What you see is what you get?

How do we know what someone looks like if we’ve never met them? How do we prove someone was here? How do we capture the image of someone we love and cherish? That’s easy. Snap a picture, right? A few years ago the answer to these questions would have seeme quite simple.But recently it seems like the evolution of the image has come full circle. Prior to the invention of photography, if someone wanted to have a person's likeness captured it was by an artist. I can only imagine that, wanting to be presented in their best light, women and men would insist on improvements and alterations. Think of it as the forerunner to Photoshop. Or, if the person didn't have much money and took their chance with a less talented artist, then maybe the painting would allude to the actual person rather than actually capture their image. And then technology advanced and gave us a way to actually capture someone's image. Photography allowed anyone who was willing to have their image frozen in time. Granted the process was somewhat painful at first since exposures were long and subjects had to sit perfectly still, but it was still very exciting. It is nice to be able to compare photographs to the paintings and sculptures of people like Abraham Lincoln. In a way it keeps the artist honest. And our reliance on the photographic image worked very well for years. Granted there were a few examples of darkroom manipulation that stand out (Ansel Adams’ Moonrise) or staging of the photo itself (Doisneau’s Paris “Kiss” or Henri Cartier-Bresson’s man jumping over a puddle). But nothing to the scale of manipulation that is done today. Today’s photographer has the ease of the digital negative with the simplicity of Photoshop manipulation. But how does this impact history itself?Can we rely on the images we see today as accurate representations any more than paintings of people created hundreds of years ago? Consider something as simple as a photograph of someone like Oprah. Do the images we see on the covers of her monthly magazines even match the images we see of her in her daily show? Or consider images of fashion models. Are the images on the covers of a magazine what these women really look like? Certainly not. Time magazine has had its own brush with controversy when they burned in O.J. Simpson’s face on their 1995 cover.

And then in 2005 Newsweek was criticized for their cover of Martha Stewart. Her face was superimposed on the body of a model photographed separately in Los Angeles.

So now my question becomes how does the ease of manipulating a photograph impact the historic record? As technology continues to improve and it becomes increasingly difficult to detect manipulation, will we ever be able to believe the images we see again?