Is film better for the truth?

[Ivo Stunga]

I'd do it for the curiosity alone to see what's up. I shoot for slideshows, scanning/web comes second currently.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

There's nothing wrong with morphing photography into graphic art if that's what we want. But we'll have to expect that the public will lose trust in photography as a source of capturing reality.

Which photography?
If you're talking about art photography, which is what most of us are doing here (even if we don't think of it as such) then the public should never have had any more trust in it than they had for painting. But for scientific, medical, or evidentiary photography, it is not the medium that should not be trusted, it is the users of the medium - a photograph is no more capable of telling a lie by itself than a rock is. It's an inanimate object created through a photochemical or photoelectric reaction. It's what the person triggering that reaction does with it that is untrustworthy.

 

[MattKing]

Even with evidentiary photography, outside of certain small exceptions that are the subject of special statutory exceptions (e.g. traffic cameras), photographs by themselves are not permitted to stand as evidence. You always need a human being to testify about the accuracy of the representation they provide.

 

[Ayne]

Even with evidentiary photography, outside of certain small exceptions that are the subject of special statutory exceptions (e.g. traffic cameras), photographs by themselves are not permitted to stand as evidence. You always need a human being to testify about the accuracy of the representation they provide.

So it seems even in a court Film is not best for "the truth". profound.

 

[MattKing]

So it seems even in a court Film is not best for "the truth". profound.

No.
A witness, together with high quality demonstrative evidence such as a good photograph make for the best.

 

[Sirius Glass]

No.
A witness, together with high quality demonstrative evidence such as a good photograph make for the best.

In one court case, which I won, I showed a large print refuting the other side. The judge asked to see the negative which I produced. It was 120 film. The judge looked at the negative with a magnifying glass and declared that I won the case. This is why I am so hard over against adding or removing major objects from a photograph especially if it changes the interpretation of the photograph.

If one photographs a caboose as a main subject, removes the caboose, changes the sky to add or delete clouds, then adds trees and shrubbery. Then puts in a stream, frog and butterflies. Then adds children playing while it may look like a photograph it is a figment of the imagination like a painting or sketch, not a painting. Then label it properly. I do not want no stinkin' T Rex chompin' on my helicopters!

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

In one court case, which I won, I showed a large print refuting the other side. The judge asked to see the negative which I produced. It was 120 film. The judge looked at the negative with a magnifying glass and declared that I won the case. This is why I am so hard over against adding or removing major objects from a photograph especially if it changes the interpretation of the photograph.

keywords here: if it changes the interpretation of the photograph.
You're insisting on applying a standard of an evidentiary photograph to ALL photographs. This is absurd.

If one photographs a caboose as a main subject, removes the caboose, changes the sky to add or delete clouds, then adds trees and shrubbery. Then puts in a stream, frog and butterflies. Then adds children playing while it may look like a photograph it is a figment of the imagination like a painting or sketch, not a painting. Then label it properly. I do not want no stinkin' T Rex chompin' on my helicopters!

Your example here is equally absurd. If someone were to do the manipulations you mention, then you wouldn't have a photograph of a caboose, and there would be no reason to call it that in the first place, and I would question the sanity of the person doing so because they went to the effort of photographing something that they then did not use in the photograph.

I agree with you re: labeling of your hypothetical image - that's no longer a photograph, it's an illustration using photographically derived elements. But I also think that nobody in their right mind would look at that illustration you described and consider it a single-capture photograph. At best it would be a collage; at worst, visual vomit, and would clearly be discernible as such.

 

[TheFlyingCamera]

In one court case, which I won, I showed a large print refuting the other side. The judge asked to see the negative which I produced. It was 120 film. The judge looked at the negative with a magnifying glass and declared that I won the case. This is why I am so hard over against adding or removing major objects from a photograph especially if it changes the interpretation of the photograph.

If one photographs a caboose as a main subject, removes the caboose, changes the sky to add or delete clouds, then adds trees and shrubbery. Then puts in a stream, frog and butterflies. Then adds children playing while it may look like a photograph it is a figment of the imagination like a painting or sketch, not a painting. Then label it properly. I do not want no stinkin' T Rex chompin' on my helicopters!

So, I have a question for you: do you consider this to be a photograph?

 

[Sirius Glass]

keywords here: if it changes the interpretation of the photograph.
You're insisting on applying a standard of an evidentiary photograph to ALL photographs. This is absurd.

I have always said the addition or removal of major objects, not all objects, not pimples.

