> 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. They told their followers that they were not edited. This is untrue, I always edit my images.
> In September-October, I traveled to Nepal, took photos, edited them, and posted them on my Facebook Page to my 2000 friends and 1100 followers. The story behind this series is true, all of the images are taken by me. I did in fact walk 103 miles to take those images. I gave permission to a select few places to share them. My intent for the entire series was to raise awareness of snow leopard conservation. I sold a little over 50 prints and donated $787.50 to the Snow Leopard Trust.
She never claims to be a 1) Photojournalist or 2) Reporter.
She clearly articulates herself as an artist and appears to enter many fine art photography competitions, never attempting to pass her work as unmanipulated to her peers. Photo manipulation and composites is extremely common in fine art photography (as well as many other photography fields, ie. landscape), and the act is never questioned when the work is hanging in a gallery.
The narrative is part of the art. An artist does not have to put a disclaimer on their own website saying their work is not manipulated, they can also tell whatever STORY they want next to it. If anything how convincing her narrative and photos are speaks volumes to her ability as an artist.
Do not claim that collages or manipulations are not 'photographs' or that she didn't 'taken them'. She took every photo used, that act alone makes her a photographer. What constitutes a photograph can not be distilled to 'this photograph was manipulated so it is not a photograph'.
Take some of this anger and direct it at publications that stole her photos and published them as something they were not with no input from the artist. It is the medias job to research what they publish, it is not an artist's job to to dictate how someone interprets their art.
> She never claims to be a 1) Photojournalist or 2) Reporter.
She might never explicitly claim that, but the page is clearly written in photojournalist style. A photo of snow leopard tracks with coordinates, talking about and documenting the process of her search and how she finally managed to snap a photo of the leopard.
Reading that page I certainly would think the images are unaltered (i.e. not stitched together).
That is not to say that the publications that took the photos were in the right. But the false impression is not entirely on them.
Sorry but I call bullshit. Considering how these images were presented to the public and accepted by many, and later even sold, the level of editing and composite work this photographer does (if she even exists as the person she claims to be) is grossly dishonest even if she never said she was a photo journalist. Nobody who takes photography seriously as a profession or way of showing the world would call what she did photography in the way the images implicitly are presented as being true to in her own blog post.
There's enough doubt here to wonder if she even made the trip or took any photos of a leopard at all.
Also worth noting that her own website, registered in July of 2022, has posts backdated to April and March of 2021, which is strange to say the least.
I think it is fine to encourage peope to be more clear about the provence of their work. Calling someone "grossly dishonest" for not doing it in the way you want is not productive and, frankly, seems like bullying.
> if she even exists as the person she claims to be
Now you are simply being mean for no reason. There is evidence that she has been submitting work under thus name for several years and nowhere does she claim anything about this linking to any real world identity.
Take a moment yourself and try not to react emotionally to a series of completely valid arguments. Were this some other context, or possibly were it a man accused of this, would you be so understanding?
The french magazine itself suspected that the photographer may not exist as a real person by that name. Given the many inconsistencias and empty spots in numerous parts of their work biography and the present circus, it's far from being "just mean" to speculate the same.
>Which she doesn't. It is a side hobby, one which you have decided it is OK to bully her for because she isn't up to your professional standards.
Im not bullying anybody. This is casual discussion here on this site, not emails or messages sent directly to this photographer.
What's more, whether a person does photography as a hobby or professionally doesn't change the very definitely gross dishonesty of presenting their work as something it wasn't to multiple major organizations, selling it to numerous buyers under that strongly implied presentation and then only later very vaguely admitting to some editing and some composite work (without specifying that these shots were composites even though they very clearly were) only because she was called out for it in extremely specific detail by a professional magazine's analysis.
So yes, I repeat, perfectly calmly, that this was indeed gross dishonesty. If you were one of the people who saw her work presented on Saatchi Art for over $1500 per print (a damn good price for a photo by a recent unknown), and then paid for it because your reading of her original narrative very strongly encouraged you to think of the photos as real and very unique nature photography examples, I doubt you'd have so much "fucking empathy" either.
