THE FAKE AND THE TRUE
by Michele Smargiassi
“I may be wrong,” wrote very concerned photographer Aaron Siskind in 1945, “but the essential illustrative nature of most documentary photography, and the worship of the object per se, in our best nature photography, is not enough to satisfy the man of today, compounded as he is of Christ, Freud, and Marx.”
The moral burden of the three men mentioned in the Siskind quote maybe a bit reduced today, but the photographer’s wish to escape from the “essential illustrative nature” of his instrument is as strong as ever. And it is the subject of an ideological battle between purists and photoshoppers. As if photography, throughout history, has never been “essentially illustrative”. As if the use of an instrument were a crime in itself; as if they existed in the imagination of criminal practices.
“But who said that you should not try to prove”, says a Gregorian chant. Who said photo retouching software is pure evil? After all, since Photoshop was made by small brushes dipped in potassium ferrocyanide, or by glue and scissors, from Henry Peach Robinson to Jerry Uelsmann, imagination photography has been an amazing way to explore dreams. A great theorist and skilled imagination photographer, guiltily ignored by the tired Italian photographic culture, Mexican Pedro Meyer dedicated his life to the rights of the oppressed ‘we-see-what-we-believe’ philosophy of the ‘we-believe-what-we-see’ culture. “Melt among them several photographs,” he wrote, “may be more realistic than watching a single photograph, because reality is richer in every moment.”
The Fake, in photography, is not the contrary of true. The contrary of true is false. But we only have a false when false wants to impersonate itself as true. Over time, I reassessed the famous aphorism by Lewis Hine, a man who believed deeply in the virtue of documentary photography: “Photographs can not lie, but liars may photograph.” Not much about the first part - photographs are forced to lie and it lies especially to people who believe are forced to tell the truth - but rather about the second part. If you are a liar, even the most virgin and untouchable “documentary” photographs will lie in your hands. Ask Joan Fontcuberta how to deceive using “very true” photographs inside crooked explanatory contexts.
Of course, when electronic brushes appear, photography changes. Each photomontage is enhanced, incorporating pictography, writing, and chirography. But be aware. Even the raw file is pure photography because the physical device that takes the photo before issuing them, cooks them like a chef, through recipes embedded in its mechanisms which are designed by engineers, who have their own idea of what makes a good photograph.
To seek compliance with the regime of truth to a mechanism is stupid. Honesty, however, lies in the uses of photography, from the agreement between function and result, in the condition that each author has with his or her reader. Marco Maraviglia’s surreal Naples made an “Italo Calvino-esque” pact with us: to show us an invisible city. And he respected him.
© Michele Smargiassi
Translation: Anthony Iacomino
by Michele Smargiassi
“I may be wrong,” wrote very concerned photographer Aaron Siskind in 1945, “but the essential illustrative nature of most documentary photography, and the worship of the object per se, in our best nature photography, is not enough to satisfy the man of today, compounded as he is of Christ, Freud, and Marx.”
The moral burden of the three men mentioned in the Siskind quote maybe a bit reduced today, but the photographer’s wish to escape from the “essential illustrative nature” of his instrument is as strong as ever. And it is the subject of an ideological battle between purists and photoshoppers. As if photography, throughout history, has never been “essentially illustrative”. As if the use of an instrument were a crime in itself; as if they existed in the imagination of criminal practices.
“But who said that you should not try to prove”, says a Gregorian chant. Who said photo retouching software is pure evil? After all, since Photoshop was made by small brushes dipped in potassium ferrocyanide, or by glue and scissors, from Henry Peach Robinson to Jerry Uelsmann, imagination photography has been an amazing way to explore dreams. A great theorist and skilled imagination photographer, guiltily ignored by the tired Italian photographic culture, Mexican Pedro Meyer dedicated his life to the rights of the oppressed ‘we-see-what-we-believe’ philosophy of the ‘we-believe-what-we-see’ culture. “Melt among them several photographs,” he wrote, “may be more realistic than watching a single photograph, because reality is richer in every moment.”
The Fake, in photography, is not the contrary of true. The contrary of true is false. But we only have a false when false wants to impersonate itself as true. Over time, I reassessed the famous aphorism by Lewis Hine, a man who believed deeply in the virtue of documentary photography: “Photographs can not lie, but liars may photograph.” Not much about the first part - photographs are forced to lie and it lies especially to people who believe are forced to tell the truth - but rather about the second part. If you are a liar, even the most virgin and untouchable “documentary” photographs will lie in your hands. Ask Joan Fontcuberta how to deceive using “very true” photographs inside crooked explanatory contexts.
Of course, when electronic brushes appear, photography changes. Each photomontage is enhanced, incorporating pictography, writing, and chirography. But be aware. Even the raw file is pure photography because the physical device that takes the photo before issuing them, cooks them like a chef, through recipes embedded in its mechanisms which are designed by engineers, who have their own idea of what makes a good photograph.
To seek compliance with the regime of truth to a mechanism is stupid. Honesty, however, lies in the uses of photography, from the agreement between function and result, in the condition that each author has with his or her reader. Marco Maraviglia’s surreal Naples made an “Italo Calvino-esque” pact with us: to show us an invisible city. And he respected him.
© Michele Smargiassi
Translation: Anthony Iacomino
