There is a statement I hear time and again, usually from people who encounter photography primarily as viewers rather than photographers: “A photograph must not be edited, otherwise it is no longer authentic.” At first glance, this may sound plausible. On closer examination, however, it is remarkably ahistorical.
Retouching has accompanied photography almost since its birth. As early as the nineteenth century, photographic negatives and prints were altered by hand. Long before digital tools existed, photographers and retouchers worked with pencils, paint, ink, razor blades, scraping tools and, later, airbrushes. Skin blemishes, scars, cleft lips, goitres, distracting shadows, exposure errors and technical imperfections were routinely corrected. Retouching is therefore by no means an invention of Photoshop, but a practice deeply rooted in the history of photography. By 1880 at the latest, with manuals such as J. P. Ourdan’s The Art of Retouching Photographic Negatives and Prints, it was already being taught systematically.
Yet even apart from retouching itself, photography has never been a neutral representation of reality. In the analogue era, the character of an image was significantly influenced by the choice of film. A photographer did not merely choose a subject, but also a particular visual language. Different films had different grain structures, contrast ranges, colour renderings and tonal characteristics. A Kodak film created a different atmosphere from a Fuji film, while a classic black-and-white film produced a different sense of depth and grain from a fine-grained portrait film. The choice of material was already a conscious aesthetic intervention. In other words, images were being shaped long before Photoshop existed – not only in the darkroom, but from the very moment the photographic material was chosen.
One essential aspect of this discussion, however, is often overlooked entirely: for me, the actual image does not originate in the camera. It frequently exists long before the photo shoot begins. Before the model starts to pose, before the lighting is arranged, before I even pick up the camera, the image is already present in my mind – sometimes as a clear composition, sometimes as an atmosphere, sometimes as an idea for the light, and sometimes as an emotional tension between light, shadow and the human body.
In this sense, the photo shoot is not the beginning of the image, but one stage in bringing it into existence. The photograph provides me with the raw material. I use that term quite deliberately. Just as a sculptor works with stone or wood, I work with photographic raw material. The camera provides the information from which the actual work is formed.
I always photograph in RAW. This is important to me. A RAW file is not a finished image. It is a raw-data format containing an enormous amount of information: highlights, shadows, colour data and considerable reserves within the tonal range. This is precisely why an unprocessed RAW image often appears flat, grey and almost disappointing. Not because it is poor, but because it has not yet been developed. It can be compared to a negative in the analogue darkroom. The actual image emerges only through the process of development.
Images taken with smartphones are also already processed. Many people overlook this. A photograph produced by a smartphone is by no means “authentic” or unedited. On the contrary, it is highly dependent on software. Depending on the manufacturer and camera model, algorithms determine which areas are emphasised, how contrast is increased, how colours are interpreted, how skin tones are rendered, how shadows are brightened and how details are sharpened. Often, several exposures are combined into a single image within fractions of a second, without the person taking the photograph even being aware of it.
Different cameras and smartphones do not produce identical images. If the same scene is photographed with several devices in JPEG mode, the results may differ considerably. This is not necessarily because one is right and another is wrong, but because manufacturers set different priorities. Some smartphones deliberately produce stronger colours, brighter shadows, higher contrast and more conspicuous sharpness. Their images appear immediately brilliant, striking and almost ready for social media. Other devices favour more restrained colours, more balanced tonal values or a different interpretation of skin tones. The supposedly “unedited” image has therefore already been interpreted – just not by the photographer, but by software and, ultimately, by the developers employed by the manufacturer.
Nor is JPEG a neutral format. A JPEG is already the result of a selection. From the total amount of image information available, certain data are prioritised, while others are compressed or permanently discarded. Contrast, colour saturation, sharpening, noise reduction and tonal rendering have already been influenced before the image even appears on the display.
As a photographer who develops his own RAW files, I make these decisions consciously. I determine which elements of the captured image I wish to emphasise: how bright or dark the shadows should appear, how much detail should remain in the highlights, how strongly the contrasts should be rendered, which tonal values should come to the fore, how colours should be interpreted and what atmosphere the finished image should convey. In doing so, I take responsibility for the development of my own image.
Anyone who fundamentally rejects image editing and photographs exclusively in JPEG does not avoid image processing. They merely leave that processing to someone else. In this case, the software inside the camera or smartphone decides which colours are intensified, which shadows are brightened, how highlights are controlled, how strongly details are sharpened and how much image noise is reduced. The aesthetic decisions are still being made – only not by the person taking the photograph, but largely by the developers of the respective camera system.
The alternative is therefore not: “Edited or unedited?” The real question is: “Who decides how the image is developed?” The photographer – or the manufacturer of the camera or smartphone? Both images have been processed.
