Digital Truth

http://www.pbs.org/ktca/americanphotography/features/digital.essay.html

Is digital truth important? In what context?

After reading the article posted on the website above, I’ve learned quite a bit about digital truth. Digital Truth is when photographs have been manually manipulated. The article talks about how digital imaging and manipulation of images on the computer goes against “traditional” means of photography. Furthermore, it definitely affects how people view the images and how people see images in newspapers and magazines. Then, the author talks about how the biggest problem with digital truth is that its extremely easy; it’s “a slippery slope is created where minor cleaning up of an image can easily lead to major changes”. He talks about how digital truth can lead to missing realness of a picture, as pictures “enter the realm of fiction”. He ends the article by saying, “Our sense of the truth to be found in images may be changing because of digital manipulation. But we still are waiting for our first great test case of digital truth, that is, digital lying.”

Personally, I feel that in our modern world today, digital truth should be important, however images must be manipulated in order to please the audience. I believe that it is important to present the “truth” rather than what the photographer/digital manipulator sees the picture as. I think that in most contexts, the population deserves to see first hand accounts. For example, I believe that Digital Truth should be important in examples such as the picture shown above. This picture has been digitally changed to make that particular place seem a lot prettier and better than it actually is. I believe that actions, such as these, should definitely be stopped, as it tricks the tourists into believing something wrong. However, at the same time, I personally feel that, if we only saw images, as they were, which weren’t digitally manipulated, our world would be much different. Pictures, brochures, advertisements, magazines, etc. wouldn’t be as appealing and interesting. Our world today, has evolved so much that we only like seeing and reading about what we like, rather than what the truth is, which is why, in some contexts, such as entertainment contexts, digital manipulations should be allowed; for the benefit of the population.