Does Originality Matter?
Have you ever found yourself fretting about whether your work is “original” enough? In the minds of most people, it seems, originality or novelty is absolutely central to art. Indeed, for many, it is axiomatic that if some work is not “original” – if it is “derivative” or has been “all done before” – it lacks real artistic merit. Moreover, to characterise a work as “highly original” is itself to issue praise, quite apart from any other aspects of the work. I think that there is something wrong in such ideas, or at least confused or ambiguous.
The Inner Reality
One of the perennial questions that photographers face is whether or to what extent they may manipulate their image or clone elements into or out of their image before it becomes “fake”. This question has become especially pressing now we have entered an era where AI tools give us the power to seamlessly change or remove anything, even entire skies, at the click of a button.
This is, fairly obviously, an ethical question, but in this blog I look at the more metaphysical question that lies behind it, especially as it applies to landscape or nature photography: Given that we have a duty not to avoid “fake” images, what is the reality against which we should judge the image. I argue that it is an inner reality that is the legitimate ground for judgments of fakery or authenticity, not the external reality we naively presuppose.