Photography Is Dead, Long Live Photography

More cameras, fewer photographers. As this new day dawns outside my window, I pose a simple yet profound question: Is there still truth in photography?

Damn you, Eddie.

“People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths.”

Eddie Adams said that. You can read it for yourself in his 1998 short-piece Eulogy: GENERAL NGUYEN NGOC LOAN for Time Magazine.

That particular handful of words have rattled around in my head since the first reading. It's like some bad connection dialing up a phone call across time.

Photographs are only half-truths. Damn. What a line to cram down for digestion inside untold future generations of picture makers.

We lost Eddie back in 2004. He may be gone, but his words (and his photographs) still speak to us today.

Is there any truth left to be harvested from the still photograph or, as Mr. Adams may have believed, was there ever a complete truth there to begin with?

Wandering in a Photographic Desert

Some say we bear witness to the last jerking gasps of life born out over two centuries of photographic labor. Truth in our craft is being eroded beneath the increasing demands of a "share it now or share it never" artistic culture.

Or maybe not.

What does it mean to have truth in a photograph? What is that truth and does it still exist? Did it ever?

To answer this, it might be more straightforward to first decide what truth isn't or, as far as photography is concerned, what truths are we attempting to glean from the photographs we make, and how?

Truth is not fact. Whether it be visually conveyed or through speech or literature, factual information computes wholly outside the subjective beliefs of the observer.

A fact is a fact, in fact, whether or not one might believe the fact to be true. Truth can be true in the eyes of one person and completely false in the view of another.

Then we have the muddy waters of metaphysical absolutism, which is just a ridiculous thought for an article already destined to be a social hand grenade.

Where was I? Ah, yes. Truth in photography.

The border between fact and truth can indeed become wildly skewed. Yet, up until our foul modern times, photography has benefited from some element of inherent truth bound to the process itself.

Be they digital or otherwise, photographs can be staged, edited, processed, and manipulated. Our work can be fiddled with to hell and back, but somehow there still was a recognizable human fingerprint.

Even if a picture proved to be silently altered, at least we could sense something familiar, and perhaps respectable, in the effort itself.

Photography, like any other personal means of self-expression, is nothing more than a bridge. A photograph is a means of connection. It's visual language from human to human.

Or at least it used to be.

Now, dear friends, we enter a weird uncertainty where our eyes might not be able to sift the real from the unreal. This conjures up all sorts of existential bubblings.

The AI Conundrum

Artificial intelligence becomes self-aware atop an ocean of leeched photographs. The end could well be nigh.

AI is its own art. AI is robbery.

Razor-sharp prompts become the new raw file.

It's generational.

Old photographers fear what they don't understand. Young photographers are selling their souls to a cycle of ease and unearned accomplishment.

If you've slung a camera in the past few years, then you've encountered all manner of statements such as these debating the ethical use of artificial intelligence in photography.

Maybe you've chosen which side of the fence you stand on, maybe you haven't, or, like me, you're still trying to decide what the fence is made of and whose property it's actually dividing.

It's tricky.

For photographers, truth in our work might exist as some far-off shore we're certain is out there but can only catch glimpses of between the waves. If that is indeed the case, then maybe AI is just the next page of the same old book that nobody knows the end to.

Full disclosure: I used generative AI to remove an unsightly lens flare from the cover image of this very article. Was that wrong? Is it the act or the knowledge of the act that tends to offend? The lens flare didn't exist until the photograph was taken. Of all the elements in that photo, the flare itself was the only thing not present in the scene.

Where is the line drawn when it comes to creation and expression? This author certainly doesn't know. I doubt that you, my beloved and appreciated reader, happen to possess that knowledge, either.*

It could be that, like any question worth the brain power to earnestly contemplate, the answer to this problem lies in the question itself. Truth in photography might exist — and not exist — all at the same time.

We investigate further.

Author's Note: If you do happen to have such grand revelations hoarded back, be sure to type it out long and loud down in the comments.

The Many-Part Soul

If there was ever hope for a solid distillation of Eddie Adams' thoughts, and likewise our own investigation into truth and photography, then it is the confusing duality of truth and indeed human nature itself.

I'm told by more learned minds than mine that multiple portions of the same matter are capable of existing in two places at once. This cohabitation of space is called "quantum superposition."

Plato called this concept of faceted duality the Tripartite Soul. The Norse believed in many components of the human mind. Yin and Yang echoes these ideas.

I think Freud had something for this…

As it pertains to our discussion today, truth in photography could exist only as 18% gray (photography metaphors are fun) — an average of infinite shades falling between two absolute yet indiscernible probabilities.

If photographs are indeed only half-truths, whole truth becomes a reflection of our own perception. In turn, we must then accept that reality is a summation of external influences.

Perhaps more simply put, our perception of truth is determined by an infinite number of creative, environmental, existential, and social variables — all of which remain incredibly fluid.

Truth in the Unanswerable

With the utmost respect to Mr. Adams, I posit that there are no half-truths in photography or any other expressive art. Rather than full stops of definable fractions, the idea of truth in photography exists as an unwrinkled gradient.

By the same token, buried deep within some photographs we can sense at least a shadow of truth. We might find it impossible to communicate why or how, but something resonates within us.

Whether or not that truth proves universal for every set of eyes that happens upon said photograph really doesn't matter, does it? That's what makes the idea of truth in photography so personal and the pursuit of that truth so worthwhile.

And that could be the handle on this whole notion of truth in photography: the pursuit, the ideal that someday we might hit the nail square on the head with one single, hypothetical photograph that makes everything clear in a flash of supernova perfection…

…but we know this will never happen, and that acceptance carries a deeper, more telling truth all its own.

A Light in the Darkness

We've covered a wide range of ground since we started on this little journey together. Heavy topics with even heavier implications.

What is truth? Quite a lofty goal for any discussion, be it photo-related or otherwise.

Was Eddie right about our photographs being only half-truths, and how does AI play into the grand architecture of future camera work? Is the increasing prevalence of artificial intelligence a sign that photography as we know it is ending?

It could be that AI heralds the final death knell that shuts the lid on creative expression for all time. Or maybe AI is just the next coming of the same old inevitability that walks hand in hand with the evolution of any art form.

As I said, it's tricky.

Our problem and our question is nothing new, not really. The potential outcomes are scary, sure, but equally scary is the prospect of slow stagnation in the mire of apprehension.

Time will prove to be the great equalizer. I take comfort in that, at least.

Between now and then, I'll make photographs in my own way and for my own reasons, keeping a sharp eye for my own truth along the way, whatever that proves to be.