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Photographs: whence veracity?


Photographs are imbued with a certain level of veracity veracity (vras´itē),
n
 as recordings of the external world. This accuracy is perceived as being at a higher level for photographs than for other two-dimensional representations of the world such as drawings and paintings. Do photographs deserve this attention? Where does the veracity dwell, and from where did it arise?

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Two of the recognized inventors of photography, Louis Daguerre Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre (November 18, 1787 – July 10, 1851) was a French artist and chemist, recognized for his invention of the daguerreotype process of photography. Biography
He was born in Cormeilles-en-Parisis, France.
 and William Henry Noun 1. William Henry - English chemist who studied the quantities of gas absorbed by water at different temperatures and under different pressures (1775-1836)
Henry
 Fox Talbot, had no doubt that their inventions possessed high veracity. Talbot tided his first book The Pencil of Nature (1844-46), and Daguerre called his version of the fixed image an "imprint of nature" and claimed that the daguerreotype daguerreotype

First successful form of photography. It is named for Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre, who invented the technique in collaboration with Nicéphore Niépce.
 "is not merely an instrument which serves to draw Nature; on the contrary it is a chemical and physical process which gives her the power to reproduce herself." (1)

On a day-to-day level, logic dictates that we must accept that a photograph can be used to represent, in some way, the external world as it is perceived, conceived, and understood by humans. People use photographs to represent the real world: for instance, to identify persons (using passports, drivers' licenses), to document results in scientific and medical research, and to illustrate fashion trends. However, using a photograph for illustrative purposes or to verify scientific findings is not the same as accepting that a photograph accurately depicts the external world.

Up until the advent of digital imaging, only a few critics and commentators on photography ever questioned the veracity of photographs. Since the earliest attempts at fixing an image created by light falling onto an emulsion emulsion: see colloid.
emulsion

Mixture of two or more liquids in which one is dispersed in the other as microscopic or ultramicroscopic droplets (see colloid). Emulsions are stabilized by agents (emulsifiers) that (e.g.
, most of those who have made and viewed these images have been convinced of the inherent veracity that photography supposedly holds in regard to depicting the external world. Since the mid-1800s, the general population has considered photography a better representation of the external world than painting, despite logical evidence to the contrary--until digital technology prompted a re-examination.

The camera obscura had long been used as a tool to aid the accurate drawing of scenes from the external world. With the daguerreotype of 1839, the image from a camera obscura had been fixed, as had been achieved by Joseph Nicephore Niepce as early as 1824 (2) and Talbot in 1839. Photography, as a recording mechanism in the mid-1800s, was different from anything that predated it. Accurate painting and drawing is time consuming and requires skills many people lack. Though preparation of photographic plates also required a specific skill set, it no longer tested the manual dexterity and mastery of the brush, pencil, or pen.

Many now argue that the historic veracity of photography has been brought into focus by digital imaging because "digital imaging is revolutionizing the way we think about photography." (3) Yet silver-based photography has always had its manufactured images, its abstract images, its "doctored" images and distortions of the external world. The introduction of digital technology into the imaging field and, in particular, computer-based seamless montage montage (mŏntäzh`, Fr. môNtäzh`), the art and technique of motion-picture editing in which contrasting shots or sequences are used to effect emotional or intellectual responses.  technique has merely called the veracity of photographic images into question by a larger audience. Manipulation has been part of photography since the earliest times. Allegorical al·le·gor·i·cal   also al·le·gor·ic
adj.
Of, characteristic of, or containing allegory: an allegorical painting of Victory leading an army.
 and propaganda pictures were created that did not represent a real world. The reason that manipulated photographs and unmanipulated photographs have coexisted since the beginning of photography without raising more explicit questions as to the difference may lie within the paradox that unmanipulated photographs derived a higher level of veracity from manipulated photographs.

WHERE DOES THE VERACITY LIE?

The veracity of photography was present from the disclosure of the various techniques that became modern photography. To some extent, the veracity predated the introduction of photography because veracity is a characteristic of the image created by the camera obscura. The level of veracity bestowed upon the camera obscura image (appropriately applied) was transferred to the photographic image (inappropriately applied--for no lesser reason than the resultant photographic image, unlike the camera obscura image, was monochromatic monochromatic /mono·chro·mat·ic/ (-kro-mat´ik)
1. existing in or having only one color.

2. pertaining to or affected by monochromatic vision.

3. staining with only one dye at a time.
 and textured by the surface coating Surface coating

A substance applied to other materials to change the surface properties, such as color, gloss, resistance to wear or chemical attack, or permeability, without changing the bulk properties.
).

