“TTG is built on 21st-century attitudes toward photos”

  • A. Burying the myths of the past

    The musty myths of the 19th and 20th centuries are growing ever more distant in the rear-view mirror:

    “Photographs are objective facts.”
    “Photographs are equivalent to reality.”
    “Photographs never lie.”

    TTG rejects all of these statements, asserting that no photographs are “objective facts,” that all photographs are “subjective,” that photographs are never equivalent to three-dimensional “reality,” and that lots of photographs “lie.”

  • B. If photos are never “objective facts” or equivalent to “reality,” what's the value of undoctored photographs?

    Undoctored photographs are valuable because they are reliable records of real-world scenes, not because they are equivalents of real-world scenes.

    Despite being both personal and subjective, those visual “records” can also be plenty trustworthy—

    — but only if the record remains undoctored (because doctoring or aigmenting a photograph always ruins its value as a record).

    Understanding the value of “records” is key to understanding TTG

     

    All of these themes are explored at length on this website, especially in FAQ #3.