Is cropping a photo lying?

[gr82bart]

Demonizing Cheney is actually morally required! That man was bad. Anyway, this article does make one think.

http://kottke.org/09/09/is-cropping-a-photo-lying

Regards, Art.

[gr82bart]

Another related article.

http://www.aphotoeditor.com/2009/09/...r-photography/

Regards, Art.

[Ian David]

Cropping a photo (either in-camera or in the darkroom) is not lying. The lie occurs when somebody uses a photo to misrepresent the facts. TV and newspaper etc do that all the time, but we all know that those great institutions are pathological twisters of the facts.

[BetterSense]

Photography is lying.

I do my own darkroom work, so I can crop whenever I want. In the camera or in the darkroom. I'm the one doing it either way.

[Sirius Glass]

Cropping is part of photography. In this case, the editor cropped the photograph to show how the photograph should have been taken in the first place!

From the article:
Given Cheney's reputation, the cropped photo of him is not an outlandish or biased depiction of the man...in fact, it's a pretty good visual metaphor of the former VP.

Steve

[Allen Friday]

Photographs do not lie. Nor do they tell the truth. Photographers and editors, however, do often lie.

[Vaughn]

People lie with their words and sometimes with their images, but photographs themselves are mute and never lie.

[Anscojohn]

Photography is lying.

I do my own darkroom work, so I can crop whenever I want. In the camera or in the darkroom. I'm the one doing it either way.

*******
I agree. But sometimes cropping an original photo can convey a falsity. I think of two examples: a photo of a principal during the Army MaCarthy hearings which purported to show the Sec. of the Army smiling at him and him alone. The actual photograph showed he was one of a whole group of people. A second is one of the rifle used in the John Kennedy murder. Measurements were taken by conspiratorri which they used for certain relative measurements of dimensions, assuming the photograph showed the weapon parallel to the plane of the photograph. The uncropped photo showed the rifle to be not aligned to the plane of the camera, so the dimensional relationships were skewed. The first instance I would consider "lieing." The second, misinformation of a sort.

[jnanian]

cropping a photograph is like using a different focal length lens.
it shows us a different perspective ... a different focus ...

[Miskuss]

Your question conjures up lectures on Roland Barthes and Semiotics. Endless debates on signs,signified and signifiers etc. University can be harmful to artistic growth. In MHO, if it looks good to you and it feels right, and says what you want your image to say, then that is all that matters. Crop away I say !!!! Purists be damned!