UCR ARTS: California Museum of Photography
Curated by Douglas McCulloh
Lies are ever-present in human affairs, a tidal flow that rises and falls. Recently, lies have been at flood stage and photographs are central to the surge.
Statements, strings of words, are readily seen as assertions, claims. Photographs, on the other hand, are presumed to be a form of evidence. In Susan Sontag’s phrase, we assume photographs are “directly stenciled off the real.” Consequently, photographs, even dubious ones, carry credence in a way that words do not. Moreover, writes theorist Lev Manovich, “the reason we think that computer graphics technology has succeeded in faking reality is that we, over the course of the last hundred and fifty years, have come to accept the image of photography and film as reality.” For these main reasons and scores of lesser ones, photographs are ideal vehicles for lies. (Read More)
Photography is used to provide evidence, but the evidence is frequently deceiving. “[Photography’s] true seduction lies in its foot in reality,” states South African photographer Pieter Hugo. “It still has the pretense of being a quasi-document.” A photograph is ocular proof that marches us toward error.
The Claim
Women workers of the American Red Cross—poised and professional—step onto Omaha Beach to aid troops injured during Operation Overlord, the bloody Allied landing operations at Normandy in June 1944.
The Lie
The photograph has been timeshifted. The women are Red Cross workers, but the photo was made January 15, 1945, seven months after the D-Day invasion at Normandy. And it’s nowhere near Omaha Beach. The central figure’s two-toned saddle shoes are hitting beach sand on the French Riviera. The photograph has gone viral off and on for years—something like the coming and going of the tide.
