#11 in a series of background briefs

Why does the public care?

Why do viewers want to know whether a photo put before the public is an undoctored record of the scene that was photographed?

  • 1. For reasons of trust

    Viewers’ level of trust in a photograph depends on their confidence in their ability to “read” the photograph based on their knowledge of how single-exposure, undoctored photographs “work.”

    When viewers know or suspect that a photograph is doctored, they lose confidence in their ability to “read” the photograph — they can no longer rely on their knowledge of how photographs “work” — so they trust the photograph less.

    There’s also a more instinctive factor

  • 2. For reasons of meaning

    An undoctored photograph often “means” something different to viewers than a doctored or aigmented photograph means even when the two photos look identical to each other.

    A scenario to illustrate this

  • 3. For reasons of difficulty (“impressiveness”)

    There was an old axiom back in the days of film photography, when it was much harder to make technically excellent photographs:

    “Viewers aren’t impressed by how hard the photographer worked to make the photo.”

    In the digital era, when it’s much easier to make technically excellent photographs, the modern counterpart is,

    “Viewers aren’t impressed with a photo if they think it would be easy to make it themselves.”

    More on this: “Viewers are human”