DECEIVE ME

AND DO IT WELL
by TOMAS IUELIS 2008

The truth has a structure of a fiction. Jacques Lacan Fake it till you make it. Alcoholics Anonymous From the very early days of photography, when pictorial representation (photographic image) was incorporated into the mass media, the concept of a historical moment became dependant on numerous factors of regulation, direction, and censorship. The story had to appear more real than the truth itself. It often comes out that appearances are not beeing seen by the subject, but they are being shown to the subject. But does such a disclosure realy change anything? While speaking on manipulating the contents of a mediated image, we usually mean the technique of transforming the visual representation of a real referent in order to change the perception of reality itself. In other words, manipulation means dealing with the referent via his/her/its representation. While contemplating on the image as a historical representation, we may ask: what is and where is the referent of the representation contained in the mediated message and what can we call an authentic image of a historical event? I. Manipulation as an Ideological Act On July 9, 2008, when Iran completed their Sahib-3 missile launch test-fire, Agence France-Presse obtained a photo of the event from Sepah News website. Sepah News is a news agency, acting as a media arm of Iranian Revolutionary Guards. On Wednesday night, the photo was already erased from Sepah News site. On Thursday, without further explanation, Sepah News published another photo that Associated Press distributed in turn. The current variation is just another version of the first photonearly identical to the first one, even though it shows three missiles instead of four. Consequently, the first version of the photo was revealed to be a digital manipulation.

DECEIVE ME AND DO IT WELL

Editor & Publisher announced that on Wednesday, Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, Chicago Tribune and other respectable newspapers, as well as BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News and NYTimes.com agencies published a doctored photo displaying four Iran missiles. The other day, they all issued mass apologies and corrections of this misunderstanding. 1 An attempt to understand the logics of this very manipulation might develope several ideas. First of all, a more thorough examination has disclosed that the original shows three missiles that have just been launched, and the forth one still on the launchpad in the truck. According to the experts, the forth missile was not lauched due to some kind of disorder. 2 Therefore, the missile could have been fired, even though we dont see the record of their syncronous launch. None the less the moment was later reproduced by a manipulator. It means that the doctored version of the event remains symbolically true in the same sense as a painted portrait is also symbolically true: it documents a set of non-simultaneous visual elements that, however, essentially define the event/the object being portrayed. Given the definition of this kind of image, isnt it the maximum approximation to the status of a historical moment? The adulteration seems to tell us: Does it really matter how many missiles took off the ground? What matters is that we have them and we show them. Therefore, we can add one more. The paradoxical case of Iran is not a precedent and event its scale surprises us no morethe adulteration has reached all news agencies all around the world and it was published in numerous media channels. With the disclosure of the fraud, the official Iranian manipulators and their PhotoShop skills, as well as the very specific character of concealing the militarist impotence, have become a target of mass mockery in the West (especially in the Western blogosphere) but the case is still significant and illustrative. Judging by the response from some of the news editors and heads of agencies, 3 they just accepted the doctored picture after giving it a quick glance. Therefore, a photo matching the criteria of a quick glance can travel all around the world and bring about the desired effect even before it is revealed to be just an adulteration. Despite the denial of the canard, it still does not disappear without a trace and it is still effective. The attempts to conceal, complement, or correct somethingwhich means changing the contents of the messagein its turn, reveals another level of the message: the way and the very fact of saying something is more important than what is being said. My personal instinctive reaction upon seeing the images denouncing the canard (the comments in the news websites assured me that the reaction of most of the readers was not much different), was astonishment: why should somebody bother at all to produce a picture showing a launch of fourinstead of threemissiles? Or more accuratelywhy am I being deceived so poorly? Here are some interpretations in an attempt to generalize this and other similar cases. First of all, why should we believe that there is some kind of an authentic visual representation of a story? A look upon what might be called the visual documentation of the XX century history shows us a systematic use of certain methods to create symbolic meaningsi.e. of propaganda. The XX century witnessed the propaganda in its full bloom. Its definition changed after World War II, but its function remained the samea persistent manipulation of the listeners/viewers. Without going into detailed definitions of propaganda, I will allow myself to make an assumption that a deception is something

