Part 2: Intersections with Photojournalism
Similar to the snapshot is a strictly photojournalistic approach, in that snapshots and photojournalism tend to rely on unretouched photography. But photojournalism unlike the snapshot can be quite intentional.
The photojournalist's documentary photo is intended as evidence to tell or support the news. With photojournalism, realism is necessary and the photographer aims to tell a story that’s consistent with what’s really happening in the world. For that reason, retouching of the image is forbidden. In contrast, the fine art photo includes much of the artist creating the image in such a way as to draw out expressions, images, and content that the artist finds most important – not merely what’s there to be photographed, but rather, what’s there to be richly emphasized, even altered if needed. The fine art photo could be (but doesn’t need to be) heavily altered and retouched, whereas the photojournalistic photo must not be retouched, and the snapshot photo too is normally little retouched. But unlike the documentary photo's need for realism, the snapshot is not retouched for a different reason... it’s just too casual to bother with much redesigning and retouching.
The photojournalist's documentary photo is intended as evidence to tell or support the news. With photojournalism, realism is necessary and the photographer aims to tell a story that’s consistent with what’s really happening in the world. For that reason, retouching of the image is forbidden. In contrast, the fine art photo includes much of the artist creating the image in such a way as to draw out expressions, images, and content that the artist finds most important – not merely what’s there to be photographed, but rather, what’s there to be richly emphasized, even altered if needed. The fine art photo could be (but doesn’t need to be) heavily altered and retouched, whereas the photojournalistic photo must not be retouched, and the snapshot photo too is normally little retouched. But unlike the documentary photo's need for realism, the snapshot is not retouched for a different reason... it’s just too casual to bother with much redesigning and retouching.
Our expectations are that fine art photos don’t have to be but could be retouched, redesigned, and altered for aesthetic or symbolic effect, whereas the snapshot probably isn’t altered and the photojournalist or documentary photo had better not be. We expect some photos to be truthful representations, even evidence in a court of law, whereas we expect other photos to be expressive or even wholly fictional.
But at a certain level no photo is entirely truthful, since the photographer must always adapt camera settings, lens settings, and composing to the imagery that she intends to record, thus altering what can be recorded every step of the way.
On the intersections and problems among the differences between careful editorial photojournalism, strange retouching issues, truthfulness versus misleads in photography, there is no better writer than Errol Morris (who made the academy-award winning documentary, The Fog of War). I recommend reading these two sets of his online essays:
It Was All Started by a Mouse (Part 1, and Part 2) – detailing the problems of how to title and caption a ‘truthful’ photojournalism.
Photography As a Weapon (linked here at the NYTimes Blogs) – regarding the unusual retouching and captioning that happens in photos such as the missiles shown here, which is widely recognized as a fake, although it was published by numerous newspapers:
[photo credit: New York Times / Errol Morris]
All of this begs the question... can you really trust any photo? Responding to this question requires being very familiar with the intentions of the photographer, the apparent uses of the camera and its settings, and looking for tell-tale clues in the photo that something may have been manipulated. How do you recognize the fakes? In addition to Morris’s articles, here’s a great sidebar discussion at Scientific American, Digital Forensics: 5 Ways to Spot a Fake Photo.
If you’d like much more detailed information about photo fakes and image forensics, then you should check out the research and writings of Hany Farid, who leads the Image Science Group at Dartmouth.
Sometimes, of course, finding the fakery is delightfully easy. You'll see lots of humorous examples (and some fakes of fakes), at PhotoshopDisasters. Enjoy!
13 comments:
i read this
Ok. So, what do y'all think... can you really trust any photo? Only parts of a photo? How much overlap with reality is reliable... how much isn't?
The Mickey Mouse article either spoke a lot of truth or the photographer was well trained to cover up any wrong doing. The interview made it clear that photojournalist use photo selection to not only tell a story of their experience (which is very obvious here), but also to pursued the viewer. Since altering and staging is forbidden, found items/context and captions are used. Propaganda techniques used through photographs like "bandwagon", "lesser of two evils", and "pinpointing the enemy" can be successfully created without changing the image or staging. With todays technology and photographer's creativity, a fake photograph could be hard to detect. I worked in a high end handbag store, and we had to deal with customers attempting to exchange or return a knock off. With training we could tell the difference (sometimes)...but the copies were pretty believable.
In order to actually trust a photograph, you may have to interview the photographer attached to a lie detector.... honestly.
It also makes you wonder... are the photographs on CSI real or are they pinpointing the murderer???
... and yet many photos are used for in-depth, precision science such as photos from a telescope for astronomy, and to good result, careful evidence and also deduction of useful information. Same w/uses of photography for medical imagining. Nothing beats a great photo for sheer precision!
I meant 'medical imaging'
I never can trust a photo unless i take it myself. You just never know!!
This is an interesting thing to wonder: are the people who are hired to take pictures of the world around them wasting our time creating falsity?
Honestly speaking, I don't consider photography something that is edited outside of a picture. If you want to put a picture through programs to make them more "perfect" then its no longer a photo in my mind, its digital art.
In my work, unless specificlly told otherwise or I have the intention of making outrageous digital art, I refuse to edit my pictures from their original state.
Alex, that puts you in the camp of 'straight photographers' with Paul Strand and Alfred Stieglitz, and alongside photojournalists. Meanwhile, as for your camera, if you are placing settings on Auto then you are relying on the decisions of thousands of software and hardware engineers to determine what kind of imagery your camera can create... in such a case, your picture's 'original state' is a collaboration with the culture of how cameras are made and what the engineers thought would be best not necessarily what you as an artist find most important (unless you agree w/those who built your camera). And in digital photography, the image is all digital all the time... it may be that it's not even a photo b/c no film, and is instead digital art all along??
i have also read this
i have read this article
really interesting article, it really makes you second guess all of the pictures you see in the newspapers & on the news and such. i mean its really true, can you trust any photo?! WHO KNOWWSSS. i liked this alot.
You know, I remember that huge stink about the doctored missile photo, it really made me wonder just how much of our supposed "news" is actually just publicity.
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