Monday, August 26, 2013

A photograph's truth

Movement is the most natural thing: Every living creature moves constantly and stops doing that only after its death. We notice each other by motion, like gestures or facial expressions, and we aren't used to see someone immobile.
Because of that a photograph should be something unnatural, even unrealistic.
Nevertheless, the contrary became accepted. With cameras and their popularity we got more and more used to fixed moments. In fact, today the real is presented by fixity.

In his book "Camera Lucida" (1980) Roland Barthes tells an anecodote: He once recived a picture with himself in it, but he couldn't remember it being taken. But since he was in the picture, it must have been true. In the same paragraph he says: "The photograph's essence is to ratify what it represents." Everything we see on the photograph must have happened sometime and therefore must be true.

Is that so? Does a photograph always depict (what once was) reality? Can we really trust photography?


The history of photomontage goes a long way back and has become a common practice. Hannah Höch, some of the Surrealists and many more experimented with it, but one could tell that these pictures had been manipulated. But also back then there were some examples that could fool even our trained Photoshop-eye. Joseph Stalin made use of photo retouching for propaganda purposes: Several people "vanished" from important pictures, like the famous commissar who was removed from an official press photo, after he was executed.


In the early 1980ies a "National Geographic" cover triggerd a debate by putting two of the Egyptian pyramids closer together, so they would fit on a vertical cover. The technology of photomontage and photo manipulation had become so elaborated that no one could tell the difference anymore.

 

Naturally, the following question came up: Should it be used by news magazines and photojournalists?

Fact is: Today there are very few pictures in magazines which aren't, in a way or another, retouched, cut or enhanced.
But this isn't a secret!
We are used to it because it has become the most natural thing. We know that the wrinkles, spots and pores of the models in the fashion magazines were removed digitally, as well as we know that a picture in the news may has been brighten up a little bit, for example because of poor light conditions on the day it was taken.
We even know how to do it ourselves! We do it with the profile pictures on facebook (red eyes and a double chin can be removed in no time), with our holiday pictures (because the sunset didn't look as great as in real life), as well as with everyday subjects: with programs like Instagram or Photoshop evey picture will turn out just great! That it has become normal also shows the term "photoshopping", which found its way into our dictionarys.

So we actually know, that we can't trust pictures and that they don't tell the whole truth!
Take the court, for example: in several cases photographs can't be used as evidence, because there is a chance that they could have been manipulated.
Photos can't be authentic. Think about it: Every detail of a picture is chosen by its photographer, and therefore is his own particular view. And like mentioned in the beginning: to freeze a moment in time isn't realistic either.

But if we know better, then why are there still debates like the one about the latest World Press Photo winner Paul Hansen?

 

His picture of a funeral procession of two Palestinian boys, killed during an Israeli airstrike in Gaza, captures feelings like anger, grief, despair and doesn't leave anyone cold. Everything matches: the narrow street, the emotional men, the reflected light on their faces. But is this photograph realistic? How much was it "photoshopped" afterwards and where is the limit for photojournalism?

In a report of "Kulturplatz" two people were interviewed: Reto Camenisch, photographer and chief of the photography department at the school for journalism MAZ, and Jann Jenatsch, CEO of Keystone, Switzerland's largest stock photography agency.
Camenish asks: "What is the picture about? Is it about grief or about political agitation?" He thinks that it isn't right for "this kind of photography" (i.e. photojournalism) to go this far with post-editing. The colors of the faces have been worked on, as has the light situation.
Jenatsch doesn't agree with him. He says that he can't say for sure, if the light is that artificial. "We can't see if there is or isn't a reflection of that wall next to the group", he argues. He thinks the picture is "acceptable". Besides: "Today eveyone works with Photoshop or similar programs. It's about underlining the essence of the picture without changing its content." But there are some rules: "The photographer mustn't change the pixels, everything else is more or less allowed." That means: no photomontage and no "vanishing" or cancelling objects out. 

There are many articles about this in the internet at the moment, but this debate about how much post-production is justifiable doesn't interest me that much. But it brought up some other questions: Why did this debate emerge? Why does the public think that this winning photograph is misleading? After all, a big jury of professionals picked out this photo, surely knowing what has been done in post-production! 
I find it more interesting, that the public still seems to feel fooled or tricked by photos like this one. Even if we know and we see that many of the submitted photos clearly have been modified in some way and we are surrounded by such images all day long, this one seems to be to much.

Is there a debate because of the award?
Are we irritated because a photographer won with this photoshopped picture?
If you look at other contestant photos, war scenes, devastation and suffering are some of the more common topics. If you compare the pictures from the last 3 years to the pictures that won a dacade ago, you notice that there has been a clear move away from realism towards what some have called "illustration-like" styles. What does that say about us? We are so used to these perfect looking pictures in the magazines, in the internet and even on our cell phones, that also photojournalism had to follow up.

Is it because of the topic?
Do we accept Photoshop in fashion magazines but want documenting photographs on events like this one in Gaza to be left as untouched as possible?
Fact still is: the airstrike happened, the boys got killed and were taken to the mosque for the funeral by this group of men. The event took place, as Barthes said - no matter if the light was't exactly as depicted in the photo.

Or is it because it shows us dead children?
Is this picture of the greatest fear we all share too much? Not so long ago, it was common that many children didn't survive their childhood.  Photographing (or painting) them on their deathbed was also current. But fortunately, childhood mortality has been successfully decreased in the past decades. As a result, we aren't used to that anymore, as we aren't used to see dead children.
In this photograph we have to add to the dead children the fact that they were killed during an attack: It reminds us that young innocent kids, their whole life ahead of them, are dying every day. And we, the observers, aren't able to change this unjust situation.
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