The clone wars: Is cloning out okay?

“We must have design in a picture even at the expense of truth. You are using nature for your artistic needs.” - John F. Carlson.

I have suggested in earlier blogs that when engaging in photography the reality we are attempting to represent in our images is an inner reality beginning with our experience of the world rather than some naïve notion of objective external reality. Moreover, I have suggested that, insofar as we are attempting to create something of artistic value rather than (merely) documenting the world, the dimension of our experience that matters is the aesthetic. What we are striving to express is our aesthetic response to the world as we experience it. As it stands, this opens the door to a very wide array of permissible manipulations, so I want to take this opportunity to close that door a little.

The first question we need to ask ourselves is the following: Who is the image for? Who will be the audience? If it is only oneself, then there is no further constraint that we need be concerned with. Whatever changes you make to your image is, to borrow a phrase from the philosopher John Stuart Mill, a “self-regarding” action – an action that affects no one except for yourself. In such a case, we may do whatever makes us happy – replace the sky and manipulate the image in whatever way we like, drop in a unicorn and some mermaids – whatever. But what if we propose to share the image with others? In that case there immediately arises a certain set of duties, the most relevant of which in the present context is to not deliberately deceive others. This demand for honesty reflects a more general prima facie duty to treat each other with respect.

So far, I hope, so uncontroversial. But how does the obligation to not deceive others impact our editing and image manipulation choices? When is an image manipulated to the point of being deceitful or dishonest? Since all images will be subject to an interpretation when viewed, and since all interpretations are affected by the viewer’s background expectations and assumptions, answering this question requires us to take into account the expectations and assumptions of our expected audience.

Consider, for example, an image of Yosemite Valley converted to black and white or shot on black and white film. This is a very common practice, especially in fine art photography, but is it deceitful? After all, the world, as almost all of us experience it, is full of colour. I think the obvious answer is that it is not, but only because we can reasonably expect our audience to understand that the scene we have captured and experienced was in colour and that the black and white rendering is an artistic or aesthetic choice. Audiences know that what they are seeing has been changed to eliminate the colour that would have been experienced in the original scene. It is the very fact that the audience understands that the reality would have been experienced differently from how the image presents it that eliminates any risk of deception. On this basis, then, there is no barrier to inserting a mermaid or a unicorn, given that the audience understands that such creatures are purely fictional. One might question whether, with the addition of mermaids or unicorns, the resulting image still counts as a “photograph”, but that is not an issue that I’m going to concern myself with now. The point is that no wrong has been committed because we can be reasonably confident that the audience will not be deceived into believing things that are false.

By contrast, few audiences would have reason to suspect that a seamlessly replaced sky is not what would have been experienced at the scene. As such, sky replacement is very likely deceptive and anyone who presents an image which has the sky replaced without declaring it is likely to have acted immorally, in my view.

But what about cloning out objects or elements from an image? Again, this ultimately turns on the question of what we can reasonably expect our audiences to understand about the image. If it is reasonable to believe that the audience will expect nothing to have been removed or changed — if, in other words, the audience understands the image to be primarily or essentially documentary — then cloning elements out will be deceitful and should be avoided. By contrast, so long as it is reasonable to believe that the audience understands that the intent behind the image is artistic or aesthetic rather than essentially documentary, then there is considerably less moral peril in cloning out elements from the image. Much the same can be said of the suite of other adjustments we might make to an image: dodging and burning, white balance adjustments, saturation adjustments, and so on. These are all permissible in the pursuit of clearer expression of our aesthetic experience of a scene, given that it is reasonable to expect our audience to be aware that our intent is primarily artistic rather than documentary. In such cases our audience will not be deceived into believing that the image is an entirely veridical or literal depiction of everything present in the scene as it would have have been experienced by the viewer had they been present when the shutter was clicked.

Two final points are worth mentioning. The first is that – to echo Aristotle when speaking about morality more generally – we should not expect more precision than our subject matter permits. Audiences are diverse and vary to some extent in their assumptions, expectations, and understandings of the world. Consequently, whatever guidelines or editing practices we follow there is always the possibility that some of our audience will be deceived in some respect. Moreover, there will always be context-dependent exceptions to any general guideline or principle we seek to apply. Whilst much manipulation of an image may be possible without leading to the viewer being deceived, there are undoubted limits to this. So long as the viewers understand that they are viewing a photograph, they will almost certainly have an expectation that there remains at least a significant correspondence between the image and the scene as they might have experienced it had they been present. How significant a correspondence will be required before our audience is likely to be deceived is impossible to pin down precisely; good judgment is always necessary.

The second point to always keep in mind is that image manipulation of some sort is an intrinsic feature of the manufacture of any photographic image. We should not, in other words, delude ourselves into thinking that a photographic image is, or even can be, an entirely veridical depiction of a scene. The very act of photographic composition is an act of selection and exclusion. In choosing the boundaries of the image we exclude elements of the scene that our audience might have witnessed had they been present when we pressed the shutter. Similarly, our choice of perspective hides certain elements in the scene from view, whilst revealing or emphasizing others. We do this at least in part based on what we seek to express or capture. This is not so different, I would argue, from what we do whenever we use language to, say, describe something. We inevitably leave out from our description innumerable details precisely so that we can better communicate what we take to be of greatest relevance or interest. There is nothing intrinsically problematic in this, of course; we should not and would not be accused of deceiving our audience if, in describing how a waterfall cascaded through the forest, we leave out any mention of the colour of the leaves. Excluding certain elements and emphasizing others may be a conscious and deliberate choice or it may be that our experience of the scene did not include any awareness of those excluded elements. Either way, our task is to “speak our truth” concerning the scene, not to speak all of the truths that might be said concerning that scene.