TTG Plus > FAQs > More on FAQ #113


“TTG is built on 21st-century attitudes toward photos”

  • A. Burying the myths of the past

    The musty myths of the 19th and 20th centuries are growing ever more distant in the rear-view mirror:

    “Photographs are objective facts.”
    “Photographs are equivalent to reality.”
    “Photographs never lie.”

    TTG rejects all of these statements, asserting that:

    • no photographs are “objective facts”
    • all photographs are “subjective”
    • photographs are never equivalent to three-dimensional “reality”
    • lots of photographs “lie”

  • B. If photos are never “objective facts” or equivalent to “reality,” what’s the value of undoctored photographs?

    Undoctored photos are valuable because they are reliable records of real-world scenes, not because they are equivalents of real-world scenes.

    Despite being both personal and subjective, those visual “records” can also be plenty trustworthy—

    — but only if the record remains undoctored (because doctoring or aigmenting a photograph always ruins its value as a record).

    Understanding the value of “records” is key to understanding TTG

     

    All of these themes are explored at length on this website, especially in FAQ #3.