But is cynicism on such a grand scale such a good thing?
I don't trust what I read in the US newspapers. (I qualify this because I find the UK newspapers are far more reliable, reporting it right the first time.) Nor do many other people, for a variety of reasons. Now this is extended to photographs, and it's for the same reason as it exists for the newspaper, but people didn't know it was happening before. So in that way it's not a good thing or a bad thing by itself, just more of the same.
The whole concept of "truth" is debatable. His photos were still genuine photos - of a staged event. Just as HCB's "decisive moment" shots were real snapshots of staged events too. It was not the camera that lied!
But is one lie better than another? If, in the end, it's supposed to be documentation (as Curtis' work was), is faking it before the shot any better than faking it after the shot?
Digital is here and here to stay. It satisfies the modern worlds quest for speed and modern man's love of shopping. No more does a budding photographer buy a Hassleblad and then, errr, use it for 3 decades. No, you spend far more than that on your first camera then replace it every 2-3 years in a never ending struggle to keep up to date. But the buzz of that "retail therapy". What can replace that?
I see it differently. I'm not constantly buying boxes of film, chemicals, making trips to the color lab, trying to find film in the bottom of the freezer, yelling at Kodak because they processed my Kodachrome on the E6 line, running out of black and white film when I'm in the middle of nowhere, etc etc etc. I've replaced one shopping scenario with another, a simpler one, at least for me.
Jeff Spirer
Photos: http://www.spirer.com
One People: http://www.onepeople.com/
Surfaces and Marks: http://www.withoutgrass.com
