Statement Update
After we have announced our new website on Apug.org the largest forum dedicated to analog photography we know of, we got a perfect example for failed communication. You may follow the still ongoing discussion here.
Our approach was massively questioned partly because of some overreaction to the name of our label itself, partly because of general objections against self restrictions on what you will do with pictures but also partly because of our inapt verbalization of our idea.
Against the very core of our idea we used the term “manipulation” all over our statement. It was never our our goal to try to define what manipulation of a photograph means. We already know from attempts which were made by others in the past that this would fail.
We have corrected our statement thus, that we make clear that we only put up some restrictions in editing our pictures.
So we emphasize again that we just want to question composites which appear as unaltered photographs to the public thus exploiting the reputation of photographs as authentic visual representation of a real world scene. As most of these photographic look’a'likes are not marked as composities (as we call them) we want to label our pictures in a way that give people the chance to realize what we have not done to our pictures.
We in no way wish to characterize other pictures as not being photographs, art, valuable or even genuine photographs at all. The whole thing is about what our labeled pictures are: genuine in the sense that we just comply with only four little restrictions we have put up to ourselves.
Ulrich Drolshagen
