Is it Real

What does it mean for photography to be “real”? Has it ever truly been real? The moment a photographer frames a scene, they make a choice—deciding what to include and what to leave out. That act alone is an edit of reality. Even the materials and tools used—whether a particular film stock or a JPEG algorithm—reflect personal decisions made by chemists or software engineers about how they believe the world should look. Every photograph, whether analog, digital, or experimental, is ultimately a reflection of how the photographer sees and interprets the world. As Tomasz Trzebiatowski notes, the photographer shapes how the moment speaks to them personally. The resulting image is their interpretation of experience—and that, in its own way, is real.