The Friday Long Read: Photography and the Problem of Truth

Introduction

“The camera never lies.” Few phrases have enjoyed such longevity, and few are so misleading. From the earliest days of photography, people have been tempted to treat the photograph as a guarantor of truth: a mechanical witness, impartial and incorruptible. Oliver Wendell Holmes, writing in 1859, called the daguerreotype a “mirror with a memory,” capturing the sense of wonder that surrounded this new technology. Here, at last, was a way to hold reality still.

But even in those early decades, the cracks were visible. Photographers staged scenes, retouched negatives, and experimented with composites. Roger Fenton’s images from the Crimean War, for example, are now thought to have been carefully arranged to heighten their impact. Was this deception, or simply an attempt to convey the atmosphere of war more vividly? The answer depends on what we expect from a photograph.

This is the problem of truth in photography: the uneasy balance between what the camera records and what the photographer intends. On one side lies the belief that photographs are evidence, proof that something happened. On the other lies the recognition that every image is shaped by choices—where to stand, when to press the shutter, what to include and exclude.

In this essay, we will explore that tension. We will look at the photograph as evidence, as art, and as memory. We will consider the role of manipulation, both in the darkroom and in the digital age. And we will ask whether truth is something photography can ever really deliver, or whether its power lies elsewhere—in ambiguity, in interpretation, in the questions it leaves us with.

The aim is not to settle the matter once and for all, but to open it up. Photography has always been caught between fact and fiction, and perhaps that is where its fascination lies.

Photography as Evidence

For much of its history, photography has been treated as a kind of witness. The idea that a photograph could serve as evidence — in courtrooms, in newspapers, in scientific studies — gave the medium a special authority that painting or drawing could never quite claim. A photograph, after all, was thought to be a direct imprint of reality: light bouncing off the world, captured on a plate or film, without the interference of human hands.

This belief in photography’s evidential power was especially strong in the nineteenth century. Police forces quickly adopted the camera for mugshots, convinced that the lens could reveal the criminal type. Scientists used photographs to catalogue plants, stars, and human physiognomy. In each case, the photograph was assumed to be neutral, objective, and therefore trustworthy. As John Tagg has argued in The Burden of Representation (1988), the photograph’s authority was less about its inherent truthfulness and more about the institutions that used it. Courts, governments, and newspapers invested photographs with credibility, and audiences accepted them as proof.

Yet even in these supposedly factual contexts, the cracks soon appeared. Consider Roger Fenton’s photographs from the Crimean War in the 1850s. Long celebrated as pioneering war reportage, they were later scrutinised for staging. In one famous image, cannonballs appear scattered across a road; in another, the same road is empty. Historians now suspect that Fenton moved the cannonballs to create a more dramatic scene. Was this a lie? Or was it an attempt to convey the danger of the battlefield more vividly than the “empty” version could? The answer depends on what we expect from a photograph. If we demand literal accuracy, then Fenton deceived his audience. If we accept that photographs can also be interpretive, then perhaps he was simply shaping the truth into a more legible form.

The same tension runs through photojournalism in the twentieth century. Eddie Adams’ famous 1968 photograph of a South Vietnamese general executing a Viet Cong prisoner on the streets of Saigon became one of the defining images of the Vietnam War. It seemed to capture the brutality of the conflict in a single frame. Yet Adams himself later reflected that the image was misleading without context. The prisoner had allegedly killed civilians, and the general’s action, while shocking, was not as arbitrary as the photograph suggested. Adams admitted that his picture “killed the general” in the eyes of the world, reducing a complex situation to a single, damning moment. Here, the photograph was both true — it showed what happened — and untrue, in that it stripped away the circumstances that might have altered its meaning.

This duality is at the heart of photography as evidence. On the one hand, photographs can be extraordinarily powerful in holding power to account. Think of Nick Ut’s 1972 image of the “Napalm Girl,” Phan Thi Kim Phuc, running naked down a road after a bombing. The photograph shocked audiences and helped shift public opinion against the war. Without the camera, such moments might have remained hidden. On the other hand, photographs can also be weaponised, stripped of context, or used to support misleading narratives. The very qualities that make them persuasive — their immediacy, their apparent transparency — also make them dangerous.