For those of us who take photography seriously enough to try being as honest as possible about its provenance and disclosing how our editing process works for the sake of sustaining respect among the public for photographers, things like this self-serving photographer's implicit bullshittery are simply annoying. AI is already letting people simulate images with increasing accuracy and pass them off as real. Someone very publicly being mendacious by more traditional means doesn't help that for others who still want to have their hard-won profession taken seriously still.
> take a moment yourself and try not to react emotionally to a series of completely valid arguments. Were this some other context, or possibly were it a man accused of this, would you be so understanding?
Yes.
> The french magazine itself suspected that the photographer may not exist as a real person by that name. Given the many inconsistencias and empty spots in numerous parts of their work biography and the present circus, it's far from being "just mean" to speculate the same.
I think the article author is engaging in the exact same clickbait online bullying. They emailed asking for higher resolution copies, but either didn't bother to ask her if the photos were manipulated or decided to not include her response.
> For those of us who take photography seriously enough to try being as honest as possible about its provenance and disclosing how our editing process works for the sake of sustaining respect among the public for photographers, things like this self-serving photographer's implicit bullshittery are simply annoying. AI is already letting people simulate images with increasing accuracy and pass them off as real. Someone very publicly being mendacious by more traditional means doesn't help that for others who still want to have their hard-won profession taken seriously still.
If you actually want to help improve the culture around provenance disclosure, bullying minor artists is not a good way to do that.
The french magazine article wasn't clickbait. It makes a claim and then strongly backs it up with detailed analysis. Did you even read the whole thing? They first asked for jpeg copies that they received along with metadata and EXIF details. Some of these made them wonder, along with other things, so they asked for two original RAW file copies. and plainly state that she then didn't reply at all.
>If you actually want to help improve the culture around provenance disclosure, bullying minor artists is not a good way to do that.
You're right. bullying minor artists isn't a good thing to do for fostering a good artistic culture in this broad space. However, calling out artists who tacitly or even plainly lie to multiple organizations and private buyers for monetary gain is a very different thing. Giving those a free pass because they're supposedly amateurs definitely doesn't help anyone or anything honest. I made my reasoning for it very clear previously.
> Also worth noting that her own website, registered in July of 2022, has posts backdated to April and March of 2021, which is strange to say the least.
So if you register a new domain name, you have to go back and edit your site's publication dates to be on or after the date in your whois record? lol?
Well, if your site was created on that date according to ICANN records, and you have multiple posts implying that it existed before that, it's one more little piece of a wider pattern of misdirection such as the stuff discussed above. So yeah, it does seem a bit odd.
> if your site was created on that date according to ICANN records
But that's not what the record indicates. You are confusing the concepts of a site and a domain name. A name points to a site. A site can exist before a name is registered.
It looks like her site used to be hosted at studiokittiya.com[1] which was registered in 2020.
> never attempting to pass her work as unmanipulated to her peers
Lying to non-photographers is also lying.
> An artist does not have to put a disclaimer on their own website saying their work is not manipulated, they can also tell whatever STORY they want next to it.
They presented it as real and were fine with it presented as real by others and selling photos as real until they were caught.
Is it not usually the case that, in photography competitions, there are separate categories for pictures showing situations and events that actually occurred in places that actually exist, and those produced by montage? The article alleges that examples of the latter were entered into competitions as the former. If this is so, then the very act would have been a falsehood, regardless of what she did not say elsewhere. This is so regardless of whether the competition rules permit certain post-processing of the image, unless the actual manipulations used fell within the rules.
One should not produce photographic art without being at least aware of its history as a representational medium, a context which still strongly surrounds the experience of viewing any photograph today.
The appeal to a "journalist" label (or lack thereof) is a shallow defense that does not stand up to any informed critique.
Artists who use the language of photographic representation to present fictional scenes would do themselves a huge favor by being transparent about it. Whether disclosed in advance or afterward (for example in satire), it's essential to being taken seriously as an artist, and not just an everyday boring faker. There is certainly nothing inherently artistic, interesting, or special about using software to manipulate the objects within the frame of a photo. Anyone can do it, just like anyone can take a snapshot with a camera.
