An article in the The Wall St. Journal this week offers more evidence of how technologies have influenced photographic behaviors. The ability to create pictures than alter the truth is increasingly a global concern. In China, an award-winning image of rare Tibetan antelopes galloping below a high-speed train is causing a storm of controversy not only in the journalistic community but also with environmentalists who see the deception as a part of a broader pattern of government propaganda.
Photo Credit: Liu Weiqing/Xinhua/Wall St. Journal
Photo Credit: Wall St. Journal
It is easy to pass off digital manipulation as isolated cases promulgated by ambitious and unethical photographers, but the issue may be symptomatic of a world-deterioration in the value of promoting ethical standards in journalism. This may also coincide with the public's inability to detect images that have been manipulated. As with other recent cases of digital manipulation, many editors, and by extension audiences, are forced to trust the source of an image's authenticity. The problem may reside in an individual's conviction to see the harm in what they might consider to be the little "white lie" in "fixing" pictures. Manipulated images give us, in other words, what we desperately want to see. We want to see a perfect drama of the human condition at arm's length or the classic tension between nature and human progress. As long as the demand for perfection outweighs truthful and fair-minded reportage, reality will continued to be subsumed.
Thank you Thomas Seymat for the link to this story.