Some commentators suggest that photography inherited its veracity from the Physionotrace, where a subject sat in the device and had their profile traced onto a copper plate from which multiple copies could be printed. The emerging middle class, who mostly subscribed to this method, believed that the images thus produced "a mechanically transcribed truth." (4) However, Silvia Kolbowski places the verisimilitude of the photograph upon an early photographic experiment in which Niepce reproduced an image by means of contact printing an oiled engraving engraving, in its broadest sense, the art of cutting lines in metal, wood, or other material either for decoration or for reproduction through printing. In its narrowest sense, it is an intaglio printing process in which the lines are cut in a metal plate with a  onto a light sensitive emulsion. (5) Mary Warner Marien suggests that postmortem postmortem /post·mor·tem/ (post-mort´im) performed or occurring after death.

post·mor·tem
adj.
Relating to or occurring during the period after death.

n.
See autopsy.
 photographs, part of the Victorian mourning ritual, were partly responsible for people's belief in photography's high veracity--mostly over painting and memory. (6) Jennifer Green-Lewis places the beginning of the rise in photography's veracity in that same time Roger Fenton Roger Fenton (March 20, 1819 - August 8, 1869) was a pioneering British photographer, one of the first war photographers.

Roger Fenton was born in Heywood, Lancashire.
 was sent to photograph the Crimean War Crimean War (krīmē`ən), 1853–56, war between Russia on the one hand and the Ottoman Empire, Great Britain, France, and Sardinia on the other. The causes of the conflict were inherent in the unsolved Eastern Question.  (1854-56). Yet Fenton's photographs show the battlefield after the bodies were cleared away and, therefore, are not accurate pictures of some of the truths of the event. She says, "Fenton's pictures unambiguously contradicted the newspapers of the day and the later history books." (7) Green-Lewis says the photographs outweighed the written reports in the beliefs of the readers of the day because "they were perceived as independent and unmediated Adj. 1. unmediated - having no intervening persons, agents, conditions; "in direct sunlight"; "in direct contact with the voters"; "direct exposure to the disease"; "a direct link"; "the direct cause of the accident"; "direct vote"
direct
 facts," (8) whereas the written reports had the bias of the author attached. Yet, the rise in popularity of stereographic ster·e·og·ra·phy  
n.
1. The art or technique of depicting solid bodies on a plane surface.

2. Photography that involves the use of stereoscopic equipment.
 photographs during the late 1850s and 1860s contributed to the perceived high veracity of photographs by adding a three-dimensional illusion of depth (9) when carried over into single view, black-and-white photographs. Kolbowski says the verisimilitude of photography "is still loudly proclaimed in the mass media and many areas of the academy." (10)

Martha Rosler Martha Rosler is an artist. She was born in Brooklyn, New York, where she now lives. She graduated from Brooklyn College (1965) and the University of California, San Diego (1974).  points out that many early landscape photographs were double-exposed or double-printed to render clouds in the sky because the orthochromatic orthochromatic /or·tho·chro·mat·ic/ (-kro-mat´ik) staining normally.

or·tho·chro·mat·ic
adj.
Staining with the same color as that of the dye used. Used of a cell or tissue.
 emulsions of the era were incapable of achieving results where clouds and landscape were both correctly exposed at once. She says that veracity posed no problems for the photographer or viewer because the manipulations "were in the service of a truer truth, one closer to conceptual adequacy" (11) This statement presents a contradiction for veracity's true meaning; on one hand, the veracity is determined by the viewer, while on the other hand, veracity is presented in manipulated images. In supporting the high veracity of photography, Lancet (1859) suggested that "[p]hotography is so essentially the Art of Truth--and the representative Truth in Art--that it would seem to be the essential means of reproducing all forms and structures of which science seeks for delineation." (12)

Paul Burrows suggests it is the camera operator, the photographer, who is the untruthful one, more so than the photograph. "The camera lies" (13) because the photographer is in control of the treatment of subject matter in the picture. He says this extends to the picture editor, caption writer, or others in the chain when the photograph is used in a publication. Yet while the photographer is the first responsible influence on a photograph apart from the subject (who may be unaware of being photographed) and usually must bear the brunt of accusation, it is not the photographer who gives photographs their veracity--not directly. Daguerre, Niepce, and Talbot believed that photographs were the product of nature, not of an operator. (14) Elizabeth Ermarth (15) and Green-Lewis identify the creator "of the realist photograph (the documentary picture, the medical record, the mug shot) ..." (16) as a non-person, or at best a collective anonymous author wherein they are perceived to have minimal influence over the way the subject is shown. But the camera itself is a tool, an inanimate inanimate /in·an·i·mate/ (-an´im-it)
1. without life.

2. lacking in animation.


in·an·i·mate
adj.
 object incapable of taking a photograph by itself without human intervention.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

THE PHOTOGRAPHIC PROCESS

At a time when the human eye was thought to be an accurate, reliable, and uninterpretive instrument for viewing the external world, the camera obscura was thought to be the equivalent of the human eye--the "retine physique physique /phy·sique/ (fi-zek´) the body organization, development, and structure.

phy·sique
n.
The body considered with reference to its proportions, muscular development, and appearance.
" (17) or physical eye, and therefore incapable of distorting reality. Of those camera obscuras fitted with a lens, some produced dark and vignetted images with muted hues. Just as with modern photography, the equipment determined the quality of the image. The idea of high veracity came to photography from the camera obscura even though the first fixed images hardly resembled the image as viewed by the camera obscura, or that of the scene in the real world.

