(Image) editorial question
The epistemology of Photoshop
One of the keys to any philosophy is being able to determine what is true and what is not. Which of my senses can I trust? It helps, when trying to decide whether — and how — to respond to things, to know whether or not these things actually exist. That is, we respond differently to things that we can observe directly, like our hairline, than we do to things we cannot observe directly, such as spiritual entities.
This also affects the issues we choose to mark as significant or substantial in some way. Many people believe, for instance, that anthropogenic global warming is a literally construed "thing," that it exists, and that it is problematic. On a day to day basis, however, I would venture to say that people spend more time thinking about smaller — but more directly observable — things, like their dry cleaning or how much they like their coworkers — than about a warming planet. Call it a hunch.
This isn't about AGW, though, or coworkers. It's about trying to come up with what amounts to a digital epistemology. That is, in an era where information production far outstrips our ability to consume it, and we can no longer live in a bubble confined to our personally-observable universe, we already have to be making decisions about what should go into any decision-making heuristics. But what information can we trust?
Photo manipulation has been around, in all probability, for as long as there have been photographs. Soviet-era censorship was known for it, and for the propensity of people in the Soviet Union to inexplicably disappear from state media. I've mentioned before how, in the west, Reuters has been caught touching up their pictures, and of course there was the flap about Time's OJ Simpson mugshot. And we all know that celebrities and models are fake, airbrushed beyond any semblance of humanity.
Photoshop Disasters is a blog tracking the failures of people to execute Photoshop correctly. What's incredible — if slightly troublesome, for any one who likes believing their eyes — is just how much is photoshopped. It's not just models; it's cars, it's product placement, it's showing the images on an electronic device. It's adding in diversity to a brochure by pasting in a black man, adding in support to a campaign rally by cloning a few more people in the crowd, and adding in some clarity to a confrontation by moving bits around.
Here's the thing, though: these are the bad fakes. These are the ones we can catch because they're obvious — like how it was blatantly obvious that Reuters had cooked their pictures. Anyone could see it. I could see it. Presumably, an expert could catch most, or all, of the edits that are invisible to the untrained eye. Maybe. Hopefully.
As it stands — and I know this is a revelation coming several years too late — I'm simply blown away by the complete and utter saturation of Photoshop today. It's the autotune of the photographic world. The pictures we see in magazines, advertisements, and even news stories have ceased to be literally accurate portrayals. Instead they are photorealistic renderings and interpretations of abstract concepts. When I wasn't looking — again, admitting that I'm late to the party — taking pictures went gonzo. Conveying a concept subrogates factual depiction.
How do we respond to this? I suppose I see two ends to this continuum.
At one end, we simply discount photographs as informing our worldview when making rational decisions, in the same way as we discard anecdotes as being insufficient (well, or should — we don't, of course), but continue to profess a belief in an objectively-understandable world.
At the other, we reject even that latter proposition. In a hyperrealistic world where we may lack the ability to critically analyse whether or not we can trust the images we see, what value do the tokens represented by that image hold — particularly when so many of those images aren't to be trusted?
Presumably not this later, for it's a dishearteningly nihilistic view of the situation. On the other hand, the former would seem to foster a pronounced — even counterproductive scepticism. Already, we find people who doubt the scale or scope of human tragedy on the grounds of being unable to trust the representative images. But then, what's the answer?
This also affects the issues we choose to mark as significant or substantial in some way. Many people believe, for instance, that anthropogenic global warming is a literally construed "thing," that it exists, and that it is problematic. On a day to day basis, however, I would venture to say that people spend more time thinking about smaller — but more directly observable — things, like their dry cleaning or how much they like their coworkers — than about a warming planet. Call it a hunch.
This isn't about AGW, though, or coworkers. It's about trying to come up with what amounts to a digital epistemology. That is, in an era where information production far outstrips our ability to consume it, and we can no longer live in a bubble confined to our personally-observable universe, we already have to be making decisions about what should go into any decision-making heuristics. But what information can we trust?
Photo manipulation has been around, in all probability, for as long as there have been photographs. Soviet-era censorship was known for it, and for the propensity of people in the Soviet Union to inexplicably disappear from state media. I've mentioned before how, in the west, Reuters has been caught touching up their pictures, and of course there was the flap about Time's OJ Simpson mugshot. And we all know that celebrities and models are fake, airbrushed beyond any semblance of humanity.