Your example here is equally absurd. If someone were to do the manipulations you mention, then you wouldn't have a photograph of a caboose, and there would be no reason to call it that in the first place, and I would question the sanity of the person doing so because they went to the effort of photographing something that they then did not use in the photograph.

I agree with you re: labeling of your hypothetical image - that's no longer a photograph, it's an illustration using photographically derived elements. But I also think that nobody in their right mind would look at that illustration you described and consider it a single-capture photograph. At best it would be a collage; at worst, visual vomit, and would clearly be discernible as such.

We agree here on the use to the term "visual vomit" in this situation as an appropriate label. I was poking fun at the extremes of some of the manipulated "photographs" posted on the internet.

 

[Sirius Glass]

So, I have a question for you: do you consider this to be a photograph?

I cannot tell. It looks very posed and appears that it could be a painting or a sketch. Hence the need to post which it is, especially since there are visual discrepancies, such as is the background without without the man a painting or screen? So you have provided more reason that one should label ones work.

 

[faberryman]

I remember studying that photograph in my History of Photography course in the context of the phenomena of death photography in the Victorian era. I don't have my text handy and can't find the image on the internet, but I am certain that it is a manipulated image.

I am pretty sure the Pictorialists wouldn't have a problem with the photograph, and the guys and gals in Group f/64 would have about two hemorrhages apiece. I don't think a label is required.

A couple of years ago I saw an exhibit of historical photographs in Philadelphia. There were some exquisite hand tinted Daguerreotypes. There was no label saying the woman in one of them wasn't really wearing a light blue blouse. The guys and gals in Group f/64 would probably have about two hemorrhages apiece over that too. I wasn't too bothered by it.

 

[Ayne]

There's nothing wrong with morphing photography into graphic art if that's what we want. But we'll have to expect that the public will lose trust in photography as a source of capturing reality.

If you google the phrase "Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear" it is from 1858 people have lost trust regarding photography and reality long before the The Weekly World News published a photograph of the "dog faced boy" or photography was "morphed" into graphic arts. That's what photography can do and people have had a can do spirit since its origin story.

 

[Maris]

So, I have a question for you: do you consider this to be a photograph?

What I see on my monitor is a rendition of Henry Peach Robinson's Fading Away, 1858.
The original is a picture resulting from the merging of five different photographs. So not a (singular) photograph but five different photographs (plural) arranged so that it is not obvious where one starts and another finishes.

Frankly, I'd support using the better term PICTURE for any realistic rendition of a material thing. Maybe adding a explanatory phrase or adjective indicating how the picture came into being would remove any confusion.

The problem with the word photograph is that it has been applied to so many different and dissimilar things that it no longer carries any reliable information value. If we, for example, insist that the critical first step that makes a picture a photograph is a lens casting an image onto a light sensor then all realistic pictures are photographs. Even paintings and drawings should be included because the artist's eye already supplies the lens, the image, and the sensor for light capture.

If we invoke the other extreme and declare a photograph is solely the pattern of marks formed in situ on a sensitive surface as a consequence of that surface being stuck by light then we are back at the original moment of invention.

In this very plural world I reckon the word picture, honestly qualified, suitably described, is more useful than trying to shoe-horn dubious things into the general classification of photograph.

 

[Sirius Glass]

What I see on my monitor is a rendition of Henry Peach Robinson's Fading Away, 1858.
The original is a picture resulting from the merging of five different photographs. So not a (singular) photograph but five different photographs (plural) arranged so that it is not obvious where one starts and another finishes.

Frankly, I'd support using the better term PICTURE for any realistic rendition of a material thing. Maybe adding a explanatory phrase or adjective indicating how the picture came into being would remove any confusion.

The problem with the word photograph is that it has been applied to so many different and dissimilar things that it no longer carries any reliable information value. If we, for example, insist that the critical first step that makes a picture a photograph is a lens casting an image onto a light sensor then all realistic pictures are photographs. Even paintings and drawings should be included because the artist's eye already supplies the lens, the image, and the sensor for light capture.

If we invoke the other extreme and declare a photograph is solely the pattern of marks formed in situ on a sensitive surface as a consequence of that surface being stuck by light then we are back at the original moment of invention.

In this very plural world I reckon the word picture, honestly qualified, suitably described, is more useful than trying to shoe-horn dubious things into the general classification of photograph.

I agree picture is a better word choice here. I did not know the provenience of the picture although I had suspected that the subjects with the possible exception of the standing man were not living at the time it was created.

