Keepin’ It Real: Decoding Pictures

Introduction

On the one hand, writing conjures something from “nothing” and can easily end up producing an experience of “the real world”. That is, of course, because language allows us to bridge the gap between cognitive and conceptual awareness. We look at the visual shapes called letters and we translate.

On the other hand, translating can just as easily result in experiencing what we deem “un-real” or even more severely “non-sense”.

Overall, it’s using code. Inventing, agreeing, applying, interpreting, breaking… all of those useful functions are the difference between writing making language functional or dysfunctional. We never think of language as being legitimate, relevant, or valuable in only one way. We think of it as a “medium” that is highly indifferent to what we are trying to accomplish.

Given that, all language seems kind of pointless without a motivation to use it. It’s fair, I think, to say that the fundamental “subject matter” or “content” of language is that motivation, and the purpose of writing is to convey it. In other words, as a medium, writing’s job is always to combine both the What and the Why of the formed expression that, through translation, is transported from the originator to the interpreter.

Defining the Real

For most of us, it’s hard to think of anything that we take more for granted than language. But most likely that exceptional thing is vision. Horribly, if one has language capability but falls mute, or has vision but goes blind, the exact importance of these two becomes evident without further explanation. But like writing is a medium for language, picturing — aka visualization — is a medium for the translations of vision’s images into seeing.

Here, in the matter of visualizing, is where the idea of what is “real” or not real often somehow carries confusion in photography. While we can think of most people we ever encounter being language capable and vision-capable, people are no more likely to be especially good visualizers than they are to be especially good writers.

The confused part I’m pointing at is the false presumption that visualization ought to count on “realism” as its primary source of value, and that most people, because they are vision-capable, can thereby claim high competency in visualizing based mainly on the primacy of realism.

Some fields such as scientific research, journalism, and biography/history put presumptive realism in the foreground as a major element of interpretation. In their process, these fields invite one to accept their interpretations as representing (re-presenting) realities while leaving their content subject to being verified.

But numerous fields including psychology, criminal investigation, and art routinely refute this presumption. Cognitive bias, the unreliability of eyewitnesses, and imaginative illustrations are all facts of life, undercurrents of experience, and even communications strategies that quickly map back to motivation.

So what does “real” actually look like?

Summary of relationships

• The Physical World: The Actual is perceived through Observation.
• The Record: Observations are recorded as Data, which are verified into Facts.
• The Meaning: Facts are woven into Non-fiction narratives in an attempt to convey Truth.

And how does that fit into the experience that results from interpretation of the visible? Here is a description that I’ve arranged specifically to account for a wide range of possible outcomes, not just highest probabilities.

Summary of Relationships

• The Vantage Point: You look from a POV, filtered through your Perspective.
• The Cognitive Filter: Your perspective is colored by Bias, which solidifies into Beliefs.
• The Explanatory Structure: Collective beliefs form Myths (narrative), while structured analysis forms Models (functional).

What We See

Overall, the connection between representation and explanation shows up as a pretty large cloud of different possible combinations.

As a photographer, one has some motivation to be a visualizer, to make pictures, and to have those pictures convey something that is at least recallable “through” experiencing the picture, whether that recallable thing is an idea (concept, message), a sensation (visceral or emotional), or some association of the two.

And that is why the vast majority of pictures can be functionally grouped into philosophical, analytical, celebratory, or documentary images. But in every case, when we study a picture, we are busy decoding it according to our own capability. We don’t all have the same capability.

In addition, there is nothing that prevents a given picture from being interpreted in multiple different ways — except for some special effort made by the presenter and the viewer to agree on which interpretation matters.

We can certainly question why the agreement is made, and that means the motivation of the viewer is as important as the presenter’s.

So let’s look at the range of interpretation where photography, with its facility for re-presentation, is concerned:

How They Logically Inform Each Other

The terms function as a “supply chain” of meaning:

1. An event occurs and leaves a Record.
2. That record is interrogated to become Evidence.
3. That evidence is styled into a Representation of the past.
4. Those representations are sequenced into a Narrative.
5. That narrative is presented under the label of Documentary.

And here, following, is a comparison of specific examples of pictures that each have had their own respective claim on “realistic” imaging. Here we describe the difference between a tracing, a super realist painting, and a photograph in terms of why each one would be preferred over the others. What is at stake here is the idea that the “same” image of something verifiable is being conveyed in differing ways for given reasons. It takes into consideration the intent of the presenter and the need (interest) of the viewer. (For convenience I have used AI discovery to develop my sample set of three types of differing examples from various knowledge bases, which I then curated for maximum simplicity of recognition. All of this is descriptive; none of it is prescriptive.)

A key distinction between a tracing, a super-realist painting, and a photograph lies not in what they show, but in the relationship between the maker, the subject, and time.

1. The Tracing

Preferred for: Structural Analysis and Pedagogy

A tracing is a reductive process. It is preferred when the goal is to filter out noise to understand the underlying structure or “skeleton” of an image.

