Reality and manipulation in photography: A comparative analysis from the Turkish press

ABSTRACT Photography has been considered in terms of reality and its capacity to reflect reality, since it first appeared on the stage of history. The concept of reality is explained in different ways in terms of the paradigm of modernism and postmodernism. Modernism's universal, objective, measurable and identifiable understanding, criticized within the context of the postmodernist paradigm, which considers reality as a phenomenon that can vary according to cultural, individual and social contexts. These two different approaches also have significant differences in the approach to photography. Although, usually photography is not being counted among the first technological developments of the Industrial Revolution, indeed it is one of them which has triggered irreversible changes in social and cultural life. Today, photography is being used in the majority of the mass media. In printed media such as newspapers and magazines, the value of the news mostly depends on the photograph used. Photography is being used to show the truth as well as to reproduce or change it. The reality of photography and the phenomenon of manipulation are discussed in the fields of documentary photography or press photography rather than artistic photography. Photographs are manipulated in multiple stages until they are published in newspapers or magazines. In terms of the right of the society to receive accurate information through the press, manipulation in press photographs should be prevented and there are ethical rules about this issue. However, the press photos are being manipulated in Turkey as well as anywhere in the world, in order to redirect the reader to a certain mood or attitude. Within the scope of this thesis, the analysis of the press photographs showed that manipulation of the press photographs is mainly being done by framing the subject with the written elements accompanying the photograph in the newspaper or by changing the frame of the photograph.