 

[Ayne]

So a photograph isn't " English dictionary definition of photograph. n. An image, especially a positive print, recorded by exposing a photosensitive surface to light" ?
This is an albumen print from a glass negative. Unless you are creating a new definition for what a photograph is according to your tastes, it was considered a photograph when it was created and is still considered to be a photograph by The MET, Art Historians and Photographic Historians. I might be wrong, but I have a feeling your personal definitions of what photographs are doesn't matter to the people writing about, cataloging and buying historic photographic artifacts from the 19th, 20th and 21st Centuries,

 

[ic-racer]

Of course the truth in a photograph does not go beyond the paper on which it is printed.

 

[MattKing]

Of course the truth in a photograph does not go beyond the paper on which it is printed.

This I would disagree with, because photographs may communicate great truths.
They are like paintings, or music, or poetry, or novels.
They can also tell people what you had for lunch.
“I only wanted Uncle Vern standing by his new car (a Hudson) on a clear day. I got him and the car. I also got a bit of Aunt Mary’s laundry and Beau Jack, the dog, peeing on a fence, and a row of potted tuberous begonias on the porch and seventy-eight trees and a million pebbles in the driveway and more. It’s a generous medium, photography.” – Lee Friedlander

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

What I see on my monitor is a rendition of Henry Peach Robinson's Fading Away, 1858.
The original is a picture resulting from the merging of five different photographs. So not a (singular) photograph but five different photographs (plural) arranged so that it is not obvious where one starts and another finishes.

Frankly, I'd support using the better term PICTURE for any realistic rendition of a material thing. Maybe adding a explanatory phrase or adjective indicating how the picture came into being would remove any confusion.

The problem with the word photograph is that it has been applied to so many different and dissimilar things that it no longer carries any reliable information value. If we, for example, insist that the critical first step that makes a picture a photograph is a lens casting an image onto a light sensor then all realistic pictures are photographs. Even paintings and drawings should be included because the artist's eye already supplies the lens, the image, and the sensor for light capture.

If we invoke the other extreme and declare a photograph is solely the pattern of marks formed in situ on a sensitive surface as a consequence of that surface being stuck by light then we are back at the original moment of invention.

In this very plural world I reckon the word picture, honestly qualified, suitably described, is more useful than trying to shoe-horn dubious things into the general classification of photograph.

I like the distinction between photograph and picture.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

This I would disagree with, because photographs may communicate great truths.
They are like paintings, or music, or poetry, or novels.
They can also tell people what you had for lunch.
“I only wanted Uncle Vern standing by his new car (a Hudson) on a clear day. I got him and the car. I also got a bit of Aunt Mary’s laundry and Beau Jack, the dog, peeing on a fence, and a row of potted tuberous begonias on the porch and seventy-eight trees and a million pebbles in the driveway and more. It’s a generous medium, photography.” – Lee Friedlander

This reminds me of the description of the difference between a painting and a photograph and that in a way, it;s easier for the painter. He starts with a blank canvas and just fills in with paint on the canvas only those things that looks best. The photographer on the other hand starts with a completed canvas and must adjust his camera to eliminate the things in it that don't work.

 

[cowanw]

What I see on my monitor is a rendition of Henry Peach Robinson's Fading Away, 1858.
The original is a picture resulting from the merging of five different photographs. So not a (singular) photograph but five different photographs (plural) arranged so that it is not obvious where one starts and another finishes.

Frankly, I'd support using the better term PICTURE for any realistic rendition of a material thing. Maybe adding a explanatory phrase or adjective indicating how the picture came into being would remove any confusion.

The problem with the word photograph is that it has been applied to so many different and dissimilar things that it no longer carries any reliable information value. If we, for example, insist that the critical first step that makes a picture a photograph is a lens casting an image onto a light sensor then all realistic pictures are photographs. Even paintings and drawings should be included because the artist's eye already supplies the lens, the image, and the sensor for light capture.

If we invoke the other extreme and declare a photograph is solely the pattern of marks formed in situ on a sensitive surface as a consequence of that surface being stuck by light then we are back at the original moment of invention.


In this very plural world I reckon the word picture, honestly qualified, suitably described, is more useful than trying to shoe-horn dubious things into the general classification of photograph.

