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When I first read of the controversy surrounding
faked
wildlife films, my immediate reaction was
so what?
After pondering the matter for several
days, I haven't found any reason to change my mind.
Many years ago, when I was managing editor of the local daily, a reporter/photographer and I got into a lengthy discussion about the ethics of photography.
He had come back from a track meet with some photos. After examining the contact sheet, I picked one and suggested he crop it in a certain way and perform some darkroom tricks (dodging) to make the Salida athlete stand out.
But that would be deceptive,
the fellow argued.
That wouldn't be anything like the original scene I
saw.
He was right, but when I'm an editor, I like to triumph in all discussions -- maintain office discipline, the decision-making hierarchy and all that other management stuff.
Reality happens in color, not the 30 or so shades of
gray that our press might be able to reproduce on a good
day,
I argued. Reality is continuous, not a 85 dots
to the inch. Reality moves -- it isn't some frozen instant.
Reality happens all around us, not in some rectangle.
Reality is in three dimensions, not two. All photographs
are distortions of reality, so the real question is not
whether we are willing to distort what we saw, but the
degree of distortion.
I might have won the philosophical argument. However, he had been at the scene in question, and I hadn't, so we ran the picture his way. You either trust the people you send out on assignments or you don't -- and if you don't, you should get rid of them and hire people you can trust.
However, that doesn't resolve the issue. Even if the images in question are in full and glorious color, and provide motion and sound, they're still not reality -- they're an abstraction, a construction.
Wildlife films may have been shot by the most ethical of photographers, working from a blind and focusing on real wild animals, but they still distort time -- they don't show you the three days of tedium at the water hole, but only the few minutes of action when the lion lunges for the impala.
Everything we see via some medium -- be it mere verbal
description or glitzy virtual reality -- is a distortion.
The silver iodide particles in a traditional photograph are
no more natural
than the electronic bits in a
digitized image.
To act horrified because tame
animals were used
or there was some digital manipulation
of an image
is to miss the point.
It's not that I have anything against people who believe that all images represent reality. If they're home watching professional wrestling on TV and cheering for one of the actors in the ring, then they're not bothering me. The same holds if they're watching one of the trash talk shows with the belief that they're really watching lesbian mothers who steal their sons' girlfriends.
But the idea that we see things that are real
persists even among those who should know better. We've got
a presidential campaign going, and a lot of it happens on
television.
Most of what we see there is rather contrived. The
candidate wants to get all of the free media
that he
can grab. In the TV world, somebody merely giving a speech
that explains his positions is known as a talking
head,
and it's considered boring and it might inspire
people to change channels.
So to get a few seconds during the evening news, the candidate needs to stage events that will appeal to the cameras. An address to a Rotary Club in comfortable surroundings is not good television, but an address from the back of a tractor to some farmers, all bundled up against the cold, does make for some theater. So guess what we get to see?
It works out to a game. The candidate's handlers try to figure out what will impress the producer of the evening news, and then stage the events accordingly.
The examples could continue indefinitely, but we'd miss the essential question: Would this event have happened if there had not been cameras around?
This seems to be the best way to separate the
real
from the unreal.
A baseball game would happen with or without TV coverage, but pro wrestling wouldn't. A candidate's service-club speech would happen anyway, but the photo-op wouldn't. Animals would still kill and eat each other, but they wouldn't fall out of cacti.
Once that point is clarified, there's no reason to be very concerned about further manipulation of images. They're all fabrications, constructions and abstractions. Unless, of course, you believe that reality happens inside a rectangle.
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