Susan Sontag, in On Photography (1977), argued that photographs are never simply evidence; they are always interpretations. The act of pointing a camera is itself a choice, and every choice excludes as much as it includes. A photograph of a protest, for example, might show a moment of violence while ignoring hours of peaceful demonstration. Both are “true,” but the image shown to the public shapes the story that is told.

So where does this leave us? One view is that photography’s evidential value is fatally compromised: if every image is partial, then none can be trusted. Another view is that photographs remain valuable as evidence, but only when treated critically — as fragments that need context, not as complete accounts. In this sense, photographs are like witnesses in a trial: they can testify, but their testimony must be weighed, questioned, and set alongside other evidence.

Perhaps the most useful way to think about photography as evidence is not in terms of absolute truth, but in terms of degrees of reliability. A photograph can show us something real, but it cannot tell us everything. It can point to an event, but it cannot explain it. Its value lies not in its neutrality, but in its ability to provoke questions: What happened here? Who chose to show it this way? What might we not be seeing?

In the end, photography as evidence is both indispensable and insufficient. We cannot do without it — but we cannot take it at face value either.

The Subjective Eye

If photography has often been treated as evidence, it is worth remembering that every photograph begins with a person making choices. The camera may be mechanical, but the act of using it is anything but neutral. Where the photographer stands, what lens is fitted, when the shutter is pressed — all of these decisions shape the final image. In this sense, every photograph is subjective, even when it claims to be objective.

Henri Cartier‑Bresson’s idea of the “decisive moment” is a useful way of thinking about this. For him, the power of photography lay in capturing the instant when form and meaning came together. But the decisive moment is not something that simply exists, waiting to be recorded. It is chosen. The photographer decides which moment is decisive, and in doing so, imposes a particular vision of the world.

This subjectivity is not necessarily a weakness. Some argue that it is precisely what makes photography meaningful. A photograph is not just a record of what was in front of the lens; it is also a record of how someone saw it. In this sense, photographs are always double: they show us the world, and they show us a way of looking at the world.

Yet subjectivity also complicates the idea of truth. If two photographers stand in the same place and take pictures of the same event, their images may look very different. One might focus on the crowd, another on a single face. One might emphasise chaos, another calm. Both are “true” in the sense that they depict something real, but they are not the same truth.

This raises an important question: does subjectivity undermine photography’s claim to truth, or does it simply remind us that truth is always partial? Some critics argue that the very idea of photographic objectivity is a myth — that all images are interpretations, and that we should stop expecting them to be anything else. Others suggest that subjectivity does not cancel out truth, but rather situates it. A photograph may not tell the whole story, but it can still tell a story, one that is valid so long as we recognise its perspective.

Consider photojournalism again. A journalist covering a protest might choose to photograph a moment of confrontation between demonstrators and police. Another might choose to photograph people handing out water bottles or singing together. Both images are accurate, but they tell very different stories. The subjectivity of the photographer shapes the narrative that reaches the public.

This is why some argue that the real problem is not subjectivity itself, but the failure to acknowledge it. When photographs are presented as neutral facts, their partiality becomes dangerous. When they are recognised as perspectives, they can still be valuable, even truthful, in a more modest sense.

In the end, the subjective eye is not something to be eliminated but something to be understood. Photography cannot escape the choices of the person behind the lens, and perhaps it should not try. Instead, we might learn to see photographs as situated truths: fragments of reality filtered through human vision. They are not the whole story, but they are part of it — and sometimes, that part is enough to change how we see the world.

Manipulation and the Spectrum of Alteration

If subjectivity is unavoidable in photography, manipulation takes us a step further. Here we are not just talking about the choices of framing or timing, but the deliberate alteration of the image itself. From the earliest days of the medium, photographers have found ways to bend reality to their purposes. The question is whether this undermines photography’s claim to truth, or whether it simply reveals that truth was never as straightforward as we imagined.

Manipulation has a long history. In the nineteenth century, composite prints were popular: multiple negatives combined to create a single, seamless image. Some were playful, others more serious. Spirit photography, for example, purported to show ghostly figures hovering beside sitters. To modern eyes, these are obvious fakes, but at the time they were persuasive enough to convince many. Even in the analogue era, manipulation was not confined to trickery. Dodging and burning in the darkroom, cropping, retouching — all were standard techniques, used by respected photographers to guide the viewer’s eye or enhance atmosphere.