The ability of daguerreotypes to show "extraordinary resolution of detail, continuous tonal recording, and [optical] perspective" (18) was a reason cited for the invention's popularity as a scientific tool. But daguerreotypes are small and difficult to view because they must be held at the correct angle to the illumination source. (19) Likewise, they are monochromatic and present an image that is laterally reversed. Talbot's paper negative/positive process obtained lower resolution but the resultant prints were larger and easier to view. At the time of its introduction, photography was "celebrated for its putative ability to produce accurate images of what was in front of its lens." (20) This was largely because "images were seen as being mechanically produced, and thus free of the selective discrimination of the human eye and hand." (21) Yet scenes in photographs are rendered in such a manner as to show the external world in a way different from how it is viewed. Apart from the characteristics already mentioned, any subject movement was blurred because the early daguerreotypes needed up to a 30-minute exposure. Marien writes, "For many people in the nineteenth century, the photograph alloyed a mirror's fine detail with a window's view of the world," (22) and Green-Lewis points out that "the discourse that shaped the early understanding of photography's relationship with truth was distinguished by an eagerness to overlook its human agency." (23)

Green-Lewis posits two misconceptions about photography's veracity: The misconception of the "lack of intrusive surface of other media ... like a pane A rectangular area within an on-screen window that contains information for the user. A window may have many panes. See menu pane.  of glass between the viewer and the world ..." (24) and, consequently, that "being invisible, photography is also assumed to be more accurate than other forms of representation." (25) The photographer is seen, under this definition, as an uninvolved un·in·volved  
adj.
Feeling or showing no interest or involvement; unconcerned: an uninvolved bystander.

Adj. 1.
 innocent bystander by·stand·er  
n.
A person who is present at an event without participating in it.


bystander
Noun

a person present but not involved; onlooker; spectator

Noun 1.
 merely using a detached machine, the picture produced by autogenesis autogenesis /au·to·gen·e·sis/ (aw?to-jen´e-sis) self-generation; origination within the organism.autogenet´ic

au·to·gen·e·sis
n.
1.
. There are marks on a surface, just no "marks of human labour." (26)

PROCESSING THE PHOTOGRAPH

The photographic process itself is as problematic as the equipment used in the "hands-off" nature of the process that reinforced perceived levels of veracity in the early years of its development. Beyond the initial stages, for much of its history, the processing side of photography has been hidden from the photographer by multinational corporations

Main article: multinational corporations

  • ABB
  • ABN-Amro
  • Accenture
  • Aditya Birla
  • Affiliated Computer Services Inc
  • Airbus
  • Allianz
  • Altria Group
  • American Express
  • Akzo Nobel
  • Apple Inc.
 that have controlled the developing and printing of photographs since 1888 for the amateur market. This created a mystification mys·ti·fi·ca·tion  
n.
1. The act or an instance of mystifying.

2. The fact or condition of being mystified.

3. Something intended to mystify.

Noun 1.
 of the process in the mind of the general public, who remain unaware of the manipulative factors of that production. As Mary Price Mary Wolfe Price was an American citizen and secretary to journalist Walter Lippmann of the New York Herald. Sometime prior to March of 1941, Mary Price allegedly agreed to furnish Jacob Golos, controller of the secret apparatus of the Communist Party of the USA (CPUSA) on behalf  puts it, "the assembly line performance of operations" (27) that were once done by the photographer, once relinquished by the amateur, meant that "claims to manipulation" (28) no longer survived for the snapshot and the perception of veracity increased. If the general public had remained more aware of the manipulations possible in processing the photograph, the veracity of photographs may not be as high as it is. However, this does not take into account the knowledge possessed by professional photographers, picture editors, and others of the techniques of photographic production.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Early photographic processes This page list various photographic processes. Color
  • Chromogenic positive (Ektachrome)
  • E-4 process
  • E-6 process
  • Chromogenic negative
 varied in their ability to produce consistent quality. On one hand there is the "grainy grain·y  
adj. grain·i·er, grain·i·est
1. Made of or resembling grain; granular.

2. Resembling the grain of wood.

3. Having a granular appearance due to the clumping of particles in the emulsion.
, soft and shadowy quality of, for example, the Hill and Adamson Hill and Adamson

Scottish photographers. David Octavius Hill (b. 1802, Perth, Perthshire, Scot.—d. May 17, 1870, Newington, near Edinburgh), originally a painter, was a founding member of the Royal Scottish Academy and its secretary for 40 years.
 portraits of the mid-1840s ..." (29) compared with the "crisp, detailed appearance" of the work of Edouard-Denis Baldus of 1851. (30) The calotypes of Louis De Clercq from the mid-1850s are soft with a narrow tonal range. Talbot's first images were not very sharp because his table salt and nitrate of silver a white crystalline salt (AgNO3), used in photography and as a cauterizing agent; - called also lunar caustic ltname>, and more commonly called silver nitrate ltname>.

