Another thread on here questioned what technology had brought to bear on the world of photography. I was on DPR tonight and there was a post with a link to a person who obviously and very skillfully manipulated his photos with a program like Photoshop. The work was very good, clearly artistic in intent, and yet spawned much animosity among the different camps. I've been thinking a lot about this. This is what my final post was...just something that seems to be relevant to todays world....Wondering what others think?
-Documentary photography takes real skill and good equipment. Artistic photography takes real skill (different maybe) and maybe not such good equipment. One is a photograph of the real...the other shows us reality in a different sense. When the two get mixed up with each other is when it hurts photography. When somebody is trying to show the literal truth and puts someones head on someone else's body, or shows a news event that didn't really happen. I think that's why literature has been divided into two distinct areas. I also think that photographers must be held accountable who manipulate documentary (sports, news, action, science) just the same way as people who write about it. That way the animosity between the two forms of it will disappear. Since one shows the truth literally and the other if it's done well shows it subjectively. Photography as a whole will suffer until those divisions are made...and people say "hey you're fired for staging that, or manipulating that shot" Just because something can be done, maybe doesn't mean it should be...then some people won't feel threatened by artistic use of the medium...and I'm not putting anybody down who feels that way...there is good cause. No one...because of the lack of integrity of some...can tell what's real anymore. I've seen nature photographers add birds...etc. that's not integrity. Once I saw a photographer add a person of a different race to a pamphlet for a sports program (they at least got caught and fired probably because they did a bad job of it...and they did) There's got to be some kind of division soon...some kind of standard for people to be held accountable to...or it's going to hurt both the artistic side, and the documentary side of photography? No one will believe anything they see....