Political manipulation is perhaps the most notorious. Under Stalin, Soviet censors routinely airbrushed out disgraced officials from official photographs. The result was a visual record of history that was literally rewritten. These images remind us that photographs can be powerful tools of propaganda, shaping collective memory as much by what they omit as by what they show.

The digital age has only expanded these possibilities. Photoshop made it easy to alter images in ways that were once laborious. Entire figures can be removed, skies replaced, colours shifted. More recently, artificial intelligence has introduced deepfakes: images and videos so convincing that they can be almost impossible to distinguish from reality. This has raised widespread concern about the erosion of trust in visual media. If any image can be fabricated, what happens to photography’s evidential power?

Yet it would be too simple to say that manipulation equals falsehood. All photographs are manipulated to some degree. Adjusting exposure, contrast, or colour balance is a form of alteration. Cropping an image changes its meaning. Even the choice of black and white over colour alters perception. The spectrum runs from subtle adjustments to wholesale invention, and the line between acceptable and unacceptable is often blurred.

Some argue that manipulation is simply part of photography’s language. Just as a painter chooses brushstrokes or a writer chooses words, a photographer shapes their image through available tools. The problem arises not from manipulation itself, but from how it is presented. If an image is offered as documentary evidence, then heavy alteration is misleading. If it is presented as art, then manipulation may be not only acceptable but essential.

This distinction becomes clear when we look at contemporary photographic art. In my own collection, Between Form and Dream, manipulation is not hidden but embraced as a way of reshaping the familiar into something extraordinary. Everyday objects are re‑staged, juxtaposed, and symbolically charged so that they become carriers of memory, ritual, and time. Works such as The Circle of Life and Morning Reflections echo classical still‑life traditions, but subtle disruptions — a metronome swinging, a razor poised mid‑ritual — invite the viewer to question what they see. Other pieces, like Escape from the Seaside or The Sun of Man, stretch logic itself, placing recognisable forms into impossible contexts. Here, manipulation is not a betrayal of truth but a deliberate strategy: a way of creating a space where reality and imagination overlap, and where viewers are encouraged to reflect on the fragile balance of existence.

Seen in this light, manipulation is not the enemy of truth but a reminder that truth in photography is always layered. An artwork may not be “true” in the documentary sense, but it can still reveal truths about memory, mortality, or the human condition. The key lies in transparency and intention. When manipulation is hidden, it risks deception. When it is acknowledged, it can enrich our understanding of photography as a medium that is always interpretive, never purely mechanical.

In the end, manipulation does not destroy photography’s relationship with truth; it complicates it. It forces us to ask what kind of truth we are looking for. Literal accuracy? Emotional resonance? Symbolic meaning? Each requires a different standard, and each allows for different degrees of alteration. The spectrum of manipulation is not a simple divide between true and false, but a continuum that reflects the many ways in which photographs can speak.

Documentary vs. Art

One of the most persistent tensions in photography lies in the divide between documentary and art. On the one hand, photography has long been valued for its ability to record the world as it is. On the other, it has been celebrated for its capacity to transform, interpret, and even invent. The problem of truth becomes particularly sharp when we ask: is a photograph meant to show us reality, or to show us an artist’s vision?

Documentary photography has traditionally carried the weight of truth. From Jacob Riis’s late-nineteenth-century images of New York tenements to Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother during the Great Depression, photographers have sought to reveal social realities that might otherwise remain hidden. These images are often presented as evidence — not just of individual lives, but of broader conditions. They are powerful precisely because they appear to show us “how things really are.”

Yet even here, the line between truth and interpretation is blurred. Lange’s Migrant Mother (1936) is one of the most iconic documentary photographs ever taken, but it was carefully composed. Lange directed her subject, Florence Owens Thompson, to adjust her pose, and she excluded certain details from the frame. The resulting image is truthful in one sense — it depicts a real woman in real hardship — but it is also a crafted representation, shaped to evoke empathy and to symbolise the plight of many.