See also: Nitrate
 coating penetrated his paper's fibers. (31) The albumen al·bu·men
n.
1. The white of an egg, which consists mainly of albumin dissolved in water.

2. Albumin.



albumen

the white of the egg; typically comprising 60% of a bird egg.
 prints from Gustave Le Gray's glass negatives from the 1860s are sharp, full of fine detail with a wide tonal range. It is difficult to distinguish them from photographs taken a hundred years later with modern materials. While soft, grainy photographs would hardly lead a viewer to say such an image resembles the external world, the sharp, finely detailed images might. Except they are monochrome and do not resemble, in that regard, the colored external world, and might show detail more sharply than the human eye can resolve. So how a conclusion that photography should have a high veracity came about at the beginning of photography is difficult to fathom fath·om  
n. Abbr. fth. or fm.
A unit of length equal to 6 feet (1.83 meters), used principally in the measurement and specification of marine depths.

tr.v.
 using these criteria.

THE PHOTOGRAPHIC CONCEPT GENERALLY

Max Kozloff (32) suggests that photographs partly receive their high veracity because people believe they affirm the external world. But as John Berger says, "The relationship between what we see and what we know is never settled." (33) Many of the comparisons that gave rise to photography's veracity were with painting or human memory, (34) not comparisons with the external world. Yet in the nineteenth century, photography did not have the high veracity it gathered to itself in the twentieth century. Susan Sontag Noun 1. Susan Sontag - United States writer (born in 1933)
Sontag
 claims that "the consequences of lying" (35) are greater for photographs than for paintings because a fake painting falsifies the history of art whereas a fake photograph falsifies reality. Green-Lewis says of photography: "Doubts concerning its limitations, however, were largely outweighed by enthusiasm for its possibilities, and the camera was far more widely regarded as an instrument of revelation than of deceit." (36) Revelation, however, does not imply truth; it merely reveals detail.

Many photographers make photomontages or staged tableaux in attempts to create a more desirable image than is possible simply by pointing a camera at the external world. In this regard they are aware that photography has a veracity that can be exploited to convince the viewer that their created scene is more truthful than a similar scene created by painting. John Tagg suggests that, by the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the increasing use of photographs by medical, legal, and government instrumentalities helped establish a truth in photography alongside the veracity it derived from its hands-off mechanical nature. (37) Photography provided a "metaphorical substance" (38) to a truthful relationship of reality and provided confirmation of what reality ought to be. "The camera had by the [1890s] become a means of establishing identity as well as verifying authenticity...." (39) Particularly pertinent, says Tagg, is the use of photographs by British police. Of two written guides for police photographers from which Tagg quotes, he says police were "unshaken in their belief in the photograph as a direct transcription of the real." (40) He suggests that the police photographers who wrote the guidebooks see falsifications such as cropping, retouching, or any interference with the negative as "perversions of this purity of nature." (41) William Ivins says that for people "the nineteenth century began by believing that what was reasonable was true and it wound up by believing that what it saw a photograph of was true." (42)

At most, it might be said that photography shows the shape and forms of objects more correctly than other means of three-dimensional representation. In a report to the United States Secretary of the Interior The United States Secretary of the Interior is the head of the United States Department of the Interior. The Department of the Interior oversees such agencies as the Bureau of Land Management, the United States Geological Survey, and the National Park Service.  in 1875, Dr. Ferdinand V Ferdinand V, Spanish king of Castile
Ferdinand V, Spanish king of Castile: see Ferdinand II, king of Aragón.
. Hayden, an expedition leader criticizing poor quality illustrations of topographic features made twenty years TWENTY YEARS. The lapse of twenty years raises a presumption of certain facts, and after such a time, the party against whom the presumption has been raised, will be required to prove a negative to establish his rights.
     2.
 earlier, says, "The truthful representations of photography render such careless work so apparent that it would not be tolerated at the present day." (43) The illustrations Hayden was referring to showed mountains "with angles of sixty degrees inclination, covered with great glaciers and modelled upon the type of any other than ..." those they purported to represent. Retrospectively, it is most obvious that some of the belief in photography's veracity stems from such comparisons with poor quality illustration, and not from comparisons with the object in the external world. This should be seen as criticism of some illustrators, not necessarily verification for photography.

In 1909, George Bernard Shaw Multiple people share the name Bernard Shaw:
  • George Bernard Shaw, the celebrated Irish playwright
  • Bernard Shaw, a journalist and longtime CNN anchorman
  • Bernie Shaw, singer for the band Uriah Heep
 wrote along similar lines about the "terrible truthfulness of photography." (44) He was comparing a painting of a pretty girl, whom the painter calls "Juliet" after Shakespeare's character, with a photograph of a pretty girl, whom the photographer calls "Juliet." As Shaw describes it, the photograph "is still Miss Wilkins, the model. It is too true to be Juliet." (45) Like in the previous example, this is affording photography a high veracity while comparing a photograph with a painting and not with the object in the external world. This situation might indicate that the clear meaning of the perceived high veracity as it applies to photographs has changed over time. The terrible truthfulness of photographs once meant "as compared with painting" whereas more recently it has come to mean "as compared with the object in the external world." This change might have been brought about by the introduction over time of sharper images due to faster emulsions in conjunction with faster shutter speeds, truer color images, and a more sophisticated appreciation of images.

