When I got into photography one of the strengths of the profession was that what a viewer saw in a picture really happened. When a reporter wrote a story the reader often could not be sure that what was described was an accurate reflection of the truth. The photograph provided a level of truth. The viewer knew that what they were seeing really happened. The photograph may have been out of context with the general tenor of the overall event, but at least it was an accurate reflection of what was happening in the instant it was created.
Now, in the Internet age that idea of photographic truth is gone.
Paul Melcher has written an interesting story on his
Kaptur blog about the increasing prevalence of Fake Images. He suggests that one way to fight against Fake Images would be to clearly associate the name of the image creator, or at least the organization that employed the photographer, with each image. Then viewers would be able to judge the credibility and bias of the creator to determine the likelihood of whether the image might be an accurate reflection of what happened, or Fake. The creator’s reputation would be on the line.
Can This Be Accomplished
Given the capabilities of technology there doesn’t seem to be any way to accomplish this goal.
1 – Most digital files are adjusted by the creator before even being presented to a viewer. The degree to which such adjustments are accurate and truthful to the real event photographed is impossible to impartially define in a way that will be understood and accepted by all viewers.
2 – A credit could be embedded in the image. But it can be easily removed, or replaced with a different credit using the name of anyone.
3 – The creators name could be included in metadata. But much of that is routinely stripped by hosting services.
4 – GPS coordinates and time of creation might help. But that information can also be stripped.
5 – Technology has also made it very easy to manipulate any image in a way so that it “looks totally real” to the human eye, but in fact may be a totally false and misleading representation of what was actually happening.
Given these difficulties it seems that in the future viewers will simply have to accept that any image they see is the distributors attempt to “sell” them on an idea or a concept. There will be no way to tell if it is real, FAKE, or how misleading it might be.