Wright Morris
[Writer and photographer, b. 1910, Central City, Nebraska, d. 1998, Mill Valley, California.]
However much [photographs] may lie, they do so with the raw materials of truth.
Pedro Meyer
[Photographer, b. 1935, Madrid, Spain, lives in Mexico City.]
Before, the myth of “photography doesn’t lie” was used in order to cover up tricks. If I [make a] portrait [of] you, accommodate you, illuminate you, put make up on you or use a filter, am I not manipulating reality? The only difference is that now I can do it from the computer in the postclick instead of the preclick. If I decide to photograph something instead of something else, I also manipulate reality. Of course a photograph can lie or commit abuse, but it always could.
Errol Morris
[Documentary filmmaker, b. 1948, Hewlett, New York, lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.]
If you want to trick someone with a photograph, there are lots of easy ways to do it. You don’t need Photoshop. You don’t need sophisticated digital photo-manipulation. You don’t need a computer. All you need to do is
change the caption.
Abelardo Morell
[b. 1948, Havana, Cuba, lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.]
There is a lot of social photography being done now to point to the untruth of photography. It’s getting very dull now. So, okay photography doesn’t tell the truth. So what? Everyone has known this forever.
Chester Higgins
[Photographer, b. 1946, Lexington, Kentucky, lives in Brooklyn, New York.]
I learned that the camera never lies about the photographer.
Judith Butler
[Philosopher and theorist, b. 1956, Cleveland, Ohio, lives in Berkeley, California.]
The critical image... must not only fail to capture its referent, but show its failure.
Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens)
[Writer, b. 1835, Hannibal, Missouri, d. 1910, Redding, Connecticut.]
The sun never looks through a photographic instrument that does not print a lie. The piece of glass it prints is well named a “negative”—a contradiction—a misrepresentation—a falsehood. I speak feelingly of this matter, because by turns the instrument has represented me to be a lunatic, A Solomon, a missionary, a burglar and an abject idiot.
(1866)
Rineke Dijkstra
[Photographer, b. 1959, Sittard, The Netherlands, lives in Amsterdam.]
A photo is always a kind of lie. Truth is only present for a matter of a fraction of a second.