Always, the photograph's "direction has been towards the revelation of truths," (46) and this accelerated with the beginning of deliberate documentation of things and events, came to maturation with the establishment of photojournalism, and continues still. As an exercise of propaganda--brainwashing--photography's veracity has been hugely successful, but it seems not to be the product of a sentient sentient /sen·ti·ent/ (sen´she-ent) able to feel; sensitive.

sen·tient
adj.
1. Having sense perception; conscious.

2. Experiencing sensation or feeling.
 mind, only a theme running through history, an inevitability based on a fraud.

Veracity did not exist for photographs before the first photograph. Whatever veracity was contained in illustrations made using the camera obscura transferred to photography, but the higher claim came from the process itself, first called by Daguerre. As Alan Thomas Alan Thomas is a British-based guitarist who performs on both classical and electric guitar.

He was born in Atlanta and completed his studies with Ernesto Bitetti at Indiana University, as well as at the University of California at San Diego, where his teachers included
 suggests, "It took the Victorians, both photographers and the public, some time to learn" the visual language of photography. (47) George Levine states that nineteenth-century realism "was not a solidly self-satisfied vision based in a misguided objectivity and faith in representation, but a highly self-conscious attempt to explore or create a new reality." (48)

Perhaps a mistaken belief in a high veracity for photography lies not in a concept but in the language used to talk about the subject. As Green-Lewis explains: "The verb to photograph is not distinct from its noun form." (49) This understanding continues in present times with reference to taking photographs rather than making them. The picture, this suggests, "is already there, we do nothing to change it ... merely carry it away...." (50) The language has allowed a confusion to arise in the mind of the viewer.

THE MIND OF THE VIEWER

Stanley Cavell Stanley Louis Cavell (born September 1, 1926) is an American philosopher. He is the Walter M. Cabot Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the General Theory of Value at Harvard University.  supposes that the difference between the object itself and a photograph of the object is sense-data. (51) If the sense-data of the photographed object were the same as the sense-data of the object "we couldn't tell a photograph of an object from the object itself." (52) Those who believe in the veracity of photographs do so because they want to believe it and because they have a vested interest Vested Interest

A financial or personal stake one entity has in an asset, security, or transaction.

Notes:
For example, if you have a mortgage, your bank has a vested interest on the sale of your house.
See also: Right
 in doing so. Professional photographers need to sell photographs to earn a living; newspaper owners and editors want to sell newspapers; critics and commentators need to enliven en·liv·en  
tr.v. en·liv·ened, en·liv·en·ing, en·liv·ens
To make lively or spirited; animate.



en·liven·er n.
 the debate to continue being published; and so on. The idea perpetuated and the public caught the craze. Ivins writes that the viewers of early photographs talked of "photographic distortion" until photograph-viewing was so commonplace that the audience became conditioned to photographic images and the distortion was gradually displaced in their viewing mode, which in turn led to descriptions such as "photographic precision" and "photographic truth." (53) Patrick Maynard suggests that viewers' puzzlement puz·zle·ment  
n.
The state of being confused or baffled; perplexity.

Noun 1. puzzlement - confusion resulting from failure to understand
bafflement, befuddlement, bemusement, bewilderment, mystification, obfuscation
 about what early photographic images actually were about, that is, what and how they depicted the external world, "should have signaled an already existing unclarity in their understanding of traditional media as well." (54) In this regard, viewers of camera obscura images did not (or perhaps could not) separate in their minds the image projected (even if it was imperfect) from the image as seen.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

Independently, Jean Hagstrum (55) and Geoffrey Batchen point out that the terminology of the nineteenth century might cloud the definitions for today's reader. If the meaning of terms such as truth and reality were understood differently in the nineteenth century from what they are in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries then comparisons between how modern viewers perceive photography's veracity and how their nineteenth-century counterparts perceived it are, perhaps, impossible to make. As a continuum through time, the understanding of veracity might be misconstrued, tautegorically, wherein writers of the nineteenth century mean one thing and readers a hundred years later construe construe v. to determine the meaning of the words of a written document, statute or legal decision, based upon rules of legal interpretation as well as normal meanings.  something else. Batchen expands on Hagstrum's idea by suggesting that landscapes viewed with optical devices were "no longer seen as a guarantee of unmediated reality" (56) but were taken as metaphors, one of which he lists as "real-ideal." (57) It may be difficult, if not impossible, for the modern scholar to ascertain the correct meaning and nuance of the thinking of the time even from the writing of the inventors of photography and their contemporaries who commented on and criticized the results.

