Ethics of Depiction: Landscape, Still Life, Human

Abstract

Excerpt from essay by Dick Goody: 180 years ago, when the first photographs were made, one can only imagine the certainty the phenomenon must have engendered. Finally, here was the ultimate arbiter of truth, the antidote to fantasy and deception because, as we have all heard, “the camera never lies.” Yet it took no time at all for the French photographic pioneer, Hippolyte Bayard, to stage his Le Noyé (Self-portrait as a drowned man) in 1840. All art is staged, all depictions are inventions to some degree. Anything that enters the retina is prone to subjectivity.