Censorship & Truth

Quality of photograph in creation of truth / /
Photographic manipulation / /
Censorship of advertising / /
Censorship in art & photography.


Software can be used to 'improve' a photographs quality, used as a tool of manipulation.
- digital photography is a 'code' that exists within this environment.
- against this, multiple photographs can be reproduced and altered slightly with different darkroom techniques applied - this will alter the way the photograph can be received


Ansel Adams 

Stalin & Nikolai Yezhov 

- Manipulated image in Pravda

- Newspaper doctored the news 

The news is censored and manipulated to give the viewer something that they think should be read / / accepted as the news.

Kate Winslet / / GQ Magazine

- Legs longer

- Body skinnier.

Difference was very far from the truth.  Sends a different message.

Photographs are manipulated in order to sell a story / / dramatise the way in which in it perceived by the viewer / / seeks attention. i.e photographs from Iraq, viewing allied soldiers in a low light.

Robert Capa

Death of a loyalist soldier, 1936

Is it real? 
Does it even matter if it isn't? 

This photograph was up for discussion for a long time - proved he almost certainly is dead.

The truth of images can be coloured by the caption they are put with, especially in the case of 'Death of a loyalist soldier'.  Using the word 'death' instantly adds drama and danger to the photograph that was perhaps not necessarily there before a name.  The word 'loyalist' gives the image personality, moreover, it makes the soldier more human than purely being referred to as 'death of a soldier', which holds a sense of detatchment, as if he doesn't deserve a name.  Such a lack of personality connotes that he means nothing, a more neutral view of war / / killing of people.  However, the use of the word 'loyalist' reflects visually in the tone of the photograph, with the grand setting and low camera angle, the viewer feels on level with this person, adding emotion.

Manipulative advertising, 1984 

Is it rational / / 
or suggestive of what people want their viewer to be seeing

Simulacrum - phases of image. 

- reflection of a basic reality 

- Jean Baudrillard 

Peter Turnley 

- The unseen Gulf War / / photographs documenting the Gulf War.

The photos were approved by the U.S army, which means they are far from telling the truth of any form.  However, his book offers all the unpublished images, this meant that people had the opportunity to see what really happened and form an opinion of their own, uncensored.

Jean Baudrillard 
Book- The Gulf War did not take place (1996) 

Forces the point that it was a war that took place as a simulation of other wars. 

- manipulated representation of war 

- Strategized media event

Monochrome

- 'arty' - colour as opposed to black and white making it more real? 

Contrived representation of reality.

An-My-Lee - Small Wars

- Fine art photographer turned to capturing war.  Is there a place for this style of photography or is Turnley's more valid? 

"landscape photograph with some tanks in it" 

Censorship

- The practice or policy of censoring films, letters or publications 

- Objectionable

- Standards of right and wrong

Theodore Levitt 

- The morality of Advertising, 1970 

Cadbury's Flake advertising 1969

- orgasmic situations 

- 'Inserting' a chocolate bar into her mouth / / perhaps says more about the viewer than it does about the images themselves. 

Oliviero Toscani, United Colours of Benetton, 1992

- Photographer building a career off adverts meant to shock

Balthus, the Golden Years 

Does the fact that it's a painting make it acceptable to be graphic?

Amy Adler - The Folly of defining 'serious' art

- The Miller Test. 1973. 

When art starts to become too graphic. 

- Obsenity law. 

'It comes from the Supreme Court's 5-4 ruling in Miller v. California (1973), in which Chief Justice Warren Burger (writing for the majority) held that obscene material is not protected by the First Amendment. The definition he used went like this:

The basic guidelines for the trier of fact must be: (a) whether "the average person, applying contemporary community standards" would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest ... (b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law, and (c) whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. If a state obscenity law is thus limited, First Amendment values are adequately protected by ultimate independent appellate review of constitutional claims when necessary.

Courts have traditionally held that sale and distribution of obscene material is not protected by the First Amendment, but that possession of obscene material is protected by the right to privacy.'
Source

Sally Mann

Sally Mann - Candy Cigarette, 1989

A mother who photographs her children and publishes them. 

Should a mother be showing images like this, and what is happening?

Should she do this or is it different because they are her own children. Family photos... 

'A REVOLTING EXHIBITION OF PERVERSION UNDER THE GUISE OF ART ' 

News of The World

Richard Prince - Spiritual America, 2005 

What should we believe? should we be protected from it?
Related back to the Miller test.
A fairly controversial view, however, is a force against the negative views of these photographs:
“[T]o imagine a new art, one must break the ancient art.”
—Marcel Schwob
This works for Manns work.