres of 'creative imaging than these two. Some incorporate photography (or film), others don't.

IMHO, 'creative imaging' (as in most other areas of music/art/craft/hobby) continues to innovate and evolve. In hindsight, art historians can perhaps place imaging (including photography) as 'move: ments/developments' in history as they do with other art forms.

I come back to my original 'story': currently (and for the foreseeable future) images are just images. Some out-of camera, others tweaked in PP and other incorpotatec (or not) into 'image creations'.  So IMHO image reality is fluid, diverse and complicated.