Photoshop Alters Memories

[arigram]

We all know many historic examples of altered photographs for propaganda and other reasons, with the goal of altering our knowledge and memory of a fact. Some have even been discussed lately.
But it is very different when you are not talking about photographs of governments, advertising, news agencies and fashion magazines and when every common person is not only the power but the will to alter their memories. It is not just propaganda, it is the alteration of memories of common people, of everybody. The common memories of humanity. Beautify a face, add or erase a person, even the smallest thing can affect us greatly.
Like a time machine in reverse.
Very interesting article:
I Was There. Just Ask Photoshop.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/17/fashion/17photo.html?ex=1376625600&en=f968dcd0c446477d&ei=5124

 

[Vaughn]

Reality is for those who can't handle drugs.

Photoshop is for those who can't handle reality.

Vaughn

 

[Vonder]

Film needs PS more!

Ya know what's really funny? I never PS my digital images. Never need to. They are THAT good. *chuckle!*

No, but the chimping helps. I see what I shot and retake if I missed the focus, had a bad reflection, whatever.

But my film ones... I scan everything. And with two kids, both of whom have sworn some unholy vow to Satan that they will NEVER both look at the camera with a cute smile at the same time... well, here's an example. I'd kill to have my daughter looking at the camera too, darnit! Now where's that negative from at Grandma's last Winter....

 

[doughowk]

Earl Morris article also in the NYT is along the same lines. One problem is that younger generation is accepting the loss of reality for photography.

 

[jpeets]

The only thing new is the relative ease with which such fakery is done.

As you well know, the portrait business has always been about idealizing images. The more so the further back you go. AFAIK, many if not most of the 19th century group photos were paste up jobs. Big negatives were cherished for the (relative) ease with which retouchers could remove blemishes or even individuals. Hollywood glamour, etc. etc. etc. Hell, it all really got started with painters, the bastards!!!


I do agree with the concern that everyone seems to have heard of Photoshop, and that there is now a reflex to assume that a remarkable image has been "Photoshopped" (you know you're in trouble when they convert trademarked names into verbs....).

 

[removed account4]

the problem is when the hard drive fails from
the next great solar flare that will disrupt the magnetic field
no one will remember anything ...
it will be like one massive brainwashing event

The only thing new is the relative ease with which such fakery is done.

As you well know, the portrait business has always been about idealizing images. The more so the further back you go. AFAIK, many if not most of the 19th century group photos were paste up jobs. Big negatives were cherished for the (relative) ease with which retouchers could remove blemishes or even individuals. Hollywood glamour, etc. etc. etc. Hell, it all really got started with painters, the bastards!!!


I do agree with the concern that everyone seems to have heard of Photoshop, and that there is now a reflex to assume that a remarkable image has been "Photoshopped" (you know you're in trouble when they convert trademarked names into verbs....).

you are right,
fakery has been around as long as drawing and photography have existed.
PS just makes it easier for people to do in minutes
what used to take a long time ...

 

[Alex Hawley]

The only thing new is the relative ease with which such fakery is done.

You mean the extreme ease that it can be done and the millions of people that can now do it. IMO, we have not even begun to address the ethics of it, even though its happening "before everyone's eyes".

 

[Ole]

... AFAIK, many if not most of the 19th century group photos were paste up jobs. ...

Many, but far from all. There were many 19th century lenses capable of the resolution necessary to allow reconition of individual faces in a group of several hundred people on a 8x10" contact print.

"19th century" is a very long time period in photography spanning everything from the invention of photography to roll films, from meniscus lenses to Anastigmats, from daguerreotypes to motion picture.

 

[Gay Larson]

A couple of years ago, I took a family portrait of a coworker with extended family, daughter-in-law and son-in-laws (film). She loved the proofs and selected one to be enlarged to 16X20 to be matted and framed for over her fireplace. Shortly after, her son divorced daughter-in-law which she hated anyway so she asked me if there was any way to take her out of the picture. It was taken at a local park on a bridge with trees etc, in background. I took it to my local photo store and the digital person took the negative, scanned it and promptly removed the offending daughter-in-law. It cost plenty but we had another 16X20 made and she was incredibly happy. Honestly you could not tell the daughter-in-law had been there with her children. Recently the daughter divorced her husband but she didn't ask to have him removed. Perhaps it's time for another family pic. I was not offended to have it done, after all she paid me for the picture and the photoshopping.

