Aesthetic Controversy and the iPhone

Damon Winter a New York Times Staff photographer has sparked controversy from his third place win in Pictures of the Year International’s Feature Picture Story competition for his photo essay A Grunt’s Life.

 He captured daily life in a war zone for US troops in and out of action, a controversial topic but not the reason he is being criticized, the bigger issue at hand for most critics is that he shot the entire body of work using an iPhone and the Hipstamatic application to add a faux-polaroid filter.

 Photographer Chip Litherland, also a contributor to the New York Times, points out that the real problem lies with the editing application "...the images were processed through an app that changes what was there when Winter shot them.  It’s now no longer photojournalism, but photography. That transition happens when images become more about the photographer and less about the subject of said photos."

The New York Times‘ own photography policy is seemingly against the color-shifting and distortion that occurs in Winter's photographs:

"Images in our pages, in the paper or on the Web, that purport to depict reality must be genuine in every way. No people or objects may be added, rearranged, reversed, distorted or removed from a scene (except for the recognized practice of cropping to omit extraneous outer portions)."

  Winter notes in his New York Times response to the controversy,  that other photographs in the competition, notably the first place winner, employ distortions similar to those of Hipstamatic:

"It is black and white, shot with an extremely shallow depth of field to focus attention on the intended subject and blur other distractions and to give it a certain feel. It features a very heavy use of vignetting." 

"Much of the information in the image has been obscured in the interest of aesthetics. We humans do not see in black and white. And we do not see the world at f/1.2. These are aesthetic choices that do not contribute to the accuracy of the image. They are ways that the scene has been enhanced aesthetically."

 It is true that no image can be deemed as being the absolute truth, the limitations of the camera and the photographers ability to make aesthetic choices will always seep into photojournalism, this is being pushed further and further with changes in photographic processes and technology.