The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/03/opinion/03publiceditor.html?n=Top%2FOpinion%2FThe%20Public%20Editor
Pictures, Labels, Perception and Reality
By BYRON CALAME; July 3, 2005 Correction Appended
TO be truly worth a thousand words, some pictures need just a few more. I'm referring to labeling images in The New York Times - the words that explain who made the image and how it was created. This credit usually appears in smaller type below the image, and is distinct from the caption. The credit line has become increasingly complex as technology has enabled visual journalists - photographers, illustrators, graphic designers and cartoonists - to alter their work with greater ease. Because of this wider variety of images, I believe Times readers deserve more precise and consistent explanations of the images put before them. Making the wording and explanations uniform across all sections of the paper would help ensure that readers know whether they are looking at news or at art, no matter what part of The Times they are reading. Few sections deal with this issue more than The New York Times Magazine, which regularly goes beyond using standard news pictures and portraits by using montages, digital manipulation and staged photographs to grab readers' attention or capture a mood that helps buttress an article. It was an article there that brought the labeling issue into focus for me.
The "Interrogating Ourselves" cover article by the former executive editor Joseph Lelyveld in the June 12 magazine discussed the "lies, threats and highly coercive force" being used to pry information out of detainees held in military custody. What caught my attention was the full-page photograph across from the title page of the article.
It was a color photograph with a mid-torso view from the rear of a person with wrists handcuffed. Below the plastic handcuffs, a red stain ran down from one wrist across the soiled palm onto the fingers. The credit at the bottom of the facing page: "Photographs by Andres Serrano."
But there wasn't any explanation that the photograph had been staged. There was no caption. Four pages later, the same was true for the full-page staged photograph of water torture. The cover picture of a person with a sandbag hood also was identified only as a photograph by Mr. Serrano.
For those who scrutinized the photographs, there was one possible clue that they were posed. The coloring of the backdrop in each photograph was similar. And a note in small type at the bottom of the contents page identified the artist who painted the backdrop for Mr. Serrano's cover photograph.
Torture is "a provocative topic," Kathleen Ryan, the magazine's photography editor, said of her decision to hire Mr. Serrano, and "this is a provocative photographer." Mr. Serrano's artistic works include a controversial 1989 photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine and blood.
The initial idea was to photograph the implements of torture for the cover article, Ms. Ryan recalled. But there was concern that readers wouldn't understand the "still life" photographs of handcuffs, for instance. "We decided the cuffs had to go on a hand," she said. It was decided that the hood needed to go on the head of a real person, she said, and a special effort was made to get the kind of sandbag actually used in interrogation. The pose for the water torture picture was based on a Vietnam-era news photograph, according to Ms. Ryan.
Magazine editor Gerald Marzorati and Ms. Ryan were understandably focused on coming up with bold images - especially for the cover - that would draw readers into the magazine and to the article by Mr. Lelyveld. To compete in the magazine world, they often seek photographs and illustrations with an edge or attitude that ranges well beyond what appears in the news columns of the newspaper. "In prose terms," Mr. Marzorati said, "it's like comparing breaking news to a poem."
So how did they decide on what kind of explanation to give readers? Mr. Marzorati said the "conceptual" photographs were so "over the top that I didn't think someone would say this is a real photograph." He continues to believe he was right. "The vast, vast majority of readers realized it wasn't real," he said.
The Times's "Guidelines on Our Integrity," which apply to all parts of the paper, emphasize the question of whether an image is intended to portray reality. "Images in our pages that purport to depict reality must be genuine in every way," the section on photography and images begins. Basically, the guidelines say any image that doesn't depict reality should be explained, "if the slightest doubt is possible."
It's clear to me that the slightest doubt was possible, especially in the case of the handcuff photograph. And I don't believe that the visual impact of the full-page photographs would have suffered from a credit that said "Depiction by Andres Serrano" or something similar.
A more sophisticated view came in a letter from David Travis, curator of photography at the Art Institute of Chicago: "Because photographs by themselves cannot clearly separate reality from appearance, it is good to know as much as possible about how, when, where, and for what reason they were made. This is especially necessary for subjects that may be part of a national debate about the practices and direction of a country at war. The photographs by Andres Serrano that accompanied your recent Sunday magazine article 'Interrogating Ourselves' would have been better described by the simple credit line: 'Photographic illustrations by Andres Serrano.' "
I found the lack of labeling especially disturbing when the handcuff photograph ran in a more obvious news context at the top of the front page of the Times Web site. The credit said only, "Andres Serrano for The New York Times." Although the editors were aware the photograph was posed, the newsy tone of the summary below the photograph offered no clues: "Detainees in the war on terrorism will be subjected to lies, threats and coercive force. Can rules be set about techniques and approaches? Go to Article." Interestingly, the manipulated images published with the cover article in today's magazine are accompanied by a quite detailed credit: "Photomontages by Jason Fulford for The New York Times. Digital manipulation by Statik Digital." (I had chatted with the editors about the labeling of the torture photographs during the week before the current issue went to the presses, but I don't know if that affected the decision on the credit.) And nytimes.com ran the complete credit, taking up three lines of type under each image, when it posted the cover article earlier this week.
