Art photos are manipulations

[Alan Edward Klein]

Alan

Would using selenium intensifier to make a thin negative printable be considered manipulation? What about burning and dodging to make "valuable" objects &c in a scene be considered manipulation? What about using tri-x ortho to make a man's complexion weathered or wet plate type emulsion to intensify the redness in someone's skin, or make someone's freckles pop out of their face when the both skins are smooth and clear?

The only truth of a photograph is that the photographer/camera was pointed at something, that's about it. Truth ( whatever that is ) is linked to the storytellers point of view. Regarding news outlets, they have a story to tell. It is not difficult to photograph a small group of people with a telephoto lens and make it look like a mob, news outlets are known to do that. There is a very famous movie taken in the 1920s or 1930s that shows a woman with a cellphone, and people who believe in time travel always point to that photograph to suggest she is from the past or future. Some argue that the device in her hand is not a cellphone but some other sort of device.
Me? I definitely think she is a time traveler on a cellphone ... its well known that they had wireless communication in Sumeria, Mesopotamia, and Babylon. It has been suggested that the hanging gardens were not gardens at all but 10G cellphone towers.
Art? Anything can be considered art, a banana duct taped to a wall, even images from Hank Hill's colonoscopy.

Captions and essays are used to distort the meaning of photos all the time. I agree with that. Recently, you saw all these telephotos of people on the beach to show how close they were in this age of Covid virus. They were all over six feet from each other. But the telephot made them look like they were holding hands. That's where editors aren't doing their job. It's easy to mislabel a photo to encourage a different take on it. How many of us name a photo with how we want the viewer to see it to influence their feelings about it? Happens all the time. So you have a good point.

The time travel movie reminds me when I was a kid in the 1950's. There was a radio announcer called Long John Nebel. I would stay up after midnight listening to his show secretly. He always interviewed weird people like magicians, witches, and especially at that time of UFO's, people who were abducted by little green men in flying saucers. Men and women alike would tells their stories of how a space craft would come down and they were either invited or grabbed and taken for a day or two before returned to Earth. It seems Martians are very interested in biology as they always were tying these people down on gurneys and exploring their bodies with probes especially examining their private parts. Of course the stories told us more about the people abducted then the Martians and maybe a lot about me too that I was interested in this stuff. But it was a real hoot.

 

[removed account4]

Captions and essays are used to distort the meaning of photos all the time. I agree with that. Recently, you saw all these telephotos of people on the beach to show how close they were in this age of Covid virus. They were all over six feet from each other. But the telephot made them look like they were holding hands. That's where editors aren't doing their job. It's easy to mislabel a photo to encourage a different take on it. How many of us name a photo with how we want the viewer to see it to influence their feelings about it? Happens all the time. So you have a good point.

The time travel movie reminds me when I was a kid in the 1950's. There was a radio announcer called Long John Nebel. I would stay up after midnight listening to his show secretly. He always interviewed weird people like magicians, witches, and especially at that time of UFO's, people who were abducted by little green men in flying saucers. Men and women alike would tells their stories of how a space craft would come down and they were either invited or grabbed and taken for a day or two before returned to Earth. It seems Martians are very interested in biology as they always were tying these people down on gurneys and exploring their bodies with probes especially examining their private parts. Of course the stories told us more about the people abducted then the Martians and maybe a lot about me too that I was interested in this stuff. But it was a real hoot.

all boils down to intent and what truth is wanting to be told. as I said previously 10 people witness an event you get 10 truths, 10 cameras photograph the same event, 10 photographs of truths. regarding time travel and alien contact, hate to say it, but human beings are not very bright .. and inter-stellar travelers from the future or past had to have given homosapiensapiens knowledge, tools plans &c. heck they've only been standing uprightupright for 35,000 years and nearly destroyed their planet, obviously not to bright...Dana Scully was a skeptic too ...

