Have you ever gone to some iconic tourist destination, with great anticipation, and been disappointed? A part of this disappointment is because the hyped-up expectations of the tourist can rarely be exceeded by reality, especially when these expectations are based on perfect images created in perfect conditions and/or the computer.
This is but one example, particularly pertinent to travel and landscape photographers, of the society we live in – relentless perfect (fake) images bombarding us from all quarters. From filters and the fake lives of influencers on social media through to increasing counterfeit brand products and the ability to easily create deep fake videos, one of the existential risks to our society is not just of widespread deception but that “people will come to regard everything as deception”.1
It is in this context we have this on-going debate – what is photography? What is digital art? Where is the line between real and deception?
For me, photography involves light travelling through a hole onto a light sensitive medium. In the early days, photography was seen more as a craft than an art as there was no human intervention beyond getting the right light through the correct aperture in sufficient quantity. As a result, the photograph was seen as reflecting reality; it was trustworthy.
Of course, there has always been interventions by the photographer – where to point the camera, what is left in or out, which images to display, some manipulation in the darkroom. But it is much easier these days to make far more significant changes and the incentives to do so seem all the greater.
As to what is real and what is deception? I can only pose a framework that has assisted me in thinking about my photography practice.
In her book Authenticity: Reclaiming Reality in a Counterfetit Culture, Alice Sherwood2 observes that the very word ‘authenticity’ now has dual meanings that are ‘almost completely opposite’.
The original meaning of authenticity (of being authentic) was the objective notion of whether something is a fact, a verifiable claim. And there’s a more recent meaning that’s altogether more subjective – what Sherwood calls personal authenticity, or “being true, not to external reality, but to your own, internal sense of self”.
A critical point that Sherwood makes is that, in either meaning, authenticity requires consistency “between the story being told and the reality – outer or inner – that lies behind it.”
Asking if an image is a photograph or digital art seems to be an increasingly irrelevant question. More important is asking which reality the image is speaking to, and what values do we expect to underpin an authentic image.
These days a cynical public expects that many (most?) landscape photographs will be manipulated in some way. “Has it been photoshopped?” is a common question of many a landscape photographer selling their images to the public.
A flat RAW file is just data. At a minimum, it needs some post-processing to reflect the reality of the landscape that was in front of the camera. The question is how much is too much?
At one end of the spectrum there are images that are authentic in the sense that the image is true to the scene. The viewer should be able to stand in the same spot as the photographer and see the same thing. Some temporary elements may have changed but it is clearly the spot.
Further, I would argue there is temporal element – the authentic image needs to be true at the time the photo was taken (so no drop-in skies, although I use exposure and focus blends required to overcome the technical limitations of the media).
These documentary style photos are where most photographers start. And indeed, most of my photos are still like this – while they are authentic to the landscape, they are often not very good. As happy tourist snaps or ‘scouting shots’, they are good for recording memories or a reminder to come back under different conditions, but they don’t document the world in a way that is specific to how I see the landscape or is meaningful to others.
As a landscape photographer, I aspire for my images to bring much more out of the scene than would have been seen by a less observant viewer. By bringing my inner experience of the landscape to the photograph, I want to impact the viewer in a particular way, or tell a story through my images of what it was like to be in that landscape. There is a balance required here between the reality of the landscape and my inner reality as I respond to that landscape.
With the power of digital manipulation, there is an opportunity and a risk with going further.
The opportunity is that photographers can take the data they capture in-camera and portray an inner reality not connected to the reality of the landscape. While the image may still be recognisable as a location, or a type of place, the viewer would not have any expectation that if they stood in the spot the photographer was standing, they would see what is shown in the image.
The question of whether or not these images are a photograph is not relevant. These images are not trying to (or pretending to) be authentic to the outer reality. They are authentic to the creative vision of the artist.
There is a risk, however, that an image is portrayed as true to the landscape but it is not. This is a tricky grey zone where the photographer needs to be clear about their intent. Context matters – it assists the viewer in making a judgement about the authenticity of the image. Strong stylistic choices may bring the image through the grey zone into a landscape that is clearly not reality. Clever editing may draw the viewer into the scene in a way entirely consistent with what the photographer perceived in the landscape at that moment.
This presents a tempting and slippery slope as photographers strive to stand out in a very competitive field, with limited time or commercial imperatives, which leads to images that are not authentic to either the inner or outer reality. And the viewer is left with “the constant and complicated process of distinguishing the authentic from the artificial.”3
In practical terms, I try to make sure to keep out of this grey zone. Landscape photography involves light reflected from the landscape being captured in a box. It should be clear from the image itself that the photograph is true to the external reality of the scene or it is not. If it requires an explanation in the caption, it will inevitably mislead. Increasingly we see debates in the comments of social media as to whether or not an image is AI generated – this is not going away.
Occasionally I will try ICM or heavily post process a photograph to create an image that says something not directly related to the landscape. But mostly I want to represent nature or the landscape in all its wonderful reality.
I am very pleased when I capture an image that tells a story about what the location meant to me, or an even bigger story. I hope to invoke a response while being authentic to the scene. This is a difficult task and I can only admire those photographers that regularly achieve this balance in a compelling way.
The very best landscape photographs successfully balance these two realities. They are true to the reality of the scene at the time as they also create an emotional response of what it was to be a person in that landscape.
To my mind, this is landscape photography at its best and is becoming all the more important in this culture of counterfeits and fakes.
Westerlund, M. 2019 The Emergence of Deepfake Technology: A Review. Technology Innovation Management Review, 9(11): 39-52.
Sherwood, Alice, 2022, Authenticity: Reclaiming Reality in a Counterfetit Culture
Carody Culver, 2023, Genuine Article, The Griffith Review 79: Counterfeit Culture
Very well stated!