A more honest standard

The BBC series Age of the Image by James Fox (on BBC iPlayer) discussed man’s desire to record his world from the earliest cave drawings to the more sophisticated paintings, sculptures and photographs which followed. The nal episode touched on the invention of the digital image in 1957, followed in 1987 by John Knoll’s holiday snap of his partner Jennifer in Paradise which led to his inventing the great dream factory which we now know as Photoshop. It alarmingly concluded that virtually every image around us is likely to be falsi ed in some way, and in particular the photograph can no longer be trusted. AP will realistically accept that many of the photographs it now publishes will be manipulated images, yet most people still instinctively look on the photograph as an accurate depiction of reality. Do not our children, grandchildren or others have the right to assume they are looking at a faithful record of the person photographed, stripped of the arti ce of the software dream machine? Leave the professional image makers to do what they must, to satisfy the expectations of demanding clients. We enthusiasts can aim for a more honest standard. Alan Newall