 

[BWGirl]

My brother took an old picture taken when my Mom was quite young and gave it to a friend of his. My Mom loved the picture, but it was taken before her youngest sister was born. She always lamented that her youngest sister was not in that family picture. So my brother's friend put my aunt into the picture. My Mom was in 7th heaven! She treasured that picture until the day she died... you see... the year before her youngest sister was born, one of her brothers was brutally murdered. A family picture was never taken after that.
This PSed photo represented something to my Mom. Yes, it was not "real", but for the joy it gave her to see her entire family together, who the hell cares. It was not like they were showing the launching of missiles.

I sort of wonder if the fact that making alterations to photos has become a tool of the 'masses,' rather than the 'masters' is what truly has our 'undies in a bunch!'

 

[Vonder]

Just ask wedding photographers

I sort of wonder if the fact that making alterations to photos has become a tool of the 'masses,' rather than the 'masters' is what truly has our 'undies in a bunch!'

Digital, and the ease by which "satisfactory" pictures are made, has been dragging down the master's bottom line for years. So the undies aren't exactly in a bunch. They're old, frayed, and too expensive to replace.

 

[haris]

I published essay last year in dailynews of about same theme. I was provoked by that photograph made by Brian Walski of Iraqui man holding a child and British soldier was turned to him with raised hand showing "stop" or "sit down" (look at: Dead Link Removed).

That was proofing of my thinking about digital imaging...

 

[DanielOB]

Photography name is bigest bad mass-game in our history, since human got two legs. SOMEONE intentionally did named digital faking as photography, counting on the fact that people beleive in what is shown on a photograph.
Faking reality became normal, not to beleive what we see is also normal, everyone be a part of faking is normal, ...
We all accepted photographs or its reproduction as truth, as the fact. We look at photo-reproductions in books from childhood and learn from them, we learn that one picture worth more than 1000 words, we all now how Andromeda looks like thanks to photo-reproductions in books...

Now all that stuff is faked, even if not, I personaly do not beleive in any image I did not make myself. And yonge generation have no more status of human anymore, or what is it that make them human as by definition we know. They are brainless dummi. Whatever they learn is just imaginary, and they are totaly unable to prodyce work of art.

I fight it with ignorance to just anything around me.

Daniel OB
www.Leica-R.com

 

[Maris]

I'm with DanielOB.

Unless the picture I'm looking at is made from light sensitive materials I don't trust it in the same way I don't trust paintings or drawings. Pushing pastels, pushing paint, and pushing pixels are, at the heart, just variations on traditional methods of fabricating pictures.

The concept of "photography" has to be kept polished bright because we need it to distinguish "light drawn" pictures from "hand drawn" and "machine drawn" images. And there is a moral dimension as well. Calling something a photograph when it is not is a bit of a swindle, a lie that ordinary folks would feel ashamed about repeating. Let not Sir Henry Taylor's (19th Cent. poet & statesman) words come true; "Falsehood ceases to be falsehood when it is understood on all sides that the truth is not expected to be spoken."

Making pictures with monitor screens or electronically controlled printers can yield pleasant fictions but they can't be accepted as photographs. Those who plead otherwise merit direct challenge every time. To fail to do so is to concede the moral ground and accept absurdity. And all too quickly acceptance becomes complicity, complicity becomes consent, and consent becomes approval.

The identity of photography is too valuable to compromise.

 

[ChrisC]

Unless the picture I'm looking at is made from light sensitive materials I don't trust it in the same way I don't trust paintings or drawings. Pushing pastels, pushing paint, and pushing pixels are, at the heart, just variations on traditional methods of fabricating pictures.

Now I'm not exactly a digital lover (wouldn't be here and loving film life if I wasn't!) but lets use the example of digital enlargers. Digital camera sensors are a "light sensitive material", and images printed from them through a digital enlarger are printed onto a "light sensitive material". Because this image was captured on something other than film, is suddenly becomes something different? Isn't 'pushing emulsion' another thing you should be adding to your list?