And of course anyone can call themselves an artist and do whatever they want. But it's also true that anyone can critique their work. It's all fair game.
I'm very wary of any claims abut what artists "should" do.
There's good art, bad art, wise art, dumb art. Declaring that anyone who picks up a camera is implicitly agreeing to be bound by this kind of stricture.
Outsider art is a thing. Most of it is terrible, some of it breaks new ground. But I wouldn't say any of it is "doing art wrong" because they took the outsider approach.
Please read the rest of my comment. There's no "stricture," but if one engages in an artistic form without even the most basic awareness of its context, then one opens oneself up to a wide variety of criticism.
If anyone is trying to impose strictures, it is the comments above who try to declare criticism off-limits because there was not a "journalist" label or something.
Simply faking an animal portrait is not groundbreaking or "outsider." It's been done, and it's boring.
Who said "correct or incorrect" besides you? This conversation is about whether a photographer can be criticized for posting faked pictures (they can).
Your phone likely takes a collage of 3 photos, otherwise known as HDR, every time you tap the shutter and then does various AI thingies to make a selfie look pretty. And if you look closely, no that's not how things look to human eye. Wide angle group photo? A physically impossible illusion distorted to look passably normal. How much are you going to disclaim on Facebook?
In Argentina, if a publicity that has photoshoped human, then it must have a text explaining that. The idea was to fight against unrealistic body standards.
The actual result is that every publicity has that text, and people just ignore it.
The problem is that non-photoshopped photos do not represent reality either. Anything with different focal distance from human eye is by definition distorted. Levels of dark and light have to be squeezed into what computer/phone screen can show, often resulting in faces that would be fully black or white if corrective steps are not taken. Depth perception is lost, making people look much fatter than they are. A lot of edits are about approximating perceived reality rather than deception.
> The problem is that non-photoshopped photos do not represent reality either.
> A lot of edits are about approximating perceived reality rather than deception.
I agree with the first, but disagree with the second.
Anyway, another interesting thing is that many cell phones have a filter by default that removes skin imperfections, so now almost all photos by non professionals are "photoshoped" by default.
Border is not 100% clear but making collage out of multiple photo and pasting leopard that would never visit such location is definitely beyond what needs disclaiming
Copy and paste zoo photo on top of the mountain and claim you saw that in the wild? Sure, that would be a lie. But individual animals are also not unheard of to do unusual things and just how well are Snow Leopards researched to say they never ever come near glaciers? Maybe they do once in a while for their own reasons.
- this images are highly misleading, real snow leopards do NOT behave like that
- that makes me (and other) justifiably more suspicious about other claims related to snow leopards, nature protection and people involved
After all, if they are happy to lie in this way - maybe they are also happy to defraud money that got donated? Maybe snow leopards are extinct or impossible to protect anyway?
> Also if all this brings more awareness to safe these animals? win-win.
This also brings more awareness and proof that people lie to you and you should ignore their claims.
That is one of reasons for denialism of smog as real problem, denialism of global warming and so on.
Sacrificing trust and credibility to get less than 800$ (maybe they lied also about this?) is not a good trade.
Also that is a perfect case to show "see, they are probably lying again about this animals - lets build that motorway/factory/resort".
This is a bad strategy even if we do not care about ethics, lying and so on.
I don't see any lieing by the artist and certainly not to you. The images were shared with a total of 3000 people by the artist, I doubt you were one of them.
If anyone engaged in deception here, it is the publications and "journalists" that reused the images without permission and without doing any basic legwork.
Does she defend the claim, that she really saw a snow leopard in the mountains in the full article / website text?
Edit: Read the disclaimer myself. She seems to defent seeing a snow leopard, as she also has a picture of its paw up in the same collection. Make of that, as you will.
>Squinting through my camera’s telephoto lens, I noticed something in the shadow of Mount Pumori. At first I thought it was a rock, but it was exactly what I was looking for.
Worded vaguely enough for plausible deniability, like the rest of the text on that page. She never mentions seeing or photographing a snow leopard, nor does she mention editing the photos. This page seems carefully compiled in order to achieve exactly the attention she got, while at the same time allowing her to deny any lies if the truth got out.