The assumption that an image straight from the camera is automatically “natural” is therefore based on a misunderstanding. A camera does not depict the world in the same way that the human eye perceives it. Group selfies taken with smartphones provide a particularly clear example. To fit as many people as possible into the frame, smartphones usually employ very wide-angle lenses. As a result, people near the edges of the image may appear considerably broader or distorted. Faces are stretched, heads may appear larger and body proportions can change. The closer the camera is and the farther a person stands from the centre of the frame, the more obvious this effect can become.
This is not a characteristic of the person being photographed. It is the result of perspective, a short camera-to-subject distance, a wide-angle lens and the way in which three-dimensional reality is projected onto a flat image.
I once demonstrated precisely this effect to an acquaintance. She had previously told me that she rejected all forms of image editing. Photographs, in her opinion, should be “completely natural.” In a group selfie, however, her face had been rendered considerably broader than it actually was because she was standing near the edge of a wide-angle image. Correcting this afterwards would not have made her artificially slimmer, nor would it have created an unrealistic ideal of beauty. It would merely have reduced a technically induced distortion.
What, then, would be more natural in this case? The unedited image that visibly distorts a person? Or the edited image that more closely resembles their actual appearance? The answer is far less obvious than the statement “A photograph must not be edited” would suggest.
The belief that a camera depicts the world exactly as the human eye sees it is fundamentally mistaken. Human vision is not a single frozen image. Our eyes are constantly moving. They adapt to different levels of brightness, perceive details selectively, shift focus and continuously provide the brain with new information. The brain combines, completes, prioritises and interprets these impressions. A camera, by contrast, freezes a single moment – using a particular focal length, from a particular distance and perspective, with a defined shutter speed, a particular aperture and a limited dynamic range.
Even the choice of lens changes the way a person appears. A short focal length used at close range can emphasise the nose and forehead and distort areas towards the edges of the image. A longer focal length used from a greater distance often makes facial features appear calmer and proportions more harmonious. Which of these representations, then, is the “authentic” one?
This is precisely why image editing is not merely a form of correction for me, but an integral part of the creative process. In my artistic photography in particular, the actual work often emerges only during its development. This is especially true in black-and-white photography. Nothing happens there with a single click, despite what social media and preset culture may sometimes suggest. Tonal values, black point, highlights, midtones, local contrast, dodge and burn, grain structure, microcontrast and vignetting are all controlled with precision.
Only in Photoshop is the inner image that already existed in my mind before the photo shoot fully brought to light. There, I shape tonal values, the direction of light, areas of shadow, contrast and the final atmosphere until they correspond to the vision that has guided the entire process from the beginning. This does not mean that everything is rigidly planned. On the contrary, working with a model – with light, posture and expression – often creates new impulses that further develop the original image. Yet the idea, the underlying mood and the internal architecture of the image are usually already present. The image is not falsified in this process; it is translated into its own language.
At the same time, there is one critical aspect that matters greatly to me. There is a form of image manipulation that I consider deeply problematic: the creation of an unattainable ideal of beauty. When eyes are artificially enlarged, breasts reshaped, necks and legs lengthened, stomachs reduced, skin rendered entirely poreless and hair thickened beyond anything found in reality, there comes a point at which the result is no longer a woman, but a cartoon figure.
My objection is directed not only at the aesthetic distortion itself, but above all at the effect such images can have. Young girls in particular may strive to emulate an ideal that is simply unattainable. They may starve themselves, train relentlessly or torment their bodies and still never achieve this artificially constructed standard of beauty – because it does not exist in reality.
A well-known example is the widely published representation of what Barbie would look like as a real woman. Translating her proportions into human anatomy demonstrates, in an almost disturbing way, just how unrealistic this ideal of beauty is. I explicitly invite the reader to search for “Nickolay Lamm – Normal Barbie” or “Lammily.” This comparison makes visible how far certain ideals promoted by the media can be removed from the proportions of a real human body.
I consider this a genuine danger.
There are countless ways to make a person appear beautiful in a photograph without distorting who they are. Lighting, perspective and posing alone can dramatically alter the appearance of a body. Turning the body slightly, raising the chin, changing the line of the shoulders, using harder side lighting or carefully controlling the shadows can create the visual impression of a considerable difference in weight – without any digital manipulation at all.
Retouching is, of course, also part of my work. I remove temporary skin blemishes, balance distracting tonal irregularities, shape light and shadow and correct technical distractions. But the woman, the model or the client must still be able to recognise herself in the image. This is precisely where I believe responsibility begins.
The decisive question for me is therefore not: “Has this image been edited?” Almost every photographic image has been interpreted in some way – through the lens, the sensor, the film, the camera software, the development process or subsequent image editing.
The more important question is: “What was edited – and for what purpose?” Does the editing serve to make a photographic idea visible, to develop an atmosphere, to correct technically induced distortions or to portray a person in a way that reflects how they may genuinely be perceived? Or does it replace a real human being with an artificial ideal to which no real body could ever conform?
That is where I draw the line. And that, for me, is the true art: not replacing the person, but allowing them to become visible in the best light.