Claiming the truth
– How the digital challenges the photographic document
Name: Kristin Hoell
Date: January 17th, 2012
Course: AGM61 – Historical & Critical Studies, Contemporary Debates & Research Methodologies
Claiming the truth – How the digital challenges the photographic document
In March of 2009, an exhibition named Controverses took place in Paris. It
assembled a large historical body of photographs which had been
divisively discussed for different reasons, which had been questioned for
their veracity or which had been manipulated – from fairies photographed
by two teenage girls in Great Britain – Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths
– in the early 20th century to the widely known retouched photograph of
Soviet soldiers running up their flag on the Reichstag in Berlin after their
victory in World War II. Watches on their arms had been removed,
because they were a sign that they had been robbing the defeated.
To look back on this exhibition is interesting against the
backdrop of the early debates, which had been led around the invention
of digital photography. The future of photography appeared to be in
danger at the end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s due to
the rise of digital technologies which are easily to be manipulated and
hence seemed to threaten photography's special nature as a truthful
medium. Some theorists, like William J. Mitchell, even went as far as
declaring the post-photographic era or the death of photography. In his
book Burning with Desire, Geoffrey Batchen has assembled a collection of
dark prophecies made for photography's further (non)existence with the
advent of the digital. Some of them are worth being noted here again, in
order to introduce the area of tension photography found itself in when
digital technologies took over in the early 1990s.
Timothy Druckrey wrote in 1988: "As digitization emerges as
a state-of-the-art method of encoding photographic images, the very
foundation and status of the [photographic] document is challenged."1
In his view, the status of photography as a medium capable of
documenting is endangered by digitization. In 1990, Fred Ritchin stated
his concern regarding the loss of truth in photography due to digital
technologies, too: "In fact, the new malleability of the image may
eventually lead to a profound undermining of photography's status as an
inherently truthful pictorial form (…) If even a minimal confidence in
1
Batchen 1997, 206
1
photography does not survive, it is questionable whether many pictures
will have meaning anymore, not only as symbols but as evidence."2 In the
same year Anne-Marie Willis noted that "photography loses its special
aesthetic status and becomes no more than visual information."
Traditional film and paper based photography will disappear, she
continues, "both as a technology and as a medium-specific aesthetic."
She concludes: "The end of photography is not the end of something
that looks like photography, but the end of something which can be
considered as stable."3 So again, photography's capacity to be a record of
the real; photography as something "which can be considered stable"
seems to be put at stake by digital processes. Paul Willemen is another
critic who joined the choir of those claiming that photography will loose
its believability due to the introduction of digital technology.
"Photochemical images will continue to be made", he acknowledges,
"but the change in the regime of 'believability' will eventually leech all the
resistance that reality offers to 'manipulation' from even those images
(…) The digitally constructed death mask has lost any trace (…) of the
dialectic between index and icon."4
Two observations made by these early critics of the new
development in photography seem to give room for the vehement
declaration of photography's death or the post-photographic era: Firstly,
they claim that the indexical property of photography – which they
perceive as the agent for "photography's status as an inherently truthful
pictorial form" – disappears due to the move away from photo-chemical
processes to the encoding of images. Secondly, they argue that digital
technology advances manipulated imagery, which will eventually lead to a
general distrust in all images that have a photographic look since digital
imagery can be manipulated seamlessly.
However, the exhibition in Paris shows that manipulated
photographic imagery has always been part of the photographic history
and that it is not a new invention that came with digital technologies.
Many critics today who are arguing against the notion of a post2
Ibd.
Ibd.
4 Willemen quoted in Doane 2008, 4 f.
3
2
photographic-era do agree with this observation. Their most prominent
agent is Tom Gunning, who affirms that the truth in photography has
always been a claim which has been made for photography. This essay
shares Gunning's point of the truth in photography being – and always
having been – a claim, a social construct. I aim to examine the two main
interpretations of the indexical in photography (the index as a trace on
the one hand and as a pointer on the other) regarding their relationship
to the photographic "truth" and how this status has changed with the
advent of digital technologies. I propose that the advent of digital
photography has not corrupted the basic nature of the index, but has
facilitated criticality around the notion of the index as an inherently
truthful device within digital as well as analogue photography.
