We all know the camera can lie.
In a world awash with celebrities who make our faces look like the contents of an organic vegetable box, there’s a healthy level of public vigilance when it comes to fakery and Photoshopping. Stalin’s famous attempts to airbrush Trotsky from photos of Lenin would be laughed out of the Kremlin today. But what about when the camera only tells a half-truth?
If you’ve spent the last few weeks anywhere other than a cryogenic freezer, in a cave, on Easter Island, you’ll have heard about Charles Saatchi. Turns out he doesn’t just have Margaret Thatcher’s election victory and the birth of Damian Hirst’s ego on his conscience. Earlier this month, the Sunday People published photos of the ad man art collector sitting outside a restaurant with his hand round the throat of his wife, Nigella Lawson.
It’s a truly disturbing scene. But according to Saatchi, the photos don’t tell the whole story. Yes, it was his hand, and it was Nigella’s throat – but the exchange, he says, was no more than a “playful tiff”. Nigella left the restaurant in tears simply because the couple “hate arguing”. Make of that what you will.
The simple fact is that we don’t know the whole story yet. As things stand, there’s still scope for Saatchi’s excuses. A photograph captures only the briefest of moments, and in an extremely limited space. A photograph can’t explain itself – and this inevitably leaves it open to misinterpretation. Take this couple in Vancouver, apparently embracing in the middle of a riot. They’ve since claimed that the photo only captures the moment after they were knocked over which rather illustrates the difference a few seconds can make.
Meanwhile, the photographer Lewis Whyld’s 360-degree photographs highlight the restricted nature of space in photography – a dramatic scene can be altered completely when we learn what happened two metres to the right of it ().
There’s been a lot of talk recently about the threats to photojournalism as a profession. Why shell out on high-quality photos when everyone has a camera on their phone and a blog? Well, a skilled photojournalist knows how to capture an image and tell the story behind it. The practice of photojournalism was founded on high ideals: it aimed to present objective narratives, respecting their context. And these ideals are still adhered to – Reuters, for example, shows little mercy to photographers who don’t adhere to its strict guidelines.
The Nokia photographer and the paparazzo have a fairly simple goal – to capture a striking image, whether for Tumblr or the Sunday People. Out of context, that striking image can cause a paroxysm of kneejerking and a storm of speculation within a matter of seconds.
With viral images continuing to dominate the public consciousness, we're in greater need than ever of journalism that tries to show things as they really are. However, if “context” ends up getting Saatchi off the hook, I might almost be willing to believe that the first moon landing was actually photographed in the Hollywood Hills.
More Orlando:
... on being underprepared
...on PR reinventions
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