So my last topic change ended up taking me back to my previous topic. So i thought, why not combine the two?
Here is my current thesis/research proposal for my research project:
Painless Plastic Surgery:
Editing and Manipulation in Photography
Television, magazines, books, smart phones, iPod’s, billboard’s, and newspapers are just a few of the media’s mediums—all of which have some sort of photograph printed on them or contain photographs through the internet or via satellite. Because the public is surrounded by visual images, the media must be careful what images are put out and in what way those images are used. Beauty and violence are two of the biggest themes that the public sees quite frequently on a day to day basis. Whether there is an advertisement for a new shooter video game, a news story of a murder or an advertisement for the latest facial cream that claims to take twenty years off of another insecure woman’s life, photography plays a huge element in translating a message to each and every viewer. Even in the last generation, the media’s audience and means to advertise has increased enormously, raising the rate and lowering the age of exposure to all types of visual images. Today, the ease of which photographs can be manipulated in all aspects of the media can be dangerous, especially considering emotional trauma or overall damage the public could suffer as a result. By examining how photography affects the public and the intent and position of the photographer, one can begin to understand how potentially influential visual images can be.
Even from photography’s inception, its inventors have known how incredible yet deceitful the art form could be. As Brooks Johnson put it, “Photographic truth is malleable; both the image-maker and the image-user are in possession of a medium that can significantly alter the way we perceive the world and process the information it contains” (Johnson 2). By saying this, Johnson confirms that even the earliest users of photography knew how to alter their photographs in such a way that the audience may not be viewing what actually took place; however, in the earliest times of photography, being able to alter or manipulate a photograph was a special skill and not a cheap one, either. Another reason photographs were not edited nearly as much during their invention was due to the fact that photography was a new and upcoming fad. Many of the photographs taken during this time period were portraits or pictures of ordinary, everyday life. Because people had no experience with photography, the thought of erasing blemishes, wrinkles, or making one’s body shape more ‘appealing’ did not exactly register with early photographers.
Before further examination of manipulation in photography, one must first understand what exactly manipulation is in this case. Photographic manipulation is considered to be anything from erasing blemishes, digitally elongating a model’s neck, or even staging photographs that claim to be live action or real time shots. The broadness of this definition can potentially get a lot of photographers into trouble, yet it also provides a loophole for people to claim ignorance to what exactly photo manipulation is. Not only can people claim ignorance, there is also an argument that photo manipulation, mainly in advertising, is not a problem because the public knows that the images are edited. While many people in the public know that photographs are altered in some way or another, it is doubtful that they know to what extent. Correspondingly, Alexis Beck, a clinical nutritionist that was interviewed on a diet.com video called The Photoshop Effect where she stated, “I don’t think women and girls know the extent to which photos are retouched…even if they do know, I’m not sure it penetrates.” This reinstates the idea that even if the public knows about the editing, due to the fact that we cannot see both the raw and altered photograph it oftentimes does not register in our minds that the photograph is not necessarily truthful. Women and men are exposed to preconceived notions of how they are supposed to look, think, and act through the media’s images everyday. For example, the women in lingerie magazines or on billboards and men posing as underwear models have fit, tone bodies that have no stretch marks or blemishes anywhere. Similarly, models that represent beauty companies with their many creams or covers have flawless skin with no wrinkles, sunspots, or creases of any kind. After being exposed to these images it is understandable how any person would feel inferior, even knowing that the images are edited. There are certainly cases in which manipulating a photo is more unacceptable in one situation than in another; however, if the media is going to continue to manipulate the images it puts out, the public ought to be more informed about how and why a photo has been altered in the first place.
While photo manipulation may be a well-known practice in advertising, it is doubtful that the public knows much about or would be comfortable with the idea of altering a news or historical photograph. There are some who claim that the images in the news would be too raw or graphic for children and editing is acceptable in those cases, while there are others, like Eamonn McCabe, who believe that, “There are times when you have to show disturbing photographs in order to make the readers realise what is happening in the world and hopefully get something done about it” (McCabe 194). In this case, McCabe illustrates that the role of the photographer is to get a message across to the people by not editing or censoring the photograph but letting the rawness of the image speak for itself. However, motivation of the people can be a dangerous goal for photographers to seek due to the fact that many photos that are taken are not as powerful as the photographer would like them to be. Though McCabe makes a solid point that informing the readers on issues in the world is important, there are cases in which some people may take advantage of their photojournalistic power and edit their photos slightly in order to spread a message. For instance, a photographer during the American Civil War era, Malcolm Brady, decided to edit his photographs in a miniscule way; yet, he still passed them off as if they had never been manipulated. Brady photographed dead soldiers in trenches, but because they were so far apart he felt they did not have the overwhelming effect he was reaching for. In order to achieve this effect, Brady edited the men in the photos to make them closer together and in doing so, make the war look more devastating than the original photographs would have. While Brady may have had good intentions, the fact that he edited a photograph and then put it into a paper that is supposed to present the public with factual information should still be unacceptable. If the public were to give any kind of leeway on manipulation of photographs in the news or for historical purposes, one may find it hard to draw the line of acceptable manipulation versus unacceptable manipulation farther down the road. (McCabe)
When talking about the news, one may find it easy to understand why manipulating images would be objectionable; yet just as the news is supposed to state the truth, our history books, museums, and any other type of historical education are also supposed to be truthful. If one is fed false information along with altered visual images, one will remember history in the wrong way or in a way that never occurred. As Mary Ann Bell stated, “Young children especially lack the judgment to evaluate what they see and hear and separate hype from truth” (Bell 4). If one remembers being in a history class, one would remember how influential the pictures were compared to text or the teacher’s lecture. Because children can be influenced so easily and absorb and retain information so quickly, teachers must be careful about what images the children are exposed to and the facts that the children are given. An important part of learning history is learning from the past; nevertheless, if the children learn the wrong information because they are misled by false photographs depicting how something happened or looked then they are no longer learning anything useful from history. The issue with making sure that the historical images correctly portray the events they are depicting is being able to know for sure whether or not a photo has been editing; this depends mostly on how much the photo was edited and how long ago the photo was taken. Adults who lived through historical events that have been photographed may be able to tell a fake photo from a real photo; however, even then one cannot be completely sure if the photographer does not want one to know. In addition to this, minor adjustments to photographs can often go undetected, such as adding light or dark to a photograph or having a photo staged. For example, the famous photo “Migrant Mother” taken by Dorothea Lange was actually one of many shots of the unfortunate family that had been set up in different poses to make the photograph more touching or pitiful.
