NEW YORK — It’s a common refrain when looking for proof that someone’s story or an event actually happened: “Pictures, or it didn’t happen.”
But in a world where the spread of technology makes photo manipulation as easy as tapping your phone, the idea that a visual image is an absolute truth is as outdated as the daguerreotype. And a photo can sometimes raise as many questions as it had to answer.
This became apparent in recent days when controversy arose over an image of Kate, Princess of Wales, and her three children. News agencies including The Associated Press published the Buckingham Palace image and then withdrew it over concerns it had been manipulated, leading Kate to say on social media that she occasionally “experimented” with photo editing.
She is certainly not alone in this.
From something that was time-consuming and required a lot of technical expertise in the days of real film and darkrooms, digital editing has become something that virtually anyone can do, from adding filters to cropping images and much more. There are countless apps that offer the simplest experiences in taking and retouching photos and videos, which can then be easily sent online and through social media.
“Cover blemishes and let the real you shine through,” says an ad for the smartphone app Facetune. “Remove and change backgrounds instantly,” says the Fotor app website. “Our AI object remover is ready to help you remove unwanted objects.”
This Wild West of image-altering skills opens new frontiers for ordinary people – and causes headaches for those who expect photographs to be a documentary representation of reality.
Photojournalists and major news organizations follow standards and codes of ethics surrounding photos. These organizations typically place an absolute value on the authenticity of images and will reject photos that have been altered in any way. But efforts to identify altered images may be hampered by increasingly user-friendly phone and computer apps that allow anyone to piece together what a camera actually captured, piece by piece.
The mainstreaming of manipulation, putting such skills at people’s fingertips, has created some interesting and viral moments – such as the one in March 2023 when an artificially generated image of Pope Francis in a puffy white coat prompted many people to think it was real used to be.
But there are risks and dangers in a world where just because you see something doesn’t mean you can absolutely believe it, says Ken Light, a professor of photojournalism at the University of California Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism.
“The role of photography has been to bear witness and record for the moment, but also for history. And I don’t think any of us know where it’s going to go,” he said. The rise of visual manipulation that casts doubt on whether something is real or not is “tremendously fraying the fabric of culture right now, but also for the future.”
Fred Ritchin, dean emeritus of the school of the International Center of Photography and former photo editor at The New York Times Magazine, agreed. “’The camera never lies’ is an idea from the 20th century. It’s not a 21st century idea,” he said. “These are all mythologies that we’re still hiding behind and haven’t really confronted yet.”
People have long known that some images are manipulated, such as magazine cover models, and some have raised concerns about the impact artificial and manipulated beauty standards can have on girls and women.
But they haven’t really figured out how widespread digital manipulation is in other areas, like social media, done by a wide variety of everyday people, said Lexie Kite, who has researched body image and media with her sister Lindsay and wrote “More than a body: your body is an instrument, not a piece of jewelry.”
“It is important for all of us to anchor ourselves in the truth that digital manipulation is our reality,” she said.
People can take steps to deal with the insidious effects of photo manipulation, says Hany Farid, a professor at UC Berkeley whose research examines digital forensics and image analysis.
Viewers should “just slow down a little bit, be a little more careful, be a little more thoughtful” about what they’re looking at, rather than just assuming that every image they see is fact, he said.
On the technology side, he said ways are being developed to track visual images and make it clear whether they have been altered after the photos were taken.
But while such steps may alleviate some problems, he said, they will not eliminate the problem or return us to the point where we could have lasting confidence in an image, as previous generations did with photos we now consider unforgettable.
“In almost every major incident in our history, wars, conflicts, disasters, there is this iconic photo,” he said. “They are so powerful because they capture this incredibly complex set of facts, emotions and history in one photo. And I don’t know if we can have that anymore. It’s a completely different world now.”
Or, if the adage was amended: “Pictures, and maybe it still hasn’t quite happened.”
