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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
NYT Magazine Withdraws Altered Photo Essay
David Harpe, Photographer
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Louisville | KY | USA | Posted: 3:19 AM on 07.09.09 |
->> http://www.pdnpulse.com/2009/07/new-york-times-magazine-withdraws-possibly-...
"The New York Times Magazine has withdrawn a photo essay by Edgar Martins — described in print as having been produced "without digital manipulation" — because several of the photographs show signs of digital manipulation. The photo essay, which ran in the July 5 issue of the magazine, shows abandoned real estate projects." |
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David Harpe, Photographer
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Jim Colburn, Photo Editor, Photographer
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McAllen | TX | USA | Posted: 11:22 AM on 07.09.09 |
->> When you hire a "fine art" photographer, you get art, not journalism...
Boring "fine art" at that. |
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James Broome, Photographer
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Tampa | FL | US | Posted: 11:28 AM on 07.09.09 |
| ->> This guy's entire body of work is based on mirror images and manipulated photos. I'm surprised he's gone this long without someone crying foul. |
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Joshua Sy, Student/Intern
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Los Angeles | CA | USA | Posted: 12:54 AM on 07.10.09 |
->> Maybe I've taken too many fine art photo classes, but I actually kind of like his series, if his site is anything to go by.
I do agree that the photos are inappropriate for publication in a journalistic publication like the NY Times, though. I think if they'd appeared somewhere where readers' journalistic expectations were lower, the reaction would have been quite different.
It is pretty encouraging to know, though, that it's not just us PJ's who care about integrity in the age of Photoshop, but also the average Joe readers who pointed out the Photoshop work in the first place. |
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James Broome, Photographer
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Tampa | FL | US | Posted: 2:57 PM on 07.10.09 |
| ->> I like his stuff as well. The only problem with him is that he repeatedly professes to use no digital enhancement to his work AT ALL. |
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David A. Cantor, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Chuck Steenburgh, Photographer
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Lexington | VA | USA | Posted: 12:35 PM on 08.02.09 |
->> "I think if they'd appeared somewhere where readers' journalistic expectations were lower."
Can't imagine that my expectations for the NYT could get any lower...they have been resting on their laurels for the past couple of decades. |
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Will Powers, Photographer
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Denver | CO | USA | Posted: 12:55 PM on 08.02.09 |
->> His explanation is an attempt to intellectualize the that the ethics of journalism does not fir into his moral universe. By quoting some other famous intellectuals he attempts to give his ideas credibility. "Photography is a simulacrum. In reconstituting its subject, argues Barthes, it creates a new world, not seeking to duplicate it but to make it visible." This simple statement trying to justify his unwillingness to photography reality but a need to change it to tell a different story.
"I have always believed that even in an editorial context there should be an attempt to raise ideas about communicating ideas. This taps into the latent potential of Photography's failings." Once again it is his inability to capture reality to tell the story, but a need to alter reality to tell the story. Our jobs as photojournalists is not to alter the reality that we see. There are limitations to what we can reproduce with our cameras (2D vs 3D), but the viewers of our images have the knowledge of the limitations of our perspective.
Although he tries to use the physics concept of the Uncertainty Principle, he uses it in a deceptive manner, too. "All reality is manipulated" just isn't true. All attempts to record reality may not be 100 percent accurate is probably more true, but reality is not manipulated.
According to Wikipedia "the Heisenberg uncertainty principle states that certain pairs of physical properties, like position and momentum, cannot both be known to arbitrary precision." I see this as another attempt to give credibility to an otherwise fallicious argument. |
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David A. Cantor, Photographer, Photo Editor
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Grant Blankenship, Photographer
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Macon | GA | USA | Posted: 10:52 AM on 08.03.09 |
->> "Photography is a simulacrum. In reconstituting its subject, argues Barthes, it creates a new world, not seeking to duplicate it but to make it visible."
I remember that Roland Barthes essay. I still have the book on the shelf. The thing that people miss when they use that line of logic as a justification for moving the needle toward out and out manipulation is that the facsimile of reality presented by a photograph is simply a product of the medium itself. A photograph doesn't need any help in terms of artistic intent or extreme manipulation to gain any distance on the actual thing it purports to record. |
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