Part 2: Press photography versus art photography

 Art photography versus Press photography 

Adam Magyar, #1089 (2008), London, recorded time: 46 sec. 

Tono Stano , Sense, 1992

Photograph courtesy Olivier Laban-Mattei, Agence France-Presse

AP Photo/Altaf Qadri, 2010, in Pattan, India. 

 

1.    The main differences and similarities between art and press photography
2.    Is it ethical and acceptable to alter art photographs? Why? Why not?
3.    Is it ethical and acceptable to alter press photographs? Why? Why not?



Art and press photography share similarity in that both serve as a tool to convey the messages photographers want to send. Both reflect the reality.

Art photography allows photographers to get creative and digital editing of the image or staging the scene to more effectively tell a story/message. Art photography also allows audiences more room to interpret the messages. First picture was taken with “the same technology as the finish line cameras at the Olympic Games, which take thousands of images a second and records through a 1 pixel wide slit”. The photography used this technology to slice the time and space and reconstruct the image by placing them next to one another.(Kottke, 2010) On the other hand, press photography has to inform audiences what happened, when and where it happened so it should come with the captions. Its purpose is not just to inform people but also to raise people’s awareness on certain issues.

Altering art photographs is acceptable because art photography is a way of expressing and telling photographer’s message/story, not a way of giving information. Postproduction process of digital editing of art photographs is allowed if it can help telling a message/story more effectively. Third picture is a great example of a vivid moment captured in press photograph; a young dead child was being thrown away onto the piled-up dead bodies at a morgue in Haiti. A dead child being thrown away as an object maximized the impact of this photo and told everything, how tragic, disastrous and devastated the situation in Haiti was and what people in Haiti was going through.

Press photographs however should not be altered because altered press photographs can mislead people into taking the manipulated and distorted truth as the truth. They should tell the story as it is visually.(Poynter, nd) They should be presented to the audience as the moment was captured/recorded. Audiences tend to take these pictures as they are without analyzing.(Shooting the truth, Iccveska) If press photographs were altered and the audience found it out, it would only mar the credibility of press photographs and photographers.

<Sources>

http://www.newsu.org/courses/language-image

Kertesz Cartier-Bresson From Shooting The Truth Gordana Iccevska

<Pictures>

http://also.kottke.org/misc/images/adam-magyar.jpg

http://www.tonostano.com/index.php?page=folder&id=1&num=5

http://images.nationalgeographic.com/wpf/media-live/photos/000/321/cache/world-press-photo-best-pictures-contest-2011-olivier-laban-mattei-port-au-prince-haiti-morgue_32153_600x450.jpg

http://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/wpph2011/s_w16_06128820.jpg