DECEIVE ME AND DO IT WELL

very close to the truthperhaps even truer than the truth itself, because the reasons of an intention to deceive define the concept of the truth itself, while the deception contains both truth and the method transcending it, and the disclosure of this method may give us knowledge of some another, higher truth. A deception is a complex structure, its a consequence of manipulation. What we call the visual representation of history has long before teleportated itself into the level of symbolic proceeding, where the representation of an object is being transformed into a construct with no authentic referentand the symbolic meaning of such a construct nowadays, in spite of everything, is perhaps even more relevant than the very object of reference. A historical moment seems to be an intention of a relevant momentan intention that is left offscreen: something that needs some help from outside in order to be recognized. It acts as an unrealized notional layer of the event. The represented event gains an aura of historicity with the help from an arsenal of retouche, collage and digital manipulations. With addition of a secret code of proceeding, the secrecy of the image becomes visible despite the fact that the initial event had probably had no secret intention at all. It is a production of symbolic meanings, and the results of this productionby following the logics of organizing this kind of representationalign into a symbolic narrative. There is a natural desire to go under that symbolic curtain, to bypass the illusion and to collide head-on with the reality, or to swallow the reality pill, but what if the very veil of propaganda is the real truth of the story? What if this veil is a power constructing my own daily life, what if its a condition of all social interactions? It is a fantasy in the reality proper. There are plenty of analogues for such truth: these are the stories of symbolic proceeding and they belong not only to the field of artthey also, of course, involve the spheres of structuring the social and political reality. Its something that is always present in our reality; it influences our formation as participants of social relations. These symbolic stories are something that we have got used to in our world. Here, I am using the term world in the historical sensemeaning a certain entirety of dominating worldview that also has other historical alternatives: for instance, the Western or Eastern, the Christian, the Moslim worlds, etc. We can find interesting examples of representing historical moments in some other worlds. Here is an extract from a propaganda text, distributed in 1952 by South Korea during the Korean war: Hero Kang Ho-yung was seriously wounded in both arms and both legs in the Kamak Hill battle, so he rolled into the midst of the enemy with a hand grenade in his mouth and wiped them out, shouting: My arms and legs were broken. But on the contrary my retaliatory spirit against you scoundrels [US soldiers] became a thousand times stronger. I will show the unbending fighting will of a member of the Workers Party of Korea and unflinching will firmly pledged to the Party and the Leader! 4 We should not rush to laugh at poor Kang, whowhile facing his death with a hand grenade in his mouthis blurting out such a complicated speech. It would be wrong to understand the description of this episode literally. A closer look upon Western culture would reveal us even more spectacular episodes. For example, in Wagners opera, the fatally wounded Tristan is singing a tedious, nearly one-hour long aria before his death.... It would be difficult to imagine an audience hall roaring with laughter at this

