In photography, what is truth, and what is a lie?
Is the truth an accurate representation of reality, as close to objective as possible? Or is the "truth" how a particular photographer saw what he was shooting?
More specifically, WHO decides truth? The photographer, or the audience? Is truth something which is inherently internalized within the artist? Or does the entire notion of "truth" cease to have any meaning outside of the added baggage projected onto the art by the audience?
After all, the artist is the only one who knows what the artist is thinking. Then, by what standard can a bystander look at one artist's works and say "that artist's works are more true than another artist's"?
Is truth all in the INTENT? About what the artist wanted that particular piece of art to accomplish, and whether or not it actually accomplished that goal? And if that's the case, does truth alone make a piece of art a GOOD work of art?
The thing is...when I look at things like photography, I see a HELL of a lot of choices that the photographer can make. But to what extent are word like "truth" and "lies" even applicable? What exactly do those words even MEAN, when the very nature nature of photography (or any other visual art for that matter) implies a deliberate manipulation of what is real? What is "truth" and what is a "lie", and to what extent can any piece of art reasonably be called "more true than another piece of art" by anyone other than the artist?
What IS photographic truth, what are photographic lies, and how much of that is dependant on the artist vs the audience?