The ethics of photography place us in odd positions that we just didn’t find ourselves in ten years ago. As photographers, we have the ability to easily cross the line between documenting what we saw at the time, and strengthening the theme of what we saw.
I’m not even talking about the most obvious uses of post-processing where you take someone’s head and stick it on a body to show that so-and-so was at a certain rally. In other words, the easiest issues to deal with are when post-processing is used propaganda. That territory has been well-covered. The ends justify the means (for example). And you can read Plato’s thoughts about such things.
But what interests me is the ability to start with a legitimate fine-art idea. In this case, there are three objects that seem related: the Aphrodite of Melos (sans arms), the prosthetic leg, and maybe – the religious figure next to the Aphrodite of Melos. The beautiful statue that is missing limbs; the piece of equipment to replace a leg; and the idea of prayer. Those ideas are floating around in the image.
But they will probably be lost on the viewer because these items are physically far away from each other.
So what if you decide, as the photographer / artist to cross the line, and re-arrange the important objects so that they still look realistic, but are closer to each other?
Is it still a photograph? In the old days, photographers used as many tricks as they could dream up. The main one may have been adding clouds to a cloudless sky. But here you are making an editorial statement. You can still be subtle about it. No need to throw it in the viewers face, but make the connection that you see more visible. Would you do it? Is it simply a new form of art, processed photograph?
The same questions were (maybe still are) asked about the inkjet print. But as time goes on, customers don’t seem to care anymore. A beautiful image, is impressive, no matter what technique was used.
And over time, I guess that a new form of media called ALTERED PHOTOGRAPHY will arise. Maybe it has already – I haven’t googled it. But the idea is that if you call it what it is, that seems to be okay, but it is an odd mixture. As a viewer, you have to wonder what the photographer has changed. And at what point is the photograph considered altered? Today, just about every photograph is altered to some degree.
You could say that anything that could have been done in the darkoom is okay, i.e. unaltered. As someone who worked for a few decades in the darkroom, even that is pretty tricky, because you could cut contrast masks for a particular negative, but would you really do it. I didn’t have the time or patience. Now I can do the same trick with a few clicks.
Well… let me do a bit of work on this shot and I’ll just call it ALTERED PHOTOGRAPH. Same for the crummy iPhone picture of Buddy (the cat). ALTERED PHOTOGRAPH.
Put another way – we are living through a time when traditional photographic techniques are merging with painting techniques and painting technique is merging with computer renditions. That, to me, is actually a good thing to be enjoyed. How many artists get to live through such fantastic transitions? My own experiments with HDR, for example, lead me to try and use it to make more naturalistic images with a wide tonal range. It’s up to the artist to decide what tools they want to use and how much they want to say about their creations.
MAN WITH TWO PHOTOGRAPHS
MAN WITH TWO PHOTOGRAPHS (Altered Media)
Frankly, I don’t see the ethical dilemma. I would superimpose the religious statuette on the image of the false leg and send it to Prothestics-R-Us as the first salvo in a proposed ad campaign.
I just recently evolved from film to digital, with a purchase of the Nikon D700, this time last month. Since, I have been looking at photo editing programs to use. For the last half dozen years, I have used Photoshop’s little sibling Elements. At first, it was because I was poor, and couldn’t afford it’s older brother version. Now though, I really only use the program for just simple exposure and color adjustments, and cleaning up of an image. I am now trying their version 8 (for Mac)… I have had v.6, but was looking to upgrade because of the new digital camera and it’s RAW format, of which v.6 could not read, and v.8 does… except I have to degrade it down to an 8 bit file…
ANYWAY, point to all of this – I was looking at CS5 the flagship Photoshop program, and it is just chock full of all these image altering capabilities, that make me just wonder – really? Is this where photography is going? Have people gotten so blasé to photos, photography, what it’s origins once were, and used for ever since, that is all, just so passé! That creating these altered/dream/faux photo-?, of whatever whim perceptions the photographer feels like creating into a “reality”…
‘Content-Aware Fill’, where one can totally remove elements out of existence, and make it like it was never there. And the one I read of this morning – ‘Puppet Warp’, with this, not happy with boring ol’ stick in the mud, Aunt Suzy? Who just always is so prim and stoic in photos… well, now you can just manipulate her limbs and entire body! Make it look like you captured her doing a crazy dance, and show it to the rest of the family stating that they just don’t know her, if they would just give her a chance, she really opens up and is a downright hoot! See, this is her after you all left and we got to talking, she just let her hair down and look at her go! I guess she just feels closer to me!
Who the hell needs this stuff? Is Adobe now just catering to the tabloids? Are they really trying to land the National Enquirer account?! Where they can have a totally innocent photo of a person, who is just a goody-two-shoes, and never does anything wrong, but now with ‘Puppet Warp’, you can manipulate some photo of this person’s limbs so that his hand is on some old-news, ne’er-do-well, socialite’s arse, his legs looking like they are about to buckle, and going out from under him from intoxication (that known because of a half empty, fifth of someone’s finest liquor, has been made to look like he’s holding)… and the female’s body will be completely fabricated of course too – some photo of her head taken while she was exiting some pub and on her way to a raucous soirée at some local, smarmy playboy’s Summer home, placed on some other chicks body, because the ol’ socialite’s hard-lived body of forty, has flabby skin, cellulite, stretch marks, and that just won’t sell! Well, combined together with some other elements, and wallah! Transformed into some scandalous photo-? !
Um, yeah, you know – I just want to even out the tones with the exposure, remove a color cast… simple image corrections… I don’t need to play god and create my own universe through my photos… I’ll stick with my simple little, Photoshop Elements, thank you very much… and Apple’s Aperture.
Okay, sorry.
ALTERED PHOTOGRAPHY – nice coining ! I did a google search and some results did appear !
AP will have soon an impact on our day-to-day efforts of capturing the glimpses of life around us. The posts in flickr.com often look too much decked up , even artificial.
I would make one suggestion with this particular case in mind – if you rearrange the objects you wish to ‘project’ in your photograph,it will look , more often than not,’rearranged/orderly’ in viewer’s eyes, like the carefully placed lock of hair on the forehead of the heroines of 1960s.
JPH, I’m using Photoshop 4, which seems to be more than enough for me; but yes, this is where one branch of photography is going.
Just to jump back to the camera for a second, the idea that cameras now routinely have FACE RECOGNITION makes you wonder if they aren’t running out of things to do with technology.
But, I believe in my own images, I will labeled some of them as ALTERED PHOTOGRAPHS. The line is wavy, between what is ALTERED and what could have been done with traditional photographic means.
We are lucky to live during such interesting times.
Dave’s point of ‘photographers always trying to push the envelope’ of what lay beyond the negative is the real point. Years ago (too many) when film was the only thing I admired the darkroom artists who combined negatives to create an ‘altered reality’ print. The drive has always been there. The entire Zone system, with dodging and burning of the print are all efforts to wrestle control of the image the lens and negative were willing to yield. ‘Content awareness’; good. ‘Puppet Warp’; bad. Or is it the other way around. Can’t wait for CS10.