Author : Pam Morris March 15 2015
“Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.” Ansel Adams
Our dilemma with seeking ‘truth’ occurs when delineation between these two types of photographs; artistic versus evidential or scientific are blurred. I.e. Our concerns arise when we are viewing a photograph that we believe has been created for the purposes of accurately recording an instance in time but for a variety of reasons it has been manipulated to distort the perceived reality. This manipulation can take place at the point of capture by choices in technology, exposure and viewpoint or at the point of post-development by choices in cropping, dodging and burning, cutting and pasting, airbrushing etc.
As early as 1846 in the Mexican – American war photography was used to document war scenes but due to technical constraints of lengthy preparation prior to exposure, long exposure times and cumbersome development processes were at odds with a need to capture the action. These early war scenes therefore required staging and were captured either before or after the battle. As time progressed, the viewing public expected photographic evidence of war to depict actuality. We now expect war photography to accurately portray action and actual events. Robert De Capa’s famous image of the young Republican militiaman in the Spanish civil war, who was shot by Francoist rebels on a hillside in Cerro Muriano near Cordoba; was at the time of publishing in 1937 hailed as an epic realistic recording of the moment of death in battle.
Figure 6 : Robert Capa Death of a Loyalist Soldier - 1936
Subsequent investigation into the events surrounding the photograph has left its veracity still in dispute. Theories include that it was taken by Capa’s colleague or partner, that it was taken as a fluke by Capa as he pushed the shutter button at the sound of shots, with his camera raised over the parapet to claims that is a complete fake and shot part of a scene staged by Capa when he was unable to get scenes close to the battle (Knightly 1982, pp. 193 – 195)[i]. Capa was never forthcoming with information pertaining to the background of the image. However its possibility of being a fake had sown the seeds of disbelief within the viewing public regarding the veracity of images purported to be truth and so reinforced the trend of suspending belief in photograph’s recording the truth until proven as fact. This distrust of the veracity of an image continued to take hold over the 20th century as people were inundated with more and more amazing special effects in Hollywood movies and later became aware of the power of image editing software to correct, manipulate and enhance an image. Whilst the capability of software to change a digital image is now common knowledge few realise that manipulation in photographic images is as old as photography itself.
[i] Knightly P., The First Casualty, Kings English Book Printers Ltd Leeds.