Photographic truth and manipulation
February 23rd, 2009
We know photographs can be false yet we want them to be true. Indeed, the desire for photographic veracity has persisted, perhaps even intensified, even as knowledge about image manipulation becomes more widespread.
Reflecting on the Oscar ceremonies, MediaGuardian has documented the widespread use of Photoshop to enhance celebrity photographs in fashion and gossip magazines. Every cover, says one media insider, has been altered to some degree, with some of these changes exposed in the “Photoshop Hall of Shame” and “Photoshop Disasters”. So common is the practice that when an October 2008 Newsweek cover of Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin was not airbrushed, conservative anchors on Fox television complained that this amounted to liberal bias. (Fox knew about the political power of such changes because it had earlier manipulated the photos of two New York Times journalists it wanted to discredit).
Despite being widespread, digital manipulation provokes anxiety and unease, especially when news photographs are involved. The scandals surrounding Brian Walski’s 2003 photos from Iraq and Adnan Hajj’s 2006 pictures from Lebanon led to both men being fired from their jobs, and the governments of Iran and the US have been criticized when they released altered military images of missiles and a general.
What is commonplace in one visual domain (fashion) is regarded as taboo in another (news). Yet both realms are still regulated by a desire for photographs to be accurate and authentic documents. The persistence and power of this desire despite the long history of photographic manipulation (chemical and digital) is something that needs explanation.
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6 Responses to “Photographic truth and manipulation”
Enlarged to Show Texture: Do Fashion Magazines Have a Responsibility to Disclose Photographic Manipulation? | gnovis March 10th, 2009 at 6:54 pm #
[...] by the ubiquitous photoshoping, I suspect, we also like it. As David Campbell suggests on his blog, “desire for photographic veracity has persisted, perhaps even intensified, even as knowledge about [...]
Daniel March 24th, 2009 at 11:09 pm #
Here is an example of photo manipulation used by radical Serbian sources to justify the Srebrenica genocide:
http://srebrenica-genocide.blogspot.com/2008/12/photo-forgeries-of-serb-victims-around.html
admin March 25th, 2009 at 2:54 pm #
Fred Ritchin has written a good report for Consumer Reports WebWatch in the US that details the variety of digital imagery on the web, and the guidelines some publications use to maintain standards. See his discussion, and a link to the full report, at: http://www.pixelpress.org/afterphotography/?p=150
David Campbell — Photography, Multimedia, Politics » Photographic truth and Photoshop April 17th, 2009 at 11:30 am #
[...] a cover story in which the models photographs have not been ‘Photoshopped’ (thereby confirming, as I’ve noted previously, that digital manipulation is the norm in this visual [...]
David Campbell April 28th, 2009 at 6:09 pm #
Now we have a controversy about a Washington magazine photoshopping an image of President Obama – see Susan Moeller’s commentary of this case at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/susan-moeller/media-literacy-101-the-et_b_189488.html
This practice and the issues it raise never go away…
Photographic retouching exposed | David Campbell -- Photography, Multimedia, Politics September 15th, 2009 at 9:52 am #
[...] meaning, manipulation and Photoshop have been prominent recently (see my previous posts here and here, with some updates amongst the comments for [...]