The Reality Of A Fake Image

Photography, meaning “drawing with lights” in Greek, is an art as well as a science of capturing light and storing it on a medium with unprecedented accuracy. Yet, up until the late 18th century, history was mainly recorded through the techniques of painting and the press. These mediums unarguably contained a certain degree of a truth, though, it was not uncommon for events, such as war to be composed with glorified details, or an unfavorable bias from the artist at hand. Beginning in the 1830’s, cameras provided a revolutionary solution by combining the advancements in optics and chemistry. Consequently, the new medium of photography was established and forever changed how history would be visually captured. Unlike other methods, photography

A photograph is a powerful tool for life. A single, unchanged image of reality can be utilized for a variety of situations. For one, one photograph could decide the lifestyle in the foreseeable future of a person that committed a crime. Furthermore, one photograph could reveal the horrors of a particular event. On another note, one photograph could hold heartwarming memories forever. In addition, one photograph could stir a controversy that will have people debating whether an entity is real or not. Overall, as Susan Sontag mentions in her book Photograph, “Photographs furnish evidence.”(Sontag); in other words, whether if it is, good, bad, or misinterpreted, one photograph can be used as evidence that something in fact happened or is real.

For this essay the works of Robert Draper, author of “Why Photos Matter,” and Fred Ritchen, author of “Photography Changes the Way News is Reported,” will be analyzed. Though both deal with the topic of photography, their take on the matter is very different. While Ritchen is a photographer who writes on “what professional photographers will be doing in the future,” Draper is a writer for the National Geographic writing on how the photographers of the magazine share “a hunger for the unknown.” Both writers, however, write on the topic of photographers having a deeper understanding of their subjects, Ritchen due to research and practice, and Draper because the photographers “sit [with] their subjects, just listening to them.” In both essays the need for a deeper understanding of the

While Postman points out the literal meaning of photography is “writing with light”; the two are from completely different universes when it comes to public discourse (p. 71). Unlike typography, photography cannot offer assertions, make propositions and offers no commentary. As long as it is not an altered photograph, it has no choice but to be true (p. 73). Thus, the photograph is only able to capture a moment in time and does not have the ability to comment on that moment. Our author contends, where language presents the world as an idea, the photographs only option is to show the world as an object (p. 72). Whereas in language, the correct context requires consideration of what is said before and after, in photography there is no before and after, only the snapshot of time. Therefore, by its very nature photography is context-free (p. 73). As photography immersed itself in the American culture author, Daniel Boorstin called this “the graphic revolution.” Postman is unequivocal on the point that the traditional forms of information, news, and even reality itself received an impairment by this new focus on images. For examples, he cites billboards, posters and advertisements. He points to magazines Life, Look and several newspapers. The picture was the focal point, and the writing was forced to take a less dominate roll and sometimes done away with altogether (p.

Photography was an ideal medium with which to explore the payers of the unconscious mind. Modernist photographers experimented with double exposure and unusual new effects similar to those of visionary Surrealist painters and sculptors. A champion of the technique, Raoul Hausmann, called photomontage “the ‘alienation’ of photography”. By this, he implied that photomontage destroyed the role of photography as a medium of recreating physical reality. But the statement also suggests that by its dependence on fragmentation and dislocation, photomontage offered a visually and conceptually new image of the chaos of an age of war and revolution.

Teju Cole, in his essay “Against Neutrality,” dissected the tones behind photography- which he believes are thought of as unbiased towards the subject. The power of words and of photos is crucial to Cole’s essay. He states that images can “make a grim situation palatable” because of the photographer’s craftiness in selection (Cole 1). To anyone who isn’t an experienced photographer these tricks can be hard to see but Cole provides further insight from the historian, John Edwin Mason. Expectantly, Mason sheds light behind the misconception on photography, how the “manipulation in photography isn’t really about Photoshop or darkroom tricks”, but the style, angle and other aspects of taking photos (Cole 1).

Quinn expresses a fundamental concern with the validity and objectivity of journalism with the coming of the digital age, and the increasing role that digital/information technology plays in media that reports or represents reality. Quinn begins his 2004 paper with the mention of the transition of non-digital/traditional photography into mainly digital photography with respect to journalism. More than just the changing of the photographic platform and format, Quinn notes the role that computer software that specializes in photographic manipulation in journalism. Early on, he contends, "Technical advancement has helped photojournalism be more effective in may ways, but has also created ethical challenges in making deception expeditious and less transparent." (Quinn, 2004, 1) The article explores this ethical quandary. Digital technology, photographic software, and digital manipulation are tightly integrated into modern photojournalism, among many other industries and fields. Quinn challenges readers to consider and explore the ethics of photographic manipulation and the implications upon perception. He presents the digital manipulation as having a positive and use; furthermore, that at this point in history and in the profession of photojournalism, it is unavoidable. Quinn clearly additionally presents the issue as loaded with negative ethical implications and

