Hachee [link]

Found this somewhat old blog entry. Perhaps you know it already but I thought it was kind of funny since it is so true. And yes, I'm afraid it somewhat applies to me as well.

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Gerard

In this entry i'd like to respond to a (now deleted) journal written by Severin (coxi.deviantart.com). For the people who didn't read it; it was an entry about photos of a certain deviant which were (clearly) manipulated. (I will not name the person here since I don't see any use for it, but I will present photo examples of other photographers) Let it be clear that I am not writing this journal to elaborate on the deviant, nor am I discussing Severin's point. I just wrote this entry to talk about photo manipulation itself and the somewhat naive or denying view of most people upon it (in my opinion that is).

I think first of all, there are two things that clearly need to be seen apart from each other, namely the deviant's manipulation of photos and his way of presenting it. Is there something wrong with manipulating photo's? I'll get to that question later. The person presented his manipulations as photojournalism and from what I've heard edited people in awkward situations without their permission. Is there something wrong with this? Yes, I think what ethics are concerned the latter fact is without question the wrong thing to do. Please don't be under the impression that I am defending this fact in any way.

However I cannot condemn or defend photo manipulations by itself that easily. I think people nowadays are under the vague impression that photography was a truth telling medium before the introduction of Photoshop and digital camera's. As if the manipulation of photographs is something we weren't able to do before. Of course this is nonsense as both you and I know (if you paid attention in history classes that is ). The most profound early examples being of course the darkroom edits in the Russian communist time. ([link]). I think there can be no doubts that these can be labelled photo manipulations. So perhaps the more interesting question than 'when is a photo manipulated?' is to ask when a photo is not.

Interesting examples are photographs taken at the site of the Madrid bombings in march 2004 ([link] , somewhat graphical, so be warned). In the lower left corner of the image lies something that appears to be a human limb. Many editors deemed the picture too horrid but also saw the news-value in it. And thus newspapers printed this photo on the front cover the next day, however the photo itself appeared in many variations. British newspapers The Daily Telegraph and The Times cloned some little rocks over the body part. Is this manipulation? I think many people can agree with me that it clearly is, I mean, most editors have guidelines for this situation (no pixels should ever be moved). German newspaper Der Spiegel and the USA Today however choose to solve the 'shocking' problem in a different way. Der Spiegel printed text over it, and USA Today simply cropped of the lower part of the photo. Now I ask the same question, is this manipulation? Is cropping a photograph manipulation? Many photographers do and did think so in the past (hence the vintage black negative frame around old photos, to show that it was uncropped). What I wonder however, how is cropping a picture to alter its meaning different from framing a situation to alter its meaning?. As an example I'd like to show this image: [link] . I think here lies the biggest contradiction in (journalistic) photography. We somehow expect (news)photographs to be objective, but at the same time, the people who make these photographs have opinions and views of their own. Photography by itself is a very aesthetic medium; it needs to be pleasing to the eyes of most people to draw attention, but at the same time the journalistic and documentary aspect of it needs to as objective as possible.

In my opinion, photojournalism itself is fake and the discussion about whether photographs are 'real' or 'fake' is totally redundant, not even speaking of the lame, pointless film vs. digital discussion. If we want uninfluenced (news)photographs we should let robots make them I guess. I think as long as the majority of people still believe photography to be a truthful medium we should just be aware of the way we present our photographs. I mean why is a staged photograph about the 2nd world war less 'true' than a movie about it? Again, it depends on the way it is presented, which is subsequently a result of how we look at different media. So is photo manipulation wrong? I think this is the wrong question to ask. Perhaps it transcends photography. Is manipulation a situation, text, photograph (etc.) wrong when the goal is to alter its news value? Definitely yes. But please lets stop crap like World Press Photo then, where photo's need to be aesthetically pleasing but be of great news value at the same time. No wonder it puts pressure on some (not so skilled) photographers.

Well this is all my opinion of course. I think its clear after reading this journal that I absolutely hate Deviantart's category system, why not let the images speak for itself. For people who didn't know I manipulate (ALL) of my photographs, consider this my coming out of the closet. I'm more interested in the meaning of the photograph and the way a photographer sees things, than discussing whether its 'real' or not. Final question, can manipulated photography still be called photography? I'm still writing with light am I not? You can answer that question yourself I guess. Why not call all type of photography just photographic images. People in the 19th century might have thought that they found the holy grail when it concerns real and objective images, truth is, thats bullshit.

Ciao!

Gerard

oh herro people.
my website is finally online, though with some minor bugs, which i hope will be solved by next week.

for example, it is still 11mb or so, so don't close it down immediately when the buttons don't respond, when i have time, which should be this weekend or so, i'll size it down a lot.

www.gerardsuk.com

Gerard

found it on amy stein's blog.

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