The power of image manipulation

Jul 6, 2010

The power of image manipulation

This post has not been approved by Media Co-op editors!

As the NYT's Media Decoder points out, the Economist took part in some questionable photo editing on its latest cover, which supposedly shows a forlone Barack Obama on the beaches of Louisina, with an oil rig looming off-shore. The cover and original photo (by Larry Downing, left) are significantly different from each other. As blogger Jeremy Peters points out, the removal of the two other people with Obama on the beach in Louisiana make him look alone and isolated.

But Peters doesn't point out the other item cropped out. In the original, Obama is looking down at something red, white and blue - maybe pieces of plastic, it's really unclear. But in the cropped photo he looks like he is looking off at nothing at all, simply hanging his head. It gives a definite different impression of what was happening when the photo was taken.

Both edits should make the Economist reconsider it's photo editing policy. But instead, Deputy Editor Emma Duncan writes to Peters:

I asked for Ms. Randolph removed because I wanted readers to focus on Mr. Obama, not because I wanted to make him look isolated. That wasn’t the point of the story. “The damage beyond the spill” referred to on the cover, and examined in the cover leader, was the damage not to Mr. Obama, but to business in America.

That doesn't really seem to answer the question of the impression given with the photo.

The point of this post isn't to defend Obama, or necessarily to call out the Economist. Rather, the point is that editing photos can easily repaint a moment in time to represent something else completely. There are times when photos are eidted for covers to make a point, but generally it is done in an obvious, clear manner.

Photo manipulation is particularly on my mind lately after the G20 protests. So many of the images captured could easily be interpreted in multiple ways with only slight editing. And the power of images is constant: there is a reason why it appears photogrpahers and videographers were targeted by police, had their footage adn pictures erased, their equipment seized and smashed. Those images tell a story. And while it's tempting, we need to avoid the trap of editing those photos to only tell the story we want and not what was captured.

(As a side note, this doesn't mean I think that photos capture the whole truth, and I fully realise how something is shot can just as much sway the viewer as post-production editing)