Erik Marshall

Errol Morris is conducting an interesting discussion of trust in photography over at his NYTimes blog. He responds to responses of an earlier article about photoshopped images. The tension between interpretation and authorial intent comes up in an interview with a photoshop artist, who contends that Morris’s interpretation is wrong because he (the photoshopper) was just joking around, not putting thought into his creation. This is all fine, and we can have a discussion about whether and to what extent authorial intent even matters, but it becomes even more interesting when it becomes clear that the artist is conservative, but Morris reads the image through a progressive lens – the exact opposite of what the artist would have meant if he had actually meant anything in the first place.