The person who shared this OK Go “This Too Shall Pass” music video with me wrote simply, “Someone learned his physics well.” As I watched the video — utterly entranced, wondering where I could get my hands on a few thousand dominoes — I had to agree.
Understanding physics certainly would be important for getting all these gadgets to go off just right, so perfectly. Clearly, this is for real, I was thinking. This is really happening in front of me. This is not a product of postproduction wizardry.
Maybe I was wrong about that, I realized. But then, it really didn’t matter.
The mechanical wonders in this video feel and so they are real. I believe in the magic of a magician who performs wonderfully, even though I know he is just performing a “trick.” The real trick, which is the magic, is that I feel and believe what I am seeing, regardless of what I might be thinking.
In relation to image making this relates to a critical concept: Authenticity.
Increasingly I photographers mention the word “authentic” to me in terms of the work they are trying to create, whether they are “straight” documentary photographers or postproduction photo wizards employing scores of layers to composite one image that could never be “real.”
Whether straight document or manipulated fantasy, all successful images present an undeniable authenticity — both visually and in terms of what we think about or sense regarding the photographer’s intent.
To come up with some text for this post, I began to search the Internet for some answers to obvious questions that image makers will ask themselves when watching the “This Too Shall Pass” video. How many takes? How much manipulation? And so on. Luckily I quickly stumbled onto the video below, hilarious and authentic, providing me with satisfying, authentic answers, even if its all a bunch of hogwash.
What I love is that right off we see Damian Kulash “disguised” as a number of famous personalities in a manner that reeks (to say the least) of manipulation. And yet, even as I am not sure if this is really Kulash’s voice or even if his interviewees are real or were actually involved in the music video, I don’t care. That’s because I believe this. It’s authentic. It’s fun. It rings true, even if it’s a sophisticated prank.
Don’t get me wrong. Obviously if I were presenting this information as authoritative investigative journalism, I’d need to look into these questions more fully. But in this case, I’m just out to share a good ride, and so I don’t have to. I can appreciate the power of the authenticity of the original video as well as the documentary about it.
The more that the general public believes that image makers can use Photoshop to easily create fake realities, the more that photographers need to focus on creating authenticity. Regardless of the message we are trying to communicate and regardless of the techniques we use to do so, quality photography must be authentic.