Before starting this project, I knew very little about photography, photographers, or exactly how much impact photographical images have had on our society. I have never taken a photography class, or researched too in depth about specific pictures or photographers. This project has allowed me to delve deeper into the world of photography in order to understand just how much influence pictures can have over society’s beliefs, emotions, and understandings’. I have have chosen two highly influential photographers, Diane Arbus and Dorothea Lange, who I have found to both resonate with me and perfectly capture human emotions in way that moves others.

In the essay, “The War Photo No One Would Publish”, by Torie DeGhett, explains the censorship of the current media. The essay depicts the Gulf War and during the war, an American photographer, Kenneth Jarecke, photographs an Iraqi man that was burned alive. Jarecke wanted to share his picture with the world, but the media would not show gruesome photograph during that time. After the war ended, different news channels in the United States published the photo, but it did not have the same impact it would have received if the war was still going on. On the Contrary, “We Are a Camera”, an essay written by Nick Paumgarten, illustrates Aaron Chase, a professional mountain biker sponsored by GoPro and his journey as he rode along a steep mountain

What’s more, Rosler argued that photography contains unfamiliar subculture elements like poverty and refugees would be excluded from the pop elite culture because of their radicalness. However, when the shock of these images gradually disappears, they eventually will be included inside.

Abstract: This essay reflects on the relationship of photographs, history, and memory based on a found and mutilated photo album. Photographs provide opportunities for disrupting and restructuring history with their attraction to memory; they privilege the subjective, creative power of the personal explanation and provide an emotional and even ideological grounding for memory. Photographs as manifestations of memory assist in the process of understanding the present.

The line separating reality and the illusion of reality is a blur. The line separating the narrator’s self-aware expression and his story telling is a blur. The line separating Ambrose and the narrator is a blur. All of this may blur understanding. It is clear, however, that these blurs exist because of the “funhouse”. A funhouse, Lost in the funhouse, in which exist other funhouses. Various funhouses exist in the story and in the writing. For this reason, the title Lost in the funhouse is very significant.

When you see a well taken photograph what's the main thing you think? Well a great many people trust that photography is just connected with top of the line computerized cameras, however a differed number of experts think this is not true anymore. Another medium iPhones photography gives the two experts and non-the capacity to take wonderful pictures without all the specialized weight behind it. In a meeting when asked How might you react to feedback that iPhone photography is less important than conventional film photography, where each shot must be created Julian Calverley expressed, "It's about observation. You don't need to shake off heaps of shots, you can at present simply take 10. I could never backpedal to film. The quality is better now, the capacity to support something on a shoot is there it goes out on a limb. You can go out and shoot and process a film and after that play with it in the darkroom much like you take a photo carefully and do the after creation. Nothing's extremely changed just discernment. Individuals say, 'Gracious it's been photoshopped,' yet in the days of yore, it was extremely worthy to avoid and consume on a print. It's simply the same (Hoyle standard). To be more correct what she implies is suppose for instance one individual likes to take photographs on film and alternate likes to take photographs on an advanced camera both take awesome pictures it only about the impression of which one they like better finished the other. Which conveys me

Although Sturken and Cartwright claim it is quite easy to fall for the misconception that photographs are “unmediated copies of the real world” (Sturken & Cartwright, 17), this is no longer true, if it ever was. While cumbersome, even before the advent of image editing software, it was possible to modify photographs. Furthermore, in contemporary society, we have completely lost faith in mass media representation; rarely do people expect images to be completely unmodified anymore. This is especially visible in western culture since people are pressured to conform into highly specific aesthetics where even a “natural” look is artificially crafted with makeup and digital filters. Even disregarding direct manipulation to a print through methods such as Photoshop, photographs are manipulated in such obvious ways, it almost seems absurd to point it out. The framing, lighting, and positioning are always adjusted by the photographer. Therefore, people themselves are a type of manipulation; a representative filter through which biases are imbued. In effect, Sturken and Cartwright’s conclusion that all camera-generated images bear an “aura of machine objectivity” (Sturken & Cartwright, 16) stemming from “the … legacy of still-photography” (Sturken & Cartwright, 17) is

However as the authors stressed, probably more significant than the change in how images are produced, distributed and used, are the ideas to which the changes are giving rise and how digital imaging is challenging and changing traditional ways of seeing and thinking. It seems that our traditional belief that ‘the camera never lies’ has been brought into question. It also appears important to consider who