Granted, altering images in Photoshop is a billion times easier than doing so to the same skill level in the darkroom, but it's more than possible in both realms of photography, and the lines between each output starts to get blurred when you introduce things like digital enlargers. We either need to draw a line somewhere, or realise that there really is no place to draw this line, and stop turning this place into the analogue version of Photo.net with all it's 'my form of image capture is superior to yours'.

 

[Jeff Kubach]

Drugs alter my memories. I think? Oh I give up and go buy me a digital camera.

Jeff

 

[DanielOB]

ChrissC
“… lets use the example of digital enlargers….”

They print from the file not from the captured facts. Open your electronic file with some editor and see your photograph. File also is subject of software interpretation…
In your way of thinking you should go in jail for you are killer, just because someone else is (means some manipulation done by bad photographers cannot be generalized), but If everyone is a killer than you are a free man (means dig manipulation is so ubiquitous that became normal-standard). So make some difference between different things or stay consumer minded.
AND if dig imaging is photography, if they are the same things, then all photographs made in past are manipulation and we have no recorded history, all pictures made by H.C.Bresson are manipulated.
AND you digital gizmos for no reason looks like photo-camera (even with film rewinding button on the left). It is made in that shape to fool consumers like you are…
AND what is on your way to call painting as photography? Painters comunicate cumulative experience just the same as digital imaging is.

Daniel OB
www.Leica-R.com

 

[BWGirl]

...Because this image was captured on something other than film, is suddenly becomes something different? Isn't 'pushing emulsion' another thing you should be adding to your list?

Granted, altering images in Photoshop is a billion times easier than doing so to the same skill level in the darkroom, but it's more than possible in both realms of photography, and the lines between each output starts to get blurred when you introduce things like digital enlargers. We either need to draw a line somewhere, or realise that there really is no place to draw this line, and stop turning this place into the analogue version of Photo.net with all it's 'my form of image capture is superior to yours'.

Actually, I'm not sure it is all that much easier... it's just a different skill set. And I am still confused as to why lines need to be drawn...:confused: ... but remember that I have a testosterone defficiency... . Film and digital both offer many opportunities to alter the scene that was taken in the camera so that the output becomes different. Does no one here realize that even negatives can be changed or sandwiched???

I agree with Chris... why in the name of Pete (or Ansel for that matter) do we have to draw a line? If we strive for purity in photography does that mean we have to stop dodging, burning & cropping in the darkroom? These "either/or" arguments are drivel. :rolleyes:

 

[DanielOB]

BWGirl
Actually, I'm not sure it is all that much easier... it's just a different skill set. And I am still confused as to why lines need to be drawn... ...

Because it is different skill set... Read your post (at least). You realized something, but cannot explain it.
Painting is also different skill set...
Graphical design is also different skill set...

And I am still confused as to why lines need to be drawn...
You will never ever realise it (by the way, I can make a painting you will never know it is a photograph or a painting, so what you think why is line between photography and painting? - I do not need you answer)

Daniel OB
www.Leica-R.com

 

[Akki14]

After reading Tim Rudman's book on printing, nothing is real. Want a moon in your picture? Sure, this is how you do it. Want to "cut and paste" seemlessly? This is how you do it. It takes a bit more skill and thought to do in the darkroom but generally speaking anyone who has ever dodged and burned a print could be accused of fakery too. Fine if you want to say this is a picture I made (like this is a painting I painted) but I wouldn't want people to pass off some photographs as being true to life, honest photographs.
If it can't be achieved in a straight print, you might as well add unicorns

 

[arigram]

The argument in this thread, from the original article is not that digital offer manipulation not possible with analog.
The argument is that its so easy now for every amateur and common person that not only alteration is accepted, but has become so much part of the photography memory that even the most common snapshots are questionable.
If you take the time to read my post and the article, you will understand that is not about the known and acceptable alterations in propaganda and the star system but the removal of truth of the memories of simple people, of the whole humanity.
It is Photoshop now that dictates and creates our memories, not our experiences.
Like I said IT IS NOT ABOUT ARTISTIC OR PROFESSIONAL MANIPULATION.

