Chapter three
Photography in the digital age

"These copies are exact?"
"Oh, yes."
"So they're legal?"
Sanders frowned. "Legal in what sense?"
"Well, as evidence, in a court of law..."
"Oh, no," Sanders said. "These tapes would never be admissible in a court of law."
"But if they're exact copies..."
"It's nothing to do with that. All forms of photographic evidence including video, are no longer admissible in court."
"I haven't heard that," I said.
"It hasn't happened yet," Sanders said. "The case law isn't entirely clear. But it's coming. All photographs are suspect these days. Because now, with digital systems, they can be changed perfectly. Perfectly." — Michael Crichton, Rising Sun, 1992.

As noted earlier, misrepresentation by photographs has occurred since the invention of the camera: photographers have had opportunities to alter their images since 1839, and suspicions about the medium did not wait the end of the twentieth century to develop. However, the appearance of digital imaging technology has made manipulation easier, faster, more accessible, more systematic, and more difficult to detect than ever before. According to the Wall Street Journal, in 1989 already, digitally retouched or altered photographs represented 10% of all the published color photographs in the United States (in de Mul, 1997: 45). With this technology, changes can be blended so convincingly, that even experts have a difficult time distinguishing what is real from what has been created. Moreover, digital imaging allows just about anyone with a computer, a scanner and/or a digital camera, basic software, and a little training to manipulate photographs, making the imagined, real. Nevertheless, the most dramatic change implicated by the technology is that computer imagery makes it possible to retouch and synthetize new images with "lifelike realism" (Reaves, 1987: 23). As a result, the computer can create photography-like images from scratch, generate images of human beings or objects and simulate reality. What are the possible consequences of this technology? Can it create problems and what are the implications in terms of photography's status of a truthful representational mode? These are some of the questions this chapter intends to address. However, the first aspect to consider is how the technology got this far.

Brief History of the development in digital imaging

According to Andy Darley, the production and manipulation of images by computer has a short history (Darley, 1990: 39). As Dale O'Dell explains in his article "Computer-manipulated Imagery: Is it Photography?", qualitative changes in the manipulation of photographic imagery occurred when computers were introduced in the early 1960s. By the 1970s, a small market had developed for computer-generated imagery despite the fact that the equipment was slow, astronomically expensive and as a result only available to a few (O'Dell: HREF). During the next decade however, the amount of computer-imagery grew tremendously as did the availability of good, cheaper equipment. However, the technology was not yet affordable to a mass audience and was still intended for professional and industrial use. For instance, photographic companies such as Kodak, Canon, and Nikon, developed and started to market cameras which recorded images directly on floppy disks for the professional fields of imaging (Mitchell, 1992: 17-8). The 1990s finally allowed the general public to afford the technology that would allow them to manipulate photographs. Personal computers began to offer the power, speed and memory necessary for image-processing work, whereas software companies launched software with capabilities previously available only to image-processing professionals.
The democratization of image processing is perhaps best symbolized by the introduction of the image-editing software Photoshop, by Adobe. First developed as Barneyscan XP in the late 1980s by Thomas and John Knoll for use with a scanner, Adobe bought the rights to the software from the Knolls and launched Photoshop 1.0 in 1990 (Salgado, 1997: HREF). Today, Photoshop is the world's best-selling professional image-editing product: the latest market share figures confirm the software's dominance: 87.7% for Windows, 85.2% for Macintosh. Moreover, Photoshop is one of the most popular pieces of software on the market with a professional version that costs $500 and a consumer version at $50. Constantly improved with new features the last version, Photoshop 5.0, was introduced in May 1998. Other similar image manipulations programs include Pixel Paint Professional, Digital Darkroom, ArcSoft PhotoMontage, and Corel Photo-Paint.
However, it is the introduction, in the 1980s, of digital retouching equipment by companies such as Hell GraphicSystems, Crosfield and Scitex Corporation Ltd. [33], that gave newspapers, magazines, and book publishers the ability to manipulate photographs that were originally intended to be classic, documentary accounts of real events (Lester: HREF). As a result, Scitex has became part of the routine of art directors' and photo editors' work and as Brian Winston remarks in Claiming the Real, the word itself has became a synonym for digital retouching: "The technology for digital image manipulation is rapidly becoming a fixture in all newspaper and magazine offices. In the United States, the pioneering commercial device's brand-name, 'Scitex,' is a synonym for the whole process, much like 'hoover.' As a verb it is already a term of art - 'to scitex,' meaning to retouch digitally" (Winston, 1995: 5).
Scitex technology allows not only photographic images to be scanned into a computer to be retouched electronically, but also to have the final pictures ready for printing, something that saves magazines and newspapers a considerable amount of time and money. Nevertheless, once the picture is scanned, perfection is only a couple of mouse clicks away and photo editors can track down the subtlest imperfections, thus attaining incredible levels of flawlessness. If such process can be compared to the work of the first retouchers, one has to realize that the capabilities of digital retouching are far more sophisticated. With this technology, Harrison Ford's facial scar can disappear on the cover of an issue of Premiere magazine and Jodie Foster can get her bellybutton moved a full three inches for a portrait in the pages of the same magazine. For a Rolling Stone cover, Demi Moore can have all traces of facial hair, wrinkles and stretch marks removed while losing about an inch from each hip in the process. Michael Moore can have his nails digitally manicured for the cover of his book The Big One while Saddam Hussein gets his moustache digitally trimmed on the September 11, 1990 cover of The New Republic to heighten his resemblance to Adolph Hitler. However, alterations can go way beyond these simple touch-ups: one of the reasons Scitex is well known amongst picture editors, is due to its ability to create a composite photograph from two images, quickly, efficiently and seamlessly. Once again, if the principle is similar in nature to double printings, there is no comparison possible in terms of the results one can obtain with computer generated images. However, I shall examine in more depth these differences later in this chapter as I would like first to determine the possibilities of digital imaging and explain how the technology works.
Now, at the end of the twentieth century, the hardware - computers, scanners, digital cameras, is becoming increasingly affordable and common. Coupled with more and more powerful and easy-to-use software, the capture and editing of visual data is in almost everyone's reach. Whereas just a few years ago, creating a convincingly altered digital image required the efforts of a specialist using sophisticated equipment, it now can be easily accomplished by a hobbyist with a home computer (McCarvel, 1995: HREF). Just as personal computers democratized skills like typesetting and page design, the last decade has brought the possibility of photo editing onto millions of desktops.

