Seeing the Truth in Photographs
Published August 20, 2006 – as Perspective, in Connecticut’s The Day——————————————Recently Reuters News Service has come under scrutiny for passing off doctored photographs to newspapers. On Aug. 6, Reuters fired Lebanese photographer Adnan Hajj and withdrew 920 of his photographs from their archives. Since then other news outlets including The New York Times, Associated Press and AFP have been criticized for running photographs that have been posed, manipulated, or misleadingly captioned.
The problem that these news outlets face is that, as photojournalist Eddie Adams once said, photographs lie. Adams took one of the most famous photographs ever, of General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing Viet Cong prisoner Nguyen Van Lem on a Saigon street during the Tet Offensive of 1968. In Adams’s photograph we see a disheveled handcuffed man at his moment of death. We do not see the events that led to his execution, his gunning down the wives and children of South Vietnamese officers, including that of a subordinate and close friend of General Loan.
Adams himself regretted the power of this photograph and later apologized to the general and his family for the damage it did to the general’s reputation. Adams stated, “’Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths.’
Photographs are not created in randomly or in a vacuum. They result from a series of conscious and unconscious decisions made by the photographer. A photojournalist begins with an assignment, a perceived need for a photograph of a certain type. The type of photograph and photographer will vary according to the assignment; we don’t expect photojournalists to travel to Iraq to shoot flowers just as we don’t send war photographers to cover flower shows. Once a photographer or his editor selects the assignment, the photographer must decide the subject matter that best fulfills it.
After the photographer finds that subject matter, she must decide on composition: What do I include in my photograph? What do I leave out? Where is the best light? Do I want to highlight my subject with a shallow focus, or do I want to include other elements using a wider lens? He will usually take several photographs of a subject, each differing slightly from the others to be assured that one of the photographs will meet the assignment’s requirements.
The mere presence of a photographer can alter a scene. In a photograph taken by newsman Arthur Weegee in 1940, a woman cheerfully smiles for the camera as she kneels behind paramedics trying to resuscitate a drowning victim on a Coney Island beach. Her expression changes a photograph from a scene of human suffering to a haunting, bizarre one. During the first Intifada in the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian youths were careful to cultivate their image as Davids fighting against Israeli Goliaths, throwing pebbles at Israeli soldiers and settlers while foreign news crews were watching them, and switching to heavier and larger stones once they left.
The selection process continues on the computer after photos are taken. A photographer or his assistant is faced with more decisions. Are there elements that need to be highlighted or de-emphasized? Is more cropping needed? Cropping, cutting elements out of a scene, changes the context of a photograph. Imagine Adams’ photograph missing either one of the subjects, and it completely loses its power, becoming a picture of a soldier firing a pistol or of a man cringing. Cropping is perhaps the most powerful tool a photographer uses to determine a photograph’s context both during composition as well as after it is taken.
Once the photographer is satisfied with her work, she passes it on to her editor. The editor must then evaluate it based on different criteria from those used by the photographer. What size photo do I need to fill this space? Which photo goes with the written copy the best? Usually an editor must select one or two photos from several hundred photos taken by different photographers, a task that can be just as daunting and biased as the decisions made by photographers themselves.
Is it any wonder that at the end of this chain of conscious and unconscious decisions we have what Adams himself described as lies and half-truths?
While technology has made it even easier for photographs to be created, manipulated, and enhanced for editorial purposes, our perception has not kept pace with these changes. We may consciously recognize that the image of a model has been manipulated to remove blemishes, wrinkles, enhance skin tones and even elongate legs and slim down waists, yet we still unconsciously cling to the belief that what we are seeing is real. She looks perfect; therefore she must really be perfect.
Since the Reuters scandal broke, manipulated images are appearing at a maddening pace, threatening the public trust of news agencies and publications around the world. However it is impossible to remove all bias and prejudice from the process of making and presenting a photograph. While much will be made by those who have been hurt by the photographs produced by these outlets, the problem will remain that the adage “seeing is believing’” holds us in its thrall.
Adams said ‘The General killed the Vietcong; I killed the general with my camera.” His photograph rallied the anti-war movement in the U.S. as it became the symbol of an atrocity, the execution of an innocent civilian by a corrupt regime supported by the United States. Adams himself fought against this interpretation of his photograph, saying that General Loan “was a hero. America should be crying. I just hate to see him go this way, without people knowing anything about him.”
Photojournalists must accept responsibility for their work and consider what messages they carry and how they will be used. They must admit that like Adams’s photograph, theirs can kill. At the same time we must free ourselves from our deeply held trust in the medium by recognizing that photographs are not a shortcut to Truth, and contrary to our perception, often lie.
Scott Kirwin is a photographer and writer who lives in Philadelphia.
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The man who reads nothing at all is better educated than the man who reads nothing but newspapers. ~Thomas Jefferson So how about if the administration devotes itself less to managing the news and more to trying to manage…
3 December 2006, 6:22 pm