Monday 26 January 2009

In the times of Photoshop

We live in the times of Photoshop. That means, among quite some other things, that photos that do not seem to look "natural" or "real" are often assumed to be photoshopped. Recently, this happened to me when I looked at the book cover of Peter Nitsch's "Bangkok" (see here). However, it was not photoshopped, as Peter Nitsch let me know. No retouching was done (and that applies to all the photos in the tome), he wrote, the photo was taken exactly as it is shown.

The problem is this: Without being told we can often not know what we are looking at for we can only see what we know, and a photo can only show what it appears to be showing. In other words, a photographer can limit unwanted readings of his pics by making it clear (in the caption, in the accompanying text) how the pictures came about.

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