Characteristics of Digital Imaging Technology

Digital manipulation is made possible by first digitizing visual images. This means to translate them into a format the computer can handle. This translation is achieved by scanning the photograph into a computer, a process which turns the image into an arrangement of thousands or millions of electronic digits, better known as "pixels" (picture elements). The particular position, tone and brightness associated with each pixel is then captured as a series of digital ones and zeros, the format readable by computers, and this information is stored in the computer's memory. Another method to enter an image into a computer is to use a digital camera which captures initially the image in digital form, making them easier to manipulate.
Once the picture is stored in digital form in the computer, a pixel (or a group of pixels) can be altered, moved or have its color, brightness and other characteristics duplicated, deleted or otherwise manipulated by making the appropriate changes to the various ones and zeros representing those characteristics. Sections of a photograph can be cloned, and subtle details such as color, contrast, light, and shadow may be adjusted (McCarvel, 1995: HREF). With an imaging program such as Adobe Photoshop, the palette of techniques available to visual creators to control and modify appearances exists with a variety that was never so powerful, diverse, easy and fast. If a comprehensive description of the current technology used to alter visual images is beyond the scope of this paper, a general summary of some of this technology may help put relevant issues into context (for an almost complete spectrum of possible interventions into the photographic image, I direct the reader to Mitchell's The Reconfigured Eye which contains an in-depth analysis of them.).

One of the most spectacular techniques made possible on the computer is known as "object cloning." This technique, which is based on importing groups of pixels from one image into another image, enables striking compositions such as transposing Sylvester Stallone and Groucho Marx into the historical photograph taken at the end of World War II in Yalta (see figure 18). "Color cloning," which consists of changing the color, contrast and brightness of groups of pixels, is the procedure that was used by Time magazine for their infamous 1994 cover photo of a severely darkened police mug shot of O.J. Simpson. Moreover, by duplicating groups of pixels within the same image, advertisers can cover up the facial blemishes of a model or erase undesirable elements from a photograph. Such operation was performed for instance by the New York Post which eliminated the name of the sponsor, a competitor, on the placard of a race winner. In addition color cloning allows to extend a photograph above its original limits ("reverse cropping"). Groups of pixels can also be deleted from an image and replaced with other objects. This process, similar in its principle to Rejlander's and Robinson's double prints, is one of the most commonly used by photo-editors when they need to create the image they do not have, without having to make complicated arrangements. For instance, when Newsweek wanted a picture of Rain Man stars Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman for a 1989 cover and one was in Hawaii while the other was in New York, they simply shot the two actors separately and later combined the two photographs. The result gave not only the false appearance of a single cover shot, but also showed a certain chemistry between the two stars that may or may not have been obtained during a more traditional photographic session. This technique is usually utilized to create visually appealing illustrations and should not be considered as "photographs," but more as photo-illustrations or "photofiction" as some call them. Examples of this process can be found on the Time cover which featured actor John Travolta apparently "posing" in front of the American flag to accompany an article on the movie Primary Colors (see figure 19), on another Time cover which showed a picture of a pig's head on top of a man's body to illustrate a story on male piggishness, or in the image of Bill Clinton with his pants down to his ankles Esquire carried, to well, guess what... (see figure 20). As Trisha Ziff remarks in "Taking Back New Ideas to the Old World," "the computer is an excellent medium for collage: cut - edit - copy - paste - merge, etc." (Ziff, 1991: 132).
To sum it up, almost anything can be accomplished with the right "tools," and as a matter of fact, changes can be blended so convincingly, that it has became increasingly difficult to distinguish what is real from what has been modified - especially since the changes are usually subtle and insidious. If the naked eye is usually able to discern enough to locate the inconsistencies of manually altered visual images, it is almost impossible to do so with digital images since the computer can locate the unnatural disparities between groups of pixels, and then automatically "smooth out" and fix these inconsistencies. Therefore, digital manipulations are especially difficult to detect for the untrained eye and, as Fred Ritchin remarks in his essay "The End of Photography as We Have Known It," we hear "of such manipulations [...] through word of mouth, since publications do not usually broadcast such modifications" (Ritchin, 1991: 13). This last claim, however, if probably true at the time Ritchin was writing, can be challenged, almost a decade later. Indeed, it has now become common for magazines to credit the person who performed the manipulation and to detail it. This is especially the case for cover photographs. It has not yet been generalized to every picture - though it would be interesting to see in a fashion magazine the list of all the retouching performed on the photograph of a model, next to the list of the make-up and clothes worn.
Before examining in greater detail the issues involved in the use of digital imaging, I would like to provide the reader with some examples that have surfaced within the print media; famous examples of photographs that have been "fixed" to make their composition perfect or adjusted to match the written text.

