Truth in Photography

June 30, 2024 Written by Angela Maloney

           “All photographs are accurate. None of them are the truth.”

                                                                        —Richard Avedon

            Artificial intelligence (AI) is winning photo contests. Previously, only humans could do that. In fact, AI has become a tempting tool for many photographers and other artists trying to win contests.

            Historically, however, photography has been prized for its fidelity to reality. But photo editing has been both possible and commonplace since photography began. The first time I know of that an object was deleted from a frame was done by Calvert Richard Jones in 1846. One of the most iconic photographs of U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, created circa 1860, was actually a composite of Lincoln’s head on politician John Calhoun’s body. But photography has largely had to at least seem real to win acceptance.

            Over time, it has become easier and faster to edit photographs. Now, widespread adoption of AI means that entirely fictional images that look real can now be created. So, what does it mean in terms of photography being real? Can we believe what we see? Could we ever?

 For us as responsible photographers, the rule is simple: what we present as true should be true.

If It’s Presented As True, It Should Be True

On March 10, 2024, Kensington Palace released this photograph of Princess Catherine, the Princess of Wales.

When signs of editing were noticed, it launched arguably the biggest photo controversy of 2024 so far. The image was recalled by agencies around the world over concerns that it may have been manipulated.

            The problem was that this image was an example of photojournalism. Photojournalism must strictly adhere to reality as much as possible because its purpose is to show the viewer a slice of reality.

At the same time, the camera sees differently from the human eye. This means that a degree of photo editing can be necessary to produce an image that reproduces what the human eye witnessed as closely as possible.

Major journalist organizations balance the need to produce accurate images with the need to use post-production tools to provide an accurate image. They permit photo editing, but only within strict boundaries. For example, Associated Press standards permit “minor adjustments to photos” such as “cropping, dodging and burning, conversion into grayscale, elimination of dust on camera sensors and scratches on scanned negatives or scanned prints or scanned prints and normal toning and color adjustments.” Reuters, likewise, prohibits “actions in visual journalism . . . That add to or detract from the reality of images.”

. . . But Art Can Still Be Art

Photography’s widespread use as a factual medium in journalism, coupled with the influence of the straight photography movement of the 20th century, have led to a widespread expectation that even in artwork, a photograph must be a literal depiction of reality.

But I disagree with that expectation. Even if viewing audiences typically expect photography to strictly reflect reality, I do not believe the artistic photographer has a duty to strictly adhere to reality any more than an artistic painter does. In fact, I agree with photographer Guy Tal, who writes that “[p]hotographs are not by necessity things taken from reality but can also be created such that they enlarge or transcend reality. Certainly, a photograph may be a record of some fact in reality; but a photograph can also be something novel—something that has not existed until a photographer created it[.]”

I have often been asked whether the colors of this image are real. Of course they are real. They are readily visible. But it is an image I created as a means of saying something about the scene that I was witnessing. And I did not feel the need to adhere strictly to reproducing what my eyes saw.

In fact, it should surprise no one that the possibilities of manipulating photographs are used to create art. It seems to be something inherent in the human condition that we human beings always use everything available to create art of some sort. Even our laundry has been used to create art.

The difference between an artist and Princess Catherine is that her image was presented as reality. The artist’s job is not to create reality, but to comment on it and express something about it. That’s why Princess Catherine’s image created an ethical firestorm and why there is nothing wrong with using the same tools in a different way that alters reality for a different purpose.