The Boundaries of Manipulation

"In the New York Times article, the author writes: 'Indeed a manipulated image, which is often more powerful than the sum of its parts, can affect not just visual perception, but opinions as well.' Reflect on this statement. What specific power do photos have to tell the truth? Are there specific guidelines that we should follow? What limitations should there be on image manipulations, posed events, and other types of fakey? What counts as manipulation, and what counts as reasonable editing, cropping or enhancement? "

When thinking about manipulated photography, you may think of the Photoshop techniques we use in Digital Photography to make silly photographs or change the color of people’s faces or clothes but there is a type of manipulated photography that can be so convincing that we cannot tell whether or not it’s real or fake. This is the power that photographs have. When photography was first introduced in the 19th century, there was not a great deal of options as the equipment and skill was so minimal that people would believe any photograph. As technology changed, programs like Photoshop or Correll have allowed us to manipulate everything on an image. We can crop, resize, and change the color, airbrush skin, change backgrounds, really anything. For us images speak louder than words. If we looked at a photo by Matthew Brady, a well-known photographer during the Civil War, we can see the history and what happened back then. A lot of photojournalists travel to such dangerous areas and take photos of bombings, terrorists attacks and the people around the area. I believe there can be reasonable editing on photographs although people will know its fake. Retouching of blemishes or whitening of teeth is reasonable but changing the weight of someone or changing the entire image to make them look guilty or innocent is an entirely different thing. When looking at magazines like National Geographic or even newspapers, I believe they should use all original images even if the pyramids do not fit or if someone is guilty. In the consumer sense of make up, hair products and clothes I think it is more accepted by our society than images containing content of dangerous/important events. Personally, I would like to see a magazine come up with no editing because people have seemed to lose the sense of what is beautiful. Advertisements in magazines with women with the most perfect body; no skin blotches, no cellulite, no wrinkles or pimples are not beautiful because they are “artificial”. Overall, I think manipulating images in magazines and newspapers is not reasonable because it changes our judgment. Manipulation in art is different as it has no effect on the world, only people who enjoy the way you compose the image or the way you layer images together.