when i think staged photos i think of Soviet Union and their manipulations of historical photos and docs...

staged photos are fine, as long as they're not implied to be
journalistic or documentary. that's where the line gets crossed
way too much these days...

I got into an interesting discussion sort of along these lines in an arch history class a few years back. We were using film/music videos as an example of where truth lies in a project/product.

First we were shown an old astaire clip of him dancing with a woman. Though the camera moved significantly throughout, the entire 4-5 minute routine had only one cut, it being placed so as to be nearly unnoticable. Astaire had creative control and was intent on there being no distraction from his dancing. He wanted it to be clear it was actually him, no mistakes and no 'lies', so to speak. Essentially, he wanted it to be no different than if you were sitting in a booth 20 ft away and sipping a scotch.
This, however, created considerable difficulties shooting. Primarily with moving a 50's camera around a set, floating it up into the air, always being on the same mark as Fred. Also there was the matter of making the cut, not look like a cut (i think they ducked the camera behind a set piece and made the splice before coming across the other side).
So, in being honest to the medium of dancing, to express the intent of the dance and it's artist, the medium of film was compromised in lying about the cut.

in this case, the dance was the product.


The next clip was michael jackson's black or white. Again a video where dancing was showcased. However, it was the dancing that lied this time, and the film that was 'true'.
Cuts are frequent and obvious, never any question. We see dancing, but only as another way to convey the idea of the video. We believe that michael is dancing when we see only his legs, but he doesn't HAVE to be. We understand that this is make-believe, that the video isn't really happening anywhere.

and here, the video was the product.



soooooo

I guess you need to ask what your intent it, and that may tell you where your integrity should lie.

A photo of chernobyl: we all know what happened, this seems to me more about effectively conveying emotions that actually exist. To be true to these actual emotions, tossing in a few dolls to a create them might not be the greatest of sins.

Soviets, vietnam, and other such propaganda: well, this is lying. the honesty is in the suffering, the evil, etc. They are showing something that is otherwise.

I think a litmus test may be, if the photo still 'works'. If you can be honest that it is staged, and it doesn't change the meaning, then you know where your product is.


if you're a journalist, bad

if you're David LaChapelle...

as superheavy points out, all photography is a kind of visual editing anyway.

there are obviously lines of trust and authorisation that get crossed, but when you take a picture you have already set in play a whole system of exclusions and arrangements, even if this occurs so quickly as to be subliminal.

for example:
- shifting the camera slightly to include three people rather than two, because it balances the composition.
- shooting a foreshortened angle of a tall structure because of what lenses you have in your bag, or what lenses you packed that day.
- choosing to shoot black and white film rather than colour digital

I think all these qualify as editing. You started editing your pictures the minute you decided to take your viewfinder leica rather than your canon SLR.

(not meaning to justify the breach of trust involved when a photograph is presented as evidence of something which did not occur, or occured differently)

canadian artist jeff wall deals with this issue a lot.

jeff wall, morning cleaning, mies van der rohe foundation, barcelona, 1999. staged..

he didn't line up the ottomans neatly along the wall first... annoying.

what about taking the sound out of a video so that you're only getting half the story? In that video of Terry Schiavo we probably all saw, it *appears* that she is somewhat alert, and that her eyes are following something. We are told that her eyes are following a balloon that is just out of the camera shot. Everyone saw this video silent, while a newscaster talked over it.

When someone finally showed the video with the sound in, it became apparent that yes, there was a balloon, but that Terry wasn't doing even a mediocre job at following it. You almost constantly heard a voice saying, "no, no. Over here, honey. There you go- oh, no. Come on, look over at the balloon. No, it's over here, not over there." and so on.

Totally different meaning. Without sound, it seems to confirm that someone is alive and responding to stimuli. With sound it confirms that the people surrounding the subject are deluding themselves.

I think that the same thing can happen with photos, easily. If something that would make the photo mean something else is always just out of the viewfinder, then the photo's a lie.

3ifs, the ottomans aren't lined up because he's 'cleaning'

a cleaner obviously couldn't do his job if he left everything perfectly arranged.

SWEET IMMACULATE STAGING!!!

rationalist, a hypothetical question then

if shiavo were really capable of repsonding to stimuli, but for whatever reason, it was or could not be captured on video, would it then be okay to use deceptive filming methods to convey her awareness?

absolutely not. If that were they case, those trying to prove it would have to take the line of, "we're unable to demonstrate this electronically, it must be seen in person." This would have the added benefit of NOT encouraging doctors to make long distance diagnoses, but restricting information to those actually involved with thea case.

It wouldn't be wise either- if/once someone found out that the tape had been made using 'deceptive filming methods', they would assume that the whole arguement was deceptive.

degrees of staging. asking someone to ,please, move out of camera view is staging. architectural photography usually finds random humans messy,
there is the lifestylish model couple in mobius houses, a passing mass of anons (sometimes fuzzied) that brings out the simultaneous alienation and titillating density of the urban condition, or mies, cigar in hand, slightly off centre. there is also the architectural digest-style
picture that carries across family values, well being, rosey cheeked
and a well groomed collie. For the more jilted, there is the anorexic
yeah-yeah-yeahs-loving colour-clash young woman framed by a
graffiti covered wall, you can almost smell the urine and vomit after
last night's local lads' binge.

pictures of the fransworth house, from the outside, are usually taken above eye level countering the flood-precaution elevation . and the iconic pictures of zaha's building are usually oblique, abstracting the building image into intersecting planes. interestingly, there are more pictures of her buildings now that promote buildability. it doesnt 'look' impossible anymore, there are even columns sometimes! the girl has become a lady. The architectural record's (i think) subdued, even banal,photograph of her leipzig bmw plant's ceiling is just yummy, allowing the eye to travel deeper across those curvilinear elements, parallel and in counterpoint. and there is a picture of her Weil am Rhein project around showing a column right next to a concrete handrail, in very bad taste 'architecturally'. but there was this cinematic background green light,
..a very hitchcock-in-colour scene actually.


taking picture in itself is an excercise in staging, without the need for 'doll'ing up. the exposure, the shutter speed, the angle,framing, developing...u can take wonderfully abstract layerings of colours and images in the tube, many will think it came to be on photoshop.

For me,
It's okay if the item that is staged is at hand (if the dolls were out of the frame, but in the room)
or if the staged act actually occurs but just not at the time (if the janitor actually does what the photo is showing).
If you make children hold dolls lovingly when they're actually there to practice putting a condom on, that's bad.
If the janitor in the shot is Christopher Walken, that's bad.
Even then, it's all staged.
It just comes down to good staged and bad staged.

Any photograph with Christopher Walken is a good photograph.

yet another staged photograph by jeff wall. biker looking guy giving a discreet 'finger' to an immigrant male while towing an immigrant girlfriend.

And, Photographs arent the only things that does this, stories, always depends on different sides, but with photos, its somewhat a little more easier to talkabout.

I mean when telling stories, there are opinions wether if the story is accurate enough or not, and there are debates-never ending ones, and there cannot be one absolute truth.

But photographs are thought to be more transparent- because in this case, many people agree, that its fine putting a teddy bear into the picture to prove the point. I agree with that too, by the way

Its interesting that photographs are overestimated in transparency(seeing is believing) but at the same time, a very powerful thing, even when distorted- unlike stories.

There's a famous image of Corb and Mies walking together at the Weissenhoff Siedlung Exhibition. It's on the cover of the Smithsons' Heroic Period of Modern Architecture If you look closely there's an extra arm in the picture which belonged to Mart Stam. He was erased to make a better picture.