Technology Undermining the Truth in Photography?

Andy (not his real name) was formerly a news photographer for the Associated Press detailed in Manila during the Marcos regime. With the downfall of the late dictator and the hot news petered out, he later freelanced for some of the big independent photo agencies like Black Star and Gamma Photos, working from his home base in Lithuania.

As a much sought after news photographer during the early eighties, Andy certainly relied on his Nikon SLR cameras, occasionally using a powerful zoom lens or two on the field when he had to take news photos of dignitaries farther out in the field. Photojournalism, according to him, was in his blood. He loved the feel of the chase, the upliftment of feeling when he gained a particularly good shot of a globally known figure or a famous celebrity, and the gritty texture of the prints when he processed them out of his darkroom. “Those were the days,” he said, “when you had to do your own processing of films. It was a great feeling to see your prints slowly emerging from the chemical pans where you immersed them – and they come out alright.”

When his photojournalism days were over by virtue of his aging years, he shifted to fashion photography. And that was where the problem emerged.

“Here was I doing a few shoots with my models outdoors, in fact, in a nice setting like a forest somewhere for a local fashion magazine,” he says. “And then I hear some young guy just out of art school getting hired for more shoots but with half the price I quoted the magazine – but with just a few models and a bluescreen behind him! And he finishes the whole lot in a computer using some software called Photoshop. Where is the art, dedication and professionalism in that,” Andy quipped.

Sounds familiar?  Yes, it is – and it happens to a lot of people as well. Much too often these days.

The Case against Photoshop – or is it as simple as that?

People think that a situation such as what Andy faced can just be resolved by just taking up a crash course in CS Photoshop and learning the rudiments of digital imaging. But the issue is far more complicated than that. When does creative photography end and digital imaging begin? Where is the line drawn between a “truthful rendition of reality and the “romantisation of a fact”, as exhibited by today’s fashion photographs?

And does fashion photography, by the very nature of its essence – that is, to record the true, the good and the beautiful – have the right to “romanticize” the very nature of reality, of not just being a “truthful recording” of the beautiful?

The Case Against Digital Manipulation – Views of Photography as a Truthful Rendition of Images

The introduction of new technologies, particularly imaging technologies, have raised countless possibilities for traditional photography. What started out as a play of light and darkness through the use of negative film became almost obsolete with the introduction of digital and multi-media technologies. Suddenly, flaws in a photograph which can be corrected only by re-shooting a scene can now be corrected in a computer using digital correction software.

Such are the possibilities opened by digital technologies. And so the opening of Pandora’s Box, as digital technologies are sometimes referred to, set forth a number of questions from the advocates of traditional straight photography – a term so used to refer to “making photographs in which evident artifice, construction and manipulation are avoided as a matter of principle” (Photography:  A Critical Introduction by Liz Wells, 337)

If Fred Ritchin believed that a certain amount of “photographic integrity” is endangered with recent digital imaging technology inventions (Wells, 336), then two other ladies proposed that “visual manipulation” is certainly a possibility with the “manipulability of the photographic process” to the detriment of truthful photography.

As said, the artist Esther Parada has certainly suggested that the “application of the computer to photographic representation will result in more ‘overt recognition and discussion’ of the manipulation that is inherent in the practice (Wells, 341).

However, it was Rosler who, despite agreeing also with Parada about the “manipulation of the photographic process”, firmly believes that these manipulations are not just caused by the advent of new technologies but also the changing of cultural values and the ideas and beliefs surrounding the nature of photography.

Rosler stresses the importance of understanding that the straight photography of documentary and journalism is a genre (highlight is mine). It has its own history, a politics, and institutional frameworks (of the press and broadcasting), which lend it its special, if contestable, authority. The term ‘straight photography’ points us to a way of making photographs in which evident artifice, construction and manipulation are avoided as a matter of principle. It does not, and cannot, mean an unmediated, uncrafted photography or an image which is not the result of intention and shaping by the photographer. . . For Rosler, the question is not how accurately or objectively photographs represent the appearance of reality but whether they, or any other kinds of image, can be used to ‘tell the truth’ about a reality whose appearance can itself be an illusion. (Wells, 337)

So Rosler was concerned more on whether a photograph was telling the truth, but as said, the presentation of the truth can be subjective. And the portrayal of that reality, by itself, is also an illusion.

Rosler also says that the ‘identification of photographs with objectivity is a modern idea’, and like any idea, such idea may also be in the process of evolvement or may someday be considered passé.

The Case for Digital Photography – A Work of Art or the Blurring of Images to

create our Wanted Illusion

On the other hand, William Mitchell is the one that espouses that digital technology is “deconstructing the singular, fixed images of photography (their objectivity and closure). In this process, we are released from the grips of a worn-out and ailing photographic tradition and its outmoded mission.” (Wells , 341)

Such is the “deconstruction of constructions”, as William Mitchell, another supporter of digital photography. Mitchell asserted that manipulations are part and parcel of photography, hence digital imaging photography is just a way of taking out the layers, the fixed images of so-called objectivity and the closed ideas of traditional photography.

Fashion Photography – Creating an Illusion?

“Fashion photography isn’t obligated to take readers into an elegant fantasyland, though that certainly was nice. But it should be different from photojournalism, and especially photojournalism concentrating on society’s dark side.” (Lehrman, 17)

Thus spoke Karen Lehrman, author of The Lipstick Proviso: Women, Sex, & Power in the Real World, who wrote a photographic essay about the decline of fashion photography. When Lehrman wrote about fashion photography not being obligated to be an “elegant fantasyland” of some sorts, she also did not agree with the contention that fashion photography should also be distinguished from photojournalism, implying that fashion photography cannot always be a truthful rendition of reality. For isn’t fashion photography the glorification of the human body, the masking of flaws and the presentation of the true, the good and the beautiful?