The index's name derived from the semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce
and his triangular relation of signs, developed around the turn of the
20th century. To give a basic explanation: Peirce said that there exist
three kinds of signs: icons, indices and symbols. "A phenomenon may be
represented or may represent iconically (through some likeness to a
quality it possesses), indexically (by way of a real connection to some
thing), or symbolically (by being so interpreted)", Martin Lefebvre
explains.5 Thus, photographs belong to the class of signs which bear a
physical connection to the signified. Peirce rooted them in the class of
indices, distinguishing them from the class of icons – even though the
common assumption would be that photographs belong to the class of
the icon, which provides meaning through resemblance. 6 Peirce justifies
this classification by stating:
"Photographs, especially instantaneous photographs, are very instructive,
because we know that they are in certain respects exactly like the objects they
represent. But this resemblance is due to the photographs having been
produced under such circumstances that they were physically forced to
correspond point by point to nature. In that aspect, then, they belong to the
second class of signs [indices], those by physical connection."7
5
Lefebvre 2007, 225
Cf. Krauss 1986, 215
7 Peirce quoted in Krauss 1986, 215
6
3
Hence, photographs do not need to look like the object that they are
physically related to. Even without resemblance, they still assure that
something has been in front of the camera at one point. Resemblance
may occur, but it is not necessary to the functioning of the index as
sheer evidence that something has happened or that something exists or
existed, Mary Ann Doane explains.8 Thus, the photograph is a trace that
does not necessarily have to show what it is a trace of and it does not
necessarily explain itself.
The observation of photography's direct link to the objects
photographed has effectively been around from the beginning of
photography. From its inception, it was praised for its automatic
capturing of the world.9 Henry Fox Talbot named the first photo book
The Pencil of Nature, thereby claiming that nature had written itself onto
the images without intervention of a human hand. In his 1945 essay
Ontology of the Photographic Image, written a century later than the
publication of Talbot's book, André Bazin still finds the same essence
for the photographic medium:
"For the first time an image of the world is formed automatically, without the
creative intervention of man. The personality of the photographer enters into
the proceedings only in his selection of the object to be photographed and by
way of the purpose he has in mind. (...) Photography affects us like a
phenomenon in nature, like a flower or a snowflake whose vegetable or earthly
origins are an inseparable part of their beauty."10
Bazin continues, arguing that this production by automatic means had
radically affected our psychology of the image: "The objective nature of
photography confers on it a quality of credibility absent from all other
picture-making. In spite of any objections our critical spirit may offer, we
are forced to accept as real the existence of the object reproduced,
actually, re-presented, set before us, that is to say, in time and space."11 At
this point it is important to notice that Bazin attributes "a quality of
credibility absent from all other picture-making" to the photograph due
to its "production by automatic means." In this case, he is stressing the
iconic side of the photograph; the fact that the majority of photographs
8
Cf. Doane 2008, 6
see further Photography Reader, 219
10 Bazin 1945, 241
11 Ibd.
9
4
are made to resemble the objects which were in front of the lens and
attributes it with "credibility", with a truthful "one-to-one" depiction of
reality. According to Martin Lister, this casting of photographic images
as slavish imprints of physical reality, as mirrors held up to the world, or
as open windows through which it can be directly seen, is as old as
photography itself.12 But this is only one way in which photography has
been perceived historically. Lister continues saying that the apparently
new opposition between digital and analogue imagery derives from an
old debate about photography. He describes the dichotomic discussion:
This is the debate between those who have stressed the photographic image's
privileged status as a trustworthy mechanical analogue of reality and those who
have stressed its constructed, artifactual, and ideological character. The former
position stresses the automatic means by which a photograph is produced, the
latter the myriad decisions, conventions, codes, operations and contexts which
are in play both when the photograph is made and when it is made sense of by
a viewer.13
Consequently, the realist view that sees photographs as an analogue of
reality has been only one side in discussions around photography.
Another route was to stress the constructedness of the photographic
image. It is arguable that both sides are discussing the iconic property of
photographs rather than the actual indexical quality, which only asserts
that a contact has occured.
