The Authenticity War

 

This headline, along with the powerful image, got my attention last week. I guess it was meant to. It turned out that the schoolgirl graveyard image was real, although a number of sources incorrectly said it was not. Is it real or AI? has become an increasingly frequent question when viewing an image. I just fear that the lines blend too much so we start not knowing which is fake and which is real!

AI arrived and it seems the development pace of the technology has ramped up  a notch or three. The skill level and equipment requirements to create a faked image have dropped substantially leaving us with a great resource that can, and is, heavily abused. Creating a fake narrative has never been easier. What would have taken hours with Photoshop thirty years ago is now done with a click or swipe.

We are at a crossroads when it comes to how images are created and used. There have probably been other images before the one of the schoolgirl graveyard that have raised questions but it does seem that AI images have reached new levels of technical quality.

Just recently some very authentic looking images of US actress Zendaya marrying fellow actor Tom Holland had many people fooled. The quality of the fakes was impressive. The disclaimer "artistic recreation" contained in a caption with the images was missed by many viewers.

We appear to have a perfect storm. What is real seems increasingly irrelevant to media and politicians, emotional content draws more hits than factual, and we are attention spans are narrowing. News moves at lightspeed these days with rolling news behaving much like a social media stream.

So what to do about it? Personally I think the genie is out of the bottle and the only real defence is educating people about how to spot a fake. Maybe we start in schools, but certainly we need the skills for critically viewing media to be taught, so that people can at least try and work out what they are looking at, and why someone wants them to see that information.

Martin Parr 1952- 2025

New Brighton, England, 1983–85 From The Last Resort © Martin Parr / Magnum Photos

The news of the death of Martin Parr brought back some of my memories of photography discussions had a college and university back in the 1990s. No other photographer seemed to polarise a group of student photographers more than Martin Parr. As the years have gone by it seems that controversial aspect of his work has remained part of his photography's story, even though my own thoughts about Parr's work, especially The Last Resort, have mellowed.

No photographer has, probably, captured an era as well as Parr. The Last Resort images have the style and feel that shout out the eighties. Bold, colourful, stark and uncompassionate, Parr's images perfectly captured the best and worst of the eighties, but have been misunderstood as politically sympathetic to the Thatcher politics of the time. There was, and still is, an element of discomfort when viewing his images with questions continuing to persist about how he regarded his subject matter. The Last Resort, and the controversy around it, did Parr's career little harm and significantly boosted awareness of his photography to a wider audience. 

I first came across Martin Parr's name whilst reading a review of The Last Resort book in a photography magazine around the mid 1980s. The other photographer whose book was being reviewed was Chris Killip 'In Flagrante'. Two very different books, from two very different photographers, but both contained work taking a long look at what was happening in the north of England in the 1980s. By the time i arrived in photography education in the early 1990s, Martin Parr was a byword for contemporary colour documentary photography.

My opinion of Parr's work has always been 'on the move'. It's never been as straightforward as viewing other photographers work. Maybe that was part of Parr's appeal. I've always admired some of his photography, mostly his black and white work from the 1970s, but certain colour images, especially those in The Last Resort and The Cost of Living, well I've always had some reservations. I would have loved for Martin to have been a guest lecturer at my college, and to hear the discussion afterwards.

Martin Parr was certainly one the most influential British photographer of the past forty years, but I suspect he may also go down as one of the most misunderstood.

The Whisky Line

 

Class 108 DMU leaving Keith Town station, Moray, Scotland

The trip to Scotland in September ended up being a mixed bag of experiences. No fault of Scotland's, it turned out that I would end up in the second week gradually feeling worse and worse as a rather nasty dose of flu took hold. The steady stream of photographs I'd usually take suddenly reduced to a trickle.

One highlight early on in week one, however, was a trip on the Keith and Dufftown Railway, also known as  the Whisky Line, a heritage railway in Scotland, running for 11 miles (18 km) from Keith Town, Keith to Dufftown.  It is the most northerly heritage railway operating in the British Isles and well worth a visit.

Salgado's Legacy

Kuwait oil fields, 1991, by Sebastião Salgado. Photograph: Sebastião Salgado

Sebastião Salgado died last week at the age of 81. Another photography hero gone. His photography was the very high quality benchmark that I have never managed to quite attain but always strived for. Salgado's superb blend of beautiful photography and getting to the heart of the subject matter place him right at the top of documentary photographers. He had critics with the term “aesthete of misery" used against him, and his departure from Magnum in 1994 seemed to cause some animosity too. Often it seemed to be a reaction against his success as a photographer.