 

[MattKing]

Today with so many video cameras around, there are constant movies recorded showing "criminals" on or near crime scenes. I have to believe that if they're used as evidence to show the criminal at the scene, someone has to testify as to where the video came from to "prove" it's accuracy. Someone has to be a witness to that fact and how it was processed to assure the jury the defendant wasn't cloned into the scene by a crooked cop. There's a word for that where the prosecution shows the "trail?" the evidence took to prove its accuracy as evidence.

That only applies to Traffic and surveillance cameras - cameras that show a scene that wasn't seen by an available witness.
Even then, the images are rarely accepted into evidence unless they are otherwise corroborated by witnesses who can testify about things that they do observe - things like blood spatter or broken glass or auto body damage. You need someone who can say that the video shows X, and that is consistent with Y which we found at the scene after the event.
And that goes to the fundamental question in the thread. On their own, photos don't establish reliable truths. They do help support the process of establishing reliable truths. There is a difference between the two.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

That only applies to Traffic and surveillance cameras - cameras that show a scene that wasn't seen by an available witness.
Even then, the images are rarely accepted into evidence unless they are otherwise corroborated by witnesses who can testify about things that they do observe - things like blood spatter or broken glass or auto body damage. You need someone who can say that the video shows X, and that is consistent with Y which we found at the scene after the event.
And that goes to the fundamental question in the thread. On their own, photos don't establish reliable truths. They do help support the process of establishing reliable truths. There is a difference between the two.

But if the witness stated that he cloned things in and out, the jury would more likely consider the photo as not being truthful evidence. The judge may not even allow it in as evidence. On the other hand, if he testified he brightened the image so you can see it to compensate it was taken at night without a flash, the jury would more likely accept it as evidence.

 

[MattKing]

But if the witness stated that he cloned things in and out, the jury would more likely consider the photo as not being truthful evidence. The judge may not even allow it in as evidence. On the other hand, if he testified he brightened the image so you can see it to compensate it was taken at night without a flash, the jury would more likely accept it as evidence.

Alan - they usually don't call the photographer as a witness, unless he has something else to ad as evidence.
They just have someone who was at the scene testify as to the details of the scene, and then authenticate the photograph as a faithful representation of what the witness observed.
The photograph is there to support the testimony. The testimony is the evidence that matters in court.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

It can be argued, but not successfully. This is really a strange statement. It sounds like you are saying complexity equals art. The artist with ink, brush and paper produces inferior work to an artist using a drawing program?

That was really just a rhetorical argument. In any case I'm not arguing more complexity=more art, rather that as I said, the artist is not saying, "because I couldn't capture everything in my vision with a single click of a shutter, I can't execute my vision".

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

If the lens did not catch it, it is manipulation. That is a really clearly defined criteria.

You're still failing to address my point - you say you don't manipulate your images. Fine - you don't bring them into Photoshop and remove things that you don't want in the scene, and add things that you do but aren't there. But you're laying claim to some kind of purity, that your photographs are some 1:1 correspondence with reality. They're NOT. No photograph is. They can't be. Ever. Full stop. To start with, they're 2-dimensional, reality is three dimensional. While photographs are capable of remarkable verisimilitude, it is still just an analog stand-in. Photographs are very close cousins of words. Words are not the things they represent. They're stand-ins - if I talk to you about a rock, you form a mental image of a rock. But it's not the exact rock I'm talking about. You might think of a brown rock, when I'm talking about a green rock. The more adjectives I apply to the description of the rock, the closer you get to envisioning the same rock, but even if I describe it in minute detail down to its mass in milligrams and dimensions in micrometers, you still aren't picturing the same rock unless you've been in the presence of the same rock I'm talking about. Even then, you're picturing it in your minds eye from a different angle, in different light, and you're thinking about it from the perspective of the texture of its surface, whereas I'm thinking about it from the perspective of the way the surface refracts light.