Hence, questioning the "credibility" and "truthfulness" that
were commonly associated with photographs is not a new discussion
which arose with the advent of digital photography. It has always been
an integral part of the discourse on the nature of photography, but it has
been neglected in the early writings on digital photography. As Lister
notes, only the realist's view stayed attached to analogue photography,
whereas "what could be called the constructivist position has been
transferred to the digital."14 The opposition between a realist and a
constructivist view on photography that was once part of the discourse
within analogue photography was turned into an opposition between
"realist" analogue photography and "constructed" digital photography –
omitting that analogue photography has been discussed as being
12
Cf. Lister 2003, 219
Ibd.
14 Ibd.
13
5
constructed, too. To sum up: Following the concept of the index as a
trace, photography is said to be indexical because of its physical relation
between the object in front of the camera and the image that results.
Historically, there are two views on photography that rely on the
intertwining of the indexical and the iconic property of photographs: a
realist view which attributes credibility to the photograph and a
constructivist view which stresses its artifactual character. Moreover, the
relation between object and image can be iconic; the image can resemble
the object, but it does not necessarily have to. A photograph can still be a
photograph and be considered indexical without looking like the object
that stood in front of the camera.
Now, critics who deny the indexicality of the digital image rely
on the following assumption: The negative in traditional photography
which is produced by photons15 reflecting off an object in front of a
lens being captured on light-sensitive emulsion resembles the
photograph. "For the indexical image, through its physical connection,
touches the real, bears its impression, and hence assures us that it is still
there", says Mary Ann Doane, continuing, "while the digital image has
the potential to abstract and isolate itself, severing any connection with
an autonomous reality."16 Digital images, which are encoded in a matrix
of numbers, do not look like a photograph, which renders them
–
according to the critics – non-indexical. Tom Gunning disagrees, saying:
"The fact that rows of numbers do not resemble a photograph, or what
the photograph is supposed to represent, does not undermine any
indexical claim."17 He does not quote Peirce explicitly, but he argues with
Peirce's concept of the index saying that an index does not need to
resemble the thing it represents. 18
Both analogue and digital photography consist of sensitive
surfaces that act as photon counters. Therefore, the indexical moment of
counting photons that bounce off an object and the dependence on
15 Frizot 2007, 276: Michel Frizot proposes the use of the term photons instead of talking about light,
"because the photon is a definite quantity and 'photography' counts photons falling on a surface: it
counts quantities of light."
16 Doane 2008, 9
17 Gunning 2008, 25
18 Cf. ibd., 25
6
something in front of the camera remains in both types of photographic
practice.19 Michel Frizot's description of the photographic process
dissolves the difference between the two: "Accumulation, quantification,
and the fixing of this quantification in a stable state: these are what
define the unique nature of photography."20 This process applies for
both analogue and digital photography. The difference is how the
information resulting from this is captured and stored.
This analysis shows that the moment in which indexicality –
the "touch" – takes place has not fundamentally changed as proposed by
critics of the digital. A light sensitive surface is still counting photons.
Something still needs to be in front of the camera to be captured by it.
What has changed is the process of recording and storing the image in
the form of data – from the negative which resembled the image to
abstract digital data. It is this second step which seems to threaten
photography's trustworthiness, the reason being that the storing of the
image as data "does have strong implications for the way the images can
be (…) indeed manipulated", as Gunning acknowledges. 21
The critics' assume, that the new mode of encoding and the
possibilities of creating Computer Generated Images (CGIs) that look
like "normal" photographs 22 as well as the ease with which manipulations can be seamlessly done today threatens the general belief in
photography. From a point of view that shares the realist praise of the
photographic medium that considers trustworthiness as the medium's
task, this brings photography to an end. In fact, many theorists have
responded that straight photography has always only been a small part of
photographic practice.23 "(…) It always coexisted with equally popular
traditions where a photographic image was openly manipulated and read
as such", Lev Manovich explains. "Equally, there never existed a single
dominant way of reading photography; depending on the context the
19
Cf. Frizot 2007, 276
Ibd.
21 Gunning 2008, 24
22 Following Jean Baudrillards argumentation that CGIs are strictly speaking not images, because "the
real has already disappeared" in them, I am excluding them from the discussion of digital photograph's
indexicality, due to the fact that these images do not necessarily need a referent in the real world and
are not counting photons. Therefore, they don't have the indexical property that photographs have.