Art photography, by contrast, often makes no claim to literal truth. It embraces symbolism, metaphor, and fiction. Surrealist photographers such as Man Ray or contemporary artists like Cindy Sherman use the camera not to document but to construct. Their work is not “true” in the evidential sense, but it may reveal deeper truths about identity, culture, or imagination.

The difficulty arises when the two modes overlap. Sebastião Salgado, for example, is celebrated for his humanitarian photography, but his highly stylised black-and-white images have been criticised for aestheticising suffering. Nan Goldin’s diaristic work raises similar questions: her images are raw and intimate, yet they are also carefully curated, blurring the line between lived experience and artistic narrative.

Some argue that this overlap is inevitable. All documentary work involves artistic choices, and all art photography is rooted in some form of reality. The distinction, then, may be less about the photograph itself and more about how it is presented and received. A photograph in a newspaper carries different expectations than the same image hung in a gallery.

This suggests that the problem of truth in photography is not only about what the image shows, but about the context in which it appears. When we encounter a photograph as documentary, we expect it to be faithful to events. When we encounter it as art, we accept — even welcome — manipulation and invention. The danger comes when these contexts blur, and viewers are unsure whether they are being asked to see evidence or interpretation.

Perhaps the most productive way forward is to acknowledge that photography always contains elements of both. Even the most straightforward documentary image is shaped by artistic decisions, while even the most fantastical artwork carries traces of the real. Rather than insisting on a rigid divide, we might see documentary and art as points on a spectrum, with most photographs occupying some space in between.

In this light, the question is not whether a photograph is documentary or art, but what kind of truth it is offering. Is it a factual record, a symbolic commentary, or something in between? Recognising this complexity allows us to appreciate photography’s richness without demanding that it conform to a single, and perhaps impossible, standard of truth.

The Viewer’s Responsibility

If photography is never entirely objective, and if manipulation is always present to some degree, then the burden of truth cannot rest solely with the photographer. The viewer, too, has a responsibility. How we look at photographs — what we assume, what we question, what we bring to them — shapes their meaning as much as the image itself.

Roland Barthes, in Camera Lucida (1980), distinguished between the studium and the punctum. The studium is the cultural, general reading of a photograph: the things we can all recognise and interpret through shared knowledge. The punctum, by contrast, is the personal detail that pierces us, the element that speaks directly to the individual viewer. This distinction reminds us that photographs are not fixed in meaning. They are open to interpretation, and each viewer brings their own history, emotions, and assumptions to the act of looking.

This openness can be enriching. It allows photographs to resonate in different ways with different people, to carry multiple truths at once. A single image might be read as evidence, as art, as memory, or as metaphor, depending on who is looking and in what context. In this sense, the viewer’s subjectivity is not a flaw but a feature: it keeps photography alive, dynamic, and responsive.

But it also carries risks. If viewers approach photographs uncritically, they may accept them at face value, mistaking partial truths for whole ones. This is especially dangerous in journalism and politics, where images can be used to manipulate opinion. A cropped photograph of a protest, for example, might make a crowd look larger or smaller than it really was. Without critical engagement, viewers may take such images as definitive proof, when in fact they are carefully framed fragments.

Some argue that visual literacy is now as important as textual literacy. Just as we are taught to question sources in writing, we need to learn to question images: Who made this? Why? What might be missing? In an age of digital manipulation and AI‑generated imagery, this responsibility becomes even more pressing. The photograph can no longer be assumed to be a straightforward record; it must be treated as a claim that requires scrutiny.

Others caution against placing too much weight on the viewer. Not everyone has the time, training, or inclination to interrogate every image they encounter. Photographs are powerful precisely because they feel immediate and self‑evident. To expect every viewer to resist that pull may be unrealistic. Instead, some suggest that institutions — news outlets, galleries, schools — have a duty to provide context and education, helping audiences to navigate the complexities of photographic truth.

Perhaps the fairest conclusion is that responsibility is shared. Photographers must be honest about their intentions and methods, but viewers must also approach images with curiosity and scepticism. Neither side can guarantee truth on its own. Together, though, they can create a more nuanced understanding of what photographs show and what they conceal.

