Eliot Shepard / a different kind of fakery
His Spots, I think, are more interesting than his People, but maybe I am more of a Spot person to begin with.
The Edgar Martins digital manipulation brouhaha is ridiculous. Rob at a photo editor points out that in a recent interview, Martins had said, “When I photograph I don’t do any post production to the images, either in the darkroom or digitally, because it erodes the process. So I respect the essence of these spaces.” Talking about adding insult to injury.
To think that you could put something so obvious (look at this photo and tell me where the stairs are going) in the NY Times Magazine of all places, and on the internet no less, and no one would catch it in this day and age of crowdsourcing and pixel-peeping is just insane. Adam Gurno, the guy who first spotted the fake and called it on Metafilter, recalls a maxim in computer programming: “To 10,000 eyes all bugs are shallow.”
The sad thing is that it would’ve made a perfectly good art piece if he’d been upfront about it. But to give it to the Times as journalism, ugh.
Edit: I’ve edited the text to fix some errors and add some links. Also, Heading East looks at a couple of photos from Martins’ portfolio made using the same technique. Martins’ claims about his work are quite strange considering.
What does Eliot Shepard’s work have to do with this Edgar Martins thing? Confusing juxtaposition.
It’s my way of posting – more of a digest than by topic. I’ve considered separating out each topic for clarity but so far I don’t think it’s too difficult to see when the photo has nothing to do with the text. But I take your point. When I transfer the blog over to my own domain, I will definitely prune a bit.
I certainly don’t mean to imply anything about Eliot Shepard’s work, I thought the almost nuclear-looking cloud suited the Martins fiasco. Kaboom! if you will.