A photograph is the same - I can take a photograph of a thing, and it is a representative, and a simulacrum, but it is not the thing. It is a single aspect of the thing. And it is a manipulated aspect of the thing - I have chosen to crop, to light from a specific angle, to expose more or less when making the exposure, and I have chosen to represent it in color or in black and white, and reproduce it at a given size that is different than the actual size of the thing.

Do you ever burn or dodge a print? Have you ever selected a film stock based on how grainy or not grainy it is? Do you ever choose a color film because it is more saturated in color than another? Or less saturated? have you ever used colored gels on your flash to either introduce a mood to a scene or to balance the light from your flash with the color of the ambient light? Bravo, you've manipulated a photograph.

Have you looked at the photographs of Henry Peach Robinson? Do you consider them to be not photographs? What about Jerry Uelsmann? Neither one of them manipulated a photograph digitally - (Henry Peach Robinson couldn't even if he wanted to - he was dead for almost three quarters of a century before the first digital image was recorded).

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

Could someone define "truth" in a photograph so we know what you are talking about. Is "truth" in a photograph some kind of virtue? It seems to me this is just the old analog versus digital argument using different words. Also, to reiterate an earlier request, please define an "art photo" as referred to in the title of the thread, and explain how it is different than any other kind of photo when it comes to "truth".

In this context, I'll tender my definition of an "art" photograph - a photograph that was created for the purpose of conveying non-factual information. That is to say, it was not created for the exclusive purpose of conveying factual information - it is not exclusively documentary in purpose. It is not a snapshot of Aunt Mabel with her new kitten, or Cousin George on the skywalk at Niagara Falls, serving as proof that Cousin George indeed went to Niagara Falls in 1985. It is not a microphotograph of a fracture in a piece of steel to demonstrate why that piece of steel failed. This is not to say that those aforementioned photographs cannot become art by selection, juxtaposition, and manipulation, but rather their intent is exclusive to the purpose of conveying specific pieces of information - Cousin George went to Niagara, the piece of steel cracked.

An art photograph is one that is created with intent not just to convey information, but to provoke reaction, introspection, and emotion. It is intended to inspire viewing outside of the context of the information it conveys. Steve McCurry's Afghan Girl, for example - it is a documentary photograph, but it is something that people choose to look at outside of the context of reading the NatGeo story about Afghanistan for which it was taken.

Many fashion photographs are NOT art, they're illustration - how many people go back and look at old Marie Claire magazines just to revel in the Versace ads for the sake of looking at the photographs? Those images were created with a single purpose in mind - to sell the piece of cloth in the picture. But occasionally, you do get fashion photographs that are also art - Richard Avedon's Vogue work springs immediately to mind. That difference is in Avedon's ability to apply photographic technique to the process of making the image such that the nominal primary purpose (selling clothes) becomes secondary and we look at the image for the sake of looking at the image - who knows (beyond deep fashionista history buffs) which dress by which designer Dovima was wearing when Avedon posed her with the elephants? If you've seen the photograph, you remember it, but unless you have a very esoteric interest, you have to look up the dress and the designer.

The people who are arguing that photographs are or have "Truth" are just re-framing the old analog-vs-digital virtue signaling. Wanting "Truth" in a photograph is of limited value when the photograph is being used for evidentiary purposes - documenting a crime scene or diagnosing a machine failure, for example. From the point of view of an "art" photograph, it has zero value. Insisting on "Truth" is imposing a moral value on something that exists outside of the constraint of morality. There is no good/evil/true/false to the existence or process of creation of an object of art. A painting is not less moral than a photograph or less "true" just because it was made from the imagination of the artist and not mechanically reproduced.

