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)
When a lie is based on a denial, it lacks the audacity of a wild claim or grandeur of a high-flying conspiracy but its simplicity can be effective. In essence, a denial acknowledges that a photograph can lie, then uses this fact to claim that an accurate photo is false.
The Claim
Press images showing throngs of Covid-era beachgoers crowding Jacksonville, Florida beaches in April 2020 are lies. In short, they are stock images, time-shifted, or misrepresentative.
The Lie
When Jacksonville, Florida re-opened its beach on the post-Easter weekend of April 17–19, 2020, after a monthlong Covid-19 closure, mobs of people and photographers turned out. “Jacksonville beach packed as Florida coronavirus cases hit record,” summarizes a New York Post headline over a beach image showing kids, couples, gambolers, dogs, clusters, clumps, crowds. The photograph was neither a stock image nor was it timeshifted, but instead was made April 17 by Sam Greenwood, a Getty Images staff photographer. Naturally, long lenses can compress perspective, but other photographs (including those by David Rosenblum, also carried by Getty Images) show comparable crowds.