They rather belong to a category that could be called digital painting. (Baudrillard 1999, 134)
23 Cf. Manovich 2003, 245
20
7
viewer could (and continue to) read photographs as representations of
concrete events, or as illustrations which do not claim to correspond to
events which have occured", he continues.24 In addition, as the discussion around the concept of the index as a trace and its intertwining
with the iconic properties of photographs has shown, not even the practice of straight photography had been uncontested.25 Consequentially,
Manovich concludes: "Digital technology does not subvert 'normal'
photography because 'normal' photography never existed."26
In fact, this is what the exhibition in Paris and a lot of theorists
expressed in response to the notion of the end of photography due to
the new malleability of the images: Manipulation is not a new
photographic practice that has been invented by the digital. It "had
always been integral to photography."27 Neither montages of different
negatives nor the erasure or adding of details in images are new to
photography.28 It could be said that as much as digital photographs aim
to look like traditional photographs, they also use the same forms of
manipulations that have been used before for analogue images. So, the
difference between the two is not an absolute, but a relative one. 29
Instead, the major difference is that the arena of manipulating
photographs has opened up for a wider range of users. It has moved
away from professionals who needed to invest a lot of time and careful
consideration in transforming images. Today photo editing computer
programs are accessible to everyone and are easy to use – making
manipulations a walk in the park.
24
Ibd.
Cf. Lister 2009, 321: "Arguably", Martin Lister writes, "even the idea of 'straight photograph', in
which the photographer avoids evident artifice, construction and manipulation as a matter of principle,
does not, and cannot, mean an unmediated, uncrafted photograph or an image which is not the result
of intention and shaping by the photographer. The very choice of to work in this way, to avoid dramatic
and rhetorical artificial lighting, for example, to resist any setting up and orchestration of the subject, or
the many manipulations and devices of the darkroom, is itself the outcome of working with ideas and
making choices within a wider set of possibilities." Geoffrey Batchen goes as far as to say: "In the mere
act of transcribing world into picture, three dimension into two, photographers necessarily
manufacture the images they make. Artifice of one kind or another is therefore an inescapable part of
photographic life. Photographs are no more or less "true" to the facts of the appearance of things in
the world than are digital images. (Batchen 1997, 212)
26 Manovich 2003, 245
27 Lister 2009, 321
28 Mitchell dedicates the whole chapter "How to Do Thing with Pictures" in The Reconfigured Eye to
historical photographic manipulations. And as Lev Manovich points out Mitchell is only able to claim
that a digital image is radically different because it is inherently mutable, because he equatates
'normal' photography with straight photography (Manovich 2003, 244)
29 Cf. Gunning 2008, 26
25
8
"But do users of photoshop want an absolute freedom?", Tom
Gunning asks. "Do they really want to create an image or, rather, is their
purpose to transform an image that can still be recognized as a
photograph (…)?"30 Gunning argues that the power of the digital to
"transform" an image depends on maintaining something of the original
image's visual accuracy and recognizability31 , so that we as viewers are
still aware of the "strata of the indexical" beneath the manipulation.
Otherwise, if the image whose indexicality lies in the moment of its
recording (both in analogue and digital processes) is transformed
absolutely, it destroys the indexical quality and would hence no longer be
considered a photograph, whereas when the original image's visual
accuracy and recognizability (its "strata of the indexical") remains, it
could still be called a photograph. Consequently, an abstraction from the
original image in both analoge (for instance, the common darkroom
techniques of dodging and burning) and digital (for instance, using false
colours) can still be considered "true" when the indexical core of the
image remains visible – but this consideration whether the image is still
"true" or whether it is "false" depends on the discourse around the
photograph, as Tom Gunning points out.32 The truth is a claim 33 (and
always has been a claim) that was made for photography; it is the product
of social discourses, a social construct:
The truth claim must always be supported by rules of discourse, whether
rigorously defined (as in scientific or legal evidence) or inherent in general
practice (as in the belief that news reporting generally tells the truth (…)). (…)
As an art form, photography has never been limited to any such restriction to
the factual or accurate. In contrast to the protocols that enabled the truth claim
of the legal or scientific photograph, art photography may create its own
protocols and practices (…).34
Derrick Price also acknowledges that it would be possible to argue that
the authenticity of the image was validated less by the nature of the
photograph itself than through the structure of discursive, social and
30
Ibd. f.