In the end, the viewer’s responsibility is not to uncover a single, definitive truth, but to remain alert to the possibility of multiple truths. To look at a photograph is to enter into a dialogue — with the image, with its maker, and with one’s own assumptions. That dialogue is where meaning is made, and where truth, however fragile, might be glimpsed.

Photography in the Age of Mistrust

If the nineteenth century was the age of photographic wonder, and the twentieth the age of photographic authority, then the twenty‑first may well be the age of photographic mistrust. We live in a world saturated with images, yet our confidence in them has never been lower. The phrase “seeing is believing” has lost much of its force. Today, seeing is often the beginning of doubt.

The rise of digital technology is central to this shift. With the advent of Photoshop in the late 1980s and 1990s, manipulation became easier and more convincing than ever before. What once required hours in the darkroom could now be achieved in minutes on a computer. The result was a gradual erosion of the assumption that photographs were straightforward records. If skies could be replaced, blemishes erased, and entire figures removed without trace, then how much of any image could be trusted?

The situation has intensified with the arrival of artificial intelligence. Deepfakes — AI‑generated images and videos that convincingly depict events that never happened — have raised alarm across journalism, politics, and law. A photograph of a politician in a compromising situation, or a video of a celebrity saying something inflammatory, can now be fabricated with astonishing realism. The implications for truth are profound. If any image can be faked, then no image can be taken as proof.

Yet mistrust is not only about technology. Social media has changed the way photographs circulate and are consumed. Images are shared rapidly, often stripped of context, and used to support competing narratives. A single photograph of a protest, for example, might be used by one group to show peaceful solidarity and by another to highlight disorder. The image itself has not changed, but its meaning shifts depending on who shares it and how it is framed.

Some see this as a crisis. If photographs can no longer be trusted, then their evidential power — once so central to journalism, science, and history — is fatally compromised. Others, however, argue that this mistrust might be healthy. It forces us to be more critical, to question what we see, and to demand context. In this view, the age of mistrust is also an age of visual literacy, where audiences are less likely to be passive consumers of images and more likely to interrogate them.

There is also the possibility that photography’s role is shifting. Perhaps it is no longer the guarantor of truth it once seemed to be, but something else: a provocation, a starting point for dialogue, a fragment that demands interpretation. Rather than lamenting the loss of certainty, we might embrace the ambiguity. After all, photographs have always been partial, subjective, and open to manipulation. The difference now is that we are more aware of it.

In this sense, the age of mistrust may not represent the end of photography’s authority, but its transformation. The photograph is no longer a final word, but an opening question. It cannot be taken at face value, but it can still be powerful — perhaps even more so, because it forces us to think harder about what truth means in a world where images are everywhere and certainty is scarce.

Time, Memory, and the Photograph

If photography is often linked to truth, it is just as deeply bound to time. Every photograph is, in one sense, a fragment of the past: a slice of light fixed at a particular moment. This is part of its fascination. Unlike painting or writing, which unfold over time, the photograph seems to freeze it. Yet this apparent stillness conceals a more complex relationship between photography, memory, and the passing of time.

On the surface, photographs appear to preserve memory. Family albums, holiday snapshots, portraits of loved ones — all are treasured as anchors to moments that might otherwise fade. They seem to offer proof that something happened, that someone was there, that life was lived in a certain way. In this sense, photographs act as mnemonic devices, helping us to recall what might otherwise be forgotten.

But memory is not simply preserved; it is also shaped. Psychologists have shown that photographs can alter how we remember events. Sometimes they strengthen memory, but sometimes they replace it. We may recall the photograph more vividly than the experience itself, until the image becomes the memory. This raises a troubling question: do photographs help us remember, or do they encourage us to forget everything except what was framed?

The paradox deepens when we consider how photographs distort time. A long exposure can stretch seconds into a blur, while a snapshot can freeze a fraction of a second invisible to the naked eye. Both are “true” in their own way, yet both are distortions. They remind us that time is not simply captured but interpreted.

Artistic photography often plays with this tension. In your own collection Between Form and Dream, time appears as a recurring motif: the alarm clock under threat in A Treatise on Early Mornings, the swinging metronome in The Circle of Life, the daily ritual of shaving in Morning Reflections. These images do not merely record time; they symbolise it, ritualise it, and invite reflection on its fragility. Here, photography becomes less about freezing a moment and more about questioning what it means to live within time at all.

