Today I looked at some old photos. All I did was look. As I did, I wondered about the ethics of re-touching personal photos.
I have the skills and technology to change photos—add things, remove things: I can change “reality”. Journalists have long dealt with the anguish caused by manipulation of photos (as the New Zealand Herald recently did with little acknowledgement). When is it permissible, how much can be changed? The point with journalists is that changing photos can change reality by changing the appearance of reality.
Well, what about personal photos? Can we remove a kilo or two? Can we add hair? Can we remove a person who’s no longer part of our circle of approved people?
We edit personal photos all the time, and we always have. In the old days, it was simply cropping: Removing extraneous background to focus on the real subject of the photo. Sometimes, this did indeed include removing unfavoured people. But now we have the technology to easily “improve” the photo, to make it more (or less) than was originally shot. Should we?
So far, any photo I’ve published on this blog has been modified only by cropping (the traditional method), and by improving colour balance and brightness (as I would if the photo was being published in print). What I do makes the photo better and, I would argue, doesn’t materially change the photo or its “reality”. Is it okay to go farther?
Clearly context matters. If I present a photo as mere illustration, it’s completely different than if I present a photo as documentary fact. The same is true for any publisher, mainstream or otherwise. We all have an obligation to reveal when and how we’ve changed a photo.
Does any of that apply to personal photos? Do we have the right to change our past? As digital technology advances, these questions will take greater prominence. In the meantime I’ll err on the side of “no”, even personal photos should remain untouched. Except for that whole cropping thing.
3 comments:
Of course it does. Unless, of course, it's done for the purpose of parody, such as you kissing John McCain.
Other than that, remove the red eye, crop those excessive number of trees on the right side of the photo, but keep the rest of it.
For the most part, we've left our photos alone (outside of red-eye removal and cropping). However, Darren did photoshop a person out of one of our wedding photos - she was frowning and ruining an otherwise amazing picture of me and my Uncle.
I agree with both of you. The main reason I don't usually modify personal photos is that I want documentary evidence of whatever memory the photo is depicting. But I do like the photos to be esthetically pleasing, too, which why I'll crop them. I don't know that I wouldn't remove a person, but I haven't yet. Actually, I can think of one situaiton where I would: To protect the privacy of someone in a photo I'm posting to the blog (unless they gave me permission).
However, I realised that I've posted on the blog a few photos I manipulated and didn't mention that fact. I think that it was pretty obvious that they were manipulated, though. I also manipulated an "arty" photo to remove a reflection of me taking the photo. As far as I know, that's about it (I haven't exactly gone back to check every photo). Guess that now amounts to full disclosure.
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