The headline on the cover of the National Enquirer read: "Battered Nicole: Photos taken by her sister show how O.J. beat her up." The tabloid showed the photo of a Nicole Simpson apparently severely beaten up, her forehead and left cheek covered with blotches and her eyes bloodied and swollen. However, the smaller type below the picture read: "Sister describes photos seized by cops - computer re-creation." The picture had been doctored to achieve the description given by the victim's sister (see figure 21 and Kobré, 1995: HREF). If one can unfortunately expect this kind of action from a tabloid, what should be said about more "credible and serious" publications when they adopt similar processes to offer an enhanced representation of reality to their readers?

One of the most notorious examples of image manipulation involving a reputable magazine is provided by National Geographic. In February 1982 , the editors of the magazine used the beginning Scitex technology to move electronically one of Egypt's great pyramids, bringing its apex inside the magazine's yellow frame, in an effort to improve the composition. Former editor Wilbur Garrett argued the decision in a New York Times letter to the editor to point out that the effect would have been the same if the photographer had moved over a couple of feet. However, two months later, another manipulation was performed when the magazine put on its cover the image of a Polish man with part of his hat grafted from a second photograph. These two incidents, which were widely publicized, were perceived as deceptive by many disappointed readers who had relied on National Geographic's reputation for accuracy (see figure 22). As a result, the magazine announced that digital retouching would not be used in the future and admitted that it got carried away by the possibilities offered by the new technology. A spokesperson for the monthly declared: "Scitex will never be used again to shift any of the Seven Wonders of the world" (in Winston, 1995: 5).

Almost a decade later, Time magazine created what might be considered the biggest ethical controversy in the history of digital manipulation with its 1994 cover depicting a severely darkened O.J. Simpson (see figure 23). The infamous cover was perceived as racist and offensive to many Americans, but for the editors of the magazine it was only meant to be a kind of "visual dramatization." However, the week after Time ran the incriminating "photo," Jim Gaines, the managing editor, apologized for confusing the magazine's audience: "If there was anything wrong with the cover, in my view, it was that it was not immediately apparent that this was a photo-illustration rather than an unaltered photograph; to know that, a reader had to turn to our contents page or see the original mug shot on the opening page of the story" (see figure 24 and Gaines, 1994: 40). Although Gaines claims that there is a clear difference between a photograph and a photo-illustration, it is doubtful that the difference is always obvious to the lay public. However, in this case, the manipulation was indubitable since the same week another magazine, Newsweek, utilized the same mug shot, but not retouched for its cover (see figure 25).
Another notorious photograph which illustrates the difference between photograph and photo-illustration, is the one New York Newsday published of rival skaters Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan practicing together (see figure 26). The situation depicted could not have happened at the time the picture was taken since practice started on the day the image was published. However, thanks to electronic imagery the sensationalist shot was composed.

Figure 27. "Digital Forgery Can Create Photographic Evidence for Events that Never Happened". Scientific American. Feb. 1994. Computer art by Jack Harris/ Visual Logic.

Several publications have demonstrated the possibilities offered by the technology. In 1990 for instance, Newsweek hired R/Greenberg Associates, an advertising agency to create a photograph of a dinner party which featured Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump's fiancée Marla Maples, Libya's dictator Mohammar Khaddafi, the Queen of England, and Elvis Presley (Alter, 1990: 44). Obviously, since Maples was probably still a toddler when Presley died, there was no chance that these people had ever gotten together. Nevertheless, this was impossible to tell solely from the picture. Every detail was perfect and the false picture produced by the agency was realistic and could convince anyone that the scene had really happened. In 1994, Scientific American declared that digital technology had subverted the certainty of photograph as evidence and to prove their point, they offered on their February cover a "photograph" of Abraham Lincoln, arm-in-arm with Marilyn Monroe (see figure 27). Inside, they demonstrated how using an off-the-shelf Macintosh with easily available software, they were able to bring together the president, who died in 1865, with the movie star, who died in 1962 (see figure 28). These two experiments are interesting because they not only reveal the capacities of digital manipulation, but they also suggest that the ability to discern truth from fabrication relies more on what one knows than on what one sees. As Mitchell notes: "Increasingly, our capacity to sort visual facts from falsehoods will rest on our ability to cross-check the visual evidence against established knowledge and beliefs" (Mitchell, 1994: 73). This means the end of the "seeing is believing" era and the beginning of a more critical approach towards visual evidences.
Once a photograph, or even elements of it, is stored in a computer, we gain unprecedented control over it. We can change, distort, or rearrange a photograph without damaging the original. This control has interesting consequences in a Baudrillardian perspective. As Jos de Mul remarks in his article "The Virtualization of the World View: The End of Photography and the Return of the Aura," Baudrillard's simulation theory "is a real option in the digital domain" (de Mul, 1997: 53). For the author of Simulacra and Simulation the successive phases of the image are:

It is the reflection of a profound reality;
it masks and denatures a profound reality;
it masks the absence of a profound reality;
it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum (1994: 6).

The examples from the National Geographic and from Time clearly "mask and denature a profound reality," while the New York Newsday, Newsweek and Scientific American illustrations "mask the absence of a profound reality." Indeed, in these cases what was pictured had simply never occurred. Reality is being dismissed to the profit of an edited one to give the public "perfect" images.

What differentiates digital from analog?