From another perspective, photographs can also erode time. Susan Sontag noted that to photograph something is to turn it into the past, even as it happens. The act of taking a picture transforms the present into history. This is why some people feel that photographing an event diminishes their experience of it: they are already seeing it as something to be remembered, rather than something being lived.

So where does this leave us? One view is that photography betrays memory, replacing lived experience with flat images. Another is that it enriches memory, giving us tangible anchors to moments that would otherwise vanish. Perhaps the truth lies in between. Photographs do not simply preserve or distort; they participate in the making of memory. They are not neutral records of time, but active agents in how we experience it.

In the end, photography’s relationship with time is as paradoxical as its relationship with truth. It freezes and distorts, preserves and erodes, remembers and forgets. And perhaps that is why photographs continue to fascinate us: they remind us that time itself is fragile, elusive, and never entirely ours to hold.

Towards a Nuanced Understanding of Truth

By now it should be clear that photography and truth have never sat easily together. From the earliest daguerreotypes to today’s AI‑generated images, the medium has always hovered between evidence and interpretation, fact and fiction. To insist that photographs either are or are not truthful is to miss the point. The reality is more complicated, and perhaps more interesting.

One way forward is to think of truth not as a single, absolute quality but as something plural and situated. A photograph can be true in one sense — as a record of light and form — while being untrue in another, by omitting context or shaping perception. It can be true emotionally, even if it is false factually. It can be true symbolically, even if it is staged. Rather than asking whether a photograph tells the truth, we might ask what kind of truth it offers, and on what terms.

This perspective allows us to reconcile some of the tensions explored earlier. Manipulation, for example, need not be seen as a betrayal of truth if we recognise that photographs always involve interpretation. Documentary and art need not be opposed if we accept that both can reveal different kinds of truth. Even mistrust, far from being a crisis, can be understood as an opportunity: a reminder that photographs are not self‑explanatory, and that our engagement with them must be active rather than passive.

Of course, this more nuanced view does not solve every problem. In journalism, law, and science, we still need standards of accuracy and accountability. A news photograph cannot be treated in the same way as a surrealist artwork. But even here, acknowledging the limits of photographic truth can be helpful. It reminds us that no image is ever the whole story, and that photographs must always be read alongside other forms of evidence.

Perhaps the most valuable lesson is that photography’s power lies not in certainty but in ambiguity. A photograph that raises questions may be more truthful, in a deeper sense, than one that pretends to offer definitive answers. By holding together multiple truths — factual, emotional, symbolic — photography reflects the complexity of human experience itself.

In this light, the problem of truth is not a flaw in photography but its defining feature. It is what keeps the medium alive, what makes it worth debating, and what ensures that photographs continue to provoke, disturb, and inspire.

Conclusion: Beyond the Lie

“The camera never lies.” It is a phrase that has haunted photography since its invention, and by now we can see how misleading it is. The camera does not lie, but neither does it tell the whole truth. It records light, yes, but it also records choices, omissions, and interpretations. Every photograph is both evidence and argument, both fragment and fiction.

What we have traced through this essay is not the collapse of photographic truth, but its complexity. Photographs can serve as powerful testimony, yet they can also mislead. They can preserve memory, yet they can also distort it. They can be manipulated, staged, or stylised, yet still reveal truths of a symbolic or emotional kind. The problem of truth in photography is not that it is absent, but that it is never singular.

Perhaps this is what gives photography its enduring power. If it were simply a mirror, it would be dull. If it were simply a lie, it would be useless. Instead, it occupies the space in between: a medium that unsettles as much as it convinces, that provokes questions as much as it provides answers.

To look at a photograph, then, is not to receive truth passively, but to enter into a dialogue — with the image, with its maker, and with our own assumptions. The responsibility is shared: photographers must be honest about their intentions, and viewers must be alert to the limits of what they see.

In the end, the camera may never lie, but it never tells the whole story either. And perhaps that is the point. Photography’s gift is not certainty, but ambiguity — the invitation to reflect on what truth means, and why it matters, in a world where images are everywhere and trust is always in question.