There are two separate and different versions of this image. While the subject image is a composite done by cutting and pasting carefully fashioned snippets; even to sanding and scraping the edges to bare collodion before gluing them on, However, the composite image was then first photographed on a glass plate collodion negative plate and subsequently secondly photographed i.e. printed in either collodion on paper or albumin on paper. It is most defiantly a photograph of a composite image created of at least 5 other photographs. Not unlike the daguerreotypes of paintings done 10 years earlier or a photograph of any other artwork done in the next 170 years.

 

[Don_ih]

truth in a photograph does not go beyond the paper on which it is printed

This I would disagree with, because photographs may communicate great truths.

Matt, "truth in a photograph" is not the same as "truths" communicated by a photograph. The latter is significance, which is contextualized. whereas the previous is referential (if anything at all). The significance of a photo is not something inherent but a consequence of a photo existing in the world.

I'd support using the better term PICTURE for any realistic rendition of a material thing.

Apart from the fact that invoking a different term won't dispense with the problems found with the first, a photograph is normally understood already to be a picture, where "picture" identifies a larger class of which "photograph" is a subset.

The majority of the issue here stems from the standard view of a photo (or picture, for that matter) where, when you look at it, you immediately ask (or immediately understand) "What's it a photo of?" The fact of the photo implies a thing or situation that it represents. That is where the truth value comes from - just from how a viewer naturally sees the photo.

Truth value only matters when the photo is used for something. Skilful combination of elements to make a print doesn't stop the result from being a photograph, it just cuts away at the reference it makes. It's still a photo because it seems to be a photo. What it's a photo of and whether or not that is something that does or does not exist is actually irrelevant to the photo. You don't need to verify the subject of a photo to appreciate the photo itself. However, with supported use of a photo, you are being asked to believe what the photo is said to represent. The photo isn't the one asking - the person or group who is using it is the one who is making the claim.

 

[ic-racer]

This I would disagree with, because photographs may communicate great truths.
They are like paintings, or music, or poetry, or novels.
They can also tell people what you had for lunch.
“I only wanted Uncle Vern standing by his new car (a Hudson) on a clear day. I got him and the car. I also got a bit of Aunt Mary’s laundry and Beau Jack, the dog, peeing on a fence, and a row of potted tuberous begonias on the porch and seventy-eight trees and a million pebbles in the driveway and more. It’s a generous medium, photography.” – Lee Friedlander

A quote from my idol! Indeed explains the photographs truth; that he, in truth, ‘only wanted Uncle Vern, ’ yet the photograph shows it’s own truth.

 

[Alan Edward Klein]

There are two separate and different versions of this image. While the subject image is a composite done by cutting and pasting carefully fashioned snippets; even to sanding and scraping the edges to bare collodion before gluing them on, However, the composite image was then first photographed on a glass plate collodion negative plate and subsequently secondly photographed i.e. printed in either collodion on paper or albumin on paper. It is most defiantly a photograph of a composite image created of at least 5 other photographs. Not unlike the daguerreotypes of paintings done 10 years earlier or a photograph of any other artwork done in the next 170 years.

I donl;t know about 5 photographs. But it does look like a composite with the guy and curtains in the background with the foreground pasted on.

 

[markjwyatt]

Maybe we need to get this going. At least we, Photrio, could define a set of terms to use that we agree on and given that Photrio is a standard on teh internet, others may accept it (or can create alternative standards).

Photrio Photographic Arts Standards


Here is an initial discussion from 2018: https://www.photrio.com/forum/threads/new-group-photrio-photographic-arts-standards.160536/

For instance a Photrio tag for a scan of a silver gelatin print might be: #[PHOTRIO: monochrome silver gelatin print; DR]
(DR = digital representation)

 

[faberryman]

Maybe we need to get this going. At least we, Photrio, could define a set of terms to use that we agree on and given that Photrio is a standard on teh internet, others may accept it (or can create alternative standards).

We already have alternate standards.

I think it is fine if you want to adopt a personal code of conduct for your photography, and if you want to add some tags to your image when you post it on the internet, so people know if it was taken with a digital camera or is a digital scan from a negative or a print. That's good informtion I guess, but I can't be bothered with it. Are you going to list all the values from your scanning and editing program too, you know, whether it is HDR, or super sharpened, or the contrast is all jacked up, or you changed the color balance, or you leveled the horizon, or you added vignetting, or God forbid you blurred an errant thumb? Where do you draw the line on which manipulations are okay and which are not, and which manipulations you are required to disclose and which ones you are not? But mostly, elaborate on why you made the decisions you did so that we know your reasoning and can evaluate whether it makes any sense, and whether it is consistent or simply ad hoc.