In my mind this really much ado about nothing...
Photography has never been about creating a strict interpretation of reality. A photograph may be interpreted by some as being closer to “reality” than a painting, but it is still an interpretive creation. The fact that a photograph is created (not “taken,” a term that has never made any sense to me...) by a human being implies that a particular point of view influenced the photograph from the start: the angle of view, exposure settings, lens filtration, etc..
Photography has always relied on a variety of technical processes and manipulations to make the imagery possible. The choices that a photographer makes is analogous to an artist deciding whether to use oil, watercolor or another technique to produce an artwork on canvas, paper or some other medium. A photo made without the benefit of film choice, filtration and knowledgeable manipulation during development and printing/reproduction fits my definition of “artless.” The tools and terminology may have changed in the digital age, but similar decisions and manipulations are still being made. We may have more options available and it might be easier to produce photographs that have been substantially manipulated, but the essence of photography remains pretty much the same as it as always been.
I have to laugh when some people hold up Ansel Adams’ works as being the essence of “pure photography,” with little or no manipulation of the final image. In fact Adams’ work was highly “manipulated” right from the start, up to and including the final print.
Adams developed the well-known “Zone System” in order to effectively deal with the inherent limitations of film, developing and printing. He would carefully expose a single sheet of film and then individually develop the negative to enhance the tonal range of the negative. He would then manipulate the final print by giving more or less exposure to printing paper and “dodging” and “burning” during the print making process.
Adams was able to produce such beautiful prints in part because he typically shot using large-format cameras using film as large as 8x10 inches. Film that large can capture detail and a tonal range that is simply impossible to attain when using 35mm film and the relatively small sensors found in current DSLRs.
Most if not all of Adams’ most famous images would look terrible without the active involvement of the photographer in each stage of the process; a so-called “straight print” from a typical Adams negative would not look very good at all. And most people do not realize that Adams’ prints of his well known images often changed during his long career depending on Adams’ mood and his changing interpretation of his original visualization of the final print.
Most of us are familiar with Adam’s most famous image “Moonrise, Hernandez, NM, 1941.” The image we usually see on postcards and posters has very high contrast with bright-white headstones in a cemetery backed by an almost pitch-black sky. It is a very dramatic photograph. But there are other prints of the same image that Adams made that are not nearly as dramatic. The sky is gray, not black; you could say that it is a more “realistic” representation of what Adams saw the day he made the original exposure and, at least in the beginning of his work with the image, it is presumably how Adams originally visualized the final print. But over time Adams’ interpretation changed to become the iconic print we know and love. (Or perhaps Adams’ discovered that print buyers preferred the more dramatic version and so he abandoned the delicate tonality of the earlier prints.)
At any rate, all versions of “Moonrise” tend to command high prices at art auctions. In December 2009 one of the early subtle prints sold for $306,000. Another version of “Moonrise” sold at the same auction for $48,000. Keep in mind that sale prices for “Moonrise” prints are dependent on the condition and size of the print; Adam’s made some very large prints of “Moonrise” and those tend to command the highest prices. I didn’t bother to find out the specifics of the two prints auctioned in 2009.
I’d like to mention that while Adams’ reputation was built upon his consummate darkroom skills and he is mainly known for large-format black and white prints, for many years he was a paid consultant of the Polaroid Corporation and he loved to make images using a SX-70 camera. I think that Adams would be diving into digital imaging with great enthusiasm if he was alive today.
So here we are in 2010... And we are still manipulating photographic images, but now we have software tools to aid us. Whereas in the not-so-distant past a photographer might employ a split neutral-density filter in order to compress the dynamic range of a scene that otherwise exceeds the capability of film to record, he/she can elect to make multiple exposures and use software to combine them to create an image with a tonal range beyond the capability of a digital camera sensor. Using a filter is still an option and they can be useful, but the software solution is generally going to offer a greater tonal range because the filters are limited in that regard. And expensive too: my set of top of-the-line ND grad filters cost around $400 when I purchased them years ago...
I think that the issue of image manipulation is germane to the topic at hand only when we are talking about photojournalism, which purports to be a literal representation of reality. While the photographer’s point of view will necessarily influence the accuracy and meaning of an image, it is assumed that nothing has been added or subtracted from the image so it is as close to representing “reality” as humanly possible.
The Associated Press requires that submitted images be JPEGs that were created “in camera” presumably because they are less likely to have been altered in Photoshop or another image editing program. Working with JPEGs also speeds-up image editing and uploading to AP. (The time-constraints associated with getting work to image brokers like AP can be daunting indeed. I worked for AP for years prior to the advent of the Digital Age and I would not like to deal with the hyper-speed deadlines faced by current AP photographers…) I personally don’t see the logic since RAW image files have significant advantages over JPEGs and I prefer to shoot all my images in RAW. And JPEGs can also be manipulated albeit with somewhat limited options compared to RAW. It is easy to create JPEGs from RAW files (or shoot both simultaneously…) but it is impossible to recreate a RAW file from a JPEG. I think that the AP requirement is more for PR value than “photographic reality” value.
But PJ images and others supposedly presenting “reality” have been faked since photography was invented. Famed Civil War photographer Matthew Brady repositioned battlefield corpses to improve the composition of his images. Edward S. Curtis, who created many iconic images of Native Americans, was known to dress-up and pose his subjects in order to enhance the image of the “noble savages” he helped mythologize for the dominant white culture that had tried to exterminate them in the first place. And 20th century photographer Robert Capa is suspected of having staged his famous image of a Spanish partisan at the instant of his death :
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8...1912110,00.html.
So it goes… When it comes to photography we have to depend to some degree on the integrity of the craftsperson/artist, just like we do with any artistic medium. In the case of photographic contests/exhibitions I think that photographers should indicate when the image has been so substantially altered that the viewer may make an incorrect assumption about the veracity of the image. Image manipulation that misleads the viewer intentionally or unintentionally is what we should be concerned about. Editing that otherwise alters the image or removes distracting elements that are not intrinsic to the subject matter should be left up to the discretion of the photographer.
Finally, whether a photograph is “art” is obviously up to the individual viewer. Some images are art and others are crap, with the vast majority somewhere between the two extremes. I have looked at paintings and art installations in major galleries and museums; much of the work seemed to be “art” to me, but occasionally I come across something that amazes me that a curator deemed it worthy of exhibition.
A pile of garbage strewn on the floor of the Centre Pompidou in Paris in 2004 comes to mind… I was impressed by the audacity of the “artist” (I use the term very loosely) while one of my companions was so enraged that he wanted to find and punch-out the curator. Instead of doing that he and I retired to a nearby outdoor cafe while our wives finished touring the museum. I have no idea what the intention of the “garbage artist” was, but I thank him/her for getting me out of that building and into the Paris sunshine with a drink in my hand.
