Photography and Truth
A great article over on The Online Photographer blog addresses the idea of truth in photography, particularly poignant given the recent Reuters scandal in which one of their photographers was fired for doctoring an image.
“Our problem as photographers today is even worse. There are no demarcation lines anywhere. Some pictures are true, and some merely pretty, and many of each look more or less the same as the other: it’s up to the viewer to sort out which is which, and the task is seldom easy. A picture with all the cues of truth might be merely propaganda, and a picture which looks standard-pretty might in fact be true. And of course there is no way to know which is which…”