Digitally Enhanced images

Not long ago, the existence of an image was least evidence that what was shown had happened. No longer. Digitized images and powerful computers can create scenes of things that never were, in such a way, that no one may be able to judge whether what is shown is a record of something that exists or an artist’s fantasy.

Novelist and filmmaker Michael Crichton explores this problem on his novel Rising Sun. Detective Peter James Smith, who tells the story, talks with Dr. Phillip Sanders at the University of Southern California:

I said, “This copies are exact?”
“Oh, yes.”
“So they’re legal?”
Sanders frowned. “Legal in what sense?”
“Well, as evidence, in a court of law-“
“Oh, no,” Sanders said. “These tapes would never be admissible in a court of law.”
“But if they’re exact copies?”
“It is nothing to do with that. All forms of photographic evidence, including video, are no longer admissible in court.”
“I haven’t heard that”, I said.
“It hasn’t happened yet,” Sanders said. “The case law isn’t entirely clear. But it’s coming. All photographs are suspect these days. Because now, with digital systems, they can be changed perfectly. Perfectly. And that’s something new…”

(from” Making documentary films and reality videos” by Barry Hampe, New York, 1997)

However, I thing it’s no longer new. It is something what is happening every day and every single hour. Changing reality for the sake of improving or even distracting it.Read related article here.