Cf. ibd., 26 : Gunning uses these terms to indicate the manner in which indexicality intertwines with
iconocity in the common assessment of photographs.
32 Cf. ibd., 30
33 Cf. ibd., 27: Gunning explains that he uses the term truth claim in order to "emphasize that this is
not simply a property inherent in a photograph but a claim made for it (dependent, of course, on our
understanding of its inherent properties)."
34 Ibd., 30 f.
31
9
professional practices which constituted photography.35 This concept of
the truth claim, that says that photographs need to be embedded in
larger discourses 36, corresponds with theoretical approaches that stress
the notion of Peirce's idea of the index as a pointer.
The perception of the index as a trace, which I have explained
earlier, because it was used by most critics to proclaim the end of
photography due to the advent of digital technologies, is only one side of
the index's coin. As Mary Ann Doane stresses, it was not necessarily the
most crucial or decisive.37 The other side is the pointing finger, the
deixis 38, which "incarnated the very ideal of indexicality, its purest
form."39 This interpretation derives from Peirce stating: "The index
asserts nothing, it only says 'there'!"40 Rosalind Krauss examines this
relationship of pointing and photography in her essay Notes on the Index:
Part 1. Krauss employs Roman Jakobson's linguistic term shifter to talk
about the pointing in photography. The shifter (similar to the deixis, it
denotes personal pronouns like "I" and "you" and demonstrative
pronouns like "this") is according to Krauss that category of linguistic
sign, "which is 'filled with signification' only because it is 'empty.'"41 With
regards to photography, she then describes that "it is about the physical
transposition of an object from the continuum of reality into the fixed
condition of the art-image by a moment of isolation, or selection. In this
process, it also recalls the function of the shifter." The photograph is
thus "a sign which is inherently 'empty,' its signification a function of
only this one instance, guaranteed by the existential presence of just this
object."42 She concludes that "it is the meaningless meaning that is
35
Cf. Price 2009, 75
Cf. Gunning 2008, 28
37 Mary Ann Doane, 6
38 The term deixis derives from linguistics, where it denotes among others "demonstrative, relative and
personal pronouns (here, now, this, that, I, you, we, them) that only acquire meaning by being
anchored in the specifics of time and space." (see further Green, Lowry 57)
39 Doane 2008, 6
40 Peirce quoted in Doane 2008, 5; Doane as well as David Green and Joanna Lowry explain, that this
duality of the index invokes a complicated relationship of time and space within photographs. The
"once" and "there" of the trace and the "now" and "here" of the pointer. A paradox of then-ness and
now-ness within the photograph that Roland Barthes tried to come to terms with in his observations
on the nature of photography. (see also: Green, Lowry 2003, 56 f.)
41 Krauss 1986, 197
42 Ibd., 206
36
10
instituted through the terms of the index."43 Following Krauss' line of
argumentation it means that meaning has to be applied to photographs
by discourses around it. "For example, the photographic image needs to
be supported by a caption that inscribes it in a field of meanings and
associations for the observer. Otherwise it remains unintelligible: it
evokes no interest; it does not speak to us", Michel Frizot notes in
addition making the necessary structures apparent, that need to surround
photographs in order for them to provide meaning. 44
David Green and Joanna Lowry as well as William J. Mitchell
get to this point via another linguistic route. They relate the concept of
the deixis to speech act theory – though with different focuses. By using
speech act theory Green and Lowry mainly draw attention to the gesture
of photographing, the pointing to the world, the performative aspect of
taking a photograph and thereby saying "Look, this!", which is "itself a
form of indexicality"45 (and which applies equally to both analogue and
digital photography). Mitchell turns to speech act theory in order to
show that "the transaction of valid reporting, stating, or asserting (...) is
defined by constitutive rules."46 He concludes that truth or falsehood of
an image was not simply a congenital property "one conferred at birth by
a particular capture or construction process."47 He says it was, at best,
only partially determined by the maker of the image. "It is a matter, as
well, of how that image is being used – perhaps by somebody other than
the maker – in some particular context", Mitchell states.48 Green and
Lowry note similarly that "truth, from the perspective of speech act
theory, would always ultimately be embedded within a set of social
relationships, a type of contract entered into by language users."49
Accordingly, to look at photographs as deixes means to take
the performative gesture of taking photographs into account, which can
43
Ibd. This correlates with Roland Barthes' conception of the photograph as a message without a
code, as pure denotation that he developed in The Photographic Message in 1977.
