Pictures That Lie

I chose to manipulate a picture taken from my visit to the Korean War Memorial in Washington D.C. this past summer. I found pictures of United States soldiers fighting in Iraq from Flikr and then used the magnetic lasso tool to place them in the Korean Memorial garden. I placed the soldiers alongside the statues, and decreased their opacity and brightness to give them more of a ghostlike effect. I manipulated this photo in this manner in order to remind us of the detrimental effects of war. Despite knowing of the harmful ways ways of war, we as a people continue to partake in wars. I do not think that manipulation in this way is harmful. It is not trying to manipulate people to act in a certain way, it is just reminding us all that war is not in our past, or merely a monument, but part of our present and affects all of us today.However, it is quite obvious that this photo has been tampered with. Often times photo manipulation can be harmful. The article "Now You See Him, Now You Don't" offers several examples of how the manipulation of photos can impact society in a negative way. The article explains that as computers make altering photos easier, they [computers] "are destroying the credibility of photography, and it's getting worse." Photo manipulation is used not only to make statements as mine does, but to alter history, manipulate people themselves, and as this article explains, alter evidence. These are examples of how photo fakery can be taken too far.

Citation:
Curry, Andrew. "Now You See Him, Now You Don't." U.S. News & World Report 131.2 (2001): 46. Academic Search Complete. EBSCO. Web. 12 Apr. 2010.