Catalogue

Photographs are deemed to tell the truth, and we are always disappointed when the camera is ‘found out’ telling a lie, when it is revealed that a picture was ‘set up’, or an image is manipulated in the computer. In these days of Photoshop, the old saying that ‘the camera never lies’ seems to have been replaced by a new one, that ‘the camera always lies’. But a photographic image is true and false in equal measure. All photographic evidence, all photographic reality, requires interpretation. The fact that the photograph appears to be a window to the world is one of the medium’s greatest problems, and yet is at the root of its potency and its fascination. The work presented here by the Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Photography graduands responds to these challenges. Each piece of work asks us to interpret the images, and reflect and think on what photography means to us as the viewer and what its role is in the society that we live in.