From time to time I share here a post I made elsewhere. Recently I posted something in one of those familiar threads lamenting that some photographer did something in an image that “altered reality” in some way. Yes, that topic. Again.
With apologies to all of you who know that the following is pretty darn obvious, here is the post:
The notion that a photograph can portray something equal to the original reality of the subject is a myth. All photographs lie.
This is not news to those who are familiar with the history of photography or with philosophical musings about the medium. The process of determining what to include and what to leave out, deciding when to click the shutter, selecting the time of day or season of year to make the exposure, chosing whether to shoot black and white (which isn’t remotely real!) or color, using filters on the camera, using filters in digital or optical/chemical post, using shift and tilt lenses, controlling DOF with aperture selection, choosing what paper to print on, selecting one frame over another, choosing how to describe and explain explain or simply title the image, dodging and burning, choosing methods of developing film for their effect on the image, shooting Velvia (!), attaching a polarizing filter, adding a hood to control flare, using flare as part of the image, brushing that bug off the leaf, adding a bug to the leaf, waiting for the bug to land/fly away, picking the prettier bird out of the flock rather than the other one with the bent wing, choosing to point your camera in the direction that excludes the power line or the buildings, waiting for the wining smile, waiting for the smile to to away, shooting with very short focal lengths, shooting with very long focal lengths, and on and on and on and on…
It is impossible for a photograph to be an analog of “reality.” At best it can suggest something that the photographer saw or felt in the presence of that reality or something about how the photographer views it. It can evoke a memory, an association, or an imagination in the viewer. It cannot portray objective components of the “reality” of the subject such as the cool breeze on your face, the smell of pine trees, the moisture in the air, your sore feet from the long walk, the warmth of sun on the back of your neck, the sound of birds and wind – all of which are components of the “reality” we experience in the presence of the actual subject.
And I really don’t care. If the only thing that I thought photography could do was “capture” an objectively accurate rendition of reality I wouldn’t bother to make photographs – which would always fail to equal the experience of that original reality. I’d get rid of may camera and just go experience it. (Which I actually did for a time, but that is not a story for this post.)
But that isn’t what photography does, and it would be far less than photography can do. One of the most interesting and humane things it does is it offers us a view into the mind and world of the person of the photographer. Frankly, in the end I’m far more interested in what the photograph tells me about the person who made the image, and perhaps about myself, than I am in the extent to which the photograph pretends that it can stand in for the real.
Imagining that the purpose of photography is merely to “capture” the real, thus creating a sort of second-best shadow image of the real, is simplistic and naive. It is also nearly completely contrary to the history and development of the craft and art of photography. It is essentially impossible to find photographs that are totally “pure” – whatever that even means.
And when I view a great and powerful photograph, virtually the last thing I ask myself is, “is this a real thing?” I think about the effect it has on me, what it tells me or suggests to me about the world, its pure aesthetic power as an image, its intrinsic beauty, the associations I draw between it and my experience.
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You hit the nail on the head Dan!
Interesting points, Kurt, and in many ways not that far off from where I might generally come down.
It is easy to point to things that are well off to one side or the other of the “boundary.” For example, it would hardly be (too) controversial to say that shooting slides without filters and using a “normal” focal length lens would not be likely to cross the boundary, but that compositing an image that included multiple locations and times, pasted in a few unicorns and fairies, filled Yosemite Valley with a sea full of leaping porpoises, and was dyed hot pink would be on the other side of the boundary.
But the idea that a “line” can be drawn at some point between these extremes is not likely to get us anywhere useful. Maybe it is the image of a “line” that is problematic. Maybe there is a region (loosely defined) where things start to get complicated and where reasonable people might differ. For example, the photographer who claims that “my images are literal depictions of things that actually happened and nothing more or less” might have some issues should the cloud be added or the tree painted out. However, for a photographer whose goal it is to suggest or evoke the sense of the subject and so forth, removing the tree (or at least a branch or two, or perhaps the letters “LP” on the hill above Lone Pine, or a few clouds above Hernandez, New Mexico…) might not seem like such a controversial or bad thing and might even result in an aesthetic result that more powerfully and directly evokes the nature of the subject.
I believe that it is necessary to accept some degree of fuzziness that makes a “line” impossible, though I also think that each photographer and each viewer will come to their own individual accommodation.
Dan
Where do you think the boundary is in photography? If I replace a sky in Death Valley with one I shot somewhere else, does that still constitute a photograph? Or is it a composite / collage / digital art?
I love to capture and interpret scenes before me, and I abhor creating them by combining things from other places and times. Maybe it’s because that’s what I do as a day job. By day I work as a visual effects artist on movies. In that job I create things that are not there. I replace skies. I add and remove buildings, or fire, or water, people, places and things from images. Some of this work is not your VFX extravaganza like you would see in 2012. Sometimes it’s replacing things in subtle ways (like extending buildings to be taller) that the audience would never have a clue had been done. I could do this with my photography, but for me to call that a photograph in my opinion would be dishonest. In my profession that’s a visual effects shot. A composite.
Based on my own participation in other such discussions I know I’m not exactly part of the majority in this opinion. For me, if I digitally paint out a tree I don’t like, or replace a cloud that I did not want, or add clouds to a sky that didn’t have them – then I’m no longer capturing and interpreting and sharing something that was before me. Those actions are no longer photography to me. That is compositing, or digital art.
I will combine exposures to fully capture the range before me with bracketing. I will paint out dust on the sensor. I will adjust color corrections to a point. I will interpret a scene in black and white. I will use some filters like polarizers or neutral density filters. Interpretation vs. creation. That’s the line between photography and digital art to me. It’s never truly “real” and indeed it is naive to say that photography is “real” due to all the ways that photography changes the scene by the way it captures it. But I do think there is a line between interpretation and creation. I for one love to interpret. I want to say “yes, that sunset actually happened and I was there to capture it” instead of “oh yeah that sunset was in Hawaii and the foreground was in California.”
Just my opinion.
Wonderful post. I could not have worded it better, myself.
I think that the imagination of the viewer is key. A good photo will begin the process of the viewer imagining being in that spot at that time. Sometimes even right beside the photographer. There have been times where I’ve seen a great photo and then while on a visit to that place, I actually feel like I’ve been there before. Sometimes even when I see a second photo of that place, I feel like I’ve been there before despite having never been there at all!
And if it is a REALLY good photo, sometimes being there is actually a letdown! Probably because the light was not as good during my visit.
Patrick