Quoting Nietzsche when you should just apologize.
Sorry Will, I know one of the tenets of this blog is refusing to post something that is being done everywhere but this is infuriating.
A few weeks ago, photo manipulation in a Times magazine article called “The Second Gilded Age” was discovered by programmer Adam Gurno and proven in this little gif. Edgar Martins, the photographer, had apparently mirrored one side of the image, making the whole photo a bit more ascetically pleasing. Obviously outside the allowed color correction and levels, but the story was not impacted by the photographer’s generous photoshopping. The photos were redacted and NYT apologized. In the grand scheme of things, not a huge deal.
However, instead of stepping up and admitting fault, Martins unloaded this crock of shit on us. Citations in what should be a short apology? Really? I haven’t read the whole thing as it runs at 2600 words, more than triple the length of the article the photos accompanied.
A choice selection:
Symmetry helps to map the parameters of human existence and communication, moreover its inconsistencies, its dialectic impetus.
For me it also highlights that ‘the camera’s rendering of reality must always hide more than it discloses’ 8 and that in the presence of the lens the photographic subject ‘instantaneously adopts another body, transforming itself in advance into an image’. 9
It would have been nice for him to have had someone copy edit this whole mess. It read likes a snobby stream of conscious. Come on Martins, you can do better!