 

[Sirius Glass]

You're still failing to address my point - you say you don't manipulate your images. Fine - you don't bring them into Photoshop and remove things that you don't want in the scene, and add things that you do but aren't there. But you're laying claim to some kind of purity, that your photographs are some 1:1 correspondence with reality. They're NOT. No photograph is. They can't be. Ever. Full stop. To start with, they're 2-dimensional, reality is three dimensional. While photographs are capable of remarkable verisimilitude, it is still just an analog stand-in. Photographs are very close cousins of words. Words are not the things they represent. They're stand-ins - if I talk to you about a rock, you form a mental image of a rock. But it's not the exact rock I'm talking about. You might think of a brown rock, when I'm talking about a green rock. The more adjectives I apply to the description of the rock, the closer you get to envisioning the same rock, but even if I describe it in minute detail down to its mass in milligrams and dimensions in micrometers, you still aren't picturing the same rock unless you've been in the presence of the same rock I'm talking about. Even then, you're picturing it in your minds eye from a different angle, in different light, and you're thinking about it from the perspective of the texture of its surface, whereas I'm thinking about it from the perspective of the way the surface refracts light.

A photograph is the same - I can take a photograph of a thing, and it is a representative, and a simulacrum, but it is not the thing. It is a single aspect of the thing. And it is a manipulated aspect of the thing - I have chosen to crop, to light from a specific angle, to expose more or less when making the exposure, and I have chosen to represent it in color or in black and white, and reproduce it at a given size that is different than the actual size of the thing.

Do you ever burn or dodge a print? Have you ever selected a film stock based on how grainy or not grainy it is? Do you ever choose a color film because it is more saturated in color than another? Or less saturated? have you ever used colored gels on your flash to either introduce a mood to a scene or to balance the light from your flash with the color of the ambient light? Bravo, you've manipulated a photograph.

Have you looked at the photographs of Henry Peach Robinson? Do you consider them to be not photographs? What about Jerry Uelsmann? Neither one of them manipulated a photograph digitally - (Henry Peach Robinson couldn't even if he wanted to - he was dead for almost three quarters of a century before the first digital image was recorded).

Thank you for your concern about my rocks. My rocks are doing well and appreciate your thought on their well being. To your point I choose the camera, lens, filters, if any, film, composition, focus, exposure and development. Once the film has captured the image from the lens, I may burn in or dodge, bleach, stain, ... but I do not tamper with the captured image, so the image is to altered nor distorted. So yes there is a purity that I maintain. Please feel free to distort your photographs, but I am not required to like the results.

 

[Vaughn]

That was really just a rhetorical argument. In any case I'm not arguing more complexity=more art, rather that as I said, the artist is not saying, "because I couldn't capture everything in my vision with a single click of a shutter, I can't execute my vision".

Thanks!

 

[faberryman]

as I said previously 10 people witness an event you get 10 truths

This is nonsense. If I am standing next to someone, and say "how many cars are in the driveway", 10 out of 10 people will tell you the correct number. They will not say "what driveway" or "what cars" or "I only see giraffes". They will also agree on the color of the cars, except for the color blind guy, who will say the color he and all other color blind guys see. Different people may focus on different small details. One might not see that one of the cars is missing a hubcap, another may not notice that one car has its radio antenna extended, yet another might not notice the barrel of a gun peeping out of the rear window, but all reports will be substantially the same. And if you point to these details, the people that missed them initially, they will say "oh yeah, now I see it." The thing is, if we all did not see the same reality in all material respects, no one could function.

 

[removed account4]

This is nonsense. If I am standing next to someone, and say "how many cars are in the driveway", 10 out of 10 people will tell you the correct number. They will not say "what driveway" or "what cars" or "I only see giraffes". They will also agree on the color of the cars, except for the color blind guy, who will say the color he and all other color blind guys see. Different people may focus on different small details. One might not see that one of the cars is missing a hubcap, another may not notice that one car has its radio antenna extended, yet another might not notice the barrel of a gun peeping out of the rear window, but all reports will be substantially the same. And if you point to these details, the people that missed them initially, they will say "oh yeah, now I see it." The thing is, if we all did not see the same reality in all material respects, no one could function.

maybe not a car in the driveway. but people are oblivious to things right in front of them. have people all watch something else, maybe a parade or an event .. and they will notice different things and have no idea about others. and power of suggestion ( like the DC sniper in the cargo van ) will make people see things that aren't there. regarding reality .. who knows. I've seen and experienced things physically, mentally and emotionally that others who were at the same place at the same time did not experience ....

