Hi guys,
Was reading about this photo essay, linked from 'Metafilter'...
http://www.metafilter.com/83061/Ruins-of-the-Second-Gilded-Age
The photo essay is this one:
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/07/05/magazine/20090705-gilded-slideshow_index.html
Where it says...
"Martins, who creates his images with long exposures but without digital manipulation, traveled...."
But the second image (third slide), the unfinished framing is a regular image digitally flipped to appear larger than it is.
http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2009/07/05/magazine/20090705-gilded-slideshow_3.html
I've attached the animated GIF file showing the work done. If that doesn't come through correctly, you can see it online here:
http://gurno.com/adam/images/abandoned-house-ps-evidence.gif
Thanks,
Adam
Editors' Note: July 8, 2009No more links to Metafilter, but this is pretty bad for a guy whose hype is all about going about "without digital manipulation," though there is no mention of his name on this page. Amusingly, Edgar Martins' website still links to the article with pride: [5th July 2009] Edgar Martins' newly commissioned work is featured in the New York Times Magazine (Link). Amusingly, when discussing the series The Accidental Theorist, he claims that "[w]hile these subjects might appear manipulated, they are almost entirely photographed as found." (Emphasis mine).
A picture essay in The Times Magazine on Sunday and an expanded slide show on NYTimes.com entitled "Ruins of the Second Gilded Age" showed large housing construction projects across the United States that came to a halt, often half-finished, when the housing market collapsed. The introduction said that the photographer, a freelancer based in Bedford, England, "creates his images with long exposures but without digital manipulation."
A reader, however, discovered on close examination that one of the pictures was digitally altered, apparently for aesthetic reasons. Editors later confronted the photographer and determined that most of the images did not wholly reflect the reality they purported to show. Had the editors known that the photographs had been digitally manipulated, they would not have published the picture essay, which has been removed from NYTimes.com.
No people or objects may be added, rearranged, reversed, distorted or removed from a scene (except for the recognized practice of cropping to omit extraneous outer portions).It's simply false to say that there is any inherent quality of digital photography that makes it impossible to adhere to these guidelines. Nor is their any question whatsoever that Martins's photoessay was a flagrant breach of them. Maundering on about how photography is inherently illusory or can never capture an unaltered version of reality is utterly irrelevant to the gross and deliberate fabrications perpetrated by Martins. We can none of us tell "the whole truth" or "pure truth" but we sure as hell know that we can sometimes tell lies.
I am travelling and so unable to access the internet.I call bullshit on that.
"A reader ... discovered upon close examination that one of the pictures was digitally altered, apparently for aesthetic reasons," the Times editors wrote.I like how the part that probably identified the reader as unixrat, or at least coming from MetaFilter, was dropped from the AP wire.
An artist using photographs, for example, will be judged by precisely the same criteria as a photojournalist or a commercial photographer, or a professional in another field for whom photography may be no more than one of many tools.It depends on whether they use the criteria of a 'photojournalist' or a 'professional in another field' to judge him. Also of course, if they spot the cloning and feel it matters.
With artful composition and controlled framing - but no digital manipulation-Edgar Martins creates sublimely beautiful views of often un-beautiful sites.Now, at the publisher's website, the no digital manipulation promise has been silently removed:
With artful composition and controlled framing Edgar Martins creates sublimely beautiful views of often un-beautiful sites.The Google Cache version of the publisher's page shows the original statement - including the no digital manipulation promise (as of 4 Jul 2009 11:23:00 GMT).
Hi [zennie],And now I have an IP origin that puts him in a part of the world currently in upheaval, with major communications problems. Don't really want to say where, just in case he's actually there. Seems unlikely to me.
Thanks for your email. Please also thank the site administrator or founder for me for trying to contact me some days ago, but I have been unable to retrieve his email.
I have been informed of the discussion that is currently taking place concerning the feature, which I had anticipated to some degree, but which I have not yet been able to acquaitance myself with it, as I am travelling and so unable to access the internet. (Yes, believe it or not there are still places in this world with limited or no internet connection..)
I will no doubt be discussing this issue fairly soon. However given that I currently only have intermittent access to any kind of communication I will be unable to do this for a few more days yet. There is no point starting a discussion, which I have been inciting for many years now, until I am able to follow it up.
The only issue at here is the NYT work. As an artist I respond to situations in different ways.
I will be releasing a statement in due time and will happily be debating this. This has always been my goal.
In the meantime let the debate rage on... no doubt this will open up a healthy dialogue about Photography, its inexorable links to the real & its inadequacies. Or so I hope... The only thing that needs to happen is for the conversation to be refocused.
Warm regards,
Edgar Martins
Martins’ intentions in these images were not only pictorial, of course; there is a contemporary anxiety to them as well. Portugal’s 2005/2008 fires were the result of extended drought and extreme heat; many believed them to be an expression of global climate change. Moreover, they could be seen as evidence of environmental mismanagement: much of the forest was eucalyptus, a fast-growing but extremely flammable tree that is frequently planted in reforestation projects. Martins was in search of this story as much as pictorial effects in these images of fire.In other words, he's claiming that these photographs should be viewed as photojournalism, not just art. The Prix Pictet people should drop him from consideration, in my view.
Edgar Martins, BES Photo Prize winner of this year answered the controversy: "I expect this discussion, which was not expected was the way happened," he said to the public. "The problem was the" New York Times "have sold the story to sell," he said, denying the charges of manipulation. "I am critical of the photographer as a tourist, which produces a factual work, refuse to be a mere intermediary, giving a fragmented vision," adds the author, stating that he was never told that it was a fact, despite knowing "the anxieties of the publisher "conceptual work on which all kinds of stylistic liberties.Oh how drearily predictable.
"I knew that would defy the conventions of journalism. I went to see, I went to comment, "admits that Edgar Martins notes that never put aside the use of computers and that speaks of a" mismatch "on how each party has made a point of departure for work.
Edgar Martins acknowledges that appealed to a technical Photoshop intentionally to convey the idea of a parallel world - hence the mirror image that was detected. And that is not flame manipulation: "It was a change to serve aesthetics. It is a message I want to spend the duality between the aspiration and the excess, the ruin and decay. "
The author, who has already spoken on this issue with critics of American art, and is in negotiations to publish the work with a full North American publisher, is pleased about the opening of a debate on a subject that should long have been launched on the factual and conceptual in photography: "They asked me if instiguei debate this deliberately and I said no, but somehow that was awaiting him. I have a picture that shows a brick on top of a sponge, which reflects the fragility of the situation. All reality is a construction."
Dear Mr. Martins,Concern for Mr. Martins' psychological welfare was a primary factor behind my decision to contact him. I wanted Metafilter to have no part in driving someone off a cliff. Fortunately, that possibility now seems remote.
I hope you are well, despite the recent uproar about the nature of your artistic process. This turn of events is all the more troubling because you are quite a gifted artist.
Many of us love your work and find your art striking; it's the kind of reflecting pool one can stare into and be lost. However, many are rather confused as to the discrepancy between your implied artistic process and your actual artistic process...
...I believe you would be doing your reputation a service, if you would reveal the details of your process and motivation....
![[larger pixelated view]](http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2536/3705972873_2a0c9aa246_o.jpg){kind=link}
posted by yoink at 7:19 PM on July 7, 2009