Logic will only apply when like is compared with like. The difference in appearance between the image projected in a camera obscura and the scene in the external world is marked, but not very much so. The difference in appearance between the image in the camera obscura and the daguerreotype or calotype Cal´o`type

n. 1. (Photog.) A method of taking photographic pictures, on paper sensitized with iodide of silver; - also called Talbotype ltname>, from the inventor, Mr. Fox. Talbot.
 is marked, very much so. It requires more than logic to infer the same true things from both images even when it is conceded that there is similarity in detail, tonal range, shape, and form. The ardent desire to see a fixed image formed by the camera obscura was strong enough in the mind of the general public that when this was achieved by Daguerre, Talbot, and others, the public ignored the discrepancy between the tiny, monochromatic recorded image and what the scene from the external world would have looked like.

A photograph freezes a moment in time and usually retains much detail from the scene depicted. If the image shows too much detail beyond that which humans can discern from looking, the resulting photograph will not match what is seen in the external world; if the photograph has low resolution (as do Talbot's early images) the resultant photographs will not match the external world as humans see it. In both these ways photographs are different from how humans see the external world so that the picture cannot faithfully represent anything the viewer has seen or experienced in the external world. The most convincing argument for photography's veracity is that viewers "imagine correctly and in great detail how their subjects are...." (58) Derrick Price and Liz Wells warn that direct comparison with perceptions now are inappropriate because in the mid-nineteenth century "drawing was received differently" (59) so photography was perceived by some as replacing "the informational sketch," (60) more so than interpretative in·ter·pre·ta·tive  
adj.
Variant of interpretive.



in·terpre·ta
 or creative painting. Photography was "seen as offering mechanical accuracy combined with a degree of quality control." (61) "It showed the world without contrivance or prejudice" (62)--at least until the pictorialists abandoned straight photography.

Price and Wells point out that the renewed debate about photography's veracity opened up by the introduction of digital imaging "shows that, in everyday parlance Parlance - A concurrent language.

["Parallel Processing Structures: Languages, Schedules, and Performance Results", P.F. Reynolds, PhD Thesis, UT Austin 1979].
, photographs are still viewed as realistic." (63) Certainly, the primary characteristic of photography is the dependence upon the object present at the moment of making the original exposure. In all cases, because of its production, the photograph has an individual and distinctive relationship with the object in front of the camera. "This physical presence is the origin or source of the possibility of an image and, consequently, the image stands as an index of the once physical presence." (64) Many commentators, including Roland Barthes Roland Barthes (November 12, 1915 – March 25, 1980) (pronounced [ʀɔlɑ̃ baʀt]) was a French literary critic, literary and social theorist, philosopher, and semiologist.  and Goran Sonesson, have identified these criteria. And as Price and Wells expand, "It is this indexical in·dex·i·cal  
adj.
1. Of or having the function of an index.

2. Linguistics Deictic.

n.
A deictic word or element.

Adj. 1. indexical - of or relating to or serving as an index
 status [that] is the source of the authority of the image." (65) Barthes, as Price and Wells point out, regards photographs as signifying reality "rather than reflecting or representing it. The emphasis is upon what the viewer as 'reader' of the image takes as the principal cues and clues for use as the basis of interpretation." (66)

The use of photographs in heritage tourist venues to depict a history that might be unrelated to the original purpose of the photograph has renewed photography's "implicit claim to authenticity." (67) For instance, a photograph of factory laborers taken to emphasize the unsafe working conditions might be later presented to depict the fashions of the era or the appearance and stance of members of a particular trade. To some extent, veracity was thrust upon photography in its early stages as a reaction to contrived images such as Oscar Gustave Rejlander's Two Ways of Life (1857) and Henry Peach Robinson's Fading Away (1858) and "practitioners of the medium were urged to stick to images of observable reality" (68) because the photograph's optically accurate image better resembled human vision. This ignored the fact that both examples given could just as well have been staged and photographed on one negative as created in a darkroom darkroom,
n a completely lightproof room or cubicle that is used in the processing of photographic, medical, and dental films. See also safe light.
 from many negatives. This debate was, however, a concurrent debate about photography as high art more so than about its veracity, having already been assumed, as can be seen in the idea that rendering a photograph "a little out of focus" (69) would make it less real and more painterly paint·er·ly  
adj.
1. Of, relating to, or characteristic of a painter; artistic.

2.
a. Having qualities unique to the art of painting.

b.
, as the pictorialists believed. This sacrifice of detail went against a demand for photographs to "submit to the iron law of 'things as they are'" (70) held by some practitioners and critics of the time because "photography is pre-eminently the art of definition." (71) Perhaps it was the newness of the imaging medium that confused nineteenth-century thinking. Marien describes photography as providing "a new kind of verisimilitude, not quite a copy, not quite an actuality ac·tu·al·i·ty  
n. pl. ac·tu·al·i·ties
1. The state or fact of being actual; reality. See Synonyms at existence.

