Essays On “Real Photos” (All Photographs are Lies) There is no such thing as a ”real picture”, and any attempt to delineate such represents illiberal and unnecessary gatekeeping in the photographic community.
Essays Adolf Fassbender (All Photographs are Lies) Adolf Fassbender, in his 1943 essay “Why Bother?”, laid the foundations for an argument that there can be no purely mechanical photographic portrayal of a scene independent of the photographer making the image.
Essays Featured Setting the Stage—Pictorialism vs Straight Photography (All Photographs are Lies) This week I dive into the origins of toxic gatekeeping in street photography culture, identifying its roots in a hundred year old beef between two of photography’s earliest movements: pictorialism and straight photography.
Essays Featured All Photographs are Lies* No one can agree what street photography is. I think most attempts boil down to gatekeeping, and are built on very shaky intellectual foundations. Let's blow some of that up.