[Leica] Photographic reality

[LRZeitlin@aol.com]

What's all this nonsense about photos or music being "realistic"?

Discussions of photographic reality tend to obscure the fact that ALL 
photographs are abstract representations of an external world. When Margaret Mead 
showed Tahitian natives black and white photographs of themselves and their 
village, they rotated the photos this way and that, shook their heads, and handed 
them back. "Nice designs", they said, "but what are they?" Mead then realized 
that photographs were such abstractions that only long experience enables their 
interpretation.

Closer to home, your dog or cat does not jump into the TV screen to frolic in 
the fields shown in the Alpo commercials. Neither does it growl or flee from 
the TV intruders in your household. The image on TV is not the real world to 
the animal but a flickering pattern on an illuminated tube. We see the image as 
a depiction of reality because our intelligence and experience enables us 
infer the scene from its abstract representation. The animal does not.

If you think your photographs are realistic, I suggest this Turing test for 
photography. Take a photo looking out a window of your house, preferably one 
with a nice view. Make the best possible print you can of the negative, then 
hang it on the wall next to the window. If a visitor to your house cannot tell 
the difference between the view out the window and the picture of the view out 
the window, you have a truly realistic photo.

The obvious limits to the simulation of reality are inherent in the 
photographic process which represents a three dimensional moving scene as a two 
dimensional static image. Lens resolution, color fidelity, contrast compression are 
just a few of these limits. Motion picture and three dimensional photography 
remove some limits but add others. Printing and reproduction processes add still 
more.

Someday holographic images may pass the photographic Turing test, presenting 
three dimensional, moving, full color scenes directly to the eyeball 
indistinguishible from actuality. Until then, assertions of reality by photographers 
are like assertions of virginity among whores. 

Larry Z
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