Other than unlimited techniques of manipulation, several characteristics differentiate conventional photography from digital imagery. Prior methods of alteration such as collages, airbrushing, cropping, change of brightness, etc., could take a skilled craftsperson many hours or days to accomplish and despite a tedious and expensive process, the final result was never guaranteed (Ritchin, 1990: 28-9). Now, thanks to the "electronic darkroom," the same changes can be achieved in a fraction of the time. Manipulations which previously would have been the outcome of several months' apprenticeship in the chemical darkroom are now a matter of days, and in some cases they can be made almost instantaneously (Salgado, 1997: HREF). Another advantage for editors and photographers is that, unlike traditional methods of retouching which required waiting for new prints to see the result of the changes, modifications performed digitally can be witnessed immediately on the monitor (Reaves, 1987: 24). As a result of these gains of time, the use of digital retouching is spreading and is now used almost systematically. In fashion magazines for instance, before the apparition of the technology, only the cover and a few "important" pictures used to be retouched, whereas today almost all of them are (Tannen, 1994: 44). Another important change inherent to digital imaging is that no film or paper is necessary in the capture or storage of images. This implies that there are no originals in the sense of a negative. Moreover, once the image has been digitized, the file can be copied and reproduced endlessly, without loosing any of its quality or resolution contrary to other methods of reproduction such as photographs of photographs or photocopies. With digital technology, the reproduction is always the same and is always perfect. Moreover, as Mitchell notes, "computer files are open to modification at any time, and mutant versions proliferate rapidly and endlessly" and "the lineage of an image file is usually untraceable, and there may be no way to determine whether it is a freshly captured, unmanipulated record or a mutation of a mutation that has passed through many unknown hands" (Mitchell, 1992: 51-2).
This aspect of digital photography, reproduction, parallels Walter Benjamin's 1936 classic account of the impact of photography upon the handmade image ("The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction") and as a result many commentators have underlined the importance of this text to estimate the impact of digital technology upon photography. This affiliation is particularly visible in titles such as PhotoVideo: Photography in the Age of the Computer (Wombell, 1991), "Photojournalism in the Age of Computers" (Ritchin, 1990), "The Work of Culture in the Age of Cybernetic Systems" (Nichols, 1988) or the even more obviously inspired "The Work of Art in the Age of Digital Reproduction" (Davis, 1991-5). Why is a sixty-year-old essay mentioned on such a regular basis? To answer this question we have to first examine Benjamin's propositions.
In "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" Benjamin examines photography's capacities to reproduce mechanically handmade images and stipulates that inevitably the medium is meant to threaten the work of art, as its "aura" or uniqueness is being eliminated by mass reproduction:

Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be. This unique existence of the work of art determined the history to which it was subjected throughout the time of its existence. This includes the changes which it may have suffered in physical condition over the years as well as the various changes in its ownership. The traces of the first can be revealed only by chemical or physical analysis which it is impossible to perform on a reproduction; changes of ownership are subject to a tradition which must be traced from the situation of the original (Benjamin, 1936: 220).

Moreover, the Marxist critic points out that mechanical reproduction "substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence" (Benjamin, 1936: 221), something which might have a disintegrating effect on "originality" itself.
What happens in the digital era, or post-photographic as some call it, is that there is no more a distinction between "original" and "reproduction." As Douglas Davis, a veteran in the New York art world and a pioneer in the use of new media in the visual arts, puts it floridly: "The fictions of 'master' and 'copy' are now so entwined with each other that it is impossible to say where one begins and the other ends, resembling lovers folded together in ecstasy" (Davis, 1991-5: HREF).
On the one hand this means that Benjamin's prediction that the aura disappears with mechanical reproduction is verified in the digital age. On the other hand, however, many commentators examine the properties of digital imaging and differentiate it from analog photographic reproduction. For instance, because digital images, supposed to be "original," are nothing more than a table of numbers, to copy a number is nothing else than the very same number. There is not a "real" double, but more a second "original." If a number is changed, the image is obviously modified, but in the sense that it is another one, as original as the first one (Huriet, 1998: HREF). This entices philosopher Jos de Mul to affirm that the end of photography signifies the return of the aura. According to him, as synthetic digital photography creates "fundamentally infinite variation and transformation of the original, a return of the aura takes place" (de Mul, 1997: 54-5). Digital reproduction means the death of the mechanical copy, not the original's. Mitchell supports this when he writes: "If mechanical image reproduction substituted exhibition value as Benjamin claims, digital imaging further substitutes a new kind of use value - input value, the capacity to be manipulated by computer - for exhibition value" (Mitchell, 1992: 52). As a result, one can argue that the concept of manipulation itself does not make sense in the digital era since the manipulation of an image implies the existence of an original, intentionally transformed to create a message, that is an original, authentic and a copy.
Nevertheless, the most important aspect of the reproduction of the digital and the digitalized images might be that it facilitates, accelerates, and effects the kinds of dispersals postmodern critics assert, assuring the plenitude of copies.

"That-has-never-been" or the disappearance of the referent

As we have seen previously, an important aspect of photography that has been emphasized to proclaim the veracity of the photographic image is based on the belief that there is always a referent; that something similar to what is depicted exists outside of the frame of the picture. It is the existence of this referential characteristic - that Barthes calls the "That-has-been" - which is greatly challenged by digital photography.

In the Fall of 1993, Time magazine featured on the cover of a special issue, a photograph of "The New Face of America." The young woman represented illustrated a story entitled: "The New Face of America: How immigrants Are Shaping the World's First Multicultural Society." A side bar revealed the origin of the model: "Take a good look at this woman. She was created by a computer from a mix of several races. What you see is a remarkable preview of... The New Face of America"(see figure 29). This cover girl, symbolically named Eve, was generated from the photographs of seven women and seven men of various ethnic and racial backgrounds by Kin Wah Lam. The Asian-American computer specialist, dubbed a cybergeneticist, used Morph 2.0, a professional, easy-to-use morphing software (Hammonds, 1997: 116). The editors resorted to this process as a way to, in the words of managing editor Jim Gaines, "dramatize the impact of inter ethnic marriage, which has increased dramatically in the U.S. during the last wave of immigration" (Gaines, 1993: 2).