44 Frizot 2007, 282
45 Cf. Green, Lowry 2003, 48
46 Mitchell 1992, 218. See also ibd., 191-224: In the chapter "How to Do Things with Pictures" Mitchell
elaborates on different kinds of subsequent rules noted in speech act theory that need to be set in
place in order for an argument to be accepted as being true.
47 Ibd., 221
48 Ibd.
49 Green, Lowry 2003, 52 f.
11
itself be considered indexical (and which applies to both analogue and
digital). On the other hand, it means to acknowledge that the deixis
which amongst others equals the "this" in language, is an empty sign, a
shifter (as Krauss describes it with Jakobson's linguistic term) or a
performative (as Green and Lowry describe it with the term from J.L.
Austin's speech act theory) which needs to be embedded in a larger
discourse in order to provide information and knowledge that could be
considered true. With the increased utilization of digital photography
and the discussions around the end of photography due to the loss of
truth within the photographic field, the interpretation of the index as
deixis in conjunction with linguistic concepts became an increasingly
important concept for photography theory. The reason is that it helps
arguing that truth within photography has always been a construct, that
there has always been a truth claim (to incorporate Tom Gunning's
argument). To put it positively, it also helps arguing that the photograph
as a document – whether it was taken traditionally or digitally – remains
in existence as long as the social contract stating that the specific
photograph is trustworthy is adhered by the makers as well as the
distributors of the photograph and is accepted by the public.50
In conclusion, it can be seen that it is not the index itself that has been
abolished due to the advent of digital photography. The basis of
indexicality as a trace, as a touch, as an inscription of something that was
in front of the camera is still alive in digital times – only the mode of
storing the information has changed; the silver-based chemicals on one
side, encoded data on the other. Both negatives and computer files can
be manipulated, but digital files can be altered with greater ease and
speed with just a couple of clicks. This has led early critics to announce
the death of photography or a post-photographic era – but in fact, it has
fostered a critical and productive discussion about the truth value that
the majority of critics had so far acclaimed for the indexical property of
50 See also Mitchell 1992, 43 f.: Mitchell proposition for what a social contract might look like: "(...) in
addition to examining an image for internal coherence and considering whether it can stand up to
cross-checking against what we know of a situation, we might ask for evidence that it is an authentic
record (…). Was it produced at the time and place claimed, by means of a process guaranteeing
fidelity, by the person identified as its originator? It the originator trustworthy and authorative? How did
the image come to be presented to us? Are there suspicious gaps in its history?"
12
photography (though there has always been a branch of critics that have
emphazised the constructedness of truth in photography).
Consequently, digital photography has emphazised what has
always been a part of the index, but has not been put in focus as it is
today: The index's capacity as a pointer, as deixis, as an empty sign refers
to photography's truth value as a claim, as a contract that is embedded in
a social discourse. Hence, digital technologies might not have abolished
the indexical in photography, but they have changed the status of the
index: The indexical property lost its per se status of guaranteeing
truthfulness (which – looking back on Peirce's conception of the index
that doesn't assert anything, that only says "There!" – it actually never
entirely possessed).
Now, by taking the notion of the deixis in conjunction with
elaborations from speech act theory to the centre stage, the question for
photography's both analogue and digital future is residing in how we
wish to define that contract for truthfulness in photography. When can
photography be considered truthful? Which parameters must be set?
When does manipulation start, and when does truthful reporting end?
13
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Statutory declaration
I hereby declare, that I wrote this essay on my own. Other tools than the ones declared have not been used.
Brighton, January 16th, 2012
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