2. Actual conditions or facts. Often used in the plural.
...."(72)

Human understanding of reality, and beliefs about photography's depiction of reality, is the product of education, cultural influences, ability to discern information, and reactions to the development of ideas over time, along with the mind's sequences of self-righting and filtering of knowledge. There are social experiences that condition particular beliefs, mental function, development, adaptation, and organization that may be in conflict or allied to each other. A natural truth can be misinterpreted for many reasons--propaganda, misunderstanding, misconception, etc.--and accumulate over time. The key to this discussion ultimately lays in the general public's belief in a high veracity for photographs. Having grown up with a notion that "the camera never lies," having taken photographs themselves and seen the resultant image so similar to what they saw in the viewfinder The preview window on a camera that is used to frame, focus and take the picture. On analog cameras, the viewfinder is an eye-sized window that must be pressed against the face. Point-and-shoot digital cameras use small LCD screens that are viewed several inches from the eyes. , the average person supposes the high veracity of photographs either without considering the matter deeply enough to ponder the opposite or ignoring the characteristics of the photograph that do not resemble the characteristics of the external world: such as black-and-white images of colored scenes, and still/frozen scenes from a moving continuum. In some instances they see photographs of people they know well, including themselves, and consider that the image does not look like that person, or themselves, yet the belief stands unquestioned as to photography's high veracity. The illusion is an allusion al·lu·sion  
n.
1. The act of alluding; indirect reference: Without naming names, the candidate criticized the national leaders by allusion.

2.
. Miles Orvell expresses the idea that "the cultural significance of the camera lies not in the image it produced, but in how people thought about it." (73) To take this idea and place it in the context herein brings the notion that people who want a high veracity for photographs will draw such a conclusion. In effect, people take the veracity of photography as a given and give away the notion of accurate representation.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

MICHAEL SHAPTER is an Australian medical and forensic photographer who has published three books of his fine art photography, and is currently completing a doctoral degree.

NOTES 1. Louis J.M. Daguerre, "Daguerreotype" in Alan Trachtenberg Alan Trachtenberg is Neil Gray, Jr. Professor Emeritus of English and American Studies at Yale University. He received his Ph.D. in American Studies at the University of Minnesota. , ed., Classic Essays on Photography (New Haven New Haven, city (1990 pop. 130,474), New Haven co., S Conn., a port of entry where the Quinnipiac and other small rivers enter Long Island Sound; inc. 1784. Firearms and ammunition, clocks and watches, tools, rubber and paper products, and textiles are among the many : Leete's Island Books, 1980), 12. 2. A.D. Bensusan, "Letters to the Editor" British Journal of Photography 149, no. 7389 (2002), 11. 3. B. Blackman, "Intro--analog photography & digital imaging" in Creating Digital Illusions; available at www.image-ine.com/high/b_works/ab_analog_digital_works.html. 4. John Tagg, The Burden of Representation: Essays on Photographies and Histories (London: Macmillan Press Ltd, 1988), 40. 5. Silvia Kolbowski, "Playing with dolls" in Carol Squiers, ed., Over Exposed: Essays on Contemporary Photography (New York New York, state, United States
New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of
: New Press, 1999), 162. 6. Mary Warner Marien, Photography and Its Critics: A Cultural History 1839-1900 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press Cambridge University Press (known colloquially as CUP) is a publisher given a Royal Charter by Henry VIII in 1534, and one of the two privileged presses (the other being Oxford University Press). , 1997), 75. 7. Jennifer Green-Lewis, Framing the Victorians: Photography and the Culture of Realism (London: Cornell University Cornell University, mainly at Ithaca, N.Y.; with land-grant, state, and private support; coeducational; chartered 1865, opened 1868. It was named for Ezra Cornell, who donated $500,000 and a tract of land. With the help of state senator Andrew D.  Press, 1996), 102. 8. Ibid. 9. Marien, 78. 10. Kolbowski, 162. 11. Martha Rosler, "Image simulations, computer manipulations, some considerations" Ten-8 2(2) 1991, 54. 12. Lancet, January 22, 1856, 89. 13. Paul Burrows, "What you see is what you want to see," ProPhoto 58, no. 7 (July 2002), 5. 14. Marien, 3. 15. Elizabeth Deeds Ermarth, Realism and Consensus in the English Novel Early novels in English
See the article First novel in English. Romantic novel
The Romantic period saw the first flowering of the English novel. The Romantic and the Gothic novel are closely related; both imagined almost-supernatural forces operating in nature or
 (Princeton: Princeton University Princeton University, at Princeton, N.J.; coeducational; chartered 1746, opened 1747, rechartered 1748, called the College of New Jersey until 1896. Schools and Research Facilities
 Press, 1983). 16. Green-Lewis, 227. 17. Dominique Francois Arago, Comptes Rendus Hebdomadaires des Seances de Academie des Science (Vol. 8) (1839), 270. 18. Patrick Maynard, The Engine of Visualization: Thinking Through Photography (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1997), 72. 19. Geoffrey Batchen, Each Wild Idea: Writing, Photography, History (Cambridge, MA: MIT MIT - Massachusetts Institute of Technology  Press, 2002), 61. 20. Derrick Price and Liz Wells, "Thinking about photography" in Liz Wells, ed., Photography: A Critical Introduction, 2nd Edition (London: Routledge, 2000), 13. 21. Ibid. 22. Marien, 39. 23. Green-Lewis, 103-104. 24. Ibid., 109. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid., 119. 27. Mary Price, The Photograph: A Strange, Confined Space Confined space is a term from labor-safety regulations that refers to an area whose enclosed conditions and limited access make it dangerous. Description
A confined space is any space: 1) that has limited or restricted means of entry or exit; 2) is large enough for a
 (Stanford: Stanford University Stanford University, at Stanford, Calif.; coeducational; chartered 1885, opened 1891 as Leland Stanford Junior Univ. (still the legal name). The original campus was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. David Starr Jordan was its first president.  Press, 1994), 30. 28. Ibid. 29. Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Photography at the Dock: Essays on Photographic History, Institutions & Practices (Media & Societies Series, Vol. 4) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press The University of Minnesota Press is a university press that is part of the University of Minnesota. External link
  • University of Minnesota Press
, 1991), 4. 30. Ibid. 31. Maynard, 42. 32. Max Kozloff, Photography and Fascination (Danbury, NH: Addison House, 1979). 33. John Berger, Ways of Seeing (London: Penguin, 1972), 7. 34. See Oliver Wendell Holmes, "The stereoscope stereoscope (stĕr`ēəskōp'), optical instrument that presents to a viewer two slightly differing pictures, one to each eye, to give the effect of depth.  and the stereograph ster·e·o·graph  
n.
Two stereoscopic pictures or one picture with two superposed stereoscopic images, designed to give a three-dimensional effect when viewed through a stereoscope or special glasses.