While the details in such credits for images can be valuable to readers, one result can be multiple terms and phrases that vary from one part of the paper to another. From the news columns, for example, a recent credit for an altered image of the state Capitol in Albany said: "Illustration by The New York Times; Photograph by The Associated Press." (The Times's customary style bans the term "photo-illustration.")
So I urge The Times to consider establishing a standardized set of simple labels to be used across all parts of the paper and online to describe various categories for images, depending on the way they have been created or manipulated. This look at the handling of images forces a fledgling public editor to ponder the extent to which journalistic practices can legitimately differ among the news columns of a newspaper, its editorial pages, a magazine, a book review section and a Web site, all bearing the New York Times imprimatur. The magazine, for instance, can reinforce the impact of a given article by deciding it wants a portrait that makes the subject look pious, or powerful, or gritty. Editors of the news columns, traditionally obligated to be impartial, aren't supposed to do that.
Even though all this landed on your doorstep this morning with each page labeled "The New York Times," top editors seem confident that readers can sort out - and allow for - differences in journalistic tone and practice from one section to another. Readers have long understood the difference between the news columns and the editorial pages, these editors reason, and the Magazine and Book Review are just other distinct parts of the package.
I've got many months to ponder these broader journalistic issues, but I think the torture photographs are a reminder that more attention needs to be devoted now to the clear and consistent labeling of images. The ideal: readers confident that whichever section they pick up on Sunday, it will be readily apparent whether images are real or manipulated - all with the help of just a few more words.
Correction
This column incorrectly described an Andres Serrano photograph of a crucifix submerged in urine. There was no blood mixed with the urine, and the photograph was taken in 1987, not 1989.
December 3, 2009
Point, Shoot, Retouch and Label?
By STEVEN ERLANGER
PARIS
VALRIE BOYER is 47, a member of the French parliament and a divorced mother of three. She is tall, fashionable and, dare we say it, slim.
But she has also created a small furor here and abroad with her latest proposal: a draft law that would require all digitally altered photographs of people used in advertising be labeled as retouched.
Some think such a law would destroy photographic art; some think it might help reduce anorexia; some say the idea is aimed at the wrong target, given that nearly every advertising photograph is retouched. Others believe such a label might sensitize people to the fakery involved in most of the advertising images with which theyre bludgeoned.
Underneath it all is an emotional debate about what it is to be attractive or unattractive, and whether the changing ideals of beauty from Sophia Loren to Twiggy have ever been realistic.
Michelangelo painted idealized bodies, so the idea of idealized beauty was already there, said Anne-Florence Schmitt, editor of Madame Figaro, the newspapers glossy womans magazine. Its a fake debate.
For Ms. Boyer, who has a background in health administration, the fight is really about her two teenage daughters, 16 and 17, and the pressures on young women to match the fashionable ideal of a thin body and perfect skin.
I got interested in the subject of the body because its really a mothers reflection, she said. Its the closeness I have to adolescents that drove me to become interested in these subjects.
It is a topic that consumes her. If someone wants to make life a success, wants to feel good in their skin, wants to be part of society, one has to be thin or skinny, and then its not enough one will have his body transformed with software that alters the image, so we enter a standardized and brainwashed world, and those who arent part of it are excluded from society.
Her proposed law has yet to be voted on in the National Assembly, where Ms. Boyer sits as a member of the center-right from heavily Socialist Marseille. The legislation is aimed at advertising, though its preamble suggests expanding the measure to other kinds of photographs. Her initiative has already brought her attention, as part of a larger, passionate and confused debate about models, beauty and anorexia.
It's a debate that goes well beyond France. In the United States, Self magazine, which champions accepting ones true self, recently published a thinned-down photo of the singer Kelly Clarkson, with a headline pushing total body confidence. Lucy Danziger, Selfs editor, defended the photo as the truest we have ever put out there, but many disagreed. There was also a fuss about a bizarrely retouched photo of the model Filippa Hamilton, whose waist was reduced to the width of her head, for a Ralph Lauren ad in Japan. Brigitte, a popular German womans magazine, decided last month that as of 2010 it would only use photos of ordinary women. The editor, Andreas Lebert, said he was fed up with retouching photos of what he considered underweight models.
