Dennis Dunleavy

Why pick up a camera?

An elderly man makes his way along a road leading to a beach along the Oregon Coast.

Our second annual high school journalism workshop hit the ground running today and it is always amazing how much enthusiasm I find in young people when it comes to making pictures. Perhaps part of the excitement is that photography affords people greater access to the lives of others. The camera is like a key to opening new doors for learning about life. There is also the feelings of instant gratification when everything seems to come together for the student.

I remember the excitement of seeing my first roll of film come out of the wash more than 30 years ago. It seemed to me such a magical process. Today, even though we no longer wait as long for the results, the sense of anticipation is still pretty much the same. I can see the same expression on students' faces as they discover the power of this medium.

In the workshop tomorrow I hope to speak about why I believe so deeply in the promise of photography as a way of opening up our hearts and eyes to the world.

Many people get into photojournalism because they believe that images can make a difference in the world. Here are some reasons why people do photojournalism:

•       To help other people care about the things we care about.
•       To help other people become more informed about their communities and the world.
•       To help other people act or respond to the problems we see in the world, but may not be able to change by ourselves.
•       Because a picture, just one picture can bring a problem, an issue, and a moment forward into our collective consciousness.
•     Because the photojournalist believes, sometimes beyond hope, that  images can change the world.

                           

David Burnett and "The Myth About Boys"

Credit: David Burnett for TIME

When you look carefully at this image what is most striking is that there is only one boy, the dominant subject, wearing a watch. The lead boy stands in a defensive pose (arms crossed) before the camera -- other boys surround him, casual yet at the ready. Can we read metaphors implicit in this scene such as "the boys of summer" or as "time stands still"? Could the posturing of the boys come a little too close to cliche for us to have impact on how we understand them?

In his photography, Burnett dutifully captures feelings of confidence and perplexity in the lives of boys.  And that's what Burnett does so well in his work -- he makes what seems obvious even more obvious and clear to us.

Burnett's work accompanies a story in TIME this week called "The Myth About Boys."

Boyhood is a proactive theme for a photographer to come to terms with and Burnett handles this assignment well. For the most part, Burnett is the quintessential fly on the wall in his Online essay. His photographs conjure up a stillness  that belies the chaos of specific moments by speaking to the universalities of youth. 

At the same time, in the article for which Burnett's pictures accompany, author David Von Drehle, provides a juxtaposition:

Statistics collected over two decades show an alarming decline in the performance of America's boys--in some respects, a virtual free fall. Boys were doing poorly in school, abusing drugs, committing violent crimes and engaging in promiscuous sex. Young males lost ground by many behavioral indicators at some point in the 1980s and '90s: sharp plunges on some scales, long erosions on others.

While Burnett's photographs conjure up a larger, more romantic, picture of boyhood in our imaginations, Von Drehle's words appear more solemn and desperate. Full of statistics and sociological referents, Von Drehle spells out the "boy crisis" in great detail, while Burnett delights us with Rockwellian moments.

In a sense, it would be quite easy to view these two forms of reportage as disparate perspectives, somehow disconnected from one another. Yet, considering the words and pictures as a package, we are bound to draw a  more emotionally and intellectually challenged conclusion.

 

On the nature of tenuous truth

Errol Morris, the acclaimed documentary filmmaker, is now blogging for the New York Times.

In a recent article Morris wrestles with the relationship between truth and photography. Morris joins a long list of big thinkers such as John Berger, Susan Sontag, Victor Burgin, Roland Barthes, and many others, who have attempted to explain the impact pictures have in the construction of our conscious reality.

"...Photographs tamper with the glue that holds life and memory together," Morris writes.

For Morris, the underlying issue in terms of a photograph's veracity is always a matter context. The question of whether a photograph is true or false also relies heavily on the words chosen to explain it. Morris appears agitated by how casually people take for granted the contents of a photographs, especially when accompanied by a caption. Morris notes:

"The issue of the truth or falsity of a photograph is only meaningful with respect to statements about the photograph. Truth or falsity “adheres” not to the photograph itself but to the statements we make about a photograph. Depending on the statements, our answers change. All alone — shorn of context, without captions — a photograph is neither true nor false."

As Morris suggests, in order to decipher the meaning of a photograph, with or without words, we must call upon memory for placing what we see within a context of all other things we have seen and known.

Morris is sincere in his attempt to solve one of the more perplexing paradoxes of our visual culture -- how seeing photographs may or may not lead to greater understanding -- to the truth. Even though a photograph cannot be the "truth", it may encourage insight, engender sympathy, or foment outrage.

The only problem here is that often this leads to the assumption that once we believe something and understanding it, we will eventually be persuaded to actually cared about it.

How many times have we assumed that what we see in a photograph is worth believing? After all, the assumptions connected with seeing as believing are; believing as knowing, and knowing as truth.

We live in an age when truth is increasingly suspect. We live in an age of creeping skepticism and incredulity -- an age when our capacity for consciousness and common sense is continually bombarded by the contradictions of an information/representational system (media) that place photographs before us as truth, even when we should know better.