Don’t forget that attention is the number one value for artists. Some who go for fame will do anything for it (whether justified or as a last ditch effort to make the artist dream reality)
So you've never had a better mixture of 60% H2O and 40% ethanol? Because that's what's left after 4x distillation followed by filtration, as claimed in the description.
I'm always baffled by people swooning over "good vodka". You're drinking industrial alcohol, diluted with distilled water! There's no flavor left.
You wish their distillation and filtration process is any good. I bet it could be repeated 20 times and it would still be garbage.
I had actual vodka made from aldehyde free HPLC grade dry alcohol and deionized water. (Remained after some cleaning of things.)
That thing literally has no taste and it's both smooth and burning sharp at the same time.
The other vodkas tend to have sugars and esters in the mix. You can detect them using a classic test.l, which shows how much the marketing about distillation process is worth.
They taste completely differently - depending on brand as well.
>I'm always baffled by people swooning over "good vodka". You're drinking industrial alcohol, diluted with distilled water! There's no flavor left.
Maybe you just have bad taste buds, i am baffled by people who don't taste the difference, an it's probably because you drink vodka that is made with distilled water.
No, the point is that the purest vodka is just ethanol and pure water, which you can approximate by distilling the water. I also don't understand why "good" vodka has any appeal at all, perhaps my bias.
I've always wondered how this escalates to death threats. I can vaguely understand it in the political sphere, there's a lot at stake with everyone believing the other side is pushing the city/state/nation/world towards certain destruction. But pictures of a snow leopard that may or may not be authentic?
How do people get from seeing a picture of a snow leopard to sending death threats? Are they just trolls who jump on to the case du jour to send threats to people? Is there a super hardcore competitive snow leopard photography scene where the stakes are high and the people are super invested?
> Are they just trolls who jump on to the case du jour to send threats to people?
Once someone has been positively categorized as belonging to the outgroup¹, people love to really get their kicks in. Doxx cheaters! Punch nazis! Get those groomers! Everything is acceptable towards the outgroup.
Some people have a strong sense of justice and love taking down people they see as cheating their way to success (this is often people who aren’t as successful as they thing they should be but aren’t accurately recognizing why). If you saw this going around social media, it might be easy to assume the creator made a serious amount of money or used it to get a good job. The more popular something was, the latter that group gets and thus the higher the risk of that group reaching a critical mass of disturbed people who escalate (often riling each other up).
Sadly, this also follows existing class, race, and gender status levels. If you’re an attractive white guy from an affluent background you are more likely to skate away from something like this without consequences. The further off you are from that, the more likely you are to encounter some sicko who thinks they’re putting you in your proper place.
Social media makes all of that worse because it provides instant gratification for everyone joining the pile-on and it allows them to feel like part of a large group even if they’re a small percentage of the total population.
>If you’re an attractive white guy from an affluent background you are more likely to skate away from something like this without consequences.
If you are a white guy you are less likely to skate away without consequences because it is possible to freely attack white men, while people are much more sympathetic to women.
Internet has plenty of people willing to make death threats with zero credibility or as jokes. The same goes for threats of sexual violence against family members.
See language used by gamers in competitive online games, especially team ones (CoD and LoL are example of games famous for toxic user base)
Longer answer: People (especially younger folks) tend to be insecure. That's why she did what she did, and why people are in such high dudgeon about it.
Myself, I don't really care. I like snow leopards, but haven't seen any (even at a zoo). I cannot imagine being famous (without the monetary rewards). That's one of the things about the Internet. It's possible to be famous; with all the downsides, and none of the upsides.
> 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. They told their followers that they were not edited. This is untrue, I always edit my images.
> In September-October, I traveled to Nepal, took photos, edited them, and posted them on my Facebook Page to my 2000 friends and 1100 followers. The story behind this series is true, all of the images are taken by me. I did in fact walk 103 miles to take those images. I gave permission to a select few places to share them. My intent for the entire series was to raise awareness of snow leopard conservation. I sold a little over 50 prints and donated $787.50 to the Snow Leopard Trust.