Foods for thought - photography, Photoshop, and art as lie

[drwex]

I'm a photographer, of sorts. I love/hate Photoshop disasters as much as anyone. And there are reams to be written and said about how Photoshop body morphing has been used to distort and hypersexualize the female figure

Comments

[vibrantabyss]

I would have been much more intrigued to see the same shot pre-and-post Photoshop, rather than two similar but clearly distinct ones. Probably as close as they can manage to collect, but who knows what was done between those two shots?

I'm not sure framing is a lie. I often consider it one of the few bits of art brought into a photo by the photog. The rest think is spot on. I can also understand the art-IS-lie philosophy. Then you can just argue over how many layers of lie are involved in each piece.

[drwex]

I think of framing as very important, particularly in what gets framed out of a shot. I've had multiple occasions in which a shot was improved by cropping out someone who was not the main focus of the picture. However, that happened to be the only image of that person I had captured. If I frame them out of the shot am I then creating the (false) impression that they were not present?

Or to take a more mundane situation - I crop my photos all the time to remove dead space. Along the way I often create the (false) impression that I was closer to the person/action/thing than I actually was.

Minor lies, to be sure, but lies nonetheless.

[vibrantabyss]

Cropping I tend to think of as a cheat, where framing, being done in the moment, seems art to me. Maybe it is just a more artful lie. Even though they are similar, I look at them completely differently.

Thinking about music - I'm not sure I've consciously considered a musician an artist unless I've seen what they can do live acoustic, regardless of their normal performance mode. If you do 20 takes and mix tracks to make it sound good... the art isn't in the musicians, it's in the control booth.

[sariel_t]

Thank you for the links. I enjoyed the reads.

[trowa_barton]

Reminds me of a Chris Rock stand-up, in which he talks about the visual lie:
"Look at you. You got on heels, you ain't that tall. You got on makeup, your face don't look like that. You got a weave, your hair ain't that long. You got a Wonderbra on, your titties ain't that big....and you expect me to tell the truth?"