> Surely the traditional image has always been capable of a lie. Multiple printing, selective cropping, editorial choice of one deceptive image from several telling a different story, altering the actual prints obtained from the same negative, even altering the negative - it's all been done before. And so well that often no-one would ever know. > And since you or I never would be able to see the negatives, those "traces" of so-called reality, it's little different in my mind to altering a digital image. That's the problem: the paradigm shift to the state where we can no longer distinguish (on an honesty axis) between choosing where to point a camera (choice of viewpoint and lens) and a totally fictional composit of images. That photos were not a perfect representation of reality was of course accepted: at least the discrepancy was objective. As to the forensic evidence: seriously, by traditional means the evidence was always there: it was impossible to hide. With digital that is truly no longer the case. In a composite image, saved as a jpeg, what finite evidence there might have been is confounded by the compression. It is truly impossible to tell (unless someone overdoes the cloning) Quoting from: http://www.archivists.org/glossary/term_details.asp?DefinitionKey=50 <<<< photograph All images constitute a record, irrespective of the value we may attach to the information they contain. The unique property of photographic records reside in their ability to capture a moment in time and to highlight the inevitable passing of time. Although the setting and depth of vision that are chosen already imply a certain voluntary or arbitrary selection, the photographic lens perceives and records the space in a homogeneous manner and it is this global view that can provide us with useful information, sometimes capturing details not even intended by the photographer himself. While the visual authority of the photograph is now increasingly undermined by the wizardry of digital technology, the 'truthfulness of facts' in a photograph has always been presumed to reside in its verisimilitude. Ever since Paul Delaroche purportedly exclaimed, 'From today, painting is dead,' the photograph has been perceived as an objective record of reality, the product of a mechanical and therefore neutral means of documentation. . . . Photographs derive the authority of their content from realism and accuracy, what J. B. Harley calls 'talismans' of authority; archival photographs convey their message through function and context. . . . The photograph is neither truth nor reality, but a representation willed into existence for a purpose and mediated by the persons concurring in its formation. >>>>> "verisimilitude" Wow! What a word ;o) Seriously, 10 y ago the perception was that photos didn't lie. Sure, they could be economical with the truth, they could provide only one point of view if not the whole truth - but at least what they did show was generally taken as honest. Today, who cares? WMD - oops, no WMD. Who gives a stuff. The new reality replaces the old without mention. Bob