I'm not going to cover Sebastião Salgado's life and work here. Other bloggers and news websites have done a far better job than I could ever do at summing up his long career. However, for a student photographer in the 1990s, it was just inspiring to see a documentary photographer producing such epic work. With over 30 books published (two or three are on my bookshelf and I'd have bought more if I'd had the money) it was always a visual treat and an education going through the images on the pages. In many respects Salgado had the successful documentary photographer career that we all wanted.

If you aren't familiar with Sebastião Salgado's work then check out some of the links in this post but especially have a look HERE for a great collection of his iconic images.

The word legend is used far too often these days, but Sebastião was a legend in every sense of the word. Another legend lost.

Formula One at 75

If you are a Formula One fan then the BBC and Getty Images have put together a great collection of Formula One photography going through 75 years of the sport.

From Juan Manuel Fangio through to Lewis Hamilton, the page is a great introduction to the history of Formula One as well as a fascinating read for any F1 fan.

Check out F1 at 75 by visiting the link below

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/extra/v7yykmbyey/f1-at-75-by-bbc-sport-and-getty-images

The Gathering Clouds

A dark sky over Old Boat Sheds - Lindisfarne, Northumberland

Last week I got a message to say that my Tumblr blog had reached the grand old age of thirteen years old. I have to admit the number seemed slightly surreal as I looked at it. Then again, this blog will be even older soon with the blog becoming eighteen years old at the end of February. All of my blogs have benefited from relatively calm and save foundations to build on by the blogging platforms. As we've seen recently though, change might come down the line at any time from the large digital overlords in future years. When it comes to the blogs I like to think that I will have the time and options to move them somewhere save if needed. That's what I hope at least.

The same can't be said about social media though. The recent revelations about changes to fact checking at Facebook, Instagram and Threads (USA only at the moment but still worrying) have made me consider my future social media yet again. The last time was when Twitter started changing into the monster that it is now, some eighteen months ago. I made the decision to deactivate the last of my Twitter accounts in November. With some fourteen years of use, over 3000 followers and a once great source of photography news, all a distant memory long before I hit the kill button, I'm just wondering if I'll have to do the same with Instagram and Threads.

In the end, it's about investment. Our time, effort and content. We store our lives on these platforms only for something or someone to move the goalposts years down the line; a change of owner or leadership, economic instability, politics, terms of service etc. Something always changes. Maybe the calculation from Meta etc is that people won't leave these platforms when they are too invested. People live their lives - good and bad - through these social media platforms, not to mention make money as businesses. Too many posts. Too much history. Too established. Leaving is just out of the question! 

Personally I am no longer willing to invest that kind of time and effort into another new social media platform. Back in August 2023, I wrote on the Darker Skies blog my thoughts about Twitter and the changes that were taking place there at the time. Nearly two years later and I'm still of the same mind. My conclusion was that the blog or website should be where I focus my efforts rather than invest too much in a platform that will eventually become too toxic to stay. I still agree with that conclusion. For now I just intend to keep a close eye on things, see what happens and make a decision as and when. That's all I can really do.

An Early Start

 

Old Boat Shed on Lindisfarne, Northumberland - December 2024

Another year started and hopefully it will be a good one. Two photo book releases are planned, one at the start of the year and then another around November. That's the plan I intend sticking to at least.

The end of the year went quite well. A trip up to Northumberland for a week around the middle of November saw a good bit of of photography taking place. Even though the weather was rather windy, the quality of light more than made up for the gusts. You just had to keep the camera as steady as possible and not wave the lens about too much.

The visit Holy Island of Lindisfarne was a nice surprise. A quick drive down revealed that the tide was at its lowest point meaning it was safe to visit without being cut off by the tide. There had been no plans to visit. It just happened. The last time I'd visited Holy Island it was the summer of 1992 and I was 20 years. A student photographer trying to find his creative path.

What would he have thought of the older photographer wandering around the old boat sheds? Horrified probably, though impressed with the camera and lenses. As for advice, I'd just tell him to be more confident. Easy to say, maybe not so easy to be.

The Last Days of Summer

 

A home on the Kintyre Coast, Scotland - September 2023

Not long left now. Almost the end of the summer. It's been a summer of consolidation for me this year. Not much in the way of travel but plenty of progress made on a number of projects that I've wanted to tick off my to-do list for years. There are just one or two things left to do before the year ends.

The website has seen the bulk of the work as I catch up with adding projects to the gallery. The Northumberland and Isle of Arran/Kintyre galleries were added last week completing the process of updating that area of the website. It's the first time I've been all caught up in some time.

As we head into Autumn/Fall the next project is to finish a photo zine I've been working on for some time. The photographs and layouts are done so only the text remains. If I can sort that out and get the zine out for before the end of 2024, I'll be happy.

So not too bad, and it means that I'm in a good place to start next year.