Granada, Spain Veronica Hansen
My thoughts have been chewing on me a lot lately. One of those thoughts has been of my personal style of photography: why I do what I do, and how I define that ’style.’ It’s been roughly 4 years since photography and I became an item. And from the outset, my Faustian love for photoshop marred my success as a “straight photojournalism” student. I’ve since spent many perfectly good facebooking hours pondering the same question: where and how does the threshold for photo manipulation fall?
After sardonically scoffing, the history nerd in me immediately and jumps to the first ‘manipulated’ photo composites, way back in the good ol’ Henry Peach Robinson days, when light quality was irrelevant and the more rigidly cut out the people, the better. From the beginning, everyone had their viewpoint crafted and logic Kant-ily reasoned. Henry P. Robsinson was hacking up bodies left and right – composing images to elucidate emotional response. Peter Henry Emerson was down for manipulation, but only if there was an immediate and previsualized double exposure, where the sky could later be added in for dramatic effect but the ‘truth’ of the image preserved. And don’t worry, there were of course the first photo-puritans, invoking the Cotton Mather spirit to condemn any image that wasn’t an exact replica of the negative (or positive – wink, wink – collodion fans!) I believe, however, the first significant case of actual ‘content’ manipulation came from Roger Fenton’s Crimean War photographs, where mysteriously missing canon balls are still being debated by the most boring people on Earth.
Fading away Henry P. Robinson
Peter Henry Emerson
'Shadow of the Valley of Death,' Roger Fenton
And so, as history often does, repeat. repeat. repeat. New technology, first darkroom advances and now the digital craft invasion, have obviously amplified the magnitude and perfection of said manipulation. Not to mention, the lack of honest reporting by opportunistic photojournalists (read: Iraq, Saddam statue protest).
For now, I’ll leave you with this: is there a threshold for photo-manipulation, be it before the shutter closes or after, that defines the label of the photograph? In other words, how do the aesthetic, technical, and moral aspects of photography determine how we differentiate between opposing worlds of art, journalism, commercial, and personal photography? And furthermore, are these labels necessary?
OFF to Cadiz for Carnaval!
You are looking lovely!
