It never was true that the camera can’t lie. Apart from standard elementary methods that could be used to distort, such as special filters, studio lighting effects, printing paper with different degrees of contrast, shading or ‘burning in’ in the darkroom etc., there have always been more advanced levels of manipulation, including retouching negatives or prints after they were made. In the digital age, however, image manipulation has been taken to new heights.
Moreover, whereas in the past such things were not openly bragged about except perhaps in the specialist press, nowadays it is trumpeted from the rooftops. Software developers brag about the ability of their products to add or remove people, objects, wrinkles, birthmarks, other human or inanimate blemishes or shadows, and to improve or change colouring, turn colour into black-and-white and heaven knows what else.
I was sharply reminded of all this in December at the Landscape Photographer of the Year Exhibition in London. There were indeed several striking scenes on display, but there was also an all-pervading air of unreality. And by each exhibit was a little card unashamedly revealing how it had been created: the colours saturated, this part treated one way, that part another, and more revealing to those still unfamiliar with the ways of the digital imaging world, how many different shots had been ‘stitched’ together to create the finished work. At least one photographer claimed to have used twelve! I would have changed the name of the exhibition to Landscape Manipulator of the Year.
Oh for the great Cartier Bresson, who would not allow the slightest crop to his photographs let alone any form of manipulation. He portrayed life as he and his camera saw it. Unadulterated.
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