Photographs as Reality in the Digital Age

Seeing this photograph for the first time, whether it was in the Los Angeles Time or on MSNBC, millions of people accepted this image just as it was billed: an Iranian test launch of four ballistic missiles in the desert. At first glance (and second... and third...) there appears to be absolutely nothing wrong with the image. This image, taken last July by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, was altered prior to being released to the press.

See if you can spot what might have been changed, and click below to see the full post to see whether or not you spotted the modification:


You may or may be surprised to find that the original photograph, shown here, actually documented the launch of only three missiles:

Through the article In an Iranian Image, a Missile Too Many, reporters Mike Nizza and Patrick J. Lyons documents how the released image differed from the actual image, which was released by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard following rumors questioning the validity of the launch. The changes, the reporters state, become quite obvious once lined up next to each other. They say:

[In the fake photograph] the second missile from the right appears to be the sum of two other missiles in the image. The contours of the billowing smoke match perfectly near the ground, as well in the immediate wake of the missile. Only a small black dot in the reddish area of exhaust seems to differ from the missile to its left, though there are also some slight variations in the color of the smoke and the sky.

This manipulation was probably accomplished with relative ease, most likely using a computer program such as photoshop.

Having established how the released image was altered, the next series of questions involve "why'". First off, why would the Iranian Revolutionary Guard feel the need to doctor a photograph of one of their missile launches? In an AFP article about the subject, Mark Fitzpatrick of the International Institute for Strategic Studies explains, "It very much does appear that Iran doctored the photo to cover up what apparently was a misfiring of one of the missiles. The whole purpose of this testing was to send a signal so Iran both exaggerated the capabilities of the missile in their prose and apparently doctored the photos as well." In other words, a missile misfire ruined the full intended effect of the launch, to demonstrate a military prowess, so the photo was altered to cover up the mistake.

But another important question raised by this whole situation was this: How could it have taken so long for everyone to realize that the photograph initially submitted by the IRG was a fraud? Prior to being exposed, the image could be found on the front page of the "The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune and several other newspapers as well as on BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com and many other major news Web sites," (Mazzetti). And when it was finally descovered to be faked, it was by a professional after it had already been seen and acknowledged by millions. How could the validity of this photograph go unchallened by so many, and why is it that we, as a society, have come to take these images at face value, without questioning them?

On Page 4 of her book On Photography, Susan Sontag explains the value we place in the images we see. Specifically, she says, "Photographed images do not seem to be statements about the world so much as pieces of it, miniatures of reality that anyone can make or acquire".  In other words, the photograph physically captures the world as it exists through the photographer's lens at a given moment. Similarly, in her essay Mythic Nature: Wish Image, Susan Buck-Morss gives a hint as to why this is the case, though pecifically comparing photography to other art forms. She says,

With photography, the artist's attempt to replicate nature was made scientific. It extended the human sense in a way commensurate with Marx's idea... that the human senses in their "true, anthropological [i.e., social nature]" are "nature as it comes to be through industry"

In other words, these two theorists would likely argue that photographs are often uncontested in their validity (especially compared to what is drawn, said, or written) because photographs have a direct physical connection to the outside reality of when they were taken. As viewers of photographs we are inherently aware of this, and it gives the impression, at least in the greater subconscious, that they are infallible in their portrayals of reality. But just as technology changes the way we socialize with others, the invention of programs such as photoshop have given people the ability to alter these same photos that we have come to accept as real. As a result, we must always remain skeptical of the images that we see, as not every photograph displays the unadulterated reality that it seems to claim.