Censorship and 'Truth'

Overview
Notions of censorship and truth
The indexical qualities of photography in rendering truth
Photographic manipulation and the documentation of truth
Censorship in advertising, art and photography


Ansel Adams, 'Moonrise Hernandes New Mexico', c. 1941 - 2


'Moon over Half Dome',1960


Manipulation is not new - in above image
'Camera never lies' - Clearly it can
Manipulation in digital photography DOES happen - Whether to, or not, to 'Improve' an image.
'Original' Negative of slide
Is it the image in itself which gives it the quality, or is it the printing process.


He made countless reproductions using the same negative, through printing processes he could suggest different day times, weather etc


The idea that truth in photography (manipulation) isn't something new, has been practised for a long time using negatives.


'Five years before coming to power in the 1917 October revolution, the soviets established the newspaper Pravda....'


'Stalin with, and without, Nikolai Yezhov'


'Stalin with, and without, Trotsky'


Whats published to us isn't necessarily the truth, we are given a certain amount of truth.


http://homegame.org/news/


911 related advertisements in above link 'Flight simulator' etc Similar to Ad Busters


Kate Winslet on cover of GQ magazine, with legs elongated in photoshop.
First example of this manipulation and notions of truth. Is it affecting anyone by doing this?


'At that time (world war 2) I fervently believed just about everything, i was exposed to in school and in the meida. For example, I knew that all Germans were evil and that all Japanese were sneaky and treacherous, while all white Americans were clean-cut, honest, fair minded and trusting"
Elliot Aronson


'a deliberate and successful attempt by one person to get another by appeals fir reason to freely accept beliefs, attitudes, values, intentions, or actions.'
Tom L. Beauchamp, Manipulative Advertising


'Whereas representation tries to adsorb simulation by interpreting it as false representation, simulation envelops the whole edifice of representation as itself a simulacrum' - Baudrillard


"It is a masquerade of information: branded faces delivered over to the prostitution of the image' - Baudrillard


Baudrillard: 'The gulf war did not take place', 1995, in Poster, M
Saying it was designed to happen, for the media, took place at 6:30, ready for the news


Peter Turnley, 1991

An-My Le, Small Wars

Does it represent the harshness of war? Or is it just landscape photography.

Should we this in news? Or the more grim reality?

Censorship

The practise of policy of censoring films, letters, or publication.

Morals

Principles of behaviour in accordance to the standards of right and wrong.

'Everybody, everywhere want to modify, transform, embellish, enrich and reconstruct the world around him - to introduce into an otherwise harsh or bland existence some sort of purposeful and distorting alleviation'

Theodore Levitt, The morality of Advertising, 1970

E.g - Cadburys flake, A woman eating a chocolate bar can be related to fellatio, if one person thinks this, then probably many people do. Is it a problem?

Oliviero Toscani, United colours of Benetton advert 1992

Black child appears to have horns, white child angelic like.

Amy Adler - The folly of defining 'Serious' Art

Professor of Law at New York University

'An irreconcilable conflict between legal rules and artistic practise.'

The requirement that protected artworks have 'serious artistic balue' is the very thing contemporary and post modernism itself attempt to defy.'

Sally Mann, Candy Cigarette, 1989

Sally Mann, Immediate Family, 1984-92

Is this acceptable? Will it effect the children?

Tierney Gearon, untitled 2001

Final thoughts

Just how much should we believe the truth that is represented to us in the meida

And should we be protected form it

Is the manipulation of the truth fair game in a capitalist society

Should art sit outside censorship laws exercised in other disciplines

WHo should be protected, artist, viewer or subject?