 

[haris]

Actually, I'm not sure it is all that much easier... it's just a different skill set. And I am still confused as to why lines need to be drawn...:confused: ... but remember that I have a testosterone defficiency... . Film and digital both offer many opportunities to alter the scene that was taken in the camera so that the output becomes different. Does no one here realize that even negatives can be changed or sandwiched???

I agree with Chris... why in the name of Pete (or Ansel for that matter) do we have to draw a line? If we strive for purity in photography does that mean we have to stop dodging, burning & cropping in the darkroom? These "either/or" arguments are drivel. :rolleyes:

It is much easier in Photoshop let say to take two photographs, make them simillar (by adding or remove noise, make colour or tone correction, etc...) and to combine them than in analogue darkroom. Imagine make combination of two photographs, one made with APX25 and developed in Perceptol and other made with Delta 3200 developed in Rodinal, and on resulting photogaph not to see anything which will make you think it is not combination of two (or more) photographs.

Next, when one dodge/burn photograph, or crop it, it is still original scene, scene which existed in particular time and space. Photograph like in link in my previous post never existed in time and space. That make huge difference and also that make argument that cropping, dodging and burning in analogue darkroom are same as Photoshop combining is not valid.

If we take for example cropping as argument, and say this photograph is excerption from scene because it contain not whole scene, then argument also can be that anything is excerption from scene. In that case any photograph should contain whole Cosmos, because anything which don't contain Cosmos is excerption from scene, not complete scene. It is pointless, so cropping as manipulation argument is not real argument.

Yes, I can make photograph for example of man with raised hands, and not to show his fists. It would look as photograph of man who surrender. In reality, he holds a riffle in his fists over his head, and not surrending. But, even if that photograph doesn't show whole reality, his hands were riased, and it is reality, only part of reality. But, having photograph of man with raised empty hands, and having other photograph of riffle, and combining them to put riffle in his hands shows something never existed in reality, nor as part nor as whole scene. That is difference.

Yes, photo manipulation allways exsisted, but that is not point. Point is, as Ari said, digital made manipulation so easily avaliable to wider audience, and people are so ready to do it because of how easy it is (compared to analogue).

And because of people's readyness to do it, it make all difference.

It is not photography anymore, it is design. That is all difference to me. Photoshop is designers software. Photographers needs about 20% of Photoshop tools to do what they did in analogue darkroom. Other 80% of Photoshop are designers tools, not photographers tools.

 

[gr82bart]

I sort of wonder if the fact that making alterations to photos has become a tool of the 'masses,' rather than the 'masters' is what truly has our 'undies in a bunch!'

I think you nailed at homer with this statement.

My younger brother who never really took a photograph made some incredibly awesome images with his new Pentax digisnap and Photoshop I bought him for his recent wedding. The technologies today allow anyone to learn quicker and produce results that often took years to do.

Anyway, it's all related. Once the masses can manipulate reality, the master guilds fret about 'their' little secret.

Regards, Art.

 

[gr82bart]

It is Photoshop now that dictates and creates our memories, not our experiences.

I have to disagree Ari. I think many humans have long wanted to alter memories. In words, in photos, on the net, in their memories. Who has embellished themselves in parties or heavens on their resume? In some extremes, people used mind altering drugs and alcohol in a course of self destruction to wash out painful memories or to enrich their otherwise bleak life. This was anathema for many. Now they can use Photoshop (and blame it too - two for the price of one!)

Regards, Art.

 

[Joe VanCleave]

The power of photography is that it gives the impression of having some sense of veracity with the objective world, while in fact it is, at its core, a completely tactile medium, capable of limitless manipulation. It is this dichotomy between what we believe photographs to be (records of 'the truth') and what they in fact are (manipulated recordings of light) that gives photography its power to become a tool for, not only propaganda by governments and other power structures but, universal mediation. Fashion model cover shots typically are photoshopped to remove blemishes and other imperfections from the model's image. This is also propaganda, in that it serves to sell the belief that some women are the ideal of perfection, no doubt due to the products being sold.

~Joe