My opinion on manipulation and authenticity

This was written as a response to a post by Ed Book where he reflects on authorial authenticity with digital cameras.

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Primarily I am a painter [and illustrator], and my photography supports that. More often than not the images I make with the camera are intended as a step in the processes that I will use to make an image with paint. Painting is nothing *but* manipulation and the same conventional wisdom that says the unphotoshopped photograph is more authentic also says the image painted in situ while looking at the subject directly or from the mind's eye is more authentic than one painted from a photograph. That's contradictory nonsense.

Whether I decided to go with what the camera does to my composition "as-is", whether I manipulate that in the dark-room or with Photoshop, and whether print the photo or the digitally manipulated painting, frame it and call it done then or I move on to represent the image in paint, and what I do with the paint are all my choices. The image and the object at the end are the product of my "authentic" authorship no matter where I stop and say "done."

When it comes to digital photography I do draw a line between what's a photograph and what is a digital work. If my Photoshopping involves no more than basic darkroom manipulations or things I could have done with filters on the camera (e.g. cropping, changing the contrast, changes in saturation and tone) I continue to call it a photograph. If my manipulations involve more complex manipulations it becomes a digital work. Still, though, the line is shady... your dodge and burn example being on that line. If I split an image into layers and mess with the histograms and focus in the layers separately I'm not doing anything that couldn't be done in a darkroom, but it's not anything I'd personally want to do "the hard way" so I'd be inclined to call the image a digital image after that rather than a photograph, but either way it still doesn't change the authenticity of the piece.

Happy Christmas yer arse!

( male female both )

Fairytale Of New York
By Shane MacGowan / Jem Finer (1987)

It was Christmas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won't see another one
And then he sang a song
The Rare Old Mountain Dew
And I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

Got on a lucky one
Came in eighteen to one
I've got a feeling
This year's for me and you
So happy Christmas
I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true

They've got cars
Big as bars
They've got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It's no place for the old

When he first took my hand
On a cold Christmas Eve
You promised me
Broadway was waiting for me

You were handsome
You were pretty
Queen of New York City
When the band finished playing
They howled out for more
Sinatra was swinging
All the drunks they were singing
We kissed on the corner
Then danced through the night

The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing 'Galway Bay'
And the bells were ringing
Out for Christmas day

You're a bum
You're a punk
You're an old slut on junk
Living there almost dead on a drip
In that bed

You scum bag
You maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy Christmas your arse
I pray God
It's our last

The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing 'Galway Bay'
And the bells are ringing
Out for Christmas day

I could have been someone
Well so could anyone
You took my dreams
From me when I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can't make it all alone
I've built my dreams around you

The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing 'Galway Bay'
And the bells are ringing
Out for Christmas day