Manipulation reality
Photographs by their nature are highly manipulable. The gap, between what the photographer thinks is being seen, and the viewer seeing the resulting photograph, offers a long series of opportunities for creativity to be exercised. Most photos receive minor titivations, many need more thorough adjustments, and some are combined into what are effectively collages - as with a new face on another body, processes which have aways been available, but which became radically easier with digital photos, and radically easier again with the help of new ‘AI’ assistance.
Here is the original slide
Between the extremes of a ‘RAW file’ and a transplanted head, a photograph, like the one above, demonstrates modest tamperings. That photo has been changed in mood, but the more interesting change is the movement of the man’s figure across to the right of the woman. This is of no consequence here, but it is not difficult to construct a story of why such changes might be of consequence. There is a more basic point that can be made. Nowhere along that whole line of potential images, from the photographer’s vision, to this page, can we pinpoint
‘reality’.
What we think we see, what we hold as representative of what was seen, what you now view, are all more like tentative proposals than independent existents. The photographer isn’t manipulating reality, what is happening is something nearer to doctoring a suggestion.
reality - Go to a page, in the Mosaic Section of this site, where the pinning down of reality is raised. It is an old game at which photographers have been no more able than artists before them - although their work has let the myth be explored more thoroughly. What is fascinating is that there is nothing we can access which is independent of consciousness; there is nothing 'there' to be pinned down.
This photo is of Devorgilla Bridge in the town of Dumfries, southern Scotland. The bridge, in this form, was built around 1432 to replace a 150 year old wooden structure.
Taken with Velvia film on a Nikon FM2 in early 2000. Focal length: 50mm.
Saturday 1st August 2026
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