Packed snow shapes can be ambiguous, but entire mountain peaks don't randomly move to different places as is clearly the case in these photos.
The article presents and excellent and very detailed case for how the photos are doctored all over the place. It's obvious and easy to see once pointed out. I can't at all imagine how it's so hard to believe.
This combined with a bunch of other odd details makes her case very suspicious. Given how much her original narrative implied fairly pure nature photography and NOT artistic composite creations, what this photographer did was dishonest in a very straightforward sense. The dishonesty becomes all the more obvious when you realize that until she was called out by a detailed analysis, she freely let sites for such entities as Saatchi Art, the U.S Embassy in Nepal, Animal Planet and the Times of London, share, claim and think that her photos were essentially nature shots with modest editing and no more. Not a peep, and she even made sales.
It was only after this individual was called out by a very specific media analysis that suddenly "News and media from around the world stole my images and published them with their own meaning. They did not ask me if they were edited. They interpreted them in their own way and spread them around the world."
And then up go the DMCA claims against the same sites that had previously shared her photos approvingly withuot being asked to take them down then (especially petapixel)
She seemed to have no problem with any of that as long as her original blog post and all it strongly implied were believed.
If what she presented was a "narrative" for a specific audience, I think that's fine. Sort of like literary fiction vs non-fiction story writing. We have historical fiction where we mix past and present real and fake. I don't see why a conceptual artists can't do the same with their photography/art --unless they were completely deceiving their audience for manipulation or monetary gain, i.e. fraud.
On the other hand it seems people are using her images without permission and passing them as authentic—which if we’re talking about transgressions, would be worse.
> We have historical fiction where we mix past and present real and fake.
It is fine as long as it presented as historical fiction.
> unless they were completely deceiving their audience for manipulation or monetary gain, i.e. fraud.
They were at least deliberately deceiving their audience (though technically without stating demonstrably false statement - nevertheless they were lying)
That’s a possibility. However maybe her “real” audience is a small group to whom she presented these via other media and are or were looking for reaction to the art. In other words a public art installation. Is it real, is it fake? That’s the art.
The bigger problem to me is other people swiping her art, not confirming and not attributing it —simply using her art.
Interesting. If they passed them as real to the newspaper then yeah, that's problematic. What I don't know and can't tell from that is if that claim is part of the art. In other words I cannot verify that was actually published on the Times on Nov 10. Or if it was how much the times knew.
The article presents and excellent and very detailed case for how the photos are doctored all over the place. It's obvious and easy to see once pointed out. I can't at all imagine how it's so hard to believe.
This combined with a bunch of other odd details makes her case very suspicious. Given how much her original narrative implied fairly pure nature photography and NOT artistic composite creations, what this photographer did was dishonest in a very straightforward sense. The dishonesty becomes all the more obvious when you realize that until she was called out by a detailed analysis, she freely let sites for such entities as Saatchi Art, the U.S Embassy in Nepal, Animal Planet and the Times of London, share, claim and think that her photos were essentially nature shots with modest editing and no more. Not a peep, and she even made sales.
It was only after this individual was called out by a very specific media analysis that suddenly "News and media from around the world stole my images and published them with their own meaning. They did not ask me if they were edited. They interpreted them in their own way and spread them around the world."
And then up go the DMCA claims against the same sites that had previously shared her photos approvingly withuot being asked to take them down then (especially petapixel)
She seemed to have no problem with any of that as long as her original blog post and all it strongly implied were believed.