An alternate universe of your own creation

I Was There. Just Ask Photoshop. — NYTimes.com — [PDF]

I find that photographs are snapshots of time.  They are memories of a particular slice of life, a moment captured to be remembered for years to come, perhaps even lifetimes away.  Photographs can be a way to memorialize pieces of life that bring us to a certain emotional checkpoint.

And that is why I don't agree with the alteration and manipulation of photographs.  I believe in truth.  If Ms. Marien says that it is a Western sense of reality that what is in front of the lens has to be true, then I have that Western sense.  I believe a photograph is a small documentary.  I believe that a photograph, as false as they usually are, still serve to say, as Sy Parrish would say, "Someone cared enough about me in this world to take my picture."

When you meddle with a photograph and begin to add and remove things and people that weren't there, you are meddling with reality.  You are altering the events that actually took place.  I find that violating.  A photograph is a reflection of a moment in time and space, and when you alter that you are denying that reality.

One may say, but what is reality but what we make of it?  I find this disturbing.  Memories are what they are, and it is how we deal with them that makes us who we are.  By removing an ex-boyfriend from a picture you took together when you went on vacation, you are rewriting your own history.  And that is a dangerous thing.  It is too much power for a person to have.