I’ve looked at the idea of truth from a number of angles over the years. I’ve looked at realism in the novel, taking in, ostensibly, foundational realists such as Dickens and subversive historiographic metafictionalists such as Rushdie. My conclusion was that the novel, whether realist or not, aims to represent an ironic impression of truth in which the author is always implicit, whether intentionally so or not. I’ve looked at different models of documentary truth, a battlefield of authenticity still arguing with itself over whether the fly-on-the-wall objectivity of ‘direct’ cinema is ever possible – or even relevant in a postmodern age. My own conclusion is that any documentary ‘truth claims’ are found not in the material itself, but in a contract, whether explicit or implicit, made with the viewer as to the relationship to truth being presented. Through market research and psychology I’ve studied the age-old antagonism between qualitative and quantitative data and thus the merits and problems with empiricism – and psychology’s current and growing ‘cultural turn’ through social constructivism. Crucially, from the perspective of truth and photography, it’s worth noting that even a basic understanding of cognitive psychology utterly destabilises any notion of ever being able to directly perceive an objective reality through the sense (contemporary physics increasingly proposes that there is no such thing anyway). Indeed, the ‘naturalness’ which we assume is inherent in looking at a flat image is anything but, as demonstrated by the length of time it takes blind people to ‘learn’ to interpret them should their sight be restored. 

In other words, ‘truth’ is a slippery, ideologically loaded term. There is, of course, a cultural expectation that persists even in the era of deep-fakes, that photographs tell the truth, even if it’s only the faintest echo of a truth. It’s my belief that this isn’t something inherent in the medium itself, but rather something that has grown up alongside it in the ways it has been deployed to support scientific, legal, journalistic assertions about ‘truth’ in the specific era it did. I would thus caution that denoting photography as being, or being believed to be, more truthful than any other form of image-making – including textual descriptions of images – is thus culturally-specific. In an era saturated with photographs, it’s difficult but worthwhile considering that painted portraits, for example, were as much freighted with ‘truth’ prior to photography’s invention as photographic portraits were afterwards. So, my answer to the question ‘what kind of truth can photography offer us’ would be: any kind of truth one feels like making a claim for – so long as one sets the terms of that claim or understands the terms implied in the contexts in which one permits one’s work to be viewed – and then fulfils them. 

I believe the photograph is different to other forms of visual representation, though I believe the degree of difference varies with the process and form of the image. Take, for example, evidentiary photographs such as passport photos and compare them with one of the few remaining circumstances where drawing is evidentiary – the courtroom. Both are perceived to be highly objective, and whether forced facial expressions, flash lighting, or use of shading or pencil colour, these are accepted as elements of each medium which transcribes a ‘reality’ onto a flat surface for scrutiny. In both cases, light has entered through a lens – the photo booth’s, the courtroom artist’s eye – and a process has been initiated for this to happen. In neither case is the implicit subjectivity of authorship considered relevant. And yet in the courtroom drawing, the artist is omnipresent. We know that this artist was sitting in this chair, saw this scene with their own eyes, and used their hands to make those lines. In a photograph, regardless of how objective or subjective it is viewed as or intended to be, there is an implicit surplus, however slight, which escapes the control of the artist: to some extent, the image that we see was recorded by a machine and no conscious decision was made by anyone about it: it was a direct relationship between a primed mechanical process and the light available to it. However much the process or the available light might have been manipulated by human agency, there will always be a surplus which escapes. 

Take, for example, Warhol’s screen-prints: Warhol is understood as ‘author’ of these images (even though he frequently didn’t make the prints himself). They are exhibited as ‘Warhols’ and the identity of the original photographer negated: the process is overtly one of paint and paper and the human hand is everywhere present. The Marilyn photos themselves are understood as fictionalised to a certain extent even before Warhol’s intervention – as icon of beauty and gender, she has a cultural meaning that Warhol accentuates – and understood as staged glamour shots. And yet there persists, deliberately, a mechanical surplus which escapes any intention to interpreted, and the screen prints are careful to retain the faintest echo of this: they remain photographs. Had this been a painting of a photograph, however faithful, the mechanical chain would have been broken – although, and this is crucial, the painting would have to be ‘understood’ as a painting, and not a photograph. It is this ‘understanding’ of the photograph’s unique quality of mechanical ‘surplus’ on which rests the cultural meanings of photographic ‘truth’ and makes possible the myriad strategies and games of communicating the photographic image. 

Even in the era of deep-fakes, I don’t believe any photograph can escape questions of veracity – even if it positions itself to argue against this, whether tableau, digitally enhanced, in the gallery or used for publicity. Public scepticism might be more attuned to it, but there remains a contract of truth between photographer and viewer, even if that truth is as basic as the photograph being a photograph and not another medium.