J. Hoberman: Trick or Truth?
Is photography a way of documenting the world that has an inherent “truth-claim” on the real? Or is it, as Edward Steichen suggested, essentially graphic, a technique for creating a certain kind of image? “Faking It: Manipulated Photography Before Photoshop,” an exhibition now up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (later traveling to the National Gallery and Houston’s Museum of Fine Art), makes a vigorous case for understanding the medium as Steichen did.
Photo: Grete Stern: Dream No. 1: Electrical Appliances for the Home, 1949 (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
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