tr.v.
" in Trachtenberg, ed. See also note 1 and Oliver Wendell Holmes, "Sun-painting and sun-sculpture," Atlantic Monthly 8 (July 1861), 14. 35. Susan Sontag, On Photography (New York: Dell Publishing, 1977), 86. 36. Green-Lewis, 3. 37. Tagg, 60-61. 38. Green-Lewis, 20. 39. Ibid., 68. 40. Tagg, 98. 41. Ibid. 42. William Mills William Mills may refer to:
  • Sir William Mills (inventor of the Mills bomb) (1856-1932), inventor of the Mills bomb.
  • William Arthur Frank 'Billy' Mills (1898-1937), South African racing driver.
  • William Corless Mills (1860-1928), a US museum curator.
 Ivins Jr., Prints and Visual Communication (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1953), 94. 43. Alan Thomas, The Expanding Eye (London: Croom Helm Ltd., 1978), 37. 44. Ibid., 163. 45. Ibid. 46. Ibid., 77. 47. Ibid., 161. 48. George Levine, The Realistic Imagination (Chicago: University of Chicago Press The University of Chicago Press is the largest university press in the United States. It is operated by the University of Chicago and publishes a wide variety of academic titles, including The Chicago Manual of Style, dozens of academic journals, including , 1981), 19-20. 49. Green-Lewis, 64. 50. Ibid. 51. Stanley Cavell, "More of the World Viewed" in Stanley Cavell, ed., The World Viewed: Reflections on the Ontology ontology: see metaphysics.
ontology

Theory of being as such. It was originally called “first philosophy” by Aristotle. In the 18th century Christian Wolff contrasted ontology, or general metaphysics, with special metaphysical theories
 of Film (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press The Harvard University Press is a publishing house, a division of Harvard University, that is highly respected in academic publishing. It was established on January 13, 1913. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. , 1979), 20. 52. Ibid. 53. Ivins, 138. 54. Maynard, 119. 55. Jean Hagstrum, The Sister Arts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958). 56. Geoffrey Batchen, Burning With Desire: The Conception of Photography (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997), 81. 57. Ibid. 58. Maynard, 29. 59. Price and Wells, 13. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid., 15. 62. Ibid., 16. 63. Ibid., 18. 64. Ibid., 34. 65. Ibid. 66. Ibid., 43. 67. Ibid., 60. 68. Marien, 88. 69. William Newton "Address to the Photographic Society of London," Journal of the Photographic Society 1 (March 3, 1853), 6-7; and Henri De la Blanchere, "L'Art du photographe," Amyot Editeur (1859), 3. 70. H.J. Morton, "The Sister Arts," Philadelphia Photographer 3 (March 1866), 72. 71. Henry Peach Robinson Henry Peach Robinson (b. Ludlow July 9,1830 – d. February 21, 1901) was a British pioneer Pictorialist photographer who made combination prints that joined multiple negatives to form a single image (photomontage). , "Pictorial Effects in Photography," 1971 reprint (Pawlet, VT: Helios Press), 145 (first published in 1869). 72. Marien, 111. 73. Miles Orvell, The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880-1940 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press The University of North Carolina Press (or UNC Press), founded in 1922, is a university press that is part of the University of North Carolina. External link
  • University of North Carolina Press
, 1989), 199.
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