Re: HH Goddard

[Christopher D. Green]

Rick, All good points. I did not mean to endorse a naive view of the "truth" of photographs. I meant (I think obviously enough) the kind of retouching that Goddard did, and I meant it only with respect to formats that are expected to be veritable accounts (e.g., news, science) as opposed to fiction, art (or that weird in-between category, advertising). As you note, there are lots of kinds of retouching which are regarded as "legitimate" and the line is often not very clear. On the other hand, as a perceptionist (I was trained in a perception lab as well), you probably know much more than most people about what goes on in the dark room -- well, now, "on the laptop" (and I suspect that many would still be shocked). As for your claim that "our postmodern world is well past being scandalized by a 'retouched' photograph," I seriously doubt it. Being "scandalized" by the banal appears to be what politics is (almost) all about now. I give you William Jefferson Clinton. :-) Regards, -- Christopher D. Green Department of Psychology York University Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] phone: 416-736-5115 ext. 66164 fax: 416-736-5814 http://www.yorku.ca/christo/ ============================ . Rick Froman wrote: Christopher D. Green wrote: “For us, of course, if, say, _Time_ magazine published retouched photos roday we'd scream "Fraud!" At a time when the "meaning" that photos have today hadn't fully crystalized, when the days in which newspapers and magazines regularly used drawings were within living memory, when the quality of photos was such that they often didn't reflect features that were fairly obvious to a direct observer of the photographed scene, retouching may have had a different relation to the viewer and to truth.”   With today’s technical innovations, there is not a picture that appears in Time magazine (or your Intro Psych textbook) that has not been retouched (photoshopped). And what is the nature of truth with regard to photographs anyway? Is cropping or framing lying? What about color “correction”? Choosing to include one picture and not another? Are the subjects of black and white photographs actually devoid of color? Photographs are not objective facts. They are included with a story to emphasize a point. National Geographic has a nice column every month called Final Edit where the photo editors give some insight into why certain photos get into a story and others don’t. Some very striking images do not illustrate a story because the picture does not advance the point of the story.   As a psychologist who considers carefully the difference between sensation and perception, I recognize that truth, if it is to be found, is only in perception, not in raw sensation. I think our postmodern world is well past being scandalized by a “retouched” photograph. As to the use of photographs as scientific evidence of something, I don’t think that a photograph can be used to provide empirical data of anything but the most obvious and measurable characteristics (like the distance between a person’s eyes, for example). They can be easily manipulated and are, therefore, useful as stimuli in experiments but their main use in research publication is as an illustration of a concept (in which case you will usually use the best example to make your point, leaving the rest on the cutting room floor).   Rick Dr. Rick Froman Professor of Psychology John Brown University 2000 W. University Siloam Springs, AR  72761 [EMAIL PROTECTED] (479) 524-7295 http://www.jbu.edu/academics/sbs/faculty/rfroman.asp --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]