Newsweek alters photo… by cropping it?
Pulitzer prize-winning photographer David Hume Kennerly — a former contributing editor for Newsweek — is not a happy camper after seeing how his former magazine used a file photo of his:
That photo of Dick Cheney poking at a bloody kitchen carving board with a knife ran in the Sept. 14 issue with a brief Cheney quote about interrogators for the C.I.A.
But the photo was altered. Not by photoshop, Kennedy says, but by simple cropping. That, and taking it out of context.
Kennerly writes today in the New York Times‘ Lens photo blog:
I took that photograph at his daughter Liz’s home during a two-day assignment, and was shocked by its usage. The meat on the cutting board wasn’t the only thing butchered. In fact, Newsweek chose to crop out two-thirds of the original photograph, which showed Mrs. Cheney, both of their daughters, and one of their grandchildren, who were also in the kitchen, getting ready for a simple family dinner.
However, Newsweek’s objective in running the cropped version was to illustrate its editorial point of view, which could only have been done by shifting the content of the image so that readers just saw what the editors wanted them to see. This radical alteration is photo fakery. Newsweek’s choice to run my picture as a political cartoon not only embarrassed and humiliated me and ridiculed the subject of the picture, but it ultimately denigrated my profession.
September 17th, 2009 at 1:55 pm
he’s being a big baby. it’s not like pyramids were moved. i’m adding this to my photoshop massacre presentation. ;) also… there’s type on the photo! OMFG!!!
September 17th, 2009 at 3:47 pm
This seems nit-picky. They used the photo as a photo illustration. It’s not like anyone thinks Cheney is being truly brutal — and if they did, it illustrates the editorial. Sure it doesn’t look like a photo ill, but its clearly using a photo in an editorial-illustration-like fashion.
September 17th, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Photographers. That’s all I’m saying.
September 17th, 2009 at 11:37 pm
Seriously?
September 18th, 2009 at 9:05 am
It’s a vast, left-wing conspiracy.
September 18th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Gimmie a break. Yeah, this crop denigrated the whole profession…it’s a photo. That you shot for a magazine, right? And they paid you. I love how photographers take themselves so seriously. You’d think they invented photography.
And it’s not a photo illustration. In any form. It’s a photo, unaltered, of a moment in time. Period.
September 19th, 2009 at 12:17 pm
Wow you guys are being pretty tough on photogs. This really was a brutal crop. What would you think if it was a photo of Obama looking at monkeys at the zoo with his daughters and they cropped it to make it look like Obama was alone in the picture and made the photo about race? Yeah, that would be totally inappropriate. Same here. Cheney was in the kitchen making dinner with his family and Newsweek cropped it to go along with an editorial about torture. That’s quite a leap.
September 20th, 2009 at 8:38 am
Let’s try to remember that integrety and truth to the reader is an important part of design.
Related topic:
http://oneheartonemind.wordpress.com/2009/09/14/truth-in-photography/
and
http://www.aphotoeditor.com/
September 20th, 2009 at 10:11 am
I’m quite aware that photogs can be prima donnas. On top of that, I think Dick Cheney is an ass.
But this just seems intentionally abusive. I agree with Francie. We should expect better of Newsweek.