Photoshop Disasters is a blog tracking the failures of people to execute Photoshop correctly. What's incredible — if slightly troublesome, for any one who likes believing their eyes — is just how much is photoshopped. It's not just models; it's cars, it's product placement, it's showing the images on an electronic device. It's adding in diversity to a brochure by pasting in a black man, adding in support to a campaign rally by cloning a few more people in the crowd, and adding in some clarity to a confrontation by moving bits around.
Here's the thing, though: these are the bad fakes. These are the ones we can catch because they're obvious — like how it was blatantly obvious that Reuters had cooked their pictures. Anyone could see it. I could see it. Presumably, an expert could catch most, or all, of the edits that are invisible to the untrained eye. Maybe. Hopefully.
As it stands — and I know this is a revelation coming several years too late — I'm simply blown away by the complete and utter saturation of Photoshop today. It's the autotune of the photographic world. The pictures we see in magazines, advertisements, and even news stories have ceased to be literally accurate portrayals. Instead they are photorealistic renderings and interpretations of abstract concepts. When I wasn't looking — again, admitting that I'm late to the party — taking pictures went gonzo. Conveying a concept subrogates factual depiction.
How do we respond to this? I suppose I see two ends to this continuum.
At one end, we simply discount photographs as informing our worldview when making rational decisions, in the same way as we discard anecdotes as being insufficient (well, or should — we don't, of course), but continue to profess a belief in an objectively-understandable world.
At the other, we reject even that latter proposition. In a hyperrealistic world where we may lack the ability to critically analyse whether or not we can trust the images we see, what value do the tokens represented by that image hold — particularly when so many of those images aren't to be trusted?
Presumably not this later, for it's a dishearteningly nihilistic view of the situation. On the other hand, the former would seem to foster a pronounced — even counterproductive scepticism. Already, we find people who doubt the scale or scope of human tragedy on the grounds of being unable to trust the representative images. But then, what's the answer?
| Vox 10.03.2010 - 9h48 |
All I can really say is, as a student for Graphics Design, that the primary reason for many images to be shopped in ads, magazines, etc., is due to sizes of the ads' placement. The same add may run on both a magazine article and a highway billboard, and having pre-rendered images simply makes it easier for the parties involved in the ad to get them out. |
| Comrade Alex 10.03.2010 - 10h14 |
Oh. Yes, I agree, and — working in the marketing field — I'm more or less familiar with the increasing trend towards mocking something up in Photoshop over creating an environment where something can be actually photographed. I also understand the reasons why this is done. At the same time, it's a little troubling to me to a) consider the extent that this extends beyond advertising (like politicians photoshopping in larger crowds at a rally) and b) consider the degree to which we have come to expect that graphic advertisements no longer demonstrate anything close to the object being represented therein. +CA |
| Vulpecula 10.03.2010 - 1h47 |
I'm not sure this is all that new, really. Photographs were of questionable realistic portrayal even before Photoshop. Politicians would take many pictures at many rallies and cherry pick the one that shows the largest fraction of the largest crowd to then pass off as typical. The menu photo of a Big Mac would be of a sandwich that someone spent an hour putting together to looks just perfect. Cars would be shown after major wax jobs and highly controlled lighting. The photography business has always had many tricks of the trade to make their images look better than reality or to skew our perception of it. Photoshopping a picture is not something new, it's just the digital evolution of what they've been doing all along. |
| Comrade Alex 10.03.2010 - 1h54 |
I disagree, to this end: digital photographic manipulation, coupled with the use of photorealistic rendering instead of actual photography, has become so incredibly accessible that — especially to pass in small-format images like banner ads or newspaper photos — it no longer requires an expert's touch, and experts are capable of doing substantially more than they were before. We're not talking about picking the most flattering photo of a model, here, we're talking about being able to fairly simply — and fairly consistently — render figures that would trip our uncanny valley detectors were we not so conditioned to accept the notion that advertising is a lie. Whether this is a good or a bad thing, I leave up to the reader's discretion. I don't know. +ca |
| Vulpecula 11.03.2010 - 2h23 |
I disagree that it's fundamentally different. Certainly the technology is better today and they can do more with it. But the concept that ad photos (and even news ones) are a lie and at best give the biased view of an object/event that the advertiser/news organization want you to see, if not outright misrepresentation, is not new. Maybe it's more convincing today, and sure they can do more with it and more people can do it. But it's still not a new concept. And I think part of the reason we're so conditioned to accepting it is precisely because it's not something new that came around solely because of computers. |