[Leica] Photoshopping truth - a polemic

[lrzeitlin at gmail.com (Lawrence Zeitlin)]

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