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)
The Claim
Toddlers have skulls horrifyingly jammed with dentition. They’re born with baby teeth plus forthcoming adult teeth. “Honestly no wonder toddlers are so angry all the time.” Evidence: pediatric x-rays showing a child’s jaw, right view, left view. Teeth jut in all directions like schooling fish fleeing a barracuda. (An x-ray is a photograph. Instead of visible light, x-ray images employ a different portion of the electromagnetic spectrum—the shorter wavelength immediately below ultraviolet light.)
The Lie
The x-rays show an extreme case of hyperdontia—surplus teeth. They do not depict a standard issue child, but a freakish outlier. The photographs show “an unusual case of multiple hyperdontia in a girl aged 11 years 8 months with 31 supernumerary teeth,” states an article in the October 2011 issue of the American Journal of Orthodontics and Dentofacial Orthopedics. (Subscription comes with a free lollipop, or should.) In short, a normal human is born with 32 teeth. This human came with 63.