DECEIVE ME AND DO IT WELL

kind of unconvincing action. Even though these examples are not adequate in their claim of authenticity (the case of Korea still deals with Kang Ho-yung who did really exist), we can read them as separate cases of a general logic of symbolic representation of an event. Therefore, in the Iranian missile case, does not the manipulators approach to visual representation of the event remind the same logics of symbolic proceeding? What is the difference between this case and the many cases when the USA photo manipulations were disclosed? 5 Another problematic aspect in the analysis of this case of manipulation concerns my nearly instinctive need for some conspiracy theories. The viewpoint of a goal/result implies that there are two possible kinds of manipulation: successful manipulation or unsuccessful one. The failure of manipulation may be due to the lack of experience of the manipulator, as well as the underestimated discernment of an audience, or an information leak. This kind of manipulation ends in a disclosure whose result is a complete destruction of symbolic structure, the loss of initial meaning and confidence. Meanwhile, successful manipulation is not just (or not necessarily) a technically flawless message/process, but a certain kind of strategy applied to it that has been worked out in advance for several steps forward. In this way, successful manipulation may also include unsuccessful manipulation, if the outcome of the latter (or the sequence of events that it caused) proves out to be intended in advance. This case would provide a new dimension for the concept of manipulationthe status of hypermanipulation, or transgressive manipulation. Here we can raise a question that implies a forementioned theory of conspiration: was the technically rough manipulation in the Iranian case just a technically rough manipulation, or was it a conscious attempt to discredit Iran and the news agency? II. A PhotoWar Despite the temptation of resorting to manipulation, the highly-technologized world still safeguards a digital image as an authentic document that reflects reality. There is a quest for more and more complex technological solutions that would help detect a digital manipulation, but still there is no standard, no authenticity safeguard for a digital image, and what is morewe still cannot talk about a unanimous cooperation between those who produce an image and those who consume it. There are all kinds of requirements applied to a digital image with a status of news/editorial image,6 but so far, no standardised discipline mechanism that would maintain the authenticity of the image (i.e. would recognize the consequences of manipulation in a digital image) has been provided; so those requirements are still actually a subjective ethic criteria. It is true that the tendencies of an image discipline do exist: after several world-wide known cases, when Adnan Hajja freelance photographer for Reuterspresented the agency with his digitally doctored photographs (so-called Reutersgate scandal),7 the agency committed Adobe company to create an algorythm for detecting manipulations in digital images. Therefore, digital image media inevitably tend to form objective strategies for protecting the referent of an image. This means that the representative image is (still?) being obstinately attached to the classical status of authenticity, which in Noam Chomskys terminology may have the name of a necessary illusion: i.e. one of many fictions that help (paradoxical as it may be) to maintain a uniform world outlook without breaking the crystal palace of the referent. Even though the fall of this classical paradygm has long begun, it is obvious that it has not yet come to an end.

DECEIVE ME AND DO IT WELL

It is curious though, that the Iranian case is still not something of a shock, as it is (having in mind a whole ocean of other cases of digital manipulations) the fulfillment of the ever-present temptation to manipulate. I mean not only the temptation that comes from the capabilities of any potential manipulator (for it is truly incoherent public that has some skills in working with PhotoShop nowadays), but also the temptation because of the very context that the image entersit is an environment of mass consumption where the critical discourse of a digital image, in the best case, is still undergoing the formation process. The daily experiences of regularly doctored images can numb even the effect of a disclosed manipulation in the political imagery sphere. It seems natural to expect something like that, when the technologies and equipment for doctoring digital images are accessible to everyone, when they have become a part of daily experience for those who are simultaneously involved in creating and consuming the web culturethose whom Geert Lovink (not considering the ethical evaluation, but referring to the classical concept of competence) has called amateurs. So, what was the point of adding that ill-fated fourth missile? Perhaps this is not so important on the first sight, perhaps there is just an unexperienced manipulator behind it, but here I also have to admit some inevitable psychoanalytical implications. The case makes us suspect that a phallocentric image of a missile taking offas the image of military potencywas so important to the manipulator(s), that it had to receive a sensitive interpretation. We are left to expect something impossiblea safe visual photowar, where the response to these kind of attacks would be the USA attempt to digitally clone their own military arsenal with the help of PhotoShop. A war where the opponents would openly use manipulations in a photowar. Perhaps this suggestion is quite humorous, still theoretically it ishaving in mind the role of propaganda in our daily lifenot so preposterous.

1
1

Joe Strupp, UPDATED: Altered Iran Missile Test Photo Makes Front PagesCorrections Slow in Coming Did Launch Fail? (Editor & Publisher, July 10, 2008). http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003826336
2

Iran doctored missile test-firing photo: defence analyst, LONDON (AFP), Jul 10, 2008. Google News: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h02c0KdPqnRSFFVj9dn9pWaVMCJQ
3

Mike Nizza and Patrick Witty, In an Iranian Image, a Missile Too Many (New York Times blog, July 10, 2008). http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/07/10/in-an-iranian-image-a-missile-too-many/index.html?hp
4

Cited in: Bradley K. Martin, Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader, p. 85 (Thomas Dunne Books, 2004).
5 6

http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/farid/research/digitaltampering/

E.g., DigitalCustom Model Ethics Guidelines To Protect The Integrity of Journalistic Photographs in Digital Editing: http://www.digitalcustom.com/howto/mediaguidelines.asp
7

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adnan_Hajj_photographs_controversy