Photos as documentation? Maybe not . . .
We've all had the urge, no doubt, at some point, to completely erase a chapter of our lives or make a few tidy changes to the past. We now have that power, it seems, but at what cost? The article, "Photoshop vs. history," on seattlepi.com discusses the practice altering photos using modern image-editing software and thereby altering history. Is it revisionist history or something more? Revisionist history is the revision of history based on new information or the reinterpretation of existing information. Given the types of manipulations, the question becomes, what can you trust? As the article suggests it's "just a tad scary -- to contemplate the possibility that many of the tangible artifacts our civilization leaves behind may prove to be, well, lies."
Labels: documentation, ethics, genealogy issues, photographs