Does digital photography change how we see photography as truth?
Exercise
Does digital photography change how we see photography as truth? Consider both sides of the argument and make some notes.
Photography has not been seen as truth for many years. Anyone with any interest in the history of photography (or was a child in 70’s when the Cottingley Fairies mystery was exposed) is aware that photographers have manipulating images since the very beginning, this list from Fourandsix, who specialises in image forensics illustrates this point.
However, the general public was unaware of what could be achieved through darkroom manipulation, as are many pure digital photographers today (as I have discussed in another post) which lead to the old adage ‘the camera never lies”. Photographic images were seen as an accurate facsimile of what was in front of a photographer, as opposed to the artist brush which could wielded as the artist pleased.
The advent of digital camera to the whole has brought the use of photographic editing software to the forefront of everyone’s mind – “Photoshop” has become a verb and hardly a day goes by without the cry that image has been/ must have been “photoshopped”. It perhaps the biggest cliché of modern photography that everything has been “photoshopped” but as I have discussed in my earlier post the use of Photoshop doesn’t mean we are altering reality
The questioning around the how genuine an image is because of a suspicion of Photoshop has just really triggered many people to question is something staged or not. We expect that wildlife photography, photojournalism and sports photography to be an accurate depiction of what happened, but we have all always harboured thoughts that did the photographer pay for the shot with the refugees, was the animal inticed with food extra. I have been told by a friend who was photographer work famine-torn Africa in the 1980’s that their client was desperate for a picture of an open grave – so he and a colleague dug one themselves have fruitlessly searched.
Digital photography has undoubtedly made photographic fraud easier, as it something almost any can have good at on their home computers but it has made anymore prevalent than it already was.
Is summary Digital photography has changed how we view truth in photography, not because digital photography is intrinsically dishonest but by bringing the knowledge of how it can happen to the forefront of the publics mind.