Synthesis Essay“Photographs intervene in every photograph they make, whether by orchestrating or directly interfering in the scene being imaged; by selecting, cropping, excluding, and in other ways making pictorial choices as they take the photograph” (1)

The first photograph that comes to mind is Robert Capa’s, who Met Museum name "the greatest war photographer in the world” (2), the ‘Fallen Soldier’ (shown below). This is arguably one of the

most iconic war photographs in the world. It shows a man being shot down, whilst having a rifle in his splayed out arm. However, a report in the Daily Mail reveals that there is evidence that this image is not real. Capa photographed his soldier at a location where there was actually no war going on at all. “The real location was approximately 10km from an inactive battle front” (3). The photograph had turned out to be staged.

Additionally, the photograph to the right was also a war photograph, taken in Ukraine in 1942 by Ivangorod. The famous, almost biblical, picture of the German soldier shooting a woman and child. “The photo was mailed from the Eastern Front to Germany and intercepted at a Warsaw post office by a member of the Polish resistance collecting documentation on Nazi war crime”. (4) The full photograph does not resemble a usual execution scene. However, it was soon realised that the photograph was in fact cropped and used to mail to the German soldier’s family. The original photograph is now shown below.

It is difficult to determine what the group of other three people on the extreme right are doing. They seem to be taking cover, or ducking to prevent the fire on themselves. There seem to be digging tools on the ground next to them. Perhaps they were under orders to dig grave for the bodies of Jews being executed. But no grave is visible, and it seems unlikely that a soldier carrying out executions would have started shooting the victims until the grave had been fully dug and prepared.

From these images we start to lose trust and side with Batchen. How do we keep our faith that photography contains truth

when this much manipulation is being used? “What does this mean for the truth value of photography? Does it mean we will no longer believe in the truth of the photographic images we see in our newspapers or on our desks?” (5).

Propaganda is the most dangerous type of photography. Viewers may see a manipulated photograph and believe that this is the truth, that the image conveys the ‘real deal’. However, as photographers, we feel the same about our favourite photographers and their photographs. As I quoted at the beginning of this essay, “Photographs intervene in every photograph they make”. We can’t comprehend that our most adored images that are captured by masters of photography have been tweaked with and photoshopped to some extent; whether it be by dodging and burning, filter differentiation, cropping, etc. every photograph has been orchestrated with.

When digital photography was invented, photographs could be manipulated easily - through Photoshop. It seemed that photographs became less believable to the eye. They sided more with film/analog photography as it was harder to change a photograph than digital where you can completely change an image. On the other hand, we usually forget is that when we take a picture we do not make a perfect recording of reality. What we make is an interpretation of reality.

Another point mentioned in ‘Phantasm’ is that Photography is dying. This could be interpreted in various ways. I, however, have always been interested in this subject. Martin Parr’s blogs on ‘Too Much Photography’ always appealed to me. He makes his photographs filled with busy-ness, humour, and uses confusing depth of field strategies. However in his most recent years, he speaks out about the use of mobile phones and mini digital cameras dominating the importance of a sight, that people care more about the photograph they’re capturing of something than the actual sight itself, “One thing that has really changed in recent years is how the tourist uses photography. Mobile phone cameras and digital photography mean that the entire visit is documented. Everyone has to be photographed in front of every feature of note. Now it is almost impossible for me to shoot a photo where someone is NOT taking a picture or posing for one”.

From reading ‘Phantasm - Digital Imaging and the Death of Photography’, I would say that I have gained more of a view on how film photography was also manipulated as well as digital imagery. Before reading this, I had never thought about how the media used film photography for propaganda and how they were manipulated. Naturally, I agree with what Batchen has written, and have concluded that his theory towards photography dying through the amount of manipulation that photographers have done in previous history was correct. However, I think that because of the new technology nowadays, viewers (of all ages) know how easy editing a photograph really is - whether it be through Instagram, or Adobe Photoshop, or even Facebook filters, we can assume no photographs are natural. It is quite frightening that we cannot be sure that any photograph is real. It will be a tragedy when people stop believing photographs, but nevertheless, all photographs contain truth of some kind. We just have to be honest.

Bibliography(1) Phantasm - Digital Imaging and the death of photography - Geoffery batchen, 1994 (2) http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/283315 - The Metropolitan

Museum of Art(3) http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/shot-down-capas-classic-image-of-

war-1754405.html - Independent - Shot down - Capa's classic image of war.(4) http://afterdarkwrites.blogspot.co.uk/2011/03/above-picture-was-took-at-ivangorod.html -

Afterlight Writes Blog post.(5) Phantasm - Digital Imaging and the death of photography - Geoffery Batchen, 1994.(6) http://www.martinparr.com/2012/too-much-photography/ - Martin Parr ‘Too Much Photography’