One of my all time favorite hobbies, besides watching New York Yankees baseball games, is photography. Though I operate with an amateur’s digital camera, I love the challenge of taking that perfect picture. When I inevitably fail to get the perfect photo, I have the option to use tools like iPhoto and Photoshop to enhance my images. Yet, I rarely use these web tools for anything more than cropping or rotating an uploaded file. One reason is that I am a stickler for maintain the authenticity of the image—even if its only for my aesthetic and personal benefit. I find it interesting that human beings implicitly trust photography. One reason to explain this is that the brain computes visceral image as memories associated with major events, regardless of their historical authenticity (Morris).
You can imagine my chagrin when I read Errol Morris’s blog Photography as a Weapon. In a dialogue with Hany Farid, an expert on digital photography, the two discuss how countries, presumably enemies to the United States, use manipulated photography as a weapon or scare tactic. Morris uses the example of four Iranian missiles streaking upwards. This image is disturbing, especially for Americans, because there is no way of knowing if: the image is of a test launch; they are aiming westward; and how many missiles the Iranians actually have in their cache.
The question digital historians must ask is what tools can we use to detect fraudulent images? Farid points out that while manipulated images may fool the eye, they do not fool the expert. One way to detect a fraudulent image is to compare the photo against raw files. This assumes, however, that you can get your hands on the original camera. It is much harder to detect manipulation if one is viewing a Photoshopped image that has been cropped, reduced, and compressed into a .Jpg file. Farid notes that historians can purchase clone detection software to run against the photo, however, this only works if the image is a perfect replica of the original. The problem now for historians, and the rest of the world, is how to figure out if the threat is real. Clearly, if a digital expert misinterprets a photograph, say of a North Korean missile attack, it could cause mass hysteria, diplomatic tension , and a potential nuclear war.
This is an interesting topic. One technique that I’ve heard of for detecting alterations is Error Level Analysis.
This article gives a sample on how it’s done http://fotoforensics.com/sample-ela.php , and you can try it yourself here: http://fotoforensics.com/.
I’m not really sure how it works, but I’ve played with it in the past and sometimes it seems to work.
Peter–You always provide great examples to our discussions in class! Thank you for the links, it is interesting to see the differences between original and edited photographs.
Thanks!
This is an interesting issue to bring up. Most of the time when images are manipulated, it doesn’t hurt anyone. Seeing what you can create in PhotoShop is simply fun and is a different type of art from photography. It seems that manipulation of photographs is more of an issue now because the Internet allows information and media to so easily be taken out of context, reproduced, and altered.
Had I been more awake when writing this, I would have said exactly your point(s). Thank you for making what I wanted to say clearer
One question that comes up for me is when does manipulation of a photo become unethical. The very framing of the photo is about an erasure of what’s outside of the frame, as we see in Morris’ essay on Roger Fenton’s photographs: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/09/25/which-came-first-the-chicken-or-the-egg-part-one/. Also, manipulation can also be used for the purpose of illumination rather then deception — as in the example he gives about the montage. And thirdly, the very processing of a photograph both past and present entails some decisions about exposure, contrast, etc. Here a manipulation may more closely represent the actual conditions that were photographed. Here the big issue is how digital tools can be used to foster an even closer read.