Why choose it:

• To Understand Mechanics: An anatomist or architect prefers a tracing because it ignores surface distractions (color, shadow, texture) to isolate the contour and proportion. It forces the creator to physically re-trace the decisions made by the original designer or nature.
• To Commit to Memory: The physical act of tracing moves information from the eye to the hand, creating “muscle memory” of a form. It is a tool for learning, not just capturing.
• To Standardize: In technical fields, a tracing (or vector) creates a clean, scalable line that is mathematically perfect, removing the “messiness” of the real world.

2. The Super-Realist Painting

Preferred for: Awe, Materiality, and Psychological Tension

A super-realist (or photorealist) painting is an additive process. It is preferred when the goal is to create an object of contemplation that questions the nature of reality itself.

Why choose it:

• The “Wow” Factor (Virtuosity): It is preferred when the artist wants to showcase human capability. The value lies in the labor — the realization that a human hand applied pigment to create an illusion indistinguishable from a photo.
• Subjective Intensity: Unlike a camera, which captures everything broadly, a super-realist painter can manipulate focus and intensity. They can make a chrome bumper or a bead of sweat “more real than real” (hyper-reality), forcing the viewer to stare at mundane details they would normally ignore.
• To Create an Object: A photograph is often seen as a window to a moment; a painting is an object in the room. It has texture, surface, and physical presence that a flat print lacks.

3. The Photograph

Preferred for: Immediacy, Verification, and The “Decisive Moment”

In this case, a photograph is an instantaneous capture. It is preferred when the goal is indexicality — proof that a specific arrangement of light and matter existed at a specific point in time.

Why choose it:

• Forensic Truth (The “Record”): It is preferred for journalism, law, and science because it is (historically) viewed as a mechanical witness. It proves existence. A painting, no matter how realistic, is always an interpretation; a photo is a trace of light.
• Temporal Precision: Only a photograph can freeze a split-second — a splashing drop of water or a fleeting expression. A painting takes months to create; a tracing is static. The photo is preferred for capturing flux.
• Democracy of Vision: It captures the “unintentional” details. A painter chooses every brushstroke; a camera captures the trash in the corner or the stray hair that the artist might have subconsciously ignored.

The Practice

The kind of differentiation above emphasizes that there is a functional aspect of visualization that is intentional, not accidental or merely peripheral.

But where intentional use is the concern, the further significant idea about these techniques is that their production method makes them a tool or an instrument for the intentionality.

The two cases are synonymous; but the situation is that all instruments are also tools, whereas all tools are not instruments.

A tool is designed to reduce effort and deliver a predictable result (like a hammer driving a nail).

An instrument is designed to extend human capability, measure the unknown, or facilitate expression (like a telescope, a violin, or a seismograph).

It seems pretty clear that photography gets used both as a tool and as an instrument. Photography is an excellent tool for realistic rendering of actual (verifiable) physical phenomena — rendering that provides the visual material used by the photographer to intentionally encode and convey expressions of any kind within a broad range of agreed interests, preferences, and needs.

Given that, it is equally clear that no single type of “realism” is the defining characteristic of photography. The acid test is that if no documentary photography continued to be performed, there would still be an enormous amount of photography produced for other reasons. And no one reason is the defining characteristic of the medium.

The reasons are where and why we find a picture to have value. There can be a proposed agreement to offer a “non-fiction” mode of representation but that is readily exposed as a contextual factor that applies as easily to other forms of visualization as well as sometimes to some photographs.

Documents? Crime Scenes? Ads? Art?

In the progression of fact to meaning, this scene has “encoded” information that we can interpret. Nonetheless, It doesn’t matter whether what is depicted actually exists — unless we want it to matter.

Seeing and Believing

In generating the photo with a camera, the original lighting is mediated by the lens, and that in turn is mediated by the composer, whose arrangement is mediated by the expressive intention, which is mediated by the circumstantial occasion of its viewing, which is mediated by the interpretive capability of the viewer, which is mediated by the interest or need of the viewer. Every point is one at which the experience of the eventual presented image can be modified.

Presenting the picture is preceded by all but the last step above. The meaning of the picture, a perception, is dominated by the last three steps.

Interpreting visual data in a photograph can be guided very strongly by an expectation or belief that the data re-presents actual (physically detectable) visible phenomena. Realism exists when the intention and the interpretation together promote factuality as the foundation of perceived meaning that is obtained in the encounter through the medium.

In Realism, the “supply chain” of meaning is a chain of four or more value assessments built on the presumption of factuality. The presumption is held by the viewer even if not by the picture-maker.

But the importance of holding that perspective is context-sensitive, and the actual experience provoked by the encounter in the presentation of the photograph is what the “-ism” in realism is about. Even including all of the above, hallucination and false narrative can be the experience produced by realism.

Realism is a capability of the medium, not the defining characteristic of it.