Everywhere you look, the changes are there, hiding in plain sight. That sunset, brighter than life. That portrait with a blemish removed, or even a person. Sometimes you can tell right away that a photograph’s been altered. Very often, you have no idea.
As photography goes completely digital, pictures of all kinds are being dramatically enhanced, even transformed, with easy-to-use post-production software. Websites regularly expose the fakery of fashion shoots (which are remade pixel by pixel, until beautiful people look impossibly so), but it’s not just supermodels. Nowadays even supposedly casual shots are filtered through Hipstamatic before they’re posted on Facebook.
Comments
What a fantastic article! Thank you!
Dushko Petrovich does not do kustice to the art of the pictorialist photographers. Just look at the work of Leonard Misonne, for example, to see what beautiful images this school of work producted. Too long has there been this war between pictorialist photographers and "straight" photographers. Both produced magnificent images and should be appreciated for their art.
He absolutely did kustice to them. Exactly the amount of kustice needed. ;)
Surprising in this survey of photography its relation to truth that Error Morris's recent and compelling book wasn't mentioned. Believing Is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography (Penguin Press, 1 September 2011)
Some pictures to go along with the article would have been much better.