[Leica] Photoshopping truth - a polemic

[ricc at embarqmail.com (Ric Carter)]

yep

ric


On Jul 7, 2010, at 5:06 PM, Lawrence Zeitlin wrote:

> Most discussions of photographic "truth" 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 does not jump into the TV screen to frolic in the
> fields shown in the dog food 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.
> 
> The obvious limits to the truthful photographic depiction of the world 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 the constraints on image
> reality. Motion picture and three dimensional photography remove some 
> limits
> but add others. Printing and reproduction processes add still more. It is
> possible to fool the eye into perceiving an image as reality in carefully
> controlled laboratory situations, but the moment the viewer shifts head
> position or moves with respect to the image, the effect vanishes.
> 
> In addition, our standards for reality are ever increasing. Audiences
> recoiled in horror when the first full length motion picture (The Great
> Train Robbery) showed a speeding locomotive heading straight for them. To
> get a similar audience response today requires IMAX and 3D glasses. In a 
> few
> years year reality might require moving holographic images, and ultimately,
> a Startrek type Holodeck in which viewers are allowed to fully interact 
> with
> the images as a form of controlled hallucination.
> 
> And, of course, there is no absolute "truth." By framing a portion of a
> total scene in a camera viewfinder the photographer makes an editorial
> judgment about what "truth" will be presented to the viewer. That is as 
> true
> when photographing natives in villages as it is when covering newsworthy
> events. Even lens selection influences photographic truth. Perspective
> distortion through the use of extreme wideangle or telephoto lenses has
> become a staple of many photographers, often substituting for content or
> creativity. Thankfully, many news photographers eschew this trick since
> picture content is still more important to the news media than artistic
> creativity, but thumb through most photo mags. and count the small number 
> of
> images taken with a normal perspective.
> 
> If you think your photographs truly represent the scene in front of the
> camera, I suggest this Turing test for photography. Take a photo out of the
> window of your house, preferably one with a nice view. Make the best
> possible print you can of the negative or digital image, 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.
> 
> Someday photographic images may pass the Turing test, presenting three
> dimensional, moving, full color scenes directly to the eyeball and other
> sense organs, indistinguishible from actuality. Until then, assertions of
> photographic "truth" are like assertions of virginity among whores.
> 
> Larry Z
> 
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