Lehrman lamented that today’s fashion photographers sometimes are so commercialized, that great photography work is hard to come by. Sometimes, the ART in the photograph has disappeared or replaced by mundane concepts – as bland as a Sears catalog.

Some photographers equate fashion photography as the “creation of illusions”. The contention is that the true purpose of fashion photography is to “create an idealized world”, wherein the viewer is most engaged to patronize the concept or buy the product.

No other than a master photographer could have said so strongly, so truly about photography being part of an illusion – in this case, portraits, the precursor of fashion photography – than Richard Avedon.

Avedon expounds that all portraiture is a matter of illusion. Why? Because the prepping of the subject for a portrait is not a natural thing. Everything is contrived.

These disciplines, these strategies, this silent theater, attempt to achieve an illusion: that everything embodied in the photograph simply happened, that the person in the portrait was always there, was never told to stand there, was never encouraged to hide his hands, and in the end was not even in the presence of a photographer. (Avedon, Foreword to In the American West)

Therefore, Avedon equates a photograph with expressing an opinion. There is no truth, because the treatment and presentation of the subject is subjective.

A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth. (Avedon, Foreword to In the American West)

Nastassja Kinski and the Serpent (Avedon, 1981)

Neither is portraiture an absolute presentation of factuality, according to Avedon.

Portraiture is performance, and like any performance, in the balance of its effects it is good or bad, not natural or unnatural . . . The point is that you can’t get at the thing itself, the real nature of the sitter, by stripping away the surface. The surface is all you’ve got. You can only get beyond the surface by working with the surface. All that you can do is to manipulate that surface-gesture, costume, expression-radically and correctly.” (Avedon, Borrowed Dogs, 1)

A similar vein of contention runs through most of Nick Knight’s techno-surreal semi-digitalized photography. Nick Knight, a brilliant and innovative fashion photographer who blends digital media photography with traditional methods, believes that good photography is a “total manipulation of reality”, and asserting his unmasking of photography as a “bringer of truth”.

I make no distinction between the manipulation of reality that digital imagery provides as opposed to the manipulation that conventional photography has always offered.

                  I guess the point I am trying to get across in a rather clumsy way is that all good photography is a total manipulation of the reality and since Roger Fenton scurried around rearranging the cannon balls on the battlefields of the Crimean War it has always been thus.

Photography is at best an extremely powerful and brilliant form of visualising opinions and should be freed from its burden of being seen as the bringer of truth. (Knight, Showstudio.com thread, 3)

Visualising opinions? A look at Knight’s work shows the range of his genius with the use of new medias and meticulous post-production work. He made fashion history in 1993 by adapting ring-flash photography to capture Linda Evangelista for a landmark, post-grunge cover of British Vogue (Vogue UK online edition). And he continues to be in the forefront of the fashion world with his online presence at ShowStudio.com, wherein artists, photographers, creatives come and discuss issues of the day in its forums section.

Nick Knight’s and Gareth Hughe’s Insensate – Mixing the real with the phantasmagorical

When it comes to “magic realism” in fashion photography, David LaChapelle is the one to focus on. Characterized by The New York Times as the “Fellini of Photography”, he developed a signature style, characterized by super-saturated colors and the shocking poses and contexts in which he got celebrities and models to appear. (Chapelle bio, www1.kunsthauswien.com)

His photographs delve on the surreal, with a lot of digitalizing images involved. Yet they seem to tug at our sense of humor. Real with a dash of the unreal.

David LaChapelle’s L’ Apocalypse Panoramique

Conclusion

Fashion Photography will certainly continue to evolve in the years to come. With the dawn of more digital imaging technologies, fashion photography will continue to become more techno-surreal. Whether the advent of these technologies will present a “true and realistic picture” of things will be a big question.

However, I do agree with the beliefs of Avedon and Knight – that a photograph is never a true picture of reality. It is a suspension of disbelief, akin to a stage performance that shows its viewers what it wants to see. By the very nature of photography, of its “subjective perception” of reality, we arrive at the conclusion that fashion photography should be treated as a separate “genre” from that of the documentary or photojournalism.

By itself alone, fashion photography is a creative process. We can use elements of the real world in it, but it will always masquerade as truth.

In a similar way, for photographers and filmmakers who ‘visualise opinions’, isn’t a degree of apparent realism in their imagery actually fundamentally key to its success, even if what’s depicted is pure fantasy? (F: Lux, Showstudio.com Forum thread, 3)

With that quote, we rest our case.

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Works Cited

Andy the Photograher [name asked to be withheld]. Internet interview (Skype). 30

November 2008.

Avedon, Richard. “Foreword to In the American West”. Richard Avedon Foundation. 1

December 2008.< http://www.richardavedon.com/.>

“David La Chapelle Photographs”. 1 December 2008

<http://www1.kunsthauswien.com/>.

Knight, Nick. “Reality; film vs. fashion photography”. 8 December 2006.

Showstudio.com. Forums. 1 December 2008.< http://www.showstudio.com/.>

La Chapelle, David. “L’ Apocalypse Panoramique”. David La Chapelle Design Studio. 1

December 2008 < http://www.davidlachapelle.com/>.

Lehrman, Karen. “The Decline of Fashion Photography:  An Argument in Pictures.”

Slate Magazine. Posted on 15 May 2001. <http://www.slte.com/features/010510_fashion-slide-show/0.1.htm/.>

Lister, Martin. “Photography in the Age of Electronic Imaging.” Photography:  A Critical

Introduction. Ed. Liz Wells. United States:  Routledge, 2000. 336-341.

“Nick Knight Biography”. Vogue UK online edition. < http://www.vogue.co.uk/>.