Images and the Truth Muscle

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

From: PAUL JULIEN <p.julien () worldnet att net>
Subject: Images and the Truth Muscle
To: dave () farber net


Dave:

As this article discusses, the reality is that we absolutely no longer know
what we are looking at in a "photograph", or, more accurately, an image.

We must doubt images now in exactly the same way that we doubt written
statements.  We must suppress the"truth muscle" that contracts automatically
when we look at an image and that makes us tend to instantly believe it, or
believe some part of it, or partly believe it. The adage "A picture is worth
ten thousand words" must now be changed to "A picture is worth zero words".


Excerpts, link, and a 32K jpeg from the NY Times:

The Camera Never Lies, but the Software Can

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/11/technology/circuits/11imag.html




Image shows:
1.1971 - John Kerry preparing to speak at an antiwar rally in Mineola, N.Y.
(Photographer: Ken Light/Corbis)
2.1972 - Jane Fonda at a Vietnam War protest in Miami Beach. (Photographer:
Owen Franken/Corbis)
3. 2004 - A composite Kerry-Fonda photograph in a fake newspaper clipping
circulated widely on the Internet.

. . .

. . . A malicious one surfaced last month, when two photographs taken a year
apart began circulating on the Web as one. The composite, which carried a
false Associated Press credit, purported to show John Kerry and Jane Fonda,
known for her stance against the Vietnam War, sharing a speaker"s platform
at a 1971 antiwar rally.

Conservative groups circulated the manipulated photo for several days, and
it appeared in several publications before it was revealed to be a fake,
apparently stitched together by someone opposed to Mr. Kerry"s presidential
run.


. . . "What if that photo had floated around two days before the general
election and there wasn't time to say it's not true?" said Ken Light, who
took the original photograph of Mr. Kerry - which did not include Ms.
Fonda - at an antiwar rally in 1971.

. . . Nor is photography for political purposes new. In 1840, Hippolyte
Bayard, one of the earliest photographers, staged a picture of himself as a
drowned man because he thought his work was not given proper recognition by
the French government.

. . . a manipulated photo that appeared on the Web in 2002 that showed
President Bush holding a book upside down during a visit with children in
Houston.

. . . Images can also create their own version of reality. David King,
author of "The Commissar Vanishes: The Falsification of Photographs and Art
in Stalin"s Russia" (Henry Holt & Company, 1997), said that point was
brought home to him years ago by a well-known 1920 photograph of Lenin with
the writer Maxim Gorky. "It"s just the two of them standing there together,"
he said. In 1972, Mr. King found the original print of the photo in an
antiquarian bookshop in Amsterdam and saw that it contained more than 20
other people. "They were all wiped out," he said.
When Mr. King showed the original photo to Russian friends, they looked at
him quizzically. "They thought I had put people into the picture," he said
"It had become such an imprint on the Soviet mind".

. . . The damage is not going to be undone later by saying it was a doctored
picture. . . . no amount of legal language or sophisticated tracking can
deter someone who is determined to distort an image.

Paul Julien

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