Employing a similar technique (and a similar designation), Mirabella magazine created an artificial model, "an extraordinary image of great American beauty," for the cover of their September 1994 issue (see figure 30). As the caption near the photograph teased the reader with the question: "Who is the Face of America," the editors gave the following clues in the contents page of the magazine:

We asked the distinguished photographer Hiro to come up with a cover personifying today's all-American beauty. We thought it should be someone who represents the diversity of this country. We know that Hiro called in models - not famous faces, but beautiful faces, of all ethnicities. And, after an extensive search and painstaking work, he did present us with an extraordinary image of great American beauty. But who is she? Hiro's not telling. He will say only that she has never been photographed before and that she's not with any modeling agency. And, she's impossible to reach. He hints that she's something of a split personality. And he says, with a smile, that it wasn't easy getting her together. Maybe her identity has something to do with the microchip floating through space, next to that gorgeous face. America is a melting pot. And true American beauty is a combination of elements from all over the world. Is our cover model representative of the melting pot? All we're sure of is that her looks could melt just about anything (Mirabella, 1994).

It is no surprise that the model was "impossible to reach," nor that she was not easy to get together since the Mirabella cover was in fact a composite picture created by combining the pictures of six different women. The best eyes from one model were added to the best "bee sting" lips of another, etc., to create the perfect face which, as a result, has no correlation in reality.
In 1996, the Visual Science Laboratory (VSL), a Japanese computer software company, went even further when it generated a nonexistent image through computer technology. The very sophisticated facsimile of a young woman was designed from scratch by VSL for Horipro, a talent agency and Kyoko Date, also known as DK-96 or "the first virtual idol," was made thanks to the latest computer technologies (see figure 31). In addition, VSL created her an ideal face. In the beginning, the project team started by imitating actual celebrities' features, but quickly changed direction and decided finally to fashion a completely imaginary look for their virtual pop-star (Visual Science Laboratory, 1996: HREF).
Kyoko Date is interesting because "she" is pure simulation in Baudrillard's sense of the term. That is, she was created through "the generation of models of a real without origin or reality: a hyperreal" (Baudrillard, 1994: 1). Eve and the Mirabella cover girl are only an amalgam of features that directly reference the real without necessarily being real. Their physical features are a combination of those of real people, which have been subsequently mixed together to create their idealistic virtual faces. Both models owes their "genes" to human models, whereas Kyoko Date comes from her creators' imagination.

San Fransisco-based artist Keith Cottingham's work perfectly illustrates this loss of origin or referent with his three portraits entitled Single, Twins and Triplets from the Fictitious Portraits series (see figure 32). If these images look at first to be studio portraits of what their respective titles indicate, they are not. They are digitally constructed color photographs, composed and constructed representations, and their subjects do not coincide with any physical person. Cottingham's subjects do not exist, never have, and most probably never will. Even though they appear soulful and real, these portraits depict fictitious beings. The illusion, however, is total and due, firstly to the belief that photography is a representation of reality, and secondly, to the long tradition of portraiture. By mimicking this genre, Cottingham shows how elastic the label "realism" is (Cottingham, 1996: 162). Moreover, for the artist: "These seemingly formal portraits foreground human reality as construction, as the product of signifying activities which play upon the body" (Cottingham, 1996: 164). Cottingham is making an important statement, core to postmodern thinking: the construction of the subject and reality.
As we can see, in their essence these Fictitious Portraits, the Mirabella cover girl, Eve and Kyoko Date contradict Barthes' concept of the mandatory existence of a photographic referent, the famous "there-has-been". None of these "models" have ever been placed in front of the lens of a camera. The fact that someone's representation exists is no longer absolute proof that the person behind it exists. It may have been electronically manipulated, or even computer generated, and no actual original may have ever even existed as is the case with Kyoko Date or Keith Cottingham's subjects. As it has already been mentioned in this paper, twenty years ago, Sontag noted that "the picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which is like what's in the picture" (Sontag, 1973: 5). With digital imaging technology this is no longer true. Therefore, Sontag's assumption and Barthes' concept of the thing "That-has-been," are clearly contradicted by digital photography. Paraphrasing him, one could claim that unlike analogue photography, digital photography, does not have the power "to compel [us] to believe its referent had really existed" (Barthes, 1981: 77). As Edmond Couchot remarks in his essay "The digital systhesis of the image," digital images present rather something which "might be" than something that "once was" (in Itoh, 1994: HREF). In the world of computer manipulation, reality itself can be dismissed or made up according to the operator's fantasy.

Furthermore, the lack of evidence to substantiate the principle of the referent will become more evident as the technology develops. As Fred Ritchin, a former director of photography for The New York Times Magazine and the founding director of the photojournalism program at the International Center for Photography, observes in his essay "Photojournalism in the age of the computers," "This last technique - creating a 'realistic' image from scratch with a computer - is perhaps the most revolutionary in its implication because it allows the generation of imagery according to mathematical application that simulate reality" [34] (Ritchin, 1990: 32). As a matter of fact, the electronic image fulfills the condition of what Baudrillard has termed the "simulacrum" - it is a copy of which there is no original: the referent has disappeared and has been replaced by a simulacrum. Therefore, it is important to realize that this aspect of digital photography shifts the debate of photo-manipulation from questions such as "Is it true or false?" to questions such as "Is it real or not?".