In France, Ins de La Fressange, a former model and clothes designer, calls Ms. Boyers bill demagogic and stupid, arguing that the causes of anorexia are complex.
Dominique Issermann, a French fashion photographer, thinks that Ms. Boyer has not only misunderstood the problem, but also the nature of photography itself. There is this illusion that photography is true, she said. But a camera can easily distort reality through the use of a different lens without any retouching. As soon as you frame something you exclude something else, she said, adding that photographs are a piece of reality, but the reality of the world is different. In family photos, for instance, Someone always says, That doesnt look like you at all.
For Ms. Issermann, the problem is not photography, but a prepubescent style a kind of adolescent androgyny, in which skinny, not very muscular young men are paired with skinny, not very curvaceous girls disguised as women. Still, she said, digital pictures often need retouching to recreate the emotion that caused you to press the shutter in the first place.
She pointed to her well-known shot of Keira Knightley taken for Chanel. Most people think the picture was retouched to enlarge Ms. Knightleys partly exposed breast, Ms. Issermann said, but in fact the retouching was done to add a bit on the thigh. Shes too thin there.
Between Botero and Giacometti, the world finds its way, she said. We still want heavenly people in a heavenly light. Its the paradise of the image.
But there are those in France who support Ms. Boyers labeling proposal. Philippe Jeammet, professor of psychiatry at the Universit Paris Descartes, said it is the least we could do. He said that photos are a factor of influence, especially for the most vulnerable young girls. He would go further. There should even be sanctions, he said. Retouched photos are a deception, an illusion, and we must think about the consequences.
For Ms. Boyer, the issue is about standards and lying. She was recently struck by a magazine headline that read: Be who you are! On the back cover was an obviously Photoshopped picture of a teenager.
The pictures contradict the message, she said, and that contradiction is evidence of the schizophrenia that exists between the representation of an ideal world, a very thin, tanned and white-toothed woman without wrinkles, and the plebe who has health problems, who doesnt necessarily have white teeth, has wrinkles and puts on weight.
Ms. Boyer knows what its like to feel like an outsider. Her parents were pieds noirs who fled from Algeria in 1962 with nothing but a beach bag, with photo albums, and my mother took the silverware and a doll they had just given me, she said. The experience and the memories pushed her into politics.
Ms. Boyer drew attention last year when she drafted another law, which would make the promotion of extreme dieting a crime punishable by up to two years in prison and a fine of some $45,000. That law is largely aimed at Internet sites and blogs advocating an anorexic lifestyle like the pro-ana (for pro-anorexia) movement, which began in the United States. It passed the French lower house, but is stuck in the Senate.
There are several thousand pro-ana Web sites in France, Ms. Boyer said, and up to 40,000 women suffer from anorexia.
Children look a lot at the Internet, she said, adding, even if youre close by, even if youre attentive, even if you love them a lot, thats not enough to protect them. Especially when they target them, because pro-ana blogs are aimed at young girls in particular, they give them perverse advice, like, Lie to your mother, say youre going to eat at a friends house, cut your hair so you dont have to say that youre losing it.
But shes also been involved in the governments efforts to cope with obesity, more prevalent in France than many imagine. Two-thirds of French men and half of all women ages 35 to 74 are thought to be overweight, while a fifth of all adults are considered obese, according to a recent study by the Institut Pasteur. Already advertisements for highly caloric foods like soda and candy require labels that, for example, warn people to avoid eating foods that are too greasy, too sugary, too salty.
Christine Leiritz, chief editor of the French magazine Marie Claire, compared the labels to those Ms. Boyer wants on retouched photographs, suggesting that they will only tell people what they already know.
Our readers are not idiots, Ms. Leiritz said, especially when they see those celebrities who are 50 and look 23, like a much-remarked recent fashion shot of Sharon Stone that appeared this August in Paris Match. Of course theyre all retouched.
Magazines must police themselves, Ms. Leiritz said, but at the same time, fashion provides a dream that is important for women. Its not just explaining what to wear. I think a womens magazine is also partly a dream, which is made possible by a certain perfection in image.
Ms. Boyer herself loves fashion magazines. Shown a French Vogue that had a photograph of a reclining womans torso attached to a dogs hindquarters, and asked if the photo needed to be labeled as retouched, she grabbed the magazine and said, Magnificent!
I buy tons of womens magazines. I love fashion and I love life, she said. But it seems to me that as a matter of professional ethics, you have to warn people that the image of the body has been modified.
Its a matter of honesty, she insisted. Do you think you have to lie in order to dream? We must treat the public as adults, and I think its a true feminist battle. I dont understand why womens magazines arent rallying to it.
Maa de la Baume contributed reporting.