My opinion on manipulation and authenticity

[mbarrick]

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.

Comments

I agree.

[morbioid.livejournal.com]

I use Photoshop for both my photographs and drawings (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/michaelmorbius2000). The photographs have to be Photoshopped anyway; after I scan them, I at least have to crop them and resize them. Sometimes I also despeckle and blur them. After that I check to see if any of the filter effects look nice; I usually go with cutout and stamp. The drawings, like the photos, have to be good enough to stand on their own before I scan them—the computer can’t magically make a bad drawing good—but once scanned sometimes I find that the cutout filter serves the same function as a comic book inker, emphasising weight in the strokes that wasn’t obvious with my Sanford Sharpie. Usually I include both versions when I post them and leave it up to the viewer which is better. I don’t think the filtered version is less authentic; it’s just a work that required one more tool to create.