Rethinking Photography and Representation

The digitized picture has broken the relationship between picture and reality once and for all. We are entering an era when no one will be able to say whether a picture is truth or false. They are all becoming beautiful and extraordinary, and with each passing day they belong increasingly to the world of advertising. Their beauty, like their truth is slipping away from us. Soon, they will really end up making us blind. — Wim Wenders

As it has been demonstrated previously, photographs have never been entirely objective representations of reality. Their historical use as evidence and reliable documentation has always been in contradiction with practices of manipulation in the fields or portraiture, advertising and art. Nevertheless, their reputation for fidelity has managed to remain largely intact in the popular imagination, and unless a photograph has some form of obvious inconsistency, it will be believed. As a society, we continue to grant a strong presumption that a photograph is undeniable evidence that a particular event, object or person once existed materially as depicted (McCarvel, 1995: HREF). As the preliminary remarks on the project "Photography after Photography" reminds us: "Although we know better, our customary reflex still persists in attributing the usual reality-content to images which have a photographic semblance" (Amelunxen, Ighlhaut, and Rötzer, 1995: 10). Even though postmodern theorists have long rejected this assertion of truth value for the photographic image, Arthur Kroker and Michael Weinstein note that "the "pencil-of-nature idea" still persists (Kroker and Weinstein, 1994: 111), while Peter Lunenfeld argues that "the very fury of the debate over digital imaging proves that the public sphere still holds the evidentiary nature of photography in high regard" (Lunenfeld, 1996: 95).
In 1994, James E. Kelly and Diona Nace conducted a study, entitled "Digital Imaging & Believing Photos," in which they investigated, amongst other themes, the way knowledge of digital manipulation technology could or could not affect the level of credibility of news pictures. Even though the study did not verify the hypothesis that "exposure to [a] Photoshop demonstration will lead to lower levels of story credibility, of photo believability, and of general newspaper believability," the authors are conscious of the limit of their experiment: "Our videotape simply stressed the capabilities of the software generally. Had it also shown examples of retouched photographs published by reputable newspapers and magazines, the effect might have been stronger" (Kelly and Nace, 1994: 4-5). Moreover, they found that "photographs have a believability beyond that of the medium of photography itself and perhaps are as dependent on the nature of the information they present as are the words in a text story" (Kelly and Nace, 1994: 5). However, according to the two authors, people believe in photographs , "not because they are exact [an] rendering of reality," but because they match their own personal convictions (Kelly and Nace, 1994: 5).
However, as a result of the recent developments in computer simulated image-making, the traditional photographic imagery that was based on the mirror theory of representation is greatly challenged. As Graham Clarke notes in The Photograph: "The photograph, far from being a literal or mirror of the world, is an endlessly deceptive form of representation" (Clarke, 1997: 25). Even if the idea of manipulating photographs is far from new, as we saw earlier, the current technological innovations are raising new questions about the status of the photographic image because of their previously described specificities: speed, low cost, availability, and systematicness. Moreover, the rapid growth of computer networks, notably the Internet, facilitate the dissemination of digital images, manipulated or not, to an uncontrollable point instigating issues of ethics and copyright. Indeed, unlike other forms of media such as newspapers, radio or television, there is no editorial control over what is diffused on the Web [35] . So how do we deal with this profusion of images? How do we discern "truth" from propaganda? And more importantly what are the implications of this situation ?

Death of the photographic image?

One of the main consequences of the introduction of digital imaging is obviously the suspicion which surrounds the photographic image. Today, more than a century and a half after the invention of photography, many commentators are announcing the death of the medium, or more precisely the death of its privileged status as an unbiased representation of reality. For Fred Ritchin, who claimed as soon as in 1990 that "the ethical or factual problem of computer alteration arises with the greatest urgency" (Ritchin, 1990: 29), photographic integrity is at stake as digital image technology dramatically increases the possibilities of image manipulation. As he observes in his article "Photojournalism in the Age of Computers:" "The implications of this new technology are now becoming clear. In fact, the new malleability of the image may eventually lead to a profound undermining of photography's status as an inherently truthful pictorial form" (Ritchin, 1990: 28). For Anne-Marie Willis, author of the article "Digitization and the Leaving Death of Photography," the mutation visual imagery is undergoing is "as significant as the invention of photography itself" (Willis, 1990: 197) and the introduction of the new technology marks the end of photography (as implied by the self-explanatory title of her essay). As she further writes:

In some ways we are facing the death of photography - but as in movie fiction the corpse remains and is re-animated, by a mysterious new process, to inhabit the earth like a zombie. Imagery that looks photographic will continue to exist, but its means of reproduction is undergoing radical changes (Willis, 1990: 198).

According to William J. Mitchell, who investigates the destruction of the truth value of the photographic image in The Reconfigured Eye: "From the moment of its sesquicentennial in 1989 photography was dead - or, more precisely, radically and permanently displaced - as was painting 150 years ago" (Mitchell, 1992: 20). However, more importantly perhaps, for Mitchell digital photography signifies the beginning of a new era, that of "post-photography." Artist David Hockney echoes this concern when asked about the likely effect of computer-generated imagery: "I can see it's the end of chemical photography" and "We had this belief in photography, but that is about to disappear because of the computer" (Leith, 1990: 37).

Implications

The most important consequence of the invasion of digital imaging is that it totally challenges the belief we had in the photograph as an accurate representation of reality, the "incontrovertible proof that a given thing happened." Photography is only a form of representation, an imitation which can always be doubted. In 1988, The Bruce Museum in Greenwich Connecticut proposed an exhibition entitled "(art)n Laboratory: Photographic Truth" which included works by many prominent artists, such as Richard Avedon, John Baldessari, Robert Cumming, Nam June Paik, Richard Prince, Cindy Sherman, etc. This is how Nancy Hall-Duncan, the curator of the exhibition, introduced the project:

The new capacity of photography with computer technology raises difficult issues: the viewer is no longer dependent on his eyes to tell him the "truth" but must rely on who is telling him that the evidence seen is real, a situation with complex and frightening moral implications. An even more frightening possibility attends another recent development which allows taking a still image of anything and creating a videotape in which the subject of the image can be made to perform any desired action realistically. One indication of where technical manipulation may lead in the future is the PHSCologram, a term derived from the beginning letters of photography, holography, sculpture and computer graphics. Produced by a team of artists collectively known as (art)n , the image at no time exists in "real" space, but is instead the photographic record or pure conceptual thought (Hall-Duncan, 1988: HREF).

