Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2000/02/24
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]>>>Should photographs be handled differently if they're news, or for illustration, or art? And where do you draw the line? I've heard stories about Wegee (did he ever own a Leica?) and he didn't always caption his "staged" photographs. Sorry if this is drifting too far. I'll drop it, but photographic ethics is an interesting topic.<<< Why drop it? It's an issue. Personally I think that potential truth-value is one of the greatest assets that photography has as a medium, and basic honesty is one of the biggest problems many practitioners have. In other words, photography can tell the truth, but people keep trying to get it to tell lies. This is one of the main problems I have with the idea of photography as "art." If it's going to be used for expressive purposes, obviously there isn't going to be a high premium placed on veracity. And indeed there isn't. A lot of art photographers are the equivalent of "poets" or fictions writers. I think that some poetry is more about truth than more mundane forms of wordsmithy, and there's an analogy to photography--some photographs can be exquisitiely poetic and still be very much about the world of real appearances. But a lot of photography just amounts to dopey fibs and lies. - --Mike