Art photography also suffers from Photoshop

Some photographers who specialize in art photography are also bothered by computer manipulation of images, since it can rob photographic prints of authenticity and therefore intrinsic value.

I wrote here about the use of Photoshop as being a barrier to believability in an essay entitled "Photoshop: Sophomoric barrier to truth."

Next day, Gary Smith, a photojournalist in the Washington DC area, wrote about the journalistic problems associated with manipulation of images in a piece headlined "What about Photoshop for the photojournalist?"

One might suppose that art photographers would never find fault with the addition or subtraction or glamorization of elements in, say, landscape pictures.

Not so. Rich Bergeman, an art photographer on the west coast, writes:

I'm personally concerned over what Photoshop is doing to the field of art photography. It seems that every ... landscape "captured" these days has to be the most stupendous, colorful, mind-blowing landscape photo ever taken in the history of mankind. Gaudy is the trend these days, and unbelievably "perfect" landscape images are so common now that we're naturally suspicious of the authenticity of all photos we see. I think truth in labeling is needed in art photography as much as in photojournalism.

Rich, in fact, has submitted to an art quarterly an article that pleads for truth in labeling of "pixelgraphs." I have archived an excerpt here:




Here's an example of a pixelgraph from the London Daily Mail. It's one of a series of stylized weather images published on line at this link.