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

Alan - they usually don't call the photographer as a witness, unless he has something else to ad as evidence.
They just have someone who was at the scene testify as to the details of the scene, and then authenticate the photograph as a faithful representation of what the witness observed.
The photograph is there to support the testimony. The testimony is the evidence that matters in court.

If the photographer cloned something in or out, then the witness could not swear the photo is a faithful representation of the original scene. It would not be truthful.

 

[KenS]

One of my most 'difficult' moments were spent during the time of one of my last courses at university when the professor asked me to explain the 'meaning' of the prints I had 'stuck' up on the wall for the final critique, and I replied "What do you see" ?. I stated that they were exposures made to film (by me) in a moment of time .. and inquired "why does it have to have 'meaning'?"

I did not get an answer.

Ken

 

[Michael Firstlight]

It's kinda funny and sad reading through this entire thread. The discussion is typical of Western polarized mindset (compared to Eastern mindset that most things are on a continuum. Sure, every image is a manipulation simply by virtue of the medium and materials. Some might not think that manipulation but no one ever claimed that whether a manipulation starts with the shooter - it starts long before that simply based on the optics, the recording media and many other factors that don't involve the shooter. Then, when the shoots enters the equation he/she makes many choices. A choice might include making no choice - simply accepting the choices of the equipment maker or the limitations of the technology, or, the manipulation might range from subtle (perspective choice) through extreme (extreme pre- or post-proces image modification). Although I also suffer from being cultured and raised in the Western world where many see the world in binary terms I understand how difficu

 

[Michael Firstlight]

I remember back in late 90's when we began shooting digital and belonged to a variety of photo clubs and organizations. Film folks considered ANY digital modification fake and excessive manipulation. Of course after many battles they were proven wrong.

It's kinda funny and sad reading through this entire thread. The discussion is typical of Western polarized mindset (compared to Eastern mindset that most things are on a continuum). Sure, every image is a manipulation simply by virtue of the medium and materials. Some might not think that constitutes manipulation but no one ever claimed that the discussion of manipulation has to start with the shooter - it starts long before that simply based on the optics, the recording media and many other factors that don't involve the shooter. Then, when the shooter enters the equation he/she makes many choices. A choice might include making no choice - simply accepting the choices of the equipment maker or the limitations of the technology, or, the manipulation might range from subtle (perspective choice or slight post-processing adjustments no different than what we did in the darkroom for decades) through extreme post-process image modification. Although I also suffer from being cultured and raised in the Western world where many see the world in binary terms, I understand how difficult it is for folks to break themselves of such a binary mindset.

MFL

 

[Sirius Glass]

I got a parking ticket because the parking sign was hidden by a sign. I took a photograph of the sign with the tree blocking the view of it. I went to court. I showed the print to the judge. He asked some questions and then asked to see the negative. I showed him the negative and he dismissed the fine and then stated for the record, "Negative do not lie." Now that is an example of photographic truth. Photograph truth has nothing to do with cropping, burning, or dodging. Folks, it is just time to suck it up. Are the FauxTow$hopers listening?

 

[MattKing]

I got a parking ticket because the parking sign was hidden by a sign. I took a photograph of the sign with the tree blocking the view of it. I went to court. I showed the print to the judge. He asked some questions and then asked to see the negative. I showed him the negative and he dismissed the fine and then stated for the record, "Negative do not lie." Now that is an example of photographic truth. Photograph truth has nothing to do with cropping, burning, or dodging. Folks, it is just time to suck it up. Are the FauxTow$hopers listening?

