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Don't You Dare Go Digital
Submitted by Andi on Sat, 2010-03-06 15:05
Rachel’s post this past week about the low-fi appeal of recent music videos raises similar questions to those surrounding a recent controversy over a digitally altered image stripped of its status as a World Press Photo contest winner. And, what was the alteration that led to this disqualification? Third prize winner in Sports Features, Stepan Rudik removed a foot from the finished photograph. World Press Photo, an organization known for promoting professional standards in photojournalism largely through the means of awarding one of the most prestigious photography prizes, disqualified Rudik because the jury discovered that he had digitally altered one of the images in his photo-essay submission. Both the low-fi aesthetics of the OKGO video and the field of professional photojournalism privilege a definition of technical prowess that does not include manipulation of the image beyond much capturing and cropping. The value of the image and the skill of the image-makers, in both of these respects, reside in the moment the photograph is shot and not at any other point in the process in which the photograph is made.
It is interesting that World Press Photo takes such pains to distance itself from the artisanal aspects of making a photograph and falls back on a presumption of authenticity aligned with the decisive moment. So, good photojournalism is not made but captured? Are these prizes just awarded to extremely lucky individuals? For the award committee, there seems to have been an implicit emphasis on aesthetically stunning images combined with an explicit emphasis on photographs captured at that lucky pivotal moment. And, always, the assertion that nothing has been altered. Amazing technical prowess at the moment of capturing combined with low-fi levels of retouching at the moment of making the photograph. Consider several of these past prize winners:
Image Credit: Jean-Marc Bouju World Press Photo of the Year, 2003  Image Credit: Anthony Suau World Press Photo of the Year, 1987
Image Credit: Nick Ut World Press Photo of the Year, 1972 Although many of the prizes are given for images that are aesthetically beautiful, the truth-claim of those photographs deemed excellent photojournalism lies in the assertion that they have not been altered. World Press Photo’s rule reads, “the content of the image must not be altered. Only retouching which conforms to the currently accepted standards in the industry is allowed” (Worldpressphoto.org). Perhaps this assertion is not all that surprising—after all, it may be quite the slippery slope that runs from the removal of a foot to the faking of photographs of missile tests. But, where is the exact difference between altering aesthetics and manipulating content? Is it okay to punch up the grain of the image or switch from color to black-and-white? Is it wrong to crop out relevant context or wipe out a misplaced foot? What is the exact difference, in terms of truth claims, between framing, cropping, and photo-shopping? |
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Interesting question!
This almost seems to link to journalism's polite fiction of objectivity: what goes into a newspaper and how it's discussed isn't entirely transparent, but not everybody thinks about that or believes that to be the case. (At least, that's how my 306 students always seemed to approach newspapers.) When one eliminates that claim of objectivity, some people will jump to thinking then if newspapers have "opinions" that they are biased and can't be trusted. The same seems to be going on here: if it's been retouched or edited, it's not "real". It seems like the reasonable response in both cases is to acknowledge that it's always blurrier than that. (For example, can you change the color balance of the photo? Raising the saturation to compensate for awkward lighting shouldn't be OK under this standard, it seems.) The problem with the slippery slope argument here seems to be that everything can become a slippery slope when most reasonable people would be able to agree on the limits.