The question at hand is the danger posed to truth by computer-manipulated photographic imagery. How do we approach this question in a period in which the veracity of even the straight, unmanipulated photograph has been under attack for a couple of decades.

Take the Money and Run? Can Political and Socio-Critical Art ‘Survive’?

The exposé, the compassion and outrage, of documentary fueled by the dedication to reform has shaded over into combinations of exoticism, tourism, voyeurism, psychologism and metaphysics, trophy hunting - and careerism.

Documentary is a little like horror movies, putting a face on fear and transforming threat into fantasy, into imagery. One can handle imagery by leaving it behind. (It is them, not us.)

How useful are documentary photographs if there is no follow up, no way of knowing what happened next in the story?

So much of my work involved the Vietnam War that it would have been obscene to show it in a gallery. But now, it’s different; it’s important to remember and to enable the young to discover what to some of us is still so present.

Any familiarity with photographic history shows that manipulation is integral to photography.