In the early days of digital, when photo clubs were still using slides for most competitions, some deep pocketed photographers started shooting their photos on film, having them scanned, editing them digitally, and then having the results written back to projectible film via film recorders. They had great success in the photo club competition world.
I take from your post that the judge didn't believe your evidence until you were able to corroborate it with an after the fact negative.
I guess the judge never heard about film recorders
Your testimony supplied the proof. The print corroborated it. The negative enhanced your credibility .
The after the fact photograph doesn't contribute any "truth" on its own.

 

[Vaughn]

And that's the reason shows include the words along the lines of , "Your work better match the slide (or file), or we'll shitcan it."

 

[markjwyatt]

Well, you are wrong because at least one person does not manipulate the image shape to make an art photograph. Me. So now you can throw that argument in the trash as it has been proven false.

Godel's incompleteness theorem applied to art photography. Interesting.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I cloned out an orange traffic cone in this one. It was sitting in a little hole so no one would step in and hurt themself. I supposed I could have moved it before taking the shot.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/50283039793/in/album-72157715763486212/

With this one, I left the traffic cone in. It was the subject of the photo and complemented the leaves.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/alanklein2000/5721232348/in/album-72157626597775701/

 

[markjwyatt]

I remember being on a photo forum (not this one) a couple of years ago. Someone displayed a very dramatic scene of a river going through a city with really dramatic clouds. I responded (paraphrased) "did you add the clouds"? Crickets. I followed his Flickr link, and saw many more images with very dramatic skies, some eerily similar to the one in the city, but in different locations. After a few days, I responded to my own response and said (paraphrase), "question answered, I took a look at your Flickr feed. Looks like a lot of your photos have dramatic clouds". A couple days later I got a private message from the poster. He said "I added the clouds".

My main beef about adding skies is they may be skies picked from a library which represent conditions that would NEVER be seen in that locale, or that time of year/day/etc. for instance. Now, if you state these are graphic arts, I guess anything goes (I have done collages for year book pages for my daughters for instance, but it was VERY clear these were a collages). I can also understand a COMMERCIAL photographer, say photographing a house, tastefully adding a few clouds to enhance a scene, or a portrait photographer removing zits on a Senior high school portrait. This is commercial activity, and one needs to please the customer. But in general, I personally prefer to be more conservative about adding/removing elements (and generally do not at all).

 

[Vaughn]

Watkins had a couple cloud negatives he used...

 

[markjwyatt]

Watkins had a couple cloud negatives he used...

"Carleton E. Watkins (1829–1916)"

He barely had orthochromatic materials available to him, if even. He had little chance of capturing a sky even if he wanted to. In that case one could argue adding clouds is more realistic than presenting a blank sky. Fair point though.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

I remember being on a photo forum (not this one) a couple of years ago. Someone displayed a very dramatic scene of a river going through a city with really dramatic clouds. I responded (paraphrased) "did you add the clouds"? Crickets. I followed his Flickr link, and saw many more images with very dramatic skies, some eerily similar to the one in the city, but in different locations. After a few days, I responded to my own response and said (paraphrase), "question answered, I took a look at your Flickr feed. Looks like a lot of your photos have dramatic clouds". A couple days later I got a private message from the poster. He said "I added the clouds".

My main beef about adding skies is they may be skies picked from a library which represent conditions that would NEVER be seen in that locale, or that time of year/day/etc. for instance. Now, if you state these are graphic arts, I guess anything goes (I have done collages for year book pages for my daughters for instance, but it was VERY clear these were a collages). I can also understand a COMMERCIAL photographer, say photographing a house, tastefully adding a few clouds to enhance a scene, or a portrait photographer removing zits on a Senior high school portrait. This is commercial activity, and one needs to please the customer. But in general, I personally prefer to be more conservative about adding/removing elements (and generally do not at all).

He shouldn't have photoshopped it if he was going to be embarrassed by the question if he photoshopped it. That's the signal that you went too far. Trust your gut not your head.