Re: Photography as a Weapon

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Chris Gulker" <cg () gulker com>
Date: August 13, 2008 4:13:58 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net, rforno () infowarrior org
Subject: Re: [IP] Photography as a Weapon

Dave and Richard-

Writing from the perspective of a former working photojournalist  
(mostly for American daily newspapers and weekly magazines), I'd offer  
this on the topic of photographs:

Media, particularly better newspapers and newsweeklies, often use  
photographs to illustrate and expand the reader's comprehension of a  
given story, and take considerable pains to guarantee the accuracy of  
their pictures (as well as their words).

Yes, photos have, not infrequently, been used as a kind of evidence to  
convince otherwise skeptical readers of a story's basis in fact. The  
recent story about an orphaned 44-lb. cat comes to mind: if the reader  
had only words, they might suspect an exaggeration: the photo (and  
news videos) put such doubts to rest. The cat is huge.

The Iranian missile photo is the most recent semi-clueless propaganda  
effort from a regime not known for a sophisticated command of media.  
Most media outlets that originally used the photo also clearly noted  
the source: in effect, they said 'Here's a photo provided by the  
Iranian government,' which leaves the reader to decide how much they  
do or don't trust the source.

That most outlets missed the fake speaks more to the epidemic of staff  
cuts currently plaguing traditional print media: photos are  
increasingly handled by people who have no formal training in  
photography, particularly in modern digital techniques.

I could write a short book on this topic: suffice to say that photos  
have been used and misused, faked, nuanced and manipulated for more  
than a century - almost since the birth of the medium. It's always  
been possible to lie using either words or photos - a fact well known  
to repressive governments, political operatives, publicists and their  
ilk.  Photoshop and digital techniques merely make it easier to create  
(and discover) convincing fakes.

As always, best policy is 'reader (viewer) beware'...

- Chris
--
Chris Gulker
cg () gulker com
http://www.gulker.com/


On Wed, Aug 13, 2008 at 11:18 AM, David Farber <dave () farber net> wrote:


Begin forwarded message:

From: Richard Forno <rforno () infowarrior org>
Date: August 13, 2008 12:52:36 PM EDT
To: Undisclosed-recipients: <>;
Cc: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Photography as a Weapon



Photography as a Weapon
http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/photography-as-a-weapon/?ref=opinion

As almost everyone knows by now, various major daily newspaper  
published, on July 10, a photograph of four Iranian missiles streaking  
heavenward; then Little Green Footballs (significantly, a blog and not  
a daily newspaper) provided evidence that the photograph had been  
faked. Later, many of those same papers published a Whitman's sampler  
of retractions and apologies. For me it raised a series of questions  
about images.[1] Do they provide illustration of a text or an idea of  
evidence of some underlying reality or both? And if they are evidence,  
don't we have to know that the evidence is reliable, that it can be  
trusted?

Hany Farid, a Dartmouth professor and an expert on digital  
photography, has published a number of journal articles and a recent  
Scientific American article on digital photographic fraud. He seemed  
to be a good person to start with. If a photograph has been tampered  
with, he's the person to analyze how the tampering has been done. I  
wanted to discuss with him the issue of the Iranian photograph  
starting with the issue of why we trust photographs in the first place.

< - >

http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/11/photography-as-a-weapon/?ref=opinion



-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com



--





-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com