
Left, the “original”; right, the “altered” as it
appeared in print.
Since my weekend NYT subscription is on hold, I
missed this
brouhaha at the Times
Magazine over a series of digitally altered
photographs. The photographer in question,
Edgar Martins, presented his
photos for a story called
“Ruins of the Second Gilded
Age” as actual documentary, unretouched
images to his editors. The story ran on July
5th, then the pixel peepers started
deconstructing the images, pointing out perfect
symmetries and cloned pipes and staircases that
went to nowhere. The Times retracted the story,
apologized to readers, and banished Martins from
practicing journalism at its paper. On July
31st, since the controversy ignited a great
debate in imaging circles, Martins was
generously invited to defend himself on
Lens, the Times’ photography
blog. Not much of what he says elucidates
anything about why he did what he did, nor does
he seem to understand the contract with viewers
of documentary photography. The problem stems
from Martins being an artist rather than a
journalist, however much he seems to lie that
his photographs are an actual depiction of
reality. He is clearly more interested in
aesthetics and theory than in pure
documentation, something which I tend to share.
The Times photography manipulation policy is
very general:
Images in our pages, in the paper or on the Web,
that purport to depict reality must be genuine in
every way. No people or objects may be added,
rearranged, reversed, distorted or removed from a
scene (except for the recognized practice of
cropping to omit extraneous outer portions).
It does not take into account selective sharpening,
blurring, color balancing, dodging and burning, high
dynamic range photography, and the dozens of other
techniques, aside from cloning and montaging, which
photographers use to enhance their images everyday.
I’m sure we will be revisiting this issue many more
times as technology matures. Very soon digital still
and movie cameras will be able to montage and
manipulate on the fly, further blurring the
definitions of reality and beauty.