Photos are already lies, or at the least a very incomplete truth as Molly Crabapple points out.

But fuck Photoshop. Photos are already lies.

I’m a former model and current artist. I’ve learned this every second I’ve stared into the camera’s insect eye.

Anyone who’s been at a photo shoot knows that even untouched photos bear only the scantest resemblance to a subject. A photo is frozen. A model sweats and bloats, ages, and dies. Framing is a lie. Lighting is a lie. Cropping is a lie. When you suck in your stomach, or turn your head so the light washes out your laugh lines, you’re lying as much as any liquefy tool. Untruth is baked into the process: Photographer Syreeta McFadden writes how the chemical makeup of some films is biased against dark skin tones. Even snapshots often don’t look like you, because you are not static. You are a three-dimensional being, torn by time. Photos are pixel ghosts.

When I used to take portraits and photograph models, I’d often hear them say to me, “I’m not all that pretty but you make me look so beautiful.”

The thing is, though, I only photographed models I knew and liked. It was easy to make them look great because I already knew they were great people. Showing what’s there is easier if you already know how to find it, if it’s already apparent to you. Capturing a moment in time where someone is at their best is just what good photographers do.

It has less to do with finding physically beautiful people but rather finding the best moments of the ordinary. Gracie Hagen illustrates exactly this with her photography.

Photoshop like any other tool can be and is abused. I too also dislike the magazine covers that do not seem to be populated by actual humans. However, the way many feminists and others go about critiquing and resisting this and other related facts is most often antithetical to their actual goals.

And god, this is a great line. I wish I’d written it.

To get a “true” photo, you need to remove artifice. This means removing art. Art’s opposite is bulk surveillance.

And to further Molly’s points, here is one of my favorite photo sets: twenty-year-old model Eniko Mihalik, photographed as if she were 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 years old. No Photoshop. Only make-up. And not even all that much make-up at that. Lighting can do amazing things, as any cinematographer knows.

All of those photos of Mihalik are “true.” And all of them are a “lie.” Both at the same time.