Calum Andrew Morrell

On a previous incarnation of this website I posted an article titled "Constructing a lie" in which I argued that all photographs, yes every single one, are a lie. I provided examples which were well known and supported my claim. I also provided examples which were more mundane and based in the everyday rather than the professional.

I have chosen not to reproduce that article on this new website for one fairly simple reason: not all photographs are a lie and the mundane examples I used actually disproved my claim!

For the past few months I have been thinking about that article and I have come to the following conclusion. What I was arguing was demonstrably incorrect, but what I thought I was arguing was correct. My task for now is to explore why my stance was incorrect and to lay out how I will resolve this at some point in the future.

The problem with the original article revolved around the word "lie". The definition I will be using is that a lie is a statement, or depiction, which deliberately, intentionally and knowingly presents a version which does not match reality. There is an intent to deceive. In the original article I used examples which do meet the definition of lie as laid out here, but not all the examples do.

The examples of Adnan Hajj adding an additional smoke stack to one image and triplicating a flare dropped by an F-16 in another demonstrate my definition of a lie as the photographer deliberately, intentionally and knowingly altered the images in a way that did not represent what they were photographing. Other examples I used, such as deciding where to stand and as a result including or excluding objects from the scene, may not result in a lie as the resulting image does actually represent the scene as the photographer saw it. Therefore there is no intention to deceive, to lie or to present a version of reality that did not exist. They have been selective in what they present to the viewer, but likely in an attempt to provide a more enjoyable experience.

There are many other examples a skilled philosopher could undoubtedly come up with to disprove my original claim, but this single example is all that's technically necessary. Not all photographs can possibly be a lie if even one can be shown not to be.

So where does this leave the article and the claim? The article is currently in limbo as, although the arguments still achieve the goal of representing what I wanted to say, I did not say what I wanted to say. The article is left as a series of arguments in search of a new, accurate, claim. The claim is dead, long live the claim?

I have so far been unable to find a word that accurately reflects my stance - that every single photograph ever captured misrepresents the scene being captured - without being as cumbersome as the way I've just had to phrase it.

I plan on rewording the article, as minimally as possible, once I have been able to resolve my previous errors to my satisfaction. I just don't know how long this will take. Ideally before I die.