Digital imaging forces us to reexamine the fundamental concept of representation, the relationship we have had with the photographic image and reconsider the medium in its entirety. This is an especially difficult assessment to make since, as we have seen earlier, we have been culturally and institutionally conditioned to believe in the photograph. However, since, as Philippe Quéau, researcher at the Paris Institut National de L'Audiovisuel, remarks "we can generate any image whatsoever, we can also use simulation to substantiate any thesis and demonstrate it by the pseudo-evidence of the visible" (in Clayssen, 1996: 74) it is important to reassess the status of the photographic image.
William Mitchell claims in the very short conclusion, entitled "Shadows on the Wall,"of his book The Reconfigured Eye that "the emergence of digital imaging has irrevocably subverted these certainties [the truthful nature of the photographic image], forcing us to adopt a far more wary and more vigilant interpretative stance [...] An interlude of false innocence has passed" (Mitchell, 1992: 225).
However, total skepticism and cynicism is not necessarily the best option. It has to be remembered that even though photographs can be manipulated, they can also be important visual proofs. As Ritchin remarks in "Photojournalism in the Age of Computers," if the status of photographic truth is completely destroyed and we are no longer able to rely on any kind of photographic evidence, we might as well be condemned to plain nihilicism. As he writes: "If even a minimal confidence in photography does not survive, it is questionable whether many pictures will have meaning anymore, not only as symbols but as evidence. A government will be able to deny the veracity of images of torture victims, for example - and it may be difficult to prove otherwise" (Ritchin, 1990: 37). Ritchin develops further his argument in another essay. In "The End of Photography as We Have Known It," he does not only argue that "the photograph is as malleable as a paragraph, able to illustrate whatever one wants it to" (Ritchin, 1991: 12) but also reiterates his concerns about the possible disappearance of the photograph as an evidence of anything. According to him, if this function vanishes there might be a risk that "photographs which seem to go too much against the common system [will be] automatically rejected" (Ritchin, 1991: 14). If photographic images become reflexively disbelieved, then the fact-based ability "to change world opinion even against the most powerful governments" will be lost (Ritchin, 1991: 15).
In addition, the current methods of alteration present enormous legal and ethical challenges that traditional ways of photo-manipulation did not, and most of it has to do with the ease with which one can have access to them, store them and manipulate them with a computer. Finally, as we have seen earlier, the images produced by the computer are constructed in such a way that they can simulate the appearance of a "real" photograph, without referring necessarily to anything "real," blurring the boundaries between reality and simulation.

Solutions

For Ritchin, a possible solution is to rely on photographers' ethics and "sense of honor." According to him, in the future, "the photographer will have to be considered to be the author of his or her images, responsible for the accuracy of what is in them" (Ritchin, 1990: 36). Moreover, Ritchin believes that it will be important to define photographs "under categories such as fiction and non-fiction or editorializing and reportage" and that it may become necessary "to employ a specific terminology, such as 'photo-illustration,' to differentiate physically manipulated photographs from other images" (Ritchin, 1990: 36). Finally, the former picture editor declares that any interference made on a photograph, should it be during the shooting stage (staging for instance) or later on the computer, should be clearly indicated to viewers.
Another aspect to consider is that, image manipulation, if proven, can jeopardize the credibility of its author or publisher - I believe for example that the level of dependability of National Geographic suffered greatly from the pyramids episode. In addition, when a fallacy is revealed, it very often generates pages of criticism and analysis, and the practice is usually condemned by media professionals themselves (the darkened O.J., the fake ice-skating practice, etc). It may well be that the media will not jeopardize their hard-won credibility for a few images and take the risk to destroy the believability of all visual images (Huriet, 1998: HREF). Therefore, one will have to depend not only on the good standing of the photographer, but also on the reputation of a given publication. Reputation of both parties will validate or not the content and authenticity of photographs.

