In the Los Angeles County Museum of Art hangs a simple painting of a pipe with the text, “Ceci n’est pas une pipe,” translating to, “This is not a pipe.”
The title of the painting? The Treachery of Images.
The artist, Belgian surrealist René Magritte, was pointing out that an image of a pipe is not really a pipe. You can’t actually use it—it isn’t “real” in the way a physical pipe would be. But our brains still recognize the image as “a pipe.” The artist was warning his audience that just because something appears to be real doesn’t mean that it is.
We’ve already discussed images generated by AI, but even images on their own can be misleading. As author Neil Postman puts it in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death, “Photography recreates the world as a series of idiosyncratic events.” Even though intellectually we know it isn’t true, photos often come across as “the whole story.”
This is why, on the political level, choosing unflattering photos of opponents can portray them to viewers as generally unattractive or incompetent, and can reveal bias. It’s also why, on a personal level, when we see the image of our friend’s perfect vacation, we should remember that we aren’t seeing what else may have happened: like the stress of a delayed connection, or the panic attack they had in the hotel bathroom. Understanding the process that goes into image selection is a key part of media literacy.
On top of all this, real photos can be edited with programs like Facetune and Photoshop (both of which also have AI capabilities). But there are ways to spot an edited photo:
- Slowing Down: Sometimes, taking an extra second to look at a picture and let your brain be critical will reveal inconsistencies in the photo.
- Lighting: While many of us take lighting for granted in the real world, light is one of the most complicated things to fake in imagery. Look for light coming from nowhere, shadows that shouldn’t exist, or even lights reflecting (or not reflecting) in people’s eyes.
- Unrealistic proportions and skin: Small adjustments to subjects’ waist, chest, or makeup are one of the most common forms of editing done on photos, with some of the most devastating effects on viewers’ self-image.
For better or worse, humans have always placed a premium on what we can see with our own eyes (hence cultural phrases like “seeing is believing,” or, “I’ll believe it when I see it”). Even Thomas, the disciple of Jesus, refused to believe in Jesus’ resurrection until he saw his Lord with his own eyes: “So the other disciples told him, ‘We have seen the Lord.’ But [Thomas] said to them, ‘Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.’” (John 20:25)
We can’t really blame Thomas. We often trust our eyes more than our other senses. But when we live in an age where images are so easily manipulated, it can be possible to put too much trust in what we’re looking at, especially online.