The truth of photographic images has been challenged since the 19th century when the means for making them were invented. While the medium was embraced by the public at large, photographers have continued to grapple with the methods and techniques available to them, experimenting with technologies as they emerged and discovering the capacity of the medium to represent the world they experienced.
 
Photographs are inherently subjective in the ways in which they are made and perceived. There is no absolute truth in the photographic image. Photographers frame the reality that they see, whether the process is spontaneous or planned.

The truth of photography relies not only on the integrity of the image, but on its context and accessibility.

VIEWING TRUTH IN PHOTOGRAPHY

The themes can be viewed in sequence or in whichever order the viewer chooses. Select a theme from the menu bar at the top of the page, or click one of the buttons below.​​

LOOKING FOR TRUTH IN A DIGITAL AGE

Featured in this installment of Looking for Truth in a Digital Age:
  • Insight into Japanese women photographers from Pauline Vermare
  • The lives of Rohingya refugees as depicted by Rohingya photographers, alongside an interview with ​​Sahat Zia Hero and Ro Yassin Abdumonab
  • Issam Larkat portrays the unemployed young people of Relizane, Algeria
  • Cristina de Middel blurs the lines of photography with her photographs
  • Encounters are key to Lua Ribeira's approach to photography
  • Olivia Arthur engages her subjects across her varied work

JAPANESE WOMEN PHOTOGRAPHERS
Pauline Vermare

Pauline Vermare, a photography historian, curator, and writer, sheds light on over one-hundred Japanese women photographers who are often overlooked.

ROHINGYA
​​Sahat Zia Hero and Ro Yassin Abdumonab

The persecuted people of Rohingya faced a massacre in 2017, causing around 800,000 people to flee their homeland. These photographs by Rohingya photographers show displaced people and their lives in refugee camps.

RELIZANE: YOUTH OUT OF FOCUS
Issam Larkat

Photographs by Issam Larkat focus on the youth of Relizane, a small town in the west of Algeria. These largely unemployed young people feel abandoned and excluded from what is happening in the world.​

AMBIGUOUS TRUTH
Cristina de Middel

Coming from a background in documentary photography, Magnum president Cristina de Middel makes evocative photographs that blur the lines of reality.

ENCOUNTERS
Lua Ribeira

​Lua Ribeira uses the photographic medium as a means to create encounters that establish relationships and question structural separations between people.

ENGAGING THE SUBJECT
Olivia Arthur

With a myriad of projects around the world, photographer Olivia Arthur discusses the ways she approaches her varied works and engages with her subjects.

FOCUS

Our new section, called Focus, highlights photographers, organizations, and issues crucial to our understanding and questioning of Truth in Photography.

THE CENTER FOR PHOTOGRAPHY AT WOODSTOCK
​Interview with Brian Wallis

“Race, Love, and Labor (an excerpt),” an exhibition at the Center for Photography at Woodstock curated by Sarah Elizabeth Lewis, features photographs drawn exclusively from the works artists donated after they completed a residency in Woodstock’s Artist-in-Residency program. See photographs from the exhibition, learn more about some of the artists featured, and read an interview with Executive Director Brian Wallis.

THE PURSUIT OF REPRODUCTIVE RIGHTS:
​1968-2022

For more than five decades, Magnum photographers have documented the pursuit of reproductive rights. Featured are a selection of these powerful images.
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