For many critical commentators, photography should, from now on, be regarded as the result of the photographer's expression rather than an objective representation of reality and should be treated similarly to prose description or painting [36] : Jacques Leslie, contributing writer for Wired suggests that a "better approach might be to remind readers to view photographs with the same healthy skepticism they apply to the written word" (Leslie, 1995: 113). Similarly, Peter Lunenfeld writes: "The digital photograph must now be treated as having the same truth value as a written text" (Lunenfeld, 1996: 95). Finally, for Max Frankel, a New York Times columnist: "By transforming a chemical craft into an electronic art, computers are... forcing us to begin thinking of photographs as we do of paintings - as renderings of art instead of representations of reality" (Frankel: HREF). It is kind of ironic to think that more than 150 years ago, when photography was invented, history painter Paul Delaroche (1797-1856) reportedly declared "From this day on painting is dead!" [37]. Given its coincidental connotation, this quote is unsurprisingly mentioned in most works on photography and digital imaging (see for instance Gernsheim, 1982: 45, Mitchell, 1992: 3, Batchen, 1997: 207, or Marien, 1997: 55 ). Less known perhaps and equally inspired, are the definitions French novelist Gustave Flaubert gave to the terms "photography" and "Daguerreotype" in his Dictionary of Received Ideas: the entry under "Photography" reads: "Will make painting obsolete. (See daguerreotype.)" and the entry for "Daguerreotype" reads "Will take the place of painting. (See Photography.)" (in Crimp, 1983: 51). Now at the very end of the twentieth century, we have to regard the media that was supposed to cause the death of painting more or less like a... painting.
Moreover, as a result of this confusion, there have been some suggestions to affix a symbol to all the published photographs that have been digitally altered. However, whether it is former New York Times Magazine photo editor Fred Ritchin's icon of a tiny crossed-out camera lens, or the "not-a-lens" symbol (a circle inside a square with a diagonal slash and a description of what was changed in the picture) proposed by a committee on photographic standards at New York University, or the Norwegian capital "M" for "montasje" which is employed to signal modification, there is apparently little chance for the idea to catch on (Shenk, 1997: HREF, Leslie, 1995: 113, and in Lunenfeld, 1996: 95). Four experts, interviewed by Wired magazine for an article on the future of photography, were split when asked to determine if a symbol like a circled A on a photograph would become a standard to warn viewers that an image has been digitally altered. Carl Gustin, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Eastman Kodak Company and Georgia McCabe, senior vice president of marketing and business developments of the Digital Imaging Systems section of Applied Graphics Technologies Inc. predicted its standard use within the next decade, whereas the two interviewed photographers, Bart Nagel and Rick Smolan thought it was simply unlikely to happen. As Nagel puts it bluntly: "Photographs have always lied, and this is not the time to start announcing it" (Pescovitz, 1997: 90).
For digital artist Bill Niffenegger, average media consumers need to realize that trusting what they see, whether it is a TV commercial, a movie footage, or a newspaper photograph, is naive. As he remarks: "It's like going online in a chat room. There will always be 300-pound hairy guys calling themselves 'Mary.' We just have to grow up" (DeMocker, 1998: HREF).
We are nowadays supposed to be visually more sophisticated and less inclined to accept the photographic "evidence." Indeed as Jacques Clayssen writes in his essay "Digital (R)evolution:" "Many cases of manipulated images had already been registered, but the accumulation and denunciation of certain abuses have heightened public awareness of the need to remain watchful and wary when it comes to images that belong more to the category of illustration than testimony" (Clayssen, 1996: 74). In his 1976 essay "Art, Common Sense and Photography" for the review Camerawork, Victor Burgin was already remarking even though "not much is known about how the media influence opinions, [...] we can be fairly sure that people aren't simply led by the nose by photographs" (Burgin, 1976: 75).

Nonetheless, photographic images appear to still affect us. Even if photographs are becoming more and more immaterial, their consequences might still be very material. Judging for example by the controversies and discussions surrounding the representation of women in the media, which alleges that the actual portrayal of women damages women's self esteem and health, it seems reasonable to believe that the power of the photograph has not yet been fully eradicated [38] .

Chapter four »

Notes

33. Founded in 1968, Scitex Corporation Ltd., the most prominent company involved in the image-manipulation industry, allows publishers to do their own prepress work, perform color correction and retouching operations in-house. In the company's words, the computer-based image processing technology offers: "advanced systems running on standard computers and dedicated workstations for image manipulation and editing (assembly, retouching, airbrushing and special effects)" (<http://karatpress.com/scitex.htm>, my emphasis). [back]

34. Almost a decade later, the technology has progressed to the point where digital human beings can be created with the highest realism. Generic Modelling and Media is for instance one of the companies that specialize in this field. Possible applications include facial identification. [back]

35. The publication in September 1997 of a faked photograph supposedly depicting Diana, Princess of Wales, dying on the back of a crashed Mercedes showed the speed with which (inaccurate) information can be disseminated over the global computer network. As Amy Harmon, author of an article entitled "Phony Diana photo reignites debate on internet postings," remarks, even though the image was immediately dismissed as an hoax, several newspapers and television channels used it. Nevertheless as Harmon points out, it is important to note the internet has the reputation to often carry bad information as a result of the ease to access and transmit whatever information, true or false and as a result the credibility of the medium is rather low (Harmon, 1997: HREF). [back]

36. It is interesting to point out here the way Adobe promotes its Photoshop software: "Create, paint, correct, and retouch with the 'camera for your mind'." [back]

37. Mitchell writes the following in his note to Delaroche's quote: "This at least, is the standard story. If it is not quite true, it should be" (Mitchell, 1992: 228n4). Naomi Rosenblum in A World History of Photography writes about "the much-publicized pronouncement" Paul Delaroche made "that the daguerreotype signaled the end of painting is perplexing because this clever artist also forecast the usefulness of the medium for graphic artist in a letter to François Arago in 1839" (Rosenblum 1981: 209). [back]

38. For more information on these claims see for instance the following studies which suggest a relationship between the use of very thin models in the mass media, negative body perception and eating disorders. For instance, in a 1986 study "Some correlates of the thin standard of bodily attractiveness for women," Silverstein, Peterson and Perdue found that the years in which the number of women in managerial positions and professional positions increased, in the 1920's and late 1960's, the female body ideal, as reflected in issues of Ladies Home Journal and Vogue, became slimmer and that the thin ideal preceded the times when the rates of anorexia nervosa were highest (International Journal of Eating Disorders, 5 (5)). Lucas, Beard, O'Fallon, Kurland studied the incidents of anorexia nervosa over a 50-year period in their 1991 "50-year trends in the incidence of anorexia nervosa in Rochester, Minn.: A population-based study" and found that the cycle of the incidence of anorexia nervosa among 10-19 year-old girls paralleled the change of fashion and its idealized body image (American Journal of Psychiatry, 148 (7), 917-22). The results of the 1990 study "Mirror images: Effects of the standard of beauty on the self- and body-esteem of women exhibiting varying levels of bulimic symptoms" showed that all subjects experienced the greatest amount of pressure to be thin from the media (Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 9 (2), 230-42). Moreover, Stice, Schupak-Neuberg, Shaw, and Stein found a direct relationship between media exposure and eating disorders symptoms in their 1994 "Relation of media exposure to eating disorder symptomatology: An examination of mediating mechanisms" (Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 103 (4), 836-40). [back]