This does not imply that the power and impact of photographs in society are in any way insignificant. Photographs convey what words often fail do to, but they also are objects of something that once was. Then, what we are left to struggle with here is more about our obsession with the visual as an proxy for what truth is and how to think about it.

This is what Morris suggests:

"The idea that photographs hand us an objective piece of reality, that they by themselves provide us with the truth, is an idea that has been with us since the beginnings of photography. But photographs are neither true nor false in and of themselves. They are only true or false with respect to statements that we make about them or the questions that we might ask of them."

We should now better by now, especially in an age of digital fabrications, photo-ops, and YouTube moments. In a sense, a photograph can make the truth appear simple and less complex.

A photograph, in the end, only reduces the world to digestible instances of partial truths -- with and without words.

Does photographic digital manipulation in the media takes place more often than most people think?

We've come to the end of the second week in our annual study of perceptions and attitudes toward digital photo manipulation. So far, the survey appears to going well with 150 respondents to date. From a scientific perspective, no conclusions can be drawn from the responses or generalized in anyway. Nevertheless, respondents comments bring greater insight into the complexities of the issue.

Although the majority of participants are professional photojournalists, there seems to be increasing interest from editors, reports, students, amateurs, and the general public.

The focus of this year’s study is to help us understand how people define digital photo manipulation.

When asked, “I can tell when a photograph has been digitally altered,” 35 percent agree with the statement, while 28 percent remain neutral on the topic. At the same time 25 percent disagree that they can tell when a picture has been manipulated.

Getting to the heart of the matter concerning how people define the term digital photo manipulation, the questions have been producing mixed results.

When questioned, “I define photo digital manipulation as changes to the content of a picture after it is made through electronic means,” nearly 90 percent of respondents agree with the statement. 

In a similar way, when asked, “I define photo digital manipulation as a process that changes the content of a picture by adding or removing visual elements from the original,” again, the majority agrees with the definition.

There have been few surprises thus far -- at least until we get to the narrower definitions.

For instance when asked, “I define photo digital manipulation as a process that helps to make the picture better aesthetically,” responses greatly varied.

In this case, 10 percent strongly agree, while 27 percent agree. The remaining 62 percent remain either neutral on the definition or disagree with the statement. As one respondent suggests, “This is a small part of photo digital manipulation, not necessarily THE definition. I would guess this is where the amateur checks in--cleaning up redeye or other little messy details that are easily fixed in this digital world.”

At the same time, when presented the definition, “I define photo digital manipulation as a process that helps to make the objects in the picture more visually interesting,” a majority affirmed the statement.

This raises an issue of semantics, since making “the picture better aesthetically” and making “the picture more visually interesting” seem, at least to me, fairly closely related. In fact, one participant asks, “Can we define the difference 'manipulation' vs. 'image enhancement/post-processing' (tone, color, contrast, brightness, etc.). Perhaps this is where the line begins to be drawn for many people. For decades, post-production processes have accepted the enhancement through dodging and burning, yet today event long-standing antecedent practices appear to be under the magnifying glass.

Nevertheless, participants seem to form consensus when asked if “Photo digital manipulation is an increasingly important issue in society today” and “I think digitally altering pictures impacts how the public perceives the media as a trustworthy, credible, and accurate source of information.” Nearly 90 percent believe that digital manipulation is a problem, as well as an influence on the public’s perception of the media as a trustworthy and valued source of information in society.

At the same time, when questioned if “Photographic digital manipulation is common place in the media today,” participants were split evenly between agreement and disagreement. However, when asked if “Photographic digital manipulation in the media takes place more often than most people think,” more than 70 percent of participants agree that it does.

In the coming weeks we shall see if these early findings remain constant. It could be that has more amateur photographers join the survey a shift will occur in perception.

Click Here to take survey

Annual survey on photo manipulation: When to draw the line on digitally altered images

As our visual culture becomes accustomed to digital photography, are people becoming more apathetic about the digital alteration of pictures in the media? Will people come to expect that most of the pictures they view in the media today have been electronically enhanced in some way? If so, how will this acceptance, impact journalism and photography as a source of information and reportage?

Last year, I surveyed photographers about their attitudes and perceptions concerning the digital manipulation of photographs, especially within the context of news reportage. This year, I would like to continue to ask respondents about the alternation of images with a brand new survey. However, the questions in this survey are far broader with the hope of collecting responses from a wider audience. Just how serious are people about photo digital manipulation?

Click Here to take the survey

What I discovered last year was that only about half of the more than 480 respondents believed they could detect a picture when it was digitally altered. Only 6 percent strongly agreed with the statement, "I can tell when a photograph has been altered."  At the same time,  85 percent of the respondent agreed that they had seen a digitally manipulated picture in the media within the last five years.

This year's annual survey is different in that it seeks to understand how people define photo digital manipulation. The survey also explores how significant digital manipulation is as an issue in society. Further, at the bottom of each question is an area for comments, which is something last year's survey lacked.  Broad participation in this survey